Free The Sin Bin by Tony Black

want, baby.'
    He ' s grinning and acting like some frat boy who ' s just got the town slut in the back-seat of his daddy ' s Buick. I lay there feeling my head pushed
against the door and my ass jammed against the stick shift and I want to scream
but my voice is so weak I can hardly get the words I have to say out. ' Like Rohypnol?'
    He puts his hand on my ass, says, 'You
know, Steve ain ' t coming back,
Alana, why don ' t you relax?'
    He moves fast, now. There ' s no, like, struggling with buttons or
straps or whatever, he ' s
ripping at me.
    'Stop!' I tell him.
    'What?' He looks pissed with me. 'I
can' t stop now!'
    His hands move fast but mine move
faster as I slip the Beretta out of the leg strap and point it at his crotch.
As he feels the cold metal touch his balls his face looks white as death, but
that might just be the moonlight. He ' s sure as hell stock-still ... until I pull the trigger.
    Blood splatters the window behind him
instantly. I move the gun about and I ' m firing and firing until there ' s smoke everywhere, so much I can taste it.
    For a moment, I lie there.
    I can feel the gun smoke burning my
throat.
    My lungs fill up and I start to cough.
    Brad ' s mouth isn ' t
crooked anymore. It flops open and his lips spill blood on me. I ' m like, yeuch. He ' s a dead weight on top of me as I slide out from under him. I
wonder, does he know why?
    Oh yeah, like I ' d care if he did.
     

Too Close to
Call
    Marie had been at me for close to
an hour when I flipped. Dropped beside her on the couch and cracked a knuckle
on her brow. She flopped like a deflating sex doll.
    'Well, what do you expect?' I said. 'Jesus
Christ!'
    Pedro rose, put a greasy paw on her
cheek. 'She's cold.'
    'No shit ... tell me something I don't
know, huh.'
    He went back to his window seat and lit
a Lucky. The neighbour's Schnauzer started barking.
    'Dog don't like it none,' said Pedro.
    I took up a football trophy and aimed
it at his head. 'You want this?''I'm only saying, bro ... No need to go all
bugeyed on me.'
    I slammed down the trophy, said, 'Just shut
up and give me a smoke.'
    Pedro smiled, his yellowed teeth looked
like little fossils inside his old head. It was all his fault, this mess. I
wanted to smack his teeth off the four walls. Bitchslap him a hundred times
harder than I'd just done to Marie.
    Pedro tossed the pack. I sparked a
match and put the Lucky to work. The taste came like old dreams as I tipped
back my head and sighed.
    'So, what's next, brother Mitch?'
    'We sit tight.'
    'We've been sitting tight for an hour
now, Mitch. Cops gonna be coming by soon. Real soon.'
    He was riding me. In the Joint they
tell you, someone starts riding, you take a breath. I took another belt on the
Lucky. I wasn't ready to go back to beating off buttfuckers and an orange
jumpsuit. Pedro knew this. He was clean — as clean as any wino crackhead
motherfucker in Dodge. But my card was already punched. I rubbed my knuckles. They
hurt like hell, sitting up in points like a row of KKK hoods.
    'Well?'
    'I'm thinking.'
    The Schnauzer barked like bad news. A
beige saloon went past the window in slow-mo.
    'Don't take too long.'
    I turned to eyeball Pedro, expected to
see him grinning, perhaps perched on the end of a cigarillo like Eli Wallach in
his most famous role. That's what the three of us were — The Good, The Bad and
The Ugly.  My mind ran amok ... I heard some of Eli's lines: There are two
types of spurs, Blondie ... The type that come in through doors and the type
that come in through windows.
    'Get to the back of the fucking house,'
I roared.
    'What?'
    'You heard me. Get off your ass and
check the back's secure and lock the Goddamn door.'
    'Are you for real?'
    'Fucking A.'
    'No door's gonna stop Mr Nightstick
coming in.'
    I lost it. Ran towards him and yanked
him by the collar. On his feet, I spun him and rabbitpunched the back of the
head. His shoes flew out behind him, he stumbled out to the back door.
    As Pedro left, Marie let out a