Free Blaze by Andrew Thorp King

go. What time?” Juan was psyched.
    â€œBe at my crib at 9pm. We’ll all roll down together. Don’t come without your protection. Shit could get ugly at this club.”
    â€œWord. See you then.”
    Juan smiled. He was excited. He stopped thinking about his mom. He stopped worrying about Marie. And he had long forgotten any wrongs Angel had done to him.
    Angel and his crew were now Juan’s friends. They still teased him, but that was all right. They had his back. They were his brothers.
    The last time they went to the cantinas across the border Angel and the crew pushed back a bunch of dudes from jumping Juan. Juan was protected. Juan had beef with one dude that night and beat him near dead with a cue ball in a dirty sock. He earned mad respect from Angel and his crew. Since then, he’d been fighting every weekend.
    Maybe I’ll score tonight. Been a minute since I got some.
    Juan put on his baseball cap, put his cell in his left pocket and his switchblade in his right pocket. He slammed the door on his way out. Not a thought given to the tattered mother he left behind. It was time to go drink and fight. And maybe get laid.

CHAPTER TWELVE
    THE OFFICE OF PRESIDENT HADI SAMANI, TEHRAN, IRAN
    T here was no comedic irony to be acknowledged by Iranian President Hadi Samani in regard to the death of his life’s mentor; his spiritual and political role model, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. As honored and humbled as he had felt to assume his mentor’s position when he had passed, thus fulfilling the meaning of his name—guide or leader—he still simmered with unspeakable rage when he thought of the audacity of his mentor’s killer. Samani was a close friend of his mentor and an integral part of his cabinet. It was not only an audacious act, but one carried out by someone who, in Hadi’s mind, should had been executed a long time ago. It was an act carried out by one whose social status was such that his success in killing Hadi’s mentor was the ultimate embarrassment in the eyes of Islam.
    When it was reported that Samani’s mentor and his driver were blown up by a car bomb detonated remotely by cell phone, that was devastating enough. When it was discovered that the attack was coordinated by the group known as GALOI, or Gays and Lesbians of Iran, the magnitude of the insult became unbearable. The act was beyond shameful. The infidels worldwide mocked Iran’s loss and championed the efforts of the homosexuals. There was no doubt that many homosexuals in Iran, while denouncing the murderous act, still felt some vindication that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was in fact terminated by one of the people he claimed did not exist in his country.
    Unfortunately for members of GALOI and other homosexuals in Iran, Hadi Samani’s vengeful hand proved to retaliate in a couple of very unpleasant ways. First, he had anyone who stepped out of the closet executed by public hanging. Additionally, he developed a law enforcement agency whose sole purpose was to defend Islam by reaching into that proverbial closet and dragging Iran’s gays and lesbians kicking and screaming to their inevitable hanging. There were a rapid series of small group hangings as well as nationally televised executions by large group firing squads. These televised events featured audio narrators reading the Koran during the executions, and hailing the imminent coming of the Twelfth Imam. Also known as Imam Al-Mahdi, the Twelfth Imam was lauded to be the One to put an end to such immoral sexual perversions with the coming Caliphate. More homosexuals had been executed in the first six months of Samani’s presidency than the entire reign of his mentor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Gay rights activists worldwide had come to view A-Jad as Santa Claus in comparison to Samani.
    As the newly elected president of Iran, Samani held his first cabinet meeting at a sacred section of real estate. It was there that all his cabinet members had