Brush Creek Charlie by D. B. Reynolds (which ebook reader .txt) 📖

People in the building knew him by Darryl. Street punks and drug dealers knew him by D-Money. Secretive residents like Charlie cared not to know him at all. He never spoke to him in passing or just taking out the trash.
Derrick and Mitchell were in the kitchen of their apartment preparing food for a big Sunday dinner. Charlie happened to be inside his apartment reading an old article about the grizzly murder of Lisa Wallace. The exact murder he’d committed he relished with commendation. A crashing knock sounded at his door. Who was bold enough to knock so aggressively? Were the law coming to arrest him for his debut murder? The knocks came non-stop. They got bolder.
“Alright, I’m coming!” Charlie yelled to make the stranger ease up.
He only hoped and prayed the interracial homosexuals weren’t coming to bother him about a bunch of nonsense. Charlie looked into the peephole. Two thuggish looking street punks stood in the hallway with their baseball caps cocked backwards. Their pants sagged far off their behinds. No way was Charlie going to open the door. Taking both of them out would’ve been no problem.
“What can I do for you?” Charlie wailed, keeping his keen eye on the thugs through the peephole.
One of the rogues nearly pressed his face to the door. “We’re here to see D-Money.”
“D-Money doesn’t live here.”
“He gave us this apartment number.”
“Somebody’s given you the wrong apartment number. There’s nobody who lives here by that name.”
The street punk molded his body further against the door. “D-money said he lives here, and this is where we were told to come.”
“For the last time, nobody lives here by that name.”
Boldly, the out-of-control roughneck rattled the doorknob to the apartment. Charlie rushed into the kitchen and jerked a large butcherknife out of the silverware drawer. In heated rage, he went inside the closet and brought out the monster machete he used to mutilate Lisa Wallace with. He looked through the peephole. Both brave punks pushed against the door like they wanted to bust through.
Charlie slid both chains off the latch and opened the door with authority. “Now, what the fuck do you two sonofabitches want!”
The knife and machete were raised high as though he prepared for fresh combat left over from Vietnam.
The pair of young thugs displayed strong demeanors of fright.
The tallest of the them stepped around his partner and said, “Look man, D-Money told us that he stayed in this apartment. We didn’t mean to disturb you or anything like that.”
“When I told you that this D-Money character didn’t live here, you should’ve got the fuck away from in front of my door. I’ll take this knife and machete and chop you up into so many pieces, until the maggots wouldn’t have enough to feast on. Anyway, what does this D-Money motherfucker look like?”
The other thug spoke up. “He’s a tall and skinny black dude with a lot of hair grease in his head.”
“So, he’s the black guy with the oily face who’s always twisting his mouth like he’s got some type of nervous condition.”
The wannabe drug kingpins turned to lock eyes. In a perfect unison, both replied by saying, “Yeah, yeah, that’s him.”
“Does he owe you money?”
“Yeah, he owes us money for some work.”
“Work?”
“You know, the smoke.”
“Dope, huh?”
Charlie held on to his weapons like the two rogues were Vietnamese enemy personnel.
“Something like that.”
“Both of you guys are stupid. This D-Money has pawned me off on you guys.”
“He told us that you would pay us for the work.”
“I’m not paying for no one else’s drug debts.”
“Why not?”
Charlie hissed out pure hostility. “You young punks aren’t getting one red cent out of me. I don’t do dope. I don’t understand why you’re here at The Rosenburg trying to set up your goddamned infant drug cartel.”
“Hey man, don’t talk to us like that. We’ll both kill your white ass and nobody will ever hear from you again.”
Charlie slipped into a flashback daze. This episode took him right back into his days of serving in the hot and hostile jungles of Saigon in Vietnam. The irritability and outburst of anger and hypervigilance took him over. He emptied round after round into several Vietnamese soldiers. He watched them drop like flies, some still breathing after being filled with hot lead. Quickly, he jumped back into the present.
“You motherfuckers, war has no beginning, and it has no end!” Charlie thundered, the monster side of him having surfaced.
He swung the butcherknife and machete at the drug pushing thugs. They rushed to the middle of the stairs. Fright shot into them like doses of penicillin. It was frightening enough for them to look into his pitted face and at his rotted dental work.
“Man, that dude is one of them crazy war soldiers,” the taller thug warned his counterpart.
“We better get away from him before he chops us up.”
“It’s not worth all that.”
“No, it ain’t.”
Charlie slammed his door loud enough to shake up Derrick and Mitchell down on the first floor. Derrick opened his door with baking flour all around his arms and hands.
Their Sunday dinner was almost complete. The wandering rogues came downstairs perpetrating their own brand of innocence.
“Who’s up there slamming doors like that?” Mitchell asked one of the thugs.
“It was that white dude with the crater face and the yuck mouth.”
Mitchell nodded his head. “You’re talking about Charlie.”
“Do you know D-Money?” the rogue questioned Derrick, more than determined to find the addict who owed he and his partner money.
“Hmmmmm,” Derrick brainstormed. “Oily face guy with slicked back hair who’s always twisting his mouth back and forth all the time?”
“Yes sir, that’s him.”
“He’s up on the third floor in Apartment 320.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“And who are you?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Do you belong here at The Rosenburg?”
They ignored Derrick to begin their journey up to the third floor. A boisterous knock rattled the door of Darrell “D-Money” Parker. No one answered. The knocks grew more commanding. D-Money crept to the door and peeped out the hole. The collectors for his drug debts had arrived. The time to pay the piper snuck up on him. A series of savage kicks followed by more knocks weakened the door’s structure. D-Money had nowhere to run. Scenarios of violence entered his deranged head. What the hell was he going to do? Where in the hell was he going to run?
“Hey D-Money, I know you’re in there,” spoke one of the vicious rogues, still kicking on the apartment’s door.
D-Money knew enough force would eventually bring the door down. He pushed his bed and dresser against the door. Chairs and miscellaneous objects were also used to barricade the door against the savages who wanted every cent of their drug profits.
“D-Money, we gave you some dope on credit. We want our money, and we want it now.”
“We’re gonna knock this door down and bust come caps in your ass!”
“And we ain’t bullshitting, D-Money.”
“Open the door or you’re gonna be one dead nigga.”
From the other side of the door, D-Money knew they meant business. Pay up or lose your life. The force of their strong legs shattered the deadbolt lock and busted both chains off the door. D-Money now had to make a choice of either life or death. He dashed over by the window and looked out. What sounded like pistols being cocked frightened him into sudden oblivion. It’d come down to two choices. Stay in the apartment and get some hot slugs pumped into his frail, crack-addicted body. Jump out the third story window and possibly suffer a broken bone or two.
Charlie and others raced out of their apartments to catch a glimpse of the action. The door to D-Money’s apartment had been kicked all the way in. Blocking the way of both thugs were the king-sized bed and the dresser, along with the chairs and other items. D-Money had already pushed the window open and half his body was suspended over the ledge. With several hard pushes, the drug bastards made their way into his apartment. D-Money had to make the most crucial decision of his life. His very life hung in the immediate balance.
Instead of taking bullets into his skinny frame, he jumped out the window. The impact after hitting the hard concrete made sounds audible enough to be heard around The Rosenburg complex. The Tibalis Anterior bones of both his legs burst through and broke the skin. Muscle tendons ripped apart and caused him excruciating pain.
Blood splattered all over the back parking lot concrete. D-Money rocked back and forth from excruciating pain. Tears of agony clouded his eyes. Residents from The Rosenburg gathered in the back of the building to spectate the young drug addict who was sprawled across the ground in unspeakable pain. A series of police sirens echoed throughout the neighborhood. Charlie stepped up to the injured D-Money with red eyes of vehemence. No sympathy whatsoever touched his black heart.
“You pawned those two dope punks off on me, didn’t you?” Charlie confrontationally barked at D-Money
D-Money couldn’t respond since he was in so much agony.
“You told them that I’d pay them for the drug debts you owed. How dare you, you crack smoking nigger. How dare you pawn of a couple of other niggers off on me. How dare you put my life in jeopardy for some bullshit mess you’ve created. I should reach down and break all the rest of the bones in your body.”
Still, D-Money couldn’t respond. The pain left him speechless. The shame left his emotions crippled.
“Every since you’ve