/yesod

Tag: crime

  • eastern promises

    I find myself on a tour of a city somewhere in Eastern Europe. It is a dank, darkly industrial place — all smokestacks and ornate spires, brick walls stained with soot. Tagging along with a friend from junior high — he has made this trip many times before — I wander through the streets and shops, taking pictures as I go…

    …the market, full of cheap knockoffs of western products and strange gummy candies, bright as chemicals…

    …a flock of pigeons, black with soot, taking flight into a smoke filled sky…

    …the rushed tour through a defunct governmental building, paper-strewn floors and broken skylights, a crudely mimeographed guide handed out — rough paper decorated with crayon scrawls and stupid jokes about American super heroes. We join an Australian tour group, twenty or more strong, demanding their money back . . . but the scam artists operating the tour lock us out…

    …tagging along with the Australians, safety in numbers, despite the growing signs that they hide dark secrets — hints that they’ve been on this same trip for decades, damned and doomed to wander in a forgotten corner of the world…

    …gathering together in a crumbling courtyard for the night, an old movie shown on a sheet hung up on one wall . . . I am horrified to see a young girl, her wits damaged in some way, mutely servicing one of the Australian men with her hands while the movie plays, casting a sickening constellation against the jacket of the oblivious woman in front of them…

    …edging out of a brick archway, strewn with vines — no interest in seeing how the movie turns out, wanting to escape their company before the evening reveals even more distasteful secrets…

    …standing in a darkened alley, taking a picture of clothes lines fluttering overhead. Two men pass along a narrow opening. They pass by and, after some hushed t ones, they return — demanding my phone and whatever money I have. One of them is dark and menacing, the other blonde and aloof. Despite the danger, I refuse and, somehow, make my escape…

    …spending the night in an old flat, the women there gray with age and disappointment…

    …the men burst in, having tracked me to my little haven. Somehow I get the upper hand…

    …the dark man is kneeling, hands bound behind him. I slap his face roughly once, then again. His eyes raise to me, full of hate, and I pull back my balled fist…

    …and then I wake in the cold light, bare branches outside my window and my daughter murmuring across the hall.

  • daycare rescue

    Somehow, I have become two people. There is the adult version of me, as I am now. And there is the teenaged version of me.

    Together, we are plotting to rescue my youngest daughter from her daycare. The details of why she needs rescuing aren’t explained but, armed to the teeth and sick with worry, we make our plans.

    (Even in my dream, the proximity of guns and children disturbs me. My younger self tries to reason with my older self, to convince him that it’s better to go to the police. But he/I refused.)

    We sneak into the school one night — something else that isn’t explained, why it’s nighttime — doing our best to bluff our way past the receptionist. Explaining why there are two of us is difficult.

    My older self is relieved when my teenage self says “I’m her older brother” — good thinking, kid.

    We do our best to keep the guns hidden as we make our way through the halls. But one of the kids sees the sawed off shotgun my younger self carries under his/my trenchcoat and we’re off to the races.

    Teachers and parents and children scramble everywhere in a panic. With the police on the way, we rush into a classroom and get my/our daughter out safely. No one has been hurt, no one has been caught.

    But back at the house, the police are waiting — painting the cheap stucco walls of our neighborhood with screams of blue and red.

    My older self says “Take care of her for me…” leaving my younger self to hold onto his/our daughter while he/I (the older version of me) leads the cops away. He doesn’t get far. And neither do we.

    It is terrifying, stressful, and heartbreaking. And I am relieved when I wake.

  • an uncomfortable visit

    …shocked at how seedy the old neighborhood looks, I feel a pang of survivor’s guilt over my own relatively comfortable life now.

    Through the open door of the apartment, I can see that our old neighbors are sitting down to dinner. I’m stunned for a moment to find that the little boy my son used to play with is now a paraplegic. I’m already regretting the visit as I knock.

    Shuffled of chairs inside, dishes and silverware clatter on a tabletop. I’m interrupting dinner. Idiot.

    The husband opens the door, still chewing.

    I’m puzzled by a poster of an old comic book character on the wall behind him.

    He’s puzzled by my visit, doesn’t recognize me at first. Then his eyes light up and he calls his wife out to say hello. He tells me to wait for a moment, that he’s got a gift he’s been saving for me. I do my best to demur but he’s already rummaging around in the chaotic jumble of old toys and rubbish in their little apartment.

    At the door, his wife asks about my kids. We trade polite pleasantries for a few minutes. She tells me that crime in the area has made it almost impossible to raise a family. Uncomfortable, I joke about dressing up like Batman and clean things up.

    In the stairwell behind me, I hear a door slam. Mutter of voices, a low level of panic. A woman cries somewhere up above.

    A man with a handgun makes his way door to door, collecting this week’s rent and/or protection money.

    She does her best to hold on to her fear. I do my best to hope that the thug didn’t hear my ridiculous crimefighter comment.

    Her husband comes out into the hallway to confront the thug. I can feel the anger building in his wife, that he would jeopardize their safety with this pointless bravado.

    Things get complicated, convoluted . . . the sands of dream shift under my feet and slides into another, disjointed direction…

  • thugs and church

    [This is directly transcribed, without changes or edits, from a journal entry dated May 4th, 2003]

    …and as I’m walking through the parking lot towards my car, I see two guys approaching — I make eye contact, just to established that they know that I know they’re there . . . One of them nods and says “How’s it going?” And I realize that I am in trouble. They’re both heavier than I am, and they move with a raw plodding strength that I do not possess and cannot hope to match — Like an idiot, I’ve parked on the far side of the lot. The other cars are very far away and a few people are moving in the darkened a lot.

    As I said, they’re big and they spread out a bit, drawing my focus first one way and then the other. I exchange words with the smaller of the two, can’t remember now what was said but things escalate and I realize that I’m not looking at a typical robbery — These guys are looking for someone to be and I’m more than convenient.

    Bad news for me.

    And this is the strange thing… I don’t remember how I got away from them but I did.

    I remember shouting to a group of people who were standing in a pool of light 100 yards away… I remember leaving my car behind — perhaps Iran?

    At any rate, I get away and at least one thing sank in — I wasn’t clear of them. They’d be waiting for me when I went back for my car.

    The next day is Sunday and I am at church — not my real church but one of those awful Seeker churches tucked away in an industrial park behind a Sam’s Club and a warehouse.

    And then everything gets murky. The dream went on for much longer, but it just didn’t stay with me long enough to capture it here.

  • home invasion

    [This is directly transcribed, without changes or edits, from a journal entry dated January 6th, 1997]

    I stand in the front window and watch as the car makes its second pass, making myself as visible as possible to the men inside . . . letting them know that there are people home and they’ll have to find someone else to rob.

    On their fourth pass, I make eye contact with the driver and I know then that this is no normal robbery. They want me to see them.

    We stand there, watching the pass and I realize that we’re being diverted.

    Misdirection.

    Someone is already in the house, I know. Someone came in the back — the car had been empty? The car had been full on the first pass, but the last few times, I could see that the men inside were not so cramped; one of them was gone.

    They were already in the house.

    Through the house I go, searching.

    Passing by my room I see that the french doors have been kicked in.

    Someone is in the house.

    In a back room, my teenage daughter’s room, I find them. He is sitting at the piano, holding a gun in her face. She sits on the bed, crying.

    With a broken crystal candlestick, I stab him in the back — just to the left of the spine — before he can turn.

    Push the splintered end deep into him, glancing off the shoulderblade, scraping against the bone.

    He breathes once, heavy, and then dies.

    When the car passes by the window again, I am there — his head in my fist, raising it high, my fingers in his hair.

    I see the eyes widen as they see his glazed, empty gaze.

    I meet the eyes of one in the car as it speeds off — that is the one, I know, who will return for revenge.

    The car drives off into the night and I drop the head, realizing that — for the first time — it is snowing in the Midlands.

    [2013 Addendum: This is a odd one to look at now. In 1997, I did not have a daughter. Now I have two. And, for what it’s worth, my bedroom (four houses and sixteen years later) has French doors. That’s not going to help me get to sleep any easier.)