The robbers look confused when I come into the bank. They hesitate a split second before they start shooting the semi-automatics at me. A couple rounds go straight into my gut, shredding it to bits no doubt. They wait for a reaction but my gut just spits out all the bullets like a sprinkler and when they see that I’m still standing, not really giving a shit about it, they start to shit themselves.

“Listen, we don’t want any trouble here.” One of them says.
Are you kidding me? After you shoot off my fucking intestines? The nerve of some guys. If you’re going to go down, go down with fucking balls is what I always say. I walk up to one of the guys and snatch the gun out of his hands. I take the butt of it and crack his skull, which knocks him out instantaneously. The other guy starts screaming like a bitch so I have to slap him up something good to get him to shut the hell up. The third guy keeps shooting the rest of his rounds at me. The skin tears away at my face and blood starts to drip out but a second later, its back to normal. This mildly irritates me so I take the gun and shoot a couple of rounds in his face, which inevitably kills the bastard.
Meanwhile, every sucker who was just trying cash in their checks and shitting themselves freeze up after I blast the last guy, then a second later someone yells,
“Hey, that’s Julian!”
Then the fucking place thunders with cheers and clapping.
“ENOUGH!” I roar.
That does the trick and the bank becomes ghostly in silence. I pick up the two writhing bastards leave the dead one on the ground.
The wind and altitude wakes the guys up and when they realize where they are, they start to scream again. I yell at them to shut up or I’m going to drop them so they shut up. I fly to the police station on Rampart and drag them in.
“What is it this time?”
“Bank robbers.”
Sheryl, the desk clerk is a fat black girl with bright red lipstick with long acrylic nails with all sorts of shit painted on them. This week she has crystals encrusted onto the tips. I fucked her in the ass last year after bringing in a Mexican gangbanger who was trying to rape a chick. I was heavily intoxicated at the time and accidentally pulled off one of the guy’s nuts. It was hilarious. I couldn’t stop laughing. I thought it apropos since he was trying to rape a twelve year-old. Sheryl agreed with this minor punishment. I thought that this agreement in principles was sufficient for a fucking. We went back to her place, knocked down a bottle of JD and fucked on the couch while her boyfriend was working the night shift at Denny’s. Her asshole was tight and smooth, and she was wet enough to lubricate her asshole with. I came after pumping her for ten minutes.
“You know the drill.”
Since filing a police report is time consuming and tedious, Specials simply sign and fingerprint next to the suspects they bring in, write what happened and toss them into a cell. I mean ever since we’ve been out here, the precincts have cut their labor in half and the they mostly have to deal with misdemeanors, traffic violations, and civil stuff. The rest is dealt by us or whoever wants the job. Our stipends are based on how many criminals we bring in so I do just enough to get by.
I toss the bank robbers into the cell and on my way out, a girl, maybe ten years old, asks for an autograph. She looks like he’s been beat up pretty good, black eye, bloody nose, and a busted lip.
“The hell happened to you?” I ask while signing her shirt.
“My paps. He’s a real asshole. A drunk. I’m making a report this time.”
“Give me a break. They ain’t gonna do shit. Where you live?”
“Third and Ardmore.”
“Come on.”

The apartment’s a mess. Stinks of booze and cunt. I even spot some condom wrappers. At least the bastards being careful. Out of all things. Overflowing ashtrays litter the apartment next to piles of empty beer and liquor bottles. I see a couple of roaches scurry underneath the fridge, which is empty except for an egg and rotten head of lettuce. There’s a forty with a wad of tissue stuck in the bottle to preserve its carbonation. I take a couple of sips from it. It’s flat but the malt liquor is still swimming in there. It’s a one-bedroom and the kid uses the living room as her bedroom. A couple of cardboard pieces are folded and used as room partitions for privacy.
“Where’s daddy?” I ask.
“Probably in his bedroom.”
I hand the kid a twenty-dollar bill and tell her to go out and get something to eat from the diner across the street. She readily accepts the bill and trots outside. I walk towards the door, swatting away the roaming flies buzzing in my face. I can hear the pig snoring from the bedroom. When I go in, I see a mass of pink flesh slathered against the bed sheets. He gurgles in his sleep, whimpering and grumbling like a hog. I imagined he would be a fat piece of work but notice he’s a gangly fellow with a thinning beard slapped onto his bony face.
“Hey.”
But he’s not budging. I can still smell the stink of bourbon off his whiskers. I kick the bed a little and yell at him once more. He shifts in his sleep. The fucker. I grab a cup from the dresser and go into the bathroom. I scoop a cup of the piss he left in the toilet and splash it onto his face, some of which dribbles into his mouth. He wakes up with a startle.
“What the fuck!” He shakes off the excess piss and looks up at me like a stray cat.
“Who the fuck are you?” He asks.
“It doesn’t matter. I hear you’ve been beating on your kid for quite a while.”
“Who the hell told you that? Is she running her smart ass mouth again?”
“She didn’t have to. It’s plain as day what’s been going on.”
“Aw hell, she’s just a clumsy little shit. Can’t be helped. Kid goes running into brick walls and I’m the one getting the blame! Shit, she outta watch where the fuck she’s going. That’s what she outta do. You from social works? I’ve been meaning to talk to you guys. I ain’t got my welfare check this month. Who do I talk to about that?”
“The kid doesn’t come off as a running into brick walls kind of a kid.”
“Listen!”

But I get sick of hearing him. Even his voice sounds like a pig’s, always wheezing in and out with deep breaths, a wet flapping noise against his tongue. Made me agitated. So I grab him by the neck just to shut him, just so that I could hear myself think. He starts to wriggle around, whipping his arms and legs around like a puppet. I’m squeezing his neck pretty tight, enough so that no oxygen can pass through his windpipe. But I’m pretty calm. I just look at the guy, wondering what his childhood was like, wondering how many times he’s beaten on the kid, where the mom is, and so forth. The bastards face gets swollen red like a cherry tomato. I could’ve popped the son of a bitch’s head if I wanted to, had his brains splatter all against the wall the flick of a finger. But hell, the kid couldn’t live in some shit storm with her daddy’s brain sprayed against the walls. Wouldn’t be too conducive to her learning environment, I don’t think. So I tell the gangly bastard that he better quit with all the beating shit. A calm kid like her, I don’t imagine would be starting enough hell to deserve a beating like that.
“Pleeeeaasssee,” the bastard starts wheezing through his purple lips. His eyes nearly popping out of his skull like two edamame peas slipping out of its skin.
“Wait, I’m not finished yet. And look around you, the place is a mess. It’s a fucking pigsty is what it is. This ain’t no fucking environment for a ten year-old to get raised in. Shit, I’ve seen some roaches crawling up and down the walls. And for chrissake’s knock off the booze. You ain’t got no style in it.”
The guy’s eyes start to roll into the back of his skull. I gotta shake him up a couple of times to keep him from passing out. And when I shake him, his whole body just flops like a damn rag doll. I can’t help but chuckle a little bit, a gangly bastard like him just flopping around against the wall with his purple head, about to pass out while I’m trying to tell him something useful. Fuck it. I drop the guy on the ground. He’s still not moving so I kick him around with my feet. That does the trick. He coughs a little, flailing his arms to get situated.
“You a Special or something?” He asks.
“It doesn’t matter. Just straighten up and don’t be such an asshole. I know where you live and I’m going to check up on you every once in a while. If I see a scratch on the kid’s face or an empty beer can lying around, I’m going to come back and rip your penis right out from your crotch, you hear me?”
I think he got the message because he didn’t stir much after that. He just sat there, trying to get composed and meekly shook his head.
“Well, shit. Time’s a wasting. You better fix yourself up and start cleaning up before the missus gets here.”
And so, the poor slob staggered upwards and hunched over all the bottles, beers and trash tossing them into trash bags, once in a while stomping on any bug that scurried about.
The girl came back shortly thereafter. She looks around to her restored sanctuary excavated from the trash and bugs. The father smiles and gives the little girl a hug. She pushes him away and goes back to her living room and watches Tom and Jerry cartoons. The father goes back into his bedroom and continues his cleaning.
“I hope you weren’t too hard on him,” says the girl.
“And if I was?”
“I don’t know. Just sounded like something I had to say. Guess I wouldn’t have cared much either way. Hey what if he beats me up after you leave, you know for getting you involved.”
“Well, I’ll come back and make him regret it.”
“What if he kills me.”
“Well, I guess I oughta kill him too.”
She thinks this scenario through and its seemingly equitable resolutions satiates her apprehension.
“Where do you live?”
“Why you wanna know kid?”
“In case…”
“In case what?”
“In case I need help.”
I scribble my address in her notebook.
“Later.” I’m about to make my exit through the window because I’m too lazy to take the stairs. Flying in a lot of ways is much easier than walking; less pressure on the knees.
“Wait.”
She hands me a box of food she brought from the diner.
“For when you get hungry,” she tells me.
I fly back home. I watch some porn and jack off. I read a couple of excerpts from Dante’s Inferno, lose my concentration and start scribbling on a notepad about a dream I had the other night. It was about some jaguar looking thing that turned into a man and kept tearing my insides out except that time, my wounds didn’t heal. My gut was melting and it hurt like a motherfucker as if I was drinking acid. Then he stopped tearing at my gut seeing as I was dying and all and just stood there and lit a cigarette. Then he said, “There’s no looking back now.” I woke up and thought it strange that I was sweating. Then I get hungry and eat the club sandwich and fries in the box and fall asleep while watching Goodfellas on TV.

Legion

February 15, 2011 at 11:34 PM PST

You are my god. Thank You Inglip.