Golumpki - Part Two
(check out Part One HERE)
DING
“Nope!” I yelled at the phone as I marched back into the bedroom where that nasty puke monster was lying dead on my bed. I found the little brown box of bullets, my shoes, Louis’ leash, my glasses and my coat. I stuffed the bullets in my left coat pocket and the little pistol in my right but not before reloading the thing. I’ve seen enough Lethal Weapon movies to figure out all you need to do is push the little round cylinder over and put 6 more bullets in the back. I clipped on Louis’ leash, zipped my coat and walked out the front door and locked it behind me.
DING
“Noooo”, I started making my way down the hall, the first door was Ms. Ramirez in 203, she’s old so I know she has a regular phone, I’ll go knock on her...
The door is wide open. A weird whitish blue light is spilling from her living room with a low buzz of TV static accompanying it. I take a few steps in and call out to her but there is no response, the rest of the apartment lights are off. I come around the corner and find her standing motionless in front of her TV.
Engage anxiety.
I step closer to her, reaching out my left hand to her shoulder, my right in my pocket nervously gripping the gun. I touch her shoulder and her head slowly turns to look at me, her eyes are open and they are the same pale orange as the creature that I puked and shot. I panic and dash out the door towards the end of the hall which is apartment 202 Mr. Gacy. Surely, he heard something since our bedrooms share a wall. He’s a smoker and I always hear him coughing in the night sometimes and it keeps me up.
I knock on his door, it’s unlatched and swings open slowly, this can’t be good. I inch into the apartment and find the same white blue glow as Ms. Ramirez had in 203. I step around the corner and past piles of clothes and old magazines to find Mr. Gacy sitting in his chair in front of his TV, I whisper his name nervously and his head leans back in the chair to look at me, again I find those same pale orange eyes. I grab Louis’ leash and run out of the smoky apartment and down the hall. I rush down two flights of stairs out the front door and into the blustery cold winter streets where I run as fast and as hard as I can. Two blocks over and around a corner I stop to catch my breath.
DING
I check my phone. 3 texts from Mirko...
Mirko: There’s no use running
Mirko: There’s no use calling for help
Mirko: We’re coming for you Coralee
How could this night get any worse?
“Hey sis!” Oh God, it’s Lexi and her boyfriend walking right towards me.
“Oh my god! What are you doing here? Do you live around here? Is this your dog? He’s sooo cute.” The words just exploded out of Lexi’s mouth like rapid fire. Her breath smells like alcohol and it makes my stomach turn. “This is Tony, remember Tony, I told you about him, right? We were just at the bar and...”
“Lexi…” still trying to catch my breath I tried to get a word in but the drunken onslaught wouldn’t stop.
“...they had these mozzarella sticks and OH MY GOD they were so good. This place had 4 stars on Yelp but the waitress was taking FOREVER and…”
“Lex-i…” my head is throbbing. My legs are still burning and I don’t have time for this verbal diarrhea right now.
“...he was gonna leave a $20 tip but I don’t think the service was worth THAT.”
“LEXI SHUT. UP”. I yelled as loud as I could. It finally got her to stop talking and even got Tony to pay attention and look up from his phone.
“What’s wrong with you?” I think this is the first time she’s asked me about my life.
“Mirko…”
“MIRKO! Uh-uh, what did he do? Did he stand you up? Gasp! Did he touch you? I swear to god if he touched you I’ll have Tony beat his ass. I can’t believe- “
“Lexi shut up and listen for once” my assertiveness shocked her, Tony went back to his phone.
“Mirko took me to this weird restaurant that his cousin owns, and…and…” all of a sudden, my mouth started getting dry, “and I ate this weird food and I started puking but there…there was this THING in, in, in the puke and it had these, these orange eyes and I, I shot it!”
I pulled the gun out, Lexi and Tony jumped back and gasped, “and Ms. Ramirez and Mr. Gacy were like, I dunno hypnotized and I ran and my phone is being weird and...what’s that green light? My head feels weird, do you see these dots?...” My vision was suddenly overcome with shifting colors with dots dancing and blinking in an out of existence superimposed over everything in my field of vision. I feel my whole body turn to jelly, my legs give out from underneath me and I collapse onto the pavement.
“Whoa, your friend is weird Lex.”
Thump thump thump thump thump.
My ears, my head, my chest are bumping and thumping in unison. A flash of light overhead, a floating sensation. A red glow from just outside my periphery and a muffled collection of voices stirring make my ears ring. My senses return slightly, we’re moving, I’m moving, my eyes fixed on the raindrop spattered window as the street lights pass overhead making the water drops dance and twinkle. The thumping is music vibrating my whole body, the voices, Lexi, Tony and the Uber driver. I sit up and see Louis sleeping at my feet. My movement makes his ears perk up and his eyes open slowly.
“It’s ok Louie, momma is fi…blegh”
Apparently, the puking isn’t over and the Uber driver is pissed.
“What de fuck! Is she puking in my fucking car mate?” Tony is trying to calm the driver down, Lexi is yelling making everything worse and I puke again.
“Oh no way man, you can’t have this shit in my car. No way.'' He pulls the minivan over abruptly to the side of the road, him and Tony jump out screaming at each other, Lexi leaves me inside. As they are yelling and screaming about how many stars each is going to give the other, I wipe my face and gather myself to crawl from the third row of seats and onto the sidewalk.
“You gonna pay for this you drunk bitch? Look at my fucking car man!” I’m tired. I’m sore. My stomach is churning and don’t have time to wake up to this bullshit. I just wanna go home, forget this night happened. I apologize as much as I can to the driver but Lexi is losing it, she’s drunk and getting a little aggressive.
“Lexi, chill it’s fine, I got this.” I turn to try to calm her down as Tony grabs her by the waist but when I turn to face the driver, I see it. Pale, orange eyes peering out of the darkness of the van. Did I puke up another one of those things? I scream as the creature leaps over the seats and onto the back of the driver, taking a bite out of the side of his unsuspecting neck. He yelps and falls against the side of the van, arms flailing as the thing continues to rip into him. Flesh and tendons and blood spray across the early morning streets.
The gun!
It’s not in my pocket. The driver finally collapses to the sidewalk as the beast looks up at me pinning me as its next victim. It leaps but Tony, who is much larger than the lanky black puke monster, grabs it and wrestles it to the ground.
“Get in the car!” Tony screams as he’s wrestling around on the blood-soaked pavement. This monster seems to be a little larger than the one in my apartment, but maybe it’s the lighting. Screaming and panicked, Lexi and I jump in the car. There’s no way in hell I would ever let Lexi drive, let alone drunk, but I feel like I’m going to pass out and a monster from my puke just ripped a guy’s throat out so I don’t care at this point and let her. I secure Louis on my lap as she jams the car in drive and starts pulling away. Suddenly, Tony and the creature tumble across the hood of the car, cracking the windscreen. Where the hell is that gun at?
“GO! GO! GO!” I scream as Lexi steps on the gas. Tony and the thing fall off the hood and the back tires roll over something. Oh my god, I hope that wasn’t Tony! The tires squeal but we don't make it very far before Lexi hits a parked car. The crash jolts us both forward and the gun spills out of her purse that was sitting at my feet. I quickly reach down and grab it and stuff it into my coat pocket. She puts the car in reverse but something jumps into the back seat through the open door, I spin around and pull the gun out.
“Whoa, whoa whoa! It’s me, get out of here Lex.” Oh, thank god, it’s just Tony and thank god, I didn’t shoot him, he already looks to be in pretty bad shape. Lexi finally takes off down the empty city streets, I can only make out some of Tony’s injuries as we pass under a street light that shines into the back of the van. Deep slashes run across his face and chest. A few blocks further and Lexi is asking a million questions. I interrupt; “who cares! Keep driving! He has to get to the hospital!” Another street light, another glimpse, this time of his left hand which is mangled, that thing took a big bite out it and there’s dark blood everywhere. The van slows to a stop, “why the hell are you stopping?” I question. At this point I seem more concerned about Tony’s well being than she does.
“Its...It’s a red light.” Oh, well that makes sense. While we’re stopped I take off my seatbelt and start climbing into the back seat to help Tony. For as much of a hippy my mother is she’s also a helicopter parent and made me take a bunch of Red Cross first aid classes before she would let me babysit my little sister and brother. Hopefully some of this stuff will be useful for monster bites. I take a strip of Tony’s ripped t-shirt and wrap it around his hand, not like it’s going to help much, his pinky and ring finger are twisted and you can see the bones protruding amongst the gore. At the next stoplight I climb back into the front seat and I give Louis a pet.
“He isn’t doing so good, we need to get there quick.” I speak quietly to Lexi. When I lift my head up from petting Louis I see outside of Lexi’s window. The site causes my blood to chill - Andreas is out there, in a black SUV.
“LEXI DRIVE NOW! IT’S HIM!”
She floors it but the van barely accelerates on the wet pavement. How did he find us? MY PHONE! As Lexi does her best to outrun Andreas, I dig around for my phone.
DING
Text from Mirko: Found you Coralee!
I do what I should have done hours ago and throw the phone out of the van’s window.
“Turn! Turn! Turn!” I scream at Lexi as Andreas’ truck inches closer to ours almost hitting us. Tony is moaning in the back seat as the movement jostles him. Louis is barking like a maniac and Lexi is crying and screaming how she hates me for getting her into this mess, love you too Lex. A few blocks over, another turn, another block down. For once we’re lucky it’s so late and there aren’t any cars on the road but on the other hand why is there never a cop when you need one? We run a red light and try to make a left onto a side street and that’s when we start to spin. My body feels weightless as the van spins around on the road before abruptly stopping, the air bag exploding into my face.
Ding...ding…ding...ding
The noise of a car door open reverberates in my ears. My face hurts and something warm and wet is running down my face over my lips and chin, I think my nose is broken. The van door slides open and I hear them.
“Take both girls.” That voice, that’s Andreas, I won’t forget that voice. “Kill the man.”
“What about dog?” A voice from the other side of the van asks in the same thick accent as Mirko and Andreas.
“Kill it”. Andres responds coldly…
“Run Louie, it’s okay mommy is fi-“
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