Post by Cartier on Dec 17, 2020 14:19:35 GMT -6
“THIS THE SPOT?”
“Damn, Santana, quit fuckin’ screamin’...”
“BITCH THIS IS HOW SANTANA WHISPERS.”
Cartier shook her head. She knew he was being honest. If Santana raised his voice the cops would probably already be here.
The car was idling across the street from Cartier’s warehouse. It hadn’t taken Santana long to get over into the city after all, he apparently already had some business in town. So much for always getting a heads up when her main source of carnal attention was in town. But whatever, she wasn’t going to sulk about her FWB not being sweet on her enough - that was level one simp shit.
Instead, she was going to just sit in this old Honda Accord with two different color quarter panels and a rear window that won’t roll up - because she’d set a trap for a rat. She’d sent a text to Slymm, the trainer that had gotten too touchy-feely with her in the ring earlier in the day, and made it sound like she wanted to mend fences. Now they just had to wait.
“Yeah, this is it. I been rentin’ out this place for a few weeks now since I upped my workload. What wit’ this GCWA battle royal comin’ up on the horizon I figured I’d get a sparrin’ partner an’ hit these ropes. I don’t needa be out there out of practice an’ lose to someone named Puffer or Thunder Knuckles. Like god damn.”
“THAT SPARRING PARTNER SEEN THOSE TITTIES?”
“Must have been dreamin’ of ‘em. I guess this man thought any woman he seen that wasn’t immediately runnin’ away from him was his for the takin’ or some shit. You know I ain’t about that life, I only fuck wit’ people who respect women.”
“SANTANA RESPECT THAT ASS JUST LIKE SANTANA RESPECT EVERY BITCH.”
She rolled her eyes. Santana wasn’t ever going to mince words, but, unlike most men she knew, he was genuinely honest. She could count on him, he’d proven it time and time again.
Cartier shivered. A big snowstorm was on its way to New York and she could feel every degree as it dropped out of the air. She shot a glance toward the window in the back, halfway rolled up and off track.
“Where’d you get this car anyways?”
“YOU THE COPS? DON’T NOBODY NEED TO KNOW THAT SHIT BUT SANTANA.”
Of course not. Cartier just rolled her eyes again and hoped to God that whoever Santana had lifted these POS from hadn’t noticed and reported it yet.
It was then that a tall, athletic, black man wandered up the street with a Baltimore Ravens bucket hat over his head and a fresh pair of brand new Timbs on his feet. It looked like he still had a bit of a limp from Cartier cracking his eggs earlier in the day.
“Yeah… look, here he come now.”
“THAT NARROW BUCKTOOTH BITCH RIGHT THERE PUT HIS HANDS ON YOU?”
“He tried to but I bruised up his balls real good wit’ a elbow that’d a cut a new ridge across your forehead. Looks like he really stupid too, thinkin’ I’d wanna talk shit over after what he done… just go scare him real good, Santana, make him worried he crossed a line wit’ someone who got man an’ … hey hol’ up…”
The driver’s side door of the Accord was already opened and swung shut with a bang though, and Cartier had to hurry to get out of the car herself by the time Santana was already standing in front of the open trunk.
“Santana what you got… oh fuck…”
Santana had pulled a thick length of pipe from the trunk of the Honda. It was just wide enough that Santana couldn’t quite get his fingers all the way around it. Without a word, Santana slammed the trunk closed and power walked across the street to where Slymm was still walking toward the warehouse door completely unawares.
“Santana wait, wait!”
“AY YO BITCH WHAT TIME IS IT!?”
Santana shouted to Slymm, who was now only about five feet ahead of him. Slymm, perplexed, turned his head back toward Santana to figure out what the hell was going on.
“Who the fuck are you, fam? Go buy a fuckin’ watch if HAAUGH!!”
He never even saw the pipe before it came down across his face like a hatchet spitting a tree trunk in half. Slymm’s teeth spilled from his open mouth like pearls from a broken necklace, ticking and tacking down onto the sidewalk and scattering in every direction.
“TIME TO HOPE YO DENTIST COULD FIX THIS ONE, BITCH!!”
Slymm landed on what was left of his face right into the lightly falling snow on the grass next to the sidewalk, and a red circle started to grow around his head like some kind of halo.
“God damn it Santana! Is he dead? Did you fuckin’ kill him!?”
Santana didn’t reply. Instead, he simply tossed the pipe down into a storm drain where it vanished as if he’d never had it to begin with. With his shoulders rippling like clumps of bananas through his wifebeater straps - because apparently Santana is too angry of a motherfucker to ever feel cold - Santana then grabbed the unconscious Slymm by one hand and dragged him in a narrow alleyway next to the warehouse. He pulled him behind a filthy dumpster and dropped him as if he were sleeping off a six pack of quarts.
“Gonna be a cold one tonight, young man.”
An older homeless man sitting across the alleyway said to Santana, smiling. Santana didn’t panic, though, instead choosing to rifle through Slymm’s pockets until he found a wad of bills. The money Cartier had paid him that morning for a month’s due. About three grand.
“TAKE THIS MONEY AND BUY YOURSELF SOMETHIN’ TO KEEP WARM WITH, UNCLE. YOU DIDN’T SEE SANTANA DO SHIT, DID YOU!?”
“Not a damn thing.”
The man hungrily accepted the cash, then wobbled off on unsteady legs. Cartier watched in semi-shocked disbelief as Santana continued to remove anything of value from Slymm’s body. A watch, his wallet, the diamond chain around his neck. He then started untying and removing the Timberland boots from his feet.
“Santana how you gonna leave this man barefoot in a blizzard?”
“HE GOTTA LEARN, CARTIER. PLUS HE LOOK THE SAME SIZE AS ME AND SANTANA NEED HIM SOME NEW SNOW BOOTS.”
Santana took the boots and headed back to the car. Cartier stood and looked down over where Slymm lay for a few moments, until she was one hundred percent positive she saw him breathe. Then, she followed Santana back into the Honda.
The two of them drove up the block towards Cartier’s home. Santana didn’t seem either tired or nervous, you would never know he’d just committed an egregious felony and left a man clinging to life in a Brooklyn alley.
Cartier waited for Santana to say something about what had just transpired, but it became apparent he wasn’t going to bother, instead pulling a five pack of original Blacks out from the glove box.
“Santana! The fuck, bruh?”
She couldn’t hold it in any longer.
“WHAT!?”
“You just committed like nine felonies, that’s what! I asked you to set Slymm straight, not fuckin’ kill him!”
“HE BREATHIN’!”
“SANTANA!… Damn, Santana… you don’t understand what I got comin’ up right now. I can’t be caught up in no bad press wit’ the cops an’ shit like this. I’m at a critical point in my career. I got opportunities lined up just waitin’ for me to grab ‘em… shit, in a few days I got a huge battle royal wit’ people from different companies, all eyes on me in GCWA. I got the champion’s attention already… because he knows the winner of this Righteous Rumble’s gonna end up right in his face next. He seen me, he made sure I seen him see me. Why? Because no matter what anyone else thinks, I got a high chance of winnin’ this match an’ he’s well aware of it. I end up locked up or told not to leave the state or some shit, all that goes out the window!”
“YOU ASKED FOR SANTANA’S HELP!”
“I know! I know… I did. An’ you right, part of me did want that dumbass to get his skull cracked. But right out in the open? Daylight? That old homeless man saw the whole thing…”
Cartier hangs her head in her hands as Santana steers the Accord slowly down the streets of Brooklyn, now slowly beginning to fill with more and more snow. She looked behind them at every corner, half expecting to see blue and red lights flashing in the rear windshield. They never came, though, and the only flashing lights she saw were the ones hung up on the front porches up and down her street as they got closer and closer to home.
“Look, my bad, Santana… I shouldn’t have tripped like that. You was here for me, you handled that shit. I’m just stressed, you feel me? I need this. I got the candle burnin’ at both ends. I’ve got matches in Mainstream, Revo1, an’ GCWA this week. That’s a singles match against a crazy hardcore bitch, a gauntlet for a championship against several people I have no info on, an’ then the battle royal - the Righteous Rumble - the biggest thing on the calendar right now. This style match is always a gamble… when am I goin’ in? Who’s gonna be in there when I get there? Who’s comin’ in fresher an’ more rested than me afterward? I could be blessed wit’ number 29 and a easy payday or I could go in at two an’ spend a hour fightin’ for my life. It’s exactly the sort of challenge I wanted, the sort of shit that makes you better than when you went in, no matter the outcome… but I ain’t the type to just go in wit’out thinkin’ it to death first, fam. It’s on my mind constantly. I been Googlin’ these people, runnin’ simulators, checkin’ the Vegas odds, all that shit. Because even though I know there ain’t to real way to be totally prepared for a rumble, my chances go sky high if I’m more prepared than the others are.”
Taking out her phone, Cartier started opening tabs of various wikis and athletic profiles from around the web.
“JUST FUCK ‘EM UP, THAT’S WHAT SANTANA WOULD DO. GOOGLE’S PUSSY SHIT.”
Cartier ignored the outburst, chalking it up to yet another instance of Santana refusing to show an ounce of human emotion. She kept pulling up internet searches on her phone, pointing out different names from the GCWA entrants.
“Like for instance… did you know Mike Graves is a girl?”
“HE A WHAT?”
“I don’t get it neither. Somethin’ about ghosts or potatoes or some shit… everythin’ I pull up weirder than the last one. But at least she gonna be closer to my size than she was before. That’s a plus for me. Oh an’ speakin’ of ghosts I guess they got this Australian ghostbuster named Noah in there too. He might be skinnier than female Graves, so no problem there that’s a wash. He just better not have no Slimers in a box or whatever.”
“THAT’S THE ONLY TAPE IN THIS DAMN TAPE DECK. LOOK!”
Santana slammed a palm into the car’s old radio, and the vehicle was suddenly filled with Ray Parker Jr.’s 1984 slap on max volume. The door frame vibrates from the loudness as Cartier presses her palms against her ears. Santana bobs his head to the beat and sings along.
“ !”
“ ?”
“ !”
“ !?”
“ !”
“ !?!?”
Cartier took a deep breath to try and shout over the radio, but Santana pounded his fist into it just as she started, silencing the Ghostbusters bop.
“I SAID TURN THE SHIT DOWN GOD DAMN IT I CAN’T HEAR SHIT!”
“BITCH YOU AIN’T GOT TO YELL AT SANTANA!”
They sat in silence for a few seconds, with Cartier shaking her head to try to get the ringing out of her ears. She kept looking through her research, saving little bits and pieces or sharing links to in-ring videos.
Eventually they pulled up to Cartier’s home, and Cartier undid her seat belt and got out of the car. She looked surprised when Santana did the same.
“What the fuck you doin’?”
“TIME TO GET THIS DICK SUCKED!”
She should have been offended, but he turns her on too much. With a bit lip she looked toward the house.
“I can’t, my Mama’s inside.”
“YO MAMA OWES SANTANA TWENTY DOLLARS FROM LAST TIME WE PLAYED SPADES.”
He was right. Cartier needed to think fast.
“Next time! She needs that shit for prescription money…”
“WHAT KINDA PILLS SHE NEED?”
Cartier just giggled, walking to Santana and holding his arms as he started to dig in his pockets.
“Tell you what… get back in the car. Roll around the corner to the old empty gas station. You got fifteen minutes.”
His grin was wide then as he stepped back behind the wheel. Cartier reapplied some red lipstick and checked her face in the side mirror. The wind gusted, but she unzipped her jacket anyway, exposing her chest in a low cut, push up top.
She shivered as she got in the car, but shook it off. She knew the mantra.