Here I am, dying on the floor outside my shitty apartment. Blood pouring out of my neck and chest, as my heart slows. I can hear the sirens in the distance, but I have no hope they’ll make it to me in time. I hope they at least catch that fucking junkie who stabbed me.

Let’s rewind a bit, shall we? I bet you’re wondering how I came to be in this situation, or maybe not. I said I was stabbed by a junkie, and here in New York City, random stabbings aren’t uncommon. It could have been some random mugging or robbery.

In fact, it was a robbery, but not a random one at all. You see, the junkie who stabbed me was after my drugs. Not that I’m a junkie like him, though I suppose I’m not much better. Still, I’m an entirely different breed of scum. I’m a drug dealer. Low level, hence the shitty apartment. Mostly, I sell coke to low level stock brokers, and the cheap whores that service them.

Beyond that, a few friends of mine are pretty decent meth cooks, and there’s money in that too, but it’s not steady since they’re always getting caught, and ending up in and out of jail. Still, when they’re around, I’ll buy a batch, and sell it to the local riffraff on the side.

The fucker who stabbed was one such piece of trash. I can’t entirely blame him, though. See, last week I ripped him off good. Not only was the ice I sold him pretty fucking shitty, wreaking of cat piss, the fucker didn’t notice my thumb on the scale. Got almost twice what it was worth off him, just ‘cause he was so desperate to get high.

Once he got back with a couple of his junkie friends whose brains weren’t quite so rotted from smack withdrawal, they caught on to my little trick, I guess.

Which is why, when I got home from the store today, I heard the three of them rustling around in my apartment. They weren’t being particularly quiet about it, and I was tempted to run. It wasn’t smart to barge into a robbery like this, where I was outnumbered. Even with the home turf advantage, it could turn bad for me. In fact, from what I’ve already said, it clearly did. So, why did I open the door instead of running?

I heard something through the door that made my blood run cold. “We finally found his stash, that low life fucking cheat! This’ll teach him to mess with us!”

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

That’s when I realized both who was robbing me, and that they were about to ruin my business. I paid good money to the local gangs for protection, and most clients, even blitzed out of their mind wouldn’t dare rob their dealer, so I’d thought it a random robbery at first. Someone who didn’t know who I was.

If that had been the case, I was pretty sure I’d be out my TV, and my game consoles, plus some other valuables, but my drugs would be safe. They were well hidden, and a robber who didn’t know they were there wouldn’t bother looking too hard. They wouldn’t have the time. My drugs would be safe.

But, realizing this was a revenge plot from someone I cheated, I couldn’t let this continue. I had to try and stop them. They were probably just after the meth, but there was the coke with it. If they took both, I was as good as dead. That coke was bought on credit from a local gang. I’d done it a few times before, and was on good terms with the local enforcers. As long as I paid my dues on time, there’d be no issues. If I didn’t, though, the stabbing I ended up getting from the junkie was the better fate anyway. Plus, at that point, I didn’t know I’d lose my life trying to stop them.

So, I threw the door open, immediately reaching for the gun in my waistband as my hand left the doorknob. Then, I saw they had posted a lookout by the door. The same guy who dealt with me originally, with a big ass military looking knife in his hand.

Seeing me reaching for my gun, he lunged forward. What happened next was over as quick as it began. As my hand reached the grip of my pistol, before I could get my fingers around it, his knife plunged into my right shoulder, and the wave of pain and heat made my arm go limp. I stumbled backwards. Next, he pulled the knife out, and stabbed again, this time into my chest. I felt my ribs cracking from the force. It hurt, but not as much as the shoulder. It was a worse injury, I think, but I was already starting to go numb. Finally, he pulled the knife out once more, and jammed it into the right side of my neck. I fell back onto the ground, dizzy and fully aware my life was going to end that day.

I heard him shout something to the other junkie scum robbing me, but couldn’t make it out. Laying there on the ground, motionless and numb, I felt him climb on top of me, take the gun out of my waistband, the knife out of my neck, and get up and start running. His friends stepped on me as they ran out of my apartment. It should have hurt, but my whole body was already numb. My heart slowing as the blood first gushed, then seeped out of my neck.

Here I am, dying on the floor outside my shitty apartment. 29 years old, a loser drug dealer who wasted his life. I never made anything of myself, and now I never will.

Or, so I thought…