I switch the record to the side B and tune the volume down a bit. Putting the pistol on the porch and the pretty wooden box on bookshelf on my way upstairs again. From afar or near, it looks like a cigarette box.

Walking past the branching chandelier on the padded staircase to closet. I slide the extra mag of the 9mm into the slot of my shoulder holster before hanging it back on the hanger.

As I turn around, finally free from the course of nuisances I'm left in my own element. My eyes drift to the empty inhaler on the table and my mind to the bag of canisters downstair.

The weight on my chest isn't getting better throughout the day. Like a train without proper lubing and maintenance, to eventually derail.

So I toss another cigarette in my mouth, light it up leading to a dryness at the root of my tongue. So I walk back downstairs to the repeating lyrics with the tone of a man as high as a skyscraper or slept in the studio last night.

"I'm beginning to see the light...."

Funny, me too. It's right behind the swine bottle standing above the stool.

Not in the mood for delicate work. I open the cabinet to grab one of the biggest containers that can still pass as a whiskey glass and have it swallow Polish vodka to feed it to me.

***

The song goes round and round, the cigarette burned shorter than my pinkie and the glass emptied and filled. Cold fire left its mark in the depths of my throat as if tearing a layer of flesh down for my stomach to digest.

The liquor's not to blame. In fact, the import brand was dime-for-dime decent with an aftertaste of vanilla and the rush of ginger.

It's the obnoxious noise telling me to do anything but the liquor.

To think about the meeting.

About where Viv is right now.

Were the cops following me in the lanes?

Was the man with a missing nail from Qins?

Who was knocking on Ivan's door?

Each time a peddle rippled the lake, I down a glass. By the fifth or sixth, even an enjoyable savour would be dulled into nothing but shots and shots of tranquilizers and each hurts lesser than the last.

The vinyl goes round and round. Yet my mind's pulling tricks on me of becoming more and more focus as the bottle went from the top shelf to the coffee table to the ground to the seam of the sofa by my hand.

Don't think.

And things will be good.

It doesn't matter the thought.

The outcome's set.

Dice thrown, cards dealt, odds stacked way too high to matter. You could die in an alley with couple of holes in the wrong place or get flayed in a basement or of old age.

And that's that so stop bothering yourself.

You're out of things to care for long ago. And long enough.

Words recited in a husky low groan. When it's angry, it may overpower Lou Reed's voice from the speakers. And after a while, even the music disappears. Or maybe the tracks ran out. At least before the liquor did.

I flipped around to a hard object at my back before it got pushed to the ground along the slope of sofa.

A loud but absorbed puncture against the floor followed by a clean smack of glass got through the turbulence and stunned my expanding dizziness.

I climb to the handle of sofa and raise my head off the leather surface to see the slander bottle rolls wobbly across the living room, passed the shadow of the chandelier in the air and onwards.

I turn around to the empty whisky glass on the table, the swirling record on the planer, the distant light reflecting on my window visible by the black shirt I'm wearing. Like sculpting a well on the wall.

All of a sudden I'm wide awake. And felt worse at the tranquility of this fucking place. I think about calling Vivian again, her and Vera's apartment came to mind and the last time I was there it had me dropped off the idea. Then the icebreakers came to mind with everything I hate and love about it. Walking down the balcony hallway to Ivan's office, noises from the left, laughters from the right walking closer and closer, the image of the place deliberately stacked onto another, so different but still the same. With a couple of fellas in suit smoking on the right, one of them holding the ashtray, on the left some lazy bastards holding off the waitress's shift, and an asshole at the corner flirting with a shit-luck receptionist.

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And a women. A woman with more details than the others walking through everything. In a red dress, fingerless long gloves, soft shoes. Walking in only the way someone with a clear purpose could, shoulder length hair covering ears.........

Another subfusc thud from behind drew me back. The bottom of the bottle hit the bookshelf.

I turn back to the deaf silent living room, save for the crackle from the speakers and patterns formed in dotted lines that rise willfully east towards the city center where the dotted stars gather and climb up the dome of starless sky. Like a highway to nowhere, a mass suicide pact.

I got myself off the leather sofa with some new stains and followed the trail of the vodka bottle as the stars shone disinterestedly behind me.

I pick up the empty flask and stand it next to the wall. The urge to get another one comes and goes. What's getting hammered good for, if it can't muffle shit? And between a puff or two from the inhaler or anything else. I choose the less destructive option and pull a hard-cover red book which's especially ill-fitted on the crank shelf.

***

Sitting back on the right edge of my bed with my feet on the floor, I flip open a page somewhere close to the middle without bothering to read the title.

The story starts with a death row's visions of Santa Muerte herself walking past him every night. But she never stayed. Nor gave the prisoner a glance with her hollowed eye sockets.

The day of Volley crawls closer and the visions double until the inmate can't take it anymore, he kneels in his solitary cell, in front of the little gap to the corridor where she passes hourly, from left to right.

He begged and cried and pleaded and bargained and went back to begging again.

"Santisima Muerte. No me abandones porque nunca he sido fiel a nuestro amo mutuo, el amo de este mundo a la luz del día. En el poco tiempo que me queda, nada de este polvo y tierra cubierta de ceniza y carne magullada y rebozada importa. Sólo importan tú y lo que he descuidado, la luz de arriba y el cielo oscuro.Por favor. Que éste sea mi peregrinaje, no mi final. Pues dejalo ser."

He repeated the prayer over and over and apologized for he had no tobacco left on him to offer, nor would the priest bless him a rosary.

The days spent doing this pathetic act didn't pay off. The hooded woman did not stop upon his cell nor did he stop. All until the night before the shooting. The inmate refused his last meal and asked for a nib of tobacco from the only CO who smokes a pipe and had a flask by his overstretched belt. Said he needs something to chew to calm himself down.

As request, he puts a small pile of raw tobacco that can't even fill his palm at the corner of his cell behind the toilet where he had drew the face of her with his now gone nails and dried blood.

Half an hour before midnight, after the chains and the priest had already blessed him on his way to the final judgment.

There and then, he kneeled again. With the back of his feet flat on the damp and rough floor, chin touching the notch on chest, eyes squinted closed.

He abandoned hope of a way out now. A man who knew he was done for. Now, on the last ray of the twilight of his life. He asks for a swift slide into the night, and he thanks the Santa muerte for letting him gaze upon her again and again in his last days.

The metal door swung open, two guards lift him up by the arm, cuffed his hands, and shackled his legs, keeping in mind to stuffed a 10 dollar bill between the chains. They hold him down with rigid force on shoulder and under the armpit, pushing him to the end.

The shackle drag dangling between his legs, each click a tedious reminder of his life, the better, the worse, the forced, the willing. They announced like an old couple bickering in the confined subway.

At the end of the hallway is a room filled with two inches deep, freshly-turned sand on the ground so the steps of the firing squad won't make a sound and the blood is easier to clean. The inmate facing the opposite side of the entrance, with his knees buried in the sand, shall not turn his head. After all, looking through the eyes of a death row brings bad sprit and the executioner already have their own spirits to dread for.

The perspective switched to the youngest member of the firing squad.

He walks in silently wearing flat bottom shoes with the others while the two guards stand by the entrance to hold the door. They spread out a loose line by the wall, proximally 7 meters behind the kneeling sinner.

Ready and aim.

The guns issued are locked and loaded. He heard two out of five rifles were filled with blanks. That upset him slightly in his fast-moving mind with a thought jumping to another. They can't be given details about the death row's crimes. Only orders are to execute at midnight and the person deserves to be put down like a dog.

The small crackles of bolt shaking against the frame are faint but audible, the young man find the prisoner kneeling with his head fixed, body slight bent forward which made he's head locked in place, almost extending to the giant mural on the other side wall.

50 seconds past midnight. All gunners finger moved to the trigger, each starting their count down as well as peeking at the clock above the entrance.

5 6 7....... The just turned adult, who was thrown to the dead-end spot out of spite from his seniors recites inside his mind, he took a glance to the right, then pressed the first layer of pressure on the trigger. His eye aligned the iron sight towards the heart of the prisoner.

8 9..... breath hold, arms relaxed. Trigger squeezed, the muzzle spit fire, and the backlash carved the stock into his shoulder belt.

And he missed. More precisely, they missed. And he actually did much better than his colleagues. The shot punctures a thumb-size hole in the man's left lung and a fist size one below his nipple. Leaking out half of the blood around his internal organs besides making his lung collapse.

Of the other four shots, two are blanks, one hit the sand bump by his feet, and the other shredded his pelvis.

The executioners are some of the most superstitious ones.

A small panic broke out silently among the firing squad, nothing like this had happened before and the man remains kneeling. His breaths were unfinished, the oxygen couldn't leave his nose properly. But he paid no mind to it, he raised his shaky arm and pointed towards the mural. A finger turned to a palm like he was trying to grasp the air in front of him.

Then he turned around. Years later the young executioner would still remember his face and those frenzied eyes.

What he said, or trying to say before the young executioner pulled the bolt back to push another cartridge into chamber and send the bullet through the man's face just to get rid of it.

"La santa muerte esta mirando!"

***

Some pulp this is. Wonder if they spent the 10 dollars ....... I flip back to the cover thinking.

‘Faust Folklore and Urban myths.’

Right. I shut and massage my sore eyes and let the book slip off my palm. Falling by the foot of bed.

The bronze pocket watch clicks every passing second as if they hold a different significance. I flip it open to the realization it's way past 11. Raising my head to the old jacket hanging by the window some wild idea about what I should have been doing came to mind as I turned over and rested my feet on the bed, laying back on the pillow, ignoring the lost man at the left corner mirror of the room and switch off the master control, though the twinkling city lights of all colors still foretells.