Burn that Fucking Russian

Every single word written here is an extraordinary exaggeration of events that have played out in my head... based on the stories I have heard from people I have met in jail or while I was dealing with my own stupidity and carelessness, resulting from my own addiction to alcohol and drugs. This is in no way a glamorization of drug use, but a tool to lend some humanity to a subculture that has been demonized and written off as a hopeless and worthless part of our human family. I do not condone or promote any of the behavior or activities herein.

Chapter Eight

              I left the scene of the assault I had just finished committing and followed my instructions.  Zoloft and I were fighting at the back of the property, and Bull’s jeep was parked near the house at the front.  I was dazed and adrenalized through the first one hundred yards of the walk, but after passing the pile of bottles and junk where I had learned about Bull's  ‘steel ball’ story, my arms had started to ache, and my chest started to cave.  I began to feel a little bit ashamed of beating Zoloft so badly.  I pulled my pipe from my pocket and stopped to smoke the ‘frosty’ resin on the stem of the thing.  
           I had a couple of grams in my pocket as well, but I needed to sell most of that to replace some money I had taken from the bank account I shared with my wife.  My body was so sore at this point that I was thinking of making up a story about losing that money…   Fortunately the stem-hits that I was smoking seemed to be working… everything soon stopped hurting and my brain began firing on all cylinders again.  I was angry again, but I smiled when I began imagining what Bull was going to do with the battery cables and gasoline when I got back to the garage.  
            Zoloft was so fucked.

           The aches left my arms… and I spit on my hands repeatedly.  I wanted the blood gone.  When my hands were wet with slimy spit, and the blood loosened, I wiped them on my jeans.  It cleaned my hands considerably, but there was still a bloody-pink residue.  I was comfortable with that.  I began to double-time my brisk pace back to Bull’s jeep.

            When I rounded the second driveway through the property, I met Dayna.  She was completely lost... geeked-out and picking through the clover on the ground.  It appeared as though she had about 100 four leafed clovers gathered in the center of an open ledger that I had bought for her to draw in.  I stopped and smiled… not realizing how horrible I must have looked.

“What the FUCK happened to you?”

She was surprised at my appearance, but I could see her looking at the blood stains on my jeans from where I had wiped my spitty, blood-soaked hands.   She crawled towards me and grabbed my pink hands and smelled them deeply.  This was completely and totally unwelcome and shocking as it appeared to be turning her on.

“Whose blood is that??”

“Shit… Dayna… Let go you fucking weirdo," I snatched my hands back.  "I beat the fuck out of Zoloft in the back.”

“Yeah… Bull said you might have to do that…”  She looked at my hands like I thought she was going to lick them, and I hid them away behind my back.  She went back to looking for clover.  “I guess you're gonna learn what happens to a motherfucker when he runs his mouth.  You didn't kill him, did you?”

“Fuck… I hope not.  He was moving when I left.  I am going to the jeep to get the cables and gas can though.  Do you know what that’s about?”

“Yeah…He wants Benny to leave and shut his mouth... he was running his mouth at the bar in town last night...”  Now she was staring at the blood stains on my jeans.  “Are you guys gonna kill him?”

“Well, shit… I hope not.  But it doesn’t sound good.”  I sat down and pulled my pipe out of my shirt pocket.  I was beginning to get numb below my kneecaps.  I was scared.   I was excited.  Dayna grabbed my pipe and began loading it from a Ziploc bag she pulled from the weeds she was sitting in.  She was operating and looking at me intently.

“He said you were going to beat him senseless… did you?”  She had white cakey spit at the corners of her lips.

“Yeah… I guess I did.”  She lit the lighter under the glass bulb of the pipe and I watched the crystals melt into a puddle and smoke began to pull back into the stem and Dayna inhaled deeply.  When she filled her lungs she blew the hit through the pipe and cooled the puddle at the bottom of the bowl until it recrystalized.  She brought the bowl up to her eyes to watch the snowflake patterns form in the fresh dope.  I was starting to salivate and grabbed the pipe.

“Shit, Dee… you obviously know I’m on a tight schedule…”  I began the process again and listened to my friends girlfriend laugh like a maniac…

“You guys are gonna be busy!”  She laughed and I cooled the bowl.  I handed it to her.

“Yeah… I hope that motherfucker is gone or dead in a little bit.”

“He will be.  Bull said so.”

“Great…  I guess I should go finish up.” 

“Gonna take this with you?”  Dayna was talking as she lit the bowl. 

“Hell no... If I’m walking into a blood bath or a murder I don’t need to blame it on that.”

“Whatever… you’ll never get caught.  Bull likes you.  I might hate you… but he seems to like you.”  I reached for the pipe and she yanked it back and glared viciously at me.

“Dayna…”

“You better get…” she looked away… misty and high.

“Gotcha.”  I left while the getting was good.

Fuck… that was my last pipe, and what the fuck did she mean by all that?  

I wandered through the last fifty yards to the house and popped the jeep door open.  I grabbed a zipper bag of battery cables and went to the rear of the vehicle.  I had to take four bungee cords off of the gas can to loosen it.  When the task was done I made for the garage.  Fortunately it was only about a quarter of the distance I had walked to get up here.  I hope Bull was there waiting, as I was high and hopped up, and I knew that my feeling of acceptance of Zoloft's fate was only going to last as long as my buzz wore on.  I WAS pretty high.

I was surprised to see the swing doors to the garage open and inviting…  I immediately noticed Zoloft slumped in an old metal folding chair.  Bull was holding his head up by his hair and standing back as though his victim was a snake.

“Hey… Sorry.  I ran into Dee.”  I stammered and set the gas can and bag of cables down.

“Yeah.  I guess you’re already high then, huh?”

“Sure boss… always time for more though.”  I smiled and wiggled my tooth.

“Fuckin’ right there’s time for more.  Wrap him up.”

“With what, Boss?”

“The fucking cables man.  Wrap him tight and clamp those things somewhere unpleasant to wake him up.”  He dumped a large bag of dope out onto piece of glass on a workbench and grabbed a spark plug boot from a bag on the workbench.  He began pacing the garage.  Seconds later he had pulled apart a tire pressure gauge and broken his own personal glass pipe at the bulb.  He put the metal tube from the gauge into one end of the boot and stuck the stem of the glass pipe into the other end “Where the fuck is a torch?”

“Back behind the anny tank, Boss.”

He walked to the tank and grabbed the torch.  I was uncomfortable with his energy.  He wasn’t acting friendly towards me at all.  “Hey… let’s not do this man,”  I quasi-asked, pulling the cords tight across Zoloft’s chest.

He had the football sized cylinder tank of propane in his hand, unwinding the torch-head.  When he had the tank separated from the nozzle, he pulled back like a quarterback and spiraled the metal tube into Zoloft's groin.  I had all I could do to get out of the way.  Zoloft sprang to life and let loose with a high pitched scream.  He turned his beaten head towards me and spat in defiance… still unable to lift his arms.  I pulled the cords tightly and squeezed he black clamp open and attached the copper points to the gaping right side of his mouth.  He let out another scream…

“Don’t move or scream motherfucker… I’ll rip your face wide open.”  I couldn’t believe how comfortably wicked I had become.  I looked up to see Bull smiling as he reached down to pick up the propane cylinder rolling towards his feet.  Zoloft was fighting against not only the cords I wrapped him in, but the Duct tape Bull had tied his hands and ankles in before I got there… that I had failed to notice.  His eyes plead with me… but I ignored them and squeezed the red cable’s clamp and grabbed a piece of skin and meat underneath his chin.

“Niiiiiiiiice.”  Bull remarked as Zoloft moaned through his battery-cable fish hook.

“Now what?”  I asked.

“Wanna do a fat hotline?”  Bull was absolutely glowing.

“Dude… what the fuck happened?  Why is Zoloft sitting where he is?  What the fuck are we doing?”

Bull was hanging the glass end of the tooter in the propane flame he had lit.  It was turning red.  His eyes were blue and glowering.  I was numb from the waist down.  He turned the red hot glass into the pile of dope and inhaled deeply.  This wasn’t a hotline… it was hot pile.  He walked to our captive and blew his hit in Zoloft’s face.  I grabbed the tooter and did the same.

“Hey fucker…” Bull demanded.  “Who'd you tell about this farm?”  He slapped Zoloft’s bloody head.

“WHAT?  Fuck You mother fuckers…”  To reiterate… it just didn’t sound right when Zoloft swore at us in English.

I finished my hit and watched the show.

Bull grabbed the yellow gas can and took the lid off…  he waved it in front of Zoloft.  “See this you fucking drunk Russian?  I’m gonna soak you in it and watch you beg me not to light you on fire… YOU FUCKING FAT, drunk cho-moe looking prick.”  A little of the cans contents splashed from the container onto Zoloft’s face.  His eyes widened inside their swollen lids.

            “Ha!  You like to scare people… but you aren’t so tough…” I’m assuming that’s what he said through his busted lips.

            Bull swung the gas can back and hit Zoloft full stride.  He began dumping the contents of the can onto our Russian captive.  Zoloft began to fight and I watched his cheek tear away with the clamp I had placed on it still attached to the loose piece of meat.  Blood and Gasoline began run onto his tight shirt.  His cheek swung down to his chin, still attached to the clamp.  He stopped moving but shivered intensely.

            Bull stepped back and grabbed me by the back of the head…

            “What a mess, man…” 

            “Fuck.”  Was all I could say.  My body had become numb and I wanted to kill Zoloft to keep him from telling on us for torturing him like this.  It made sense to me.  I had no sense of wrong, except that I might not be able to get another hotline off that big pile of dope Bull had put on the glass at the workbench.

            “You cannot burn me without burning yourself you fucking cunt…”  Zoloft spat at both of us.

            “Who fucking cares?”  and Bull pulled the can over his own bald head and mine.  The gasoline poured onto us and burned my eyes but I kept them open, fueled by my Bosses rage.  “You think that prison is any different than burning myself to death?”  Bull pulled a pink Bic lighter from his soaked jeans and began rubbing the igniter.  “Fuck you you drunk piece of shit.  You either leave hear mutilated… or I burn all of us.  I’m not going back to prison on account of your rambling, drunk ass.”

            I wasn’t scared… But I couldn’t breathe… but I didn’t think I was going to get hurt, but Zoloft, on the other hand, had just about had enough.

            “STOP… STOP… don’t light it.  I’m sorry.  I will leave.”

            “Well no shit you fucking dumbass... Don't you fucking talk about this farm to another living creature... or I will burn you're ass and eat the remains, do you fucking understand me?” Bull was holding the glass in the flame again.... No concern for his gas soaked clothes.  “Brother, cut his tape off… But let him take the clamps off.” 

            I did as I was told and Zoloft darted out of the garage leaving a trail of gas and blood.  Me and Bull got high as kites and dumped kitty litter everywhere a stain had existed.

            We erased what we had done to Zoloft.



This work is the intellectual property of Jerome J. Panozzo