Stuck With the Miscreants

Bye-Bye, My Gin-Soaked Dream

 Impatient shoes clacked onto the pavement below, you've already been with this guy for an hour, you slumped over, at this point you doubted you were going to get your precious saxophone anytime soon.

"And you see, that's why magenta isn't a real color," he said diligently. He'd been clamoring your ear off for the last hour, you just wanted to rip your ears off or maybe rip them off and shove it in this guy's mouth. Either way, it would be way better than listening to this guy blabber to you for an hour. You'd groan, just nodding your whole way through the conversation, at this rate you'd be lucky to even hear the whereabouts of your saxophone. It's either all the no-good thugs here were just as good bullshit artists as Vinnie was or they were just fucking with the poor cop and you.

You gripped your forehead between your nimble fingertips letting the stray strands of your hair slip through them. You still wondered if you asked this guy nicely to shut the hell up, would he do it? Or rather continue to complain and call you 'rather rude'? Now you realize why Vinnie set you up with this dude, a nice way of fucking you over. You'd swore you could picture her sly-mouthed words and smirk.

"Alright, we're here." he'd said, pointing upward at the building's sign.

You'd look up, glaring at the bold lettering which read, 'Dante's Bar'.

"A bar?" You blurted out loud, trying to gripe your brain to understand why he brought you here.

"Were you not paying attention, or do you just not care?" He'd question you in a condescending tone.

"Of course, I care," you snorted, flaring your nostrils, "But why are we here?" You sighed, revealing that you weren't listening all along.

"Well, our last lead led us here," he'd explain whilst flipping through his miniscule notepad as if he wrote the whole conversation down. You doubted it.

You insisted on walking in first, hearing the loud groans and creaks of the door hinges, your ears soon filled with small talk and conversation.

Tre quickly caught up with you, walking ahead over to the counter, speaking to the bartender.

"Don'cha think it's a little bit early for alcohol?" You questioned, furrowing your brows and gripping your hip tightly.

The bartender slid the orange drink over to him, you watched as it slowly glided across the table and was found in the young man's hand.

"I don't drink." He answered, clinking the ice cubes around in the orange-colored liquid before taking a long refreshing sip.

"It's orange soda." He added, clinking the empty shot glass down onto the hard marble counter below.

"I'm not like those," he wiggled his fingertips around, "delinquents you hang around with." He finished, but you could tell there was a noticeable strain in his voice.

"I don't even-" You were cut off by Tre's finger, at this point you wanted to bite it off until you saw the bartender approaching.

Tre dipped his hat at the scruffy-looking man, a sign of local respect. He gripped your forearm before releasing and relaxing, grasping his notepad ready to write down the details of the location of your saxophone.

"You ain't hearin' this from me," the bartender started, "but, I heard that one of them guys over there at table nine has something that fits the description." He pointed to the table in particular, filled with very shifty guys. By that, you mean one of them was unnecessarily short and had a trench coat that drowned their overall form. A perfect cover for hiding a huge instrument like yours in particular.

Your eyes connected with the person in particular, their pupils widening at the sight of you and the cop. Their chair made an uncomfortable screech as they leaped out of their sitting position and made a run for the door. It confused you, instead of seeing regular-sized legs they had very puny legs like a child. Not to mention the funny scurrying sound they made while running, somewhat comparable to a bug.

It was surprising seeing Tre already catching up with the culprit, almost like it was his saxophone that was stolen. Quite funny watching him run in his little police uniform. Truly a man on a mission.

You finally caught up with Tre, panting and hunching over trying to catch your breath.

Tre flicked out his pistol, "Stop right there, in the name of the law!"

The small figure backed up into the wall of the vacant alleyway, their trench coat soon falling to the floor, revealing the figure beneath it. Not to mention your saxophone.

Wavering around his pistol, he demanded, "Put the saxophone down."

You could see they were somewhat a small child, around five you assumed. He'd look up at you, pupils getting bigger and eyes getting watery as he held his hands in a pleading, sad puppy-dog tone. At this point, you realized that you couldn't do this, at least sit around while Tre wavered a gun at a literal toddler.

You poked the officer in question, pushing the slide of the pistol slowly down, "Tre, put the gun down."

"What?" He questioned, gripping his gun tighter.

"Cmon, look at the lil' fellow." You pointed towards the small child, he gave Tre the same sad puppy-dog eyes.

"Well, I guess he is pretty cute." Tre slowly lowered his gun, putting his other hand on his chest and clutching his heart looking at the child with true admiration.

The child's facade quickly faded away, smirking at you both, revealing shark-like teeth and a small and puny but threatening knife.

"HE'S GOT A KNIFE!" Tre shouted, being a little too trigger happy and firing a stray bullet that you and Tre had to duck repeatedly for.

You panted, grasping the fabric of your shirt before turning your attention to the child and hearing as it let out a gremlin-like giggle and scurried up Tre's pant leg and bit him like a rabid dog.

"GET IT OFF, AH!" Tre let out a ear-splitting scream, shaking his leg up and down trying to get the wretched creature off as its teeth sunk in more.

Reaching out for his belt around his waist, you grasped the black wooden baton. The child scurried up Tre's torso like a pesky bug before reaching his head and that's when you swung. The wooden baton hit the back of Tre's head, missing the child altogether. The child loudly giggled like the nuisance it was. Shredding bits off of the officer's uniform, basically mauling Tre.

This went on for several minutes until you finally knocked the child off of Tre. He hit the inner wall of the alleyway, rubbing his head and standing up like he was fine, making sure to take your precious instrument with it as it scurried off.

Tre let out a dramatic inhale, slowly turning to you, in all his uniform-torn and baton-beaten glory.

"So," you started, "you alright?"

He twitched his eye at you, "Do I look okay to you?" His voice wavered.

By the time you knew it, you were the one walking Tre back to the police station, he insisted on going there rather than his house, he didn't want you and your 'hoodlum' kind showing up at his door. But you were pretty sure he just didn't want to be humiliated by Vinnie. You really didn't have anywhere else to go, so you dragged yourself back to the dreaded alleyway, empty-handed once again. Vinnie was already there, just waiting for you around the corner.