Chapter 20
I wake up hurting on the inside and out, on the out as in my head and on the inside as in I feeling real guilt about something. Something that is big and mean a lot to me gone now and I cannot think what it is. I laying on my stomach on the couch, my face hanging over the edge I staring at my own drool on the floor I alone in our place, our mansion in the sky, and I know I been drinking for the first time since I get the job. The job. I think of the job, I think of a meeting, a 'mandatory' meeting someone call it, and at that meeting I hearing screaming and hurt, chair flying, people running, people who look like me, they my family, they nasty face big and right in mine when I holding them by they shirt so I can see they teeth, they nose, they eye, eye that beg and say I one of them but I hurt them anyway and that where the guilt come from, stirring my stomach juice just like them special machine at the job stir them tasty milkshake that woman make all the time, I can't think of her name, it start with a R. And the other woman, the leader woman of something, something that have to do with food, the job, oh right the job of course, what they call that place again? I see a sandwich, I feel a knife in my hand cutting into bread and meat, that woman eye look into mine, both my hand already bruise, man on the floor crawling for the door, other people in the corner, they won't call the police, they still plead calling me one of them, only that leader woman standing in front of me, blurry through my tear, like I cut into them sandwich, she cut into me with a question that I can hear as if she saying it out loud: Why?
I smile at the floor now and a tear splash in the puddle of drool the same time. I thinking for more on what happen and I come up with that leader woman voice over the answering machine, I see myself standing over it swaying, more drink than ever, she sound so sad, she saying something like she never know I feel that way, it regretful it come to this and they not gonna call the cop but they have to let me go, I crying and moaning, a storm of snot and tear slopping down like a rope onto my naked body, she saying they even ignore that I don't have any social security number or identification of any kind and now I get up off the couch go over to the answering machine I too in a rush to hear it again I knock it off the stand it break on the floor I hit myself in the leg until I crying I go in the kitchen drawer pull out a knife I holding it over my arm when the blonde walk in, she take her ugly face and wig off with one brush of her hand, she let it all drop to the floor, she breathing hard, she look at the knife, she see my tear.
She raise her eyebrow and say, "Well this is a new level of selfish. I'm not cleaning that up."
She looking blurry through my eye, I just say, with as much hate as I can, "YOU."
She shake her head like it's something small and say, "Oh, right. The job. What can I say. I did warn you. But listen"-
"NO. NO. If you never show your face there. If"-
She yell, "Shut up! Listen."
She reach in the crack of the couch searching for something, I still holding the knife to my arm watching her, she come up with the television remote, she click on the TV, she start turning the channel, searching, her hand on her hip.
She stop at a news woman sitting behind a desk and there a picture someone draw that look just like me in the corner of the TV.
The blonde say, "Here's where the plot thickens."
The newswoman, she saying, "Police have unearthed a series of unsolved attacks that were, until now, believed to be un connected. Various people say that a man with a very memorable face beat them and took pictures of their bloodied appearance. Now police say these attacks were all perpetrated by the same man. This man. Plot twist: This same man is believed to be Uglyman, the serial vigilante who has executed a staggering four hundred eighty-seven separate assaults on Harlem based drug dealers over a number of years. Though he has never killed anyone, he has long been a much sought after arrest for New York's finest. As you can see from the sketch artist's rendering to my right-er my left, the moniker of Uglyman has been more than justified. In fact, we're going to blur that image out for a span of 20 seconds, allowing anyone at home who might have small children or elderly to remove them from the room. A truly disturbing portrait indeed."
