Karma

Chapter One: The Alley

The night was cold and dark. There was certain chill to the air; though that's what I love about autumn. It's warm enough to dress comfortably but cold enough to wear a sweater or a hoody. Summer's too hot, especially in Texas. Literally feels like your skin is cooking sometimes. There's rarely snow during the Texas winters. Every few years, sure. But for the most part, it's ice, which makes the roads incredibly dangerous. I've found, in the five years that I've lived here, that spring doesn't really exist. It's more that winter turns to summer almost immediately. Well that's Texas for ya. Never know what's going to happen, unless you're a weatherman or the kid across the street who actually watches the weather channel.
August Sherman. Town drunk, punk, and thug. You'd think being only twenty, he'd be a lot less trouble. He's the furthest thing from it. He fancies himself a "vigilante." He's convinced that he's "doing the cops job for them, since they don't seem to give a fuck." His words, not mine. Me? I think he's just depressed and feels like he's worthless. His parents died a year and a half, roughly, after I moved to Texas. He was so devastated. He turned his back on his friends and remaining family. Turned to drugs and alcohol.
We used to be friends. August and I. We practically lived at each other houses. We would do everything together. He would about girls with me. I would talk about guys with him. We would sit for hours on end on my roof, just ranting on why we think this girl was perfect or how this guy was "literally a god." Then came the news. He cried on my shoulder for three hours, until he practically shoved me out of his home and his life.
I still go over there. I knock, knowing he won't answer, and I just sit in front of his door, talking to it, like it's really him. I laugh because I know the joke that he would make about what I said. I cry, begging him to open the door and let me in. But most of all, I just remind him that he doesn't have to be alone in this grieve. Then I get angry that he's still grieving, since it's been three and half years since they died, and that its time to move on. And then I cry, and apologize. I say a few "get well" words that seem to have lost all meaning, then I stand, turn and walk away, only to come back in exactly a month, to do it all over again. Not quite what you'd call a healthy lifestyle.
Distracting me from trance, as I walk back home from having a little too much to drink, was a scream like none I have ever heard. It sounded like a mixture of a goat screaming, a baby screaming, and tires screeching. I don't know what came over me, but I followed it to its source. The alley was dark and mucky. I could barely see anything but what I could see was a man, about my height and a little buffer than me, standing over who I presumed to be the source of the demonic screech. I looked closer, as my eyes adjusted to darkness. As I hid behind a dumpster, I saw the man grab her throat to lift her off the ground. Then, without a moments hesitation, he sliced her neck open with a box cutter.
"No!" I screamed, so loud and violently that it nearly destroyed my vocal chords. I lunged at him and the man whipped around just time to knock me to ground with a lead pipe in his hand. As I lay there in the alley, I saw his face. I saw the woman's killer's face. I was so shocked that as I passed out, I kept saying to myself that this is a dream. That I'm about to wake in my dorm with a massive hangover and panic because I missed my half of my morning class. What I actually wake up to, however, is something incomprehensible.
—
"Sir?" A voice called. It had a strange accent. I probably wouldn't have been able to understand her if she had said anything other than that one word. "Sir?"
I slowly opened my eyes, hoping to wake up in my dorm, but that was not so, unfortunately. I was still on ground in the alley, limbs twisted in weird ways. When I tried to stand, my limbs sent off a huge shooting pain, and I screamed almost as guttural as the woman last night. That's when my memory finally caught up with one. The scream, the woman, the box cutter, the man, the pipe, everything.
Still paralyzed from my chest down, I turned my head, looking for the body of the dead woman. I finally acknowledged the woman above me and the jagged cut on her throat. I pushed away from me, crawled back, and froze.
"What the fuck?!" I exclaimed, as I noticed what had happened. I was at least twenty feet away from where I lay previously, where I was unable the move.
"Well it seems you're awake," a deep voice commended on my obvious state of consciousness.
"No thanks to you," I mumbled
"Actually," the woman said. She had a deep, Russian accent, though I understood her fine. "He's the only reason that you're alive." Apparently I looked super confused because she continued. "We found you on the ground, half dead. If Luciano wasn't a doctor, you'd be fully dead."
"Wait," I sighed. "You said you found me. Lady you were dead. I saw your neck get sliced with a box cutter. And I have no idea where Sir Spanish came from." I stood so that I didn't like a scared little kid.
"Did you actually see her die, kid?" Luciano asked. "I'm guessing you didn't because you would've remembered something like that."
"Whatever," I shrugged. "I have to get back. I'm late for class."
"And where exactly do you think you are?" Sir Spanish asked with a smirk.
"Austin, Texas," I stated. How could he not know where he lived? I walk away from them and out of the alley, where it definitely was not Austin , Texas. Luciano and the woman, whose name I still don't know, walked up behind me.
"Welcome to Kismet, kid," he stated as he patted my shoulder.
"What the fuck?"
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