10-14-23

Well, storm six thousand fifty-three is on the way. They say we will have a foot of snow over night. Time
for me to move to south America. Of course, then I would have the hot
weather and the Guerrilla fighters to complain about or get killed
by. Hmmm. Well, maybe I’ll stay put, the snow and cold has not killed
me yet!

This was me and Dell screwing around trying to think up our own Gieco
Commercial. Sometimes we get a little stupid when we’re brain storming stuff. But I liked this one…

In:

Two women working in a cubicle. The first woman just had an Email that
tells about Gieco. The monitor is in the background showing the Gieco
Gecko.

First Woman: “Huh… Fifteen minutes can save you fifteen percent on
car insurance.”

Second Woman: “Yeah… Everybody knows that.”

First woman, taken aback a little: “Yeah? Well, do you know why the
chicken crossed the road?”

Second Woman looks confused:

Scene shifts. A group of chickens hanging around at the side of the road.
They are all goofing around, pushing each other playfully, like grade
school friends. Clucking and talking.

Chicken One: “I don’t know… I don’t see anything over there that looks
any different to me.” She glances up and down the road nervously.
Smiles at the other chickens. Glances across the road where
everything appears lush and green.

Chicken two, kind of nerdy: “They say the barnyard over there is lush
and green… Filled with grain and water troughs everywhere.”
Gets excited as he talks. All the other chickens look at her and
begin nodding in agreement. “And no one ever disappears,” she adds. Everyone clucks nervously, bobbing their heads.

Chicken One licks her lips: “Gee, I don’t know girls.”

Chicken Three: “They say you never know ’til you try.” Glances
across the road.

Silence holds for a beat.

Chicken One Laughs nervously. Smiles: “Yeah… Okay.” She looks up
and down the empty road. Nothing but silence greets her. “Well,
here goes.” She smiles and darts out into the road.

The other chickens stare in wonder, but their faces change fast as the
sound of an engine building comes to them. Their eyes widen in fear.
A wind whips their feathers as a vehicle roars by, and they close
their eyes. A split second later Chicken Three opens her eyes.

Chicken Three: “Oooohh… That looks bad.”

The other chickens are all nodding and clucking.

Scene shifts to black screen with announcer over.

Announcer: “Fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent on car
insurance.”

Out:

A free look at the book Run from Author Sam Wolfe. Here is chapter one followed by the link to get the book!

RUN

Copyright law in all countries protects this book. It is published in the
United States of America and all enforcement of those copyright laws
will be in the U. S. court system.

This book is a work of fiction. Any places, people or locations are
inventions of the author’s imagination and in no way correlate to
any real places, people or events.

Sunday Night

The Moon has led my way and I’m on my way across the desert through
Mexico of all places. What did they say, hide in plain sight?
There I’m going to be. Already passed the border, and once I
find a little border town I’ll find a small town to buy gasoline
enough so I can reach South America.

I’ve played the events of the last week over and over in my head as I’ve
driven. It still makes no sense to me at all. They say shit
happens, we’ll sometimes it does, and I tell myself that’s exactly
what happened here. Some shit decided to happen and I just happened
to be there.

Is that a good way to look at it? An accurate analysis of the situation,
as we used to say in group a few years back? Maybe, but I can’t help
thinking that sometimes I must be part of making that shit happen
because I find myself right in the middle of it too often.

Last Saturday night everything was fine in my world. Maybe a little
boring, but whose world isn’t at least a little boring, right?
Tonight I am burying one man and trying to count the people that
wound up dead in the last week and I have to admit I lost track. Was
it ten? More?

I am bone weary. I know what that means exactly now. I need sleep but I
can’t stop for sleep, and even though I need it I doubt my brain
would shut down long enough for me to get it. I just got to keep
driving…

Last Saturday Evening

It was early. I had nothing better to do so I took a walk downtown
just to take a look at the buildings. Thinking, as I walked,
how just a few short years ago I had spent almost all of my time down
there. Chasing a high, drunk or both. And sometimes a
third thing: Taking a little comfort with the ladies. It all came
back to me as I walked the streets.

About three years of my life had been spent like that. From the day Lilly
told me goodbye, until the day I woke up in the alley that runs down
the back of West Broad, behind the Chinese restaurant. The back of my
head had been lumped up with something, maybe the wall of the Chinese
restaurant, or maybe by someone.

Someone, I had decided as I began to blink the cobwebs away and felt carefully
with my fingers. A lump only, no blood. Probably a closed fist…

Two feet away from me was a dead rat. A big dead rat, and a few
even larger rats were breakfasting on him. And, suddenly, just like
that, I was done. That gave me a clear message about the
world. And I heard it.

Of course that didn’t mean I got off Scot free. There were many little
things I’d done during my long slide, and it took time to fix those
things. Rehab, jail for some bad checks I couldn’t remember. Bad
teeth, health, bad ideas, depression, suicide, and finally a night
where I felt strong enough to take a walk through the worst of my
nightmares and see if I was truly over the drugs, the life, and the
weaknesses that had led me there in the first place.

So that’s how I came to be there last Saturday evening. Getting my feet
wet. Seeing how strong I was… Or wasn’t. And it turns out I was
strong enough for the temptation of the streets but not for the bad
habits I had picked up there. And that’s what got me… I cannot
believe it has been only a week since all this started.

I had walked by the mouth of the alley twice and both times I saw the
old Ford sitting there in the deep shadows… Heard the soft murmur
of its engine running: Some guy and some girl, I thought or some guy
with some guy… or boy who knows what. It was downtown. Shit like
that happened all the time. They didn’t call this area the meat
market for nothing, but I thought after the second time that this guy
must be trying to set a record. He’d been there for fifteen minutes
by my watch, not that it was my business, all the same fifteen
minutes is a long time for a trick. Or to shoot up. Fifteen minutes
could bring a cop. In the street world it was just too long for
almost anything. In fifteen minutes you could get your thing on, your
drug of choice, your sex of choice, cop that stolen watch, and be a
half mile away and have forgotten all about that last little space of
time. So why was this guy still there?

And that was the street part of me that was not gone. The street part of
me that was still looking for trouble. And I found it…

The third time by, which was just a few minutes later, I was too curious.
My evening had bought me some excitement. The drugs: I could
see the flow all over the avenue. Easy to see if you knew what to
look for. The ladies were calling too. I knew what that was about. I
didn’t look at them like they were whores or something less than
human. It was a line I couldn’t draw, had confused many times so I
came back fast to see what this was. That Ford was calling.

I had stopped at the mouth of the alley. Same Ford. An old one; like a
classic. Nice shape to. Maybe somewhere in the sixties, but I wasn’t
good with cars like that. I only knew old, classic, nice looking.

Nobody around. Of course, that didn’t mean there was no one in the car. I
hesitated for only a second, and then walked quietly down the alley,
staying in the shadows as I went.

As I stole silently up the driver’s side of the car I found the Mexican
slumped over behind the wheel. Blood dripping down the side of his
head. What looked like a 45 on the seat beside him. Another guy was
slumped over into the floorboards on the passenger side: That one was
dead for sure. A large, bloodless hole on one side of his chest. An
even larger hole behind that shoulder I saw when I reached over to
move him.

And why are you still here,
a little voice in my head whispered. Why are you touching him?
What are you doing? But I pushed those warning voices away and continued to look.

There was blood and gore all over the seat on that side. The coppery stench
of blood was thick and nauseating. Something else mixed in with it,
tugging at my brain: Blood and… Fear?
Something. That was when the Mexican spoke in all that silence and
nearly made me jump out of my skin.

“Don’t call the cops!” and… “No Policia.” His head came away from
wheel. He shook it and drops of blood went flying. I felt a
drop hit my face, but I was still too stunned to move.

“Hey! … You hear me, blanquito? Habla English? … No Policia?” He
muttered under his breath “Dios Christos,” he focused his eyes on
me once more. “What’s the matter with you?”

“I thought you were dead,” I managed. I should’ve run. I chose to
talk.

“Yeah… I get that a lot, but I ain’t dead.” He picked up the 45 from the
seat and before I knew it, it was in my face. “Come around the
side, blanquito. Get Lopez out of the car.” He waved the pistol and
I moved.

Lopez pretty much helped himself out of the car. When I opened the door he
spilled out into the alley leaving a mess on the seat and a large
smear of blood on the seat back and the door panel as he went.

“Good… Good,” the Mexican said. “Now get in the fuckin’ car…
No… No… This side. Come back around to this side. I can’t drive
no car, blanquito… Dios!” He waved the gun once more and I moved.
Racing around the hood of the car to the door.

The Mexican did a fair job of getting himself over into the passenger
seat. I was glad it was him sitting in Lopez’s blood and not me
although I had been about to sit in it. I slid into the driver’s
seat.

“You got some kind of car… Truck… Something like that?” The Mexican
asked.

I didn’t have a vehicle, but my grandfather had, had a truck. It was
sitting in the garage in back of my house on Maryland Ave. That house
had also been my grandfather’s. They were the only two things, the
house and the truck that had survived those three years on the
streets.

“Sort of.”

“Sort of?” He looked around “Get this car moving. That’s the first
thing… You got a place?… Close by? How does anybody sort of own a
fuckin’ car anyway?”

“Yeah, I got a place” I said. I was afraid to answer, but more afraid of
not answering fast enough.

“Let’s get there, Amigo.” He slumped back against the seat. I shifted into
drive, worried I might drive over Lopez as I went and drove us out of
the alley.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Never mind, blanquito… Just drive the fuckin’ car.”

I hope you enjoyed the preview. If you want a fast paced crime drama this is your book!

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