Versus Oasis (True Freak pt 3)

Versus Oasis


Her red beat cheeks nearly mirrored my melrose apple that was doubling as a pipe for my last dime bag of grass. Such a shame, I thought, to be so low on supplies at a time like this. She kept pouring out to me in nonsensical slurs that were made even harder to decipher over her insistent weeping, as my mind kept drifting off into pieces of sky buried in the soot of some corporate swine’s nature-driven killing factory slipping through the windows of our crying concrete abode that was lower Manhattan. I knew I had to get the facts straight for this story, but nothing seemed to fit into place.

Over a dozen pair of wild-eyed madmen, all praying her down like a pack of lions in front of a slice of untouched meat, getting ready for the kill as her boyfriend lay unconscious on the cold warehouse floor. The victim, who has chosen to remain anonymous for this interview, was a survivor of an attempted gang rape. As for the gang in question, they never got the chance to stick it to her. No sir, they only managed to strip her down to her bare bottom before their pack leader was shot through the head with a high powered revolver, with the rest of them soon following in what the FED’s were calling a “total blood bath”.

The ass-kissing bureaucrats were calling them despicable outlaws, while the lower class patrons praised them as something out of folklore or a tale of legend. If it were up to me, I’d give them all a medal of honor, though I’m not really one to bark about honor, having been discharged from almost every military branch imaginable for insubordination to the point of running blank on fake names to enlist with. But hell, I figured if I couldn't officially join, then I could at least cover war stories from here to timbuktu. So being a reporter was the next best thing, especially since our country is never shy of getting low on battles to fight. That was, until I started paying attention to these newcomers making more coverage than the latest rigged election. People always eat up this kind of shit when it’s been made mainstream media’s number one bite. Though I confess, even I was rooting for these indecent heroes.

As I inhaled another good whiff of California green, I chimed in closer to her words in hopes of receiving more detail. She was, after all, the first person to actually witness them firsthand and live to tell the tale. Three in total, she said, all laughing up a storm that made the sound of their bullets seem like tedious background noise. One was a heavy set looking guy who had a spiked Jersey cut with a distinguished chin and wore a light brown vest. Another looked and acted like a nihilist hippie, or as she described him, “John Lennon on crack”, while the other sported some kind of dark-green wool hat with a black leather jacket hanging over his shoulders like a gothic superman, and had eyes darker than the devil’s. It wasn’t long after, that her tongue soon became twisted in riddles again as she started crying louder than an abandoned child left at a freakshow circus. I wasn’t gonna get anything more out of her today. It was high time I turned over to my next source.

I let myself through the “Do Not Cross” tape, staying clear of the forensics team and tiptoeing my way over spatters of blood that lay across the floor. The air was thick of cheap menthols, and the man I wanted to see was just about finished with his third pack of the day as he leaned casually against the side of his patrol car.

“Goddamit, Hunter! How many times I gotta tell you not to step all over the crime scene? You know my department hates my guts as it is, and if they catch me talkin’ to your scrawny ass again, they’re gonna suspend me!” Officer Laurence howled.

“Hey, no harm no fowl, see? No blood on my shoes here. I just wanted, uh, your valued opinion on the situation.” I countered.
“Yeah, whatever”
Laurence was always my “go-to” guy for getting the pieces of fact that were more or less meant to be hidden in fiction for the press. I knew better than to trust the hand that feeds, especially when it came from sources already bought out by a second party. That’s why I liked Laurence. Not only was he the last good cop on a force sugarcoated in bribery and overrun with your typical swine, he was the only negro too. All in all, I suspect that's why he was hated so much in his branch, because he was the only law-abiding enforcer that actually had the morale of a decent human being that couldn’t be bought or bullied, that, and well...because he was black. Though compared to his corrupt counterparts, he was heavily outmatched.

“It’s all more of the same. They come and go and leave nothing left but bodies. Only this time, they hit it big. Pissed off a lot of people in the process.” he said to me as I instinctively started jotting down everything my brain picked up from what I could only hear as mumbling. Should have taken a smaller hit.

“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I mean they done and killed themselves a member of the mob. The pack leader, was Monty “Mad Dog” Gambino, the little shithead brother of Salvatore “Snake Eyes” Gambino”.

My jaw almost dropped off the hinges of my skull in utter shock. “The “Snake Eyes” Gambino? Head of the most dangerous crime family ever to plague the streets!?”

“The very same. Turns out that Monty had a hobby for raping young women with his pals. Only this time, our friendly neighborhood psychopaths caught him in the act and left him with his drawers dropped down to his ankles and buried in bullet shells.”

“No shit? Hmm, ‘dropped...drawers...’, mind if I use that in the article?” I asked.
“Are you trying to get me fired?”

Our conversation was then cut short by a flutter of engines as three black Lincoln Continentals came rolling in with two squad cars following behind. Everything suddenly became silent, as the leading Lincoln’s back door was opened by the chief of police himself, as if to showcase a guest of honor, only to have an older looking gentleman come stepping out with his personal bodyguard by his side. It was Salvatore “Snake Eyes”, and as his name suggests, his eyes looked like they were ready to strike like a cobra at who ever was responsible for icing his kid brother.

The chief and Sal shook hands in a friendly manner, but as the snake came slithering to see one of his own covered in blood, a fit of rage soon broke out to replace the silence. As I veered on, a thought raced in the back of my mind, and I couldn’t tell if I counted myself as lucky not to be in the outlaw's’ shoes, or if I secretly envied them. I bet I knew what Laurence would pick.

I had gotten all that I needed from this end of the spectrum, but what I wouldn’t give to have a one-on-one with the crusading killers pulling the strings behind the scenes. It sickened me to see our once fabled banner of right and wrong be held in the hands of these bought-off scumbags. Then again, our supposed Due Process has slowly been seeping into the bowls of this corruption for some time now. Like any other government or social system, they try to make a profit out of it, and if your overall goal is to make a buck out of something as important as justice, then the end result is never going to be justice. Like this one gig that I had for over a year, I was covering this story in a little country-side town just outside the city for the case of a child killer who was dubbed ‘The Candy Man’ by its fearful townsfolk, and just when I thought our beloved law and order was about to nail this sex-offending piece of shit with a death sentence, the jury found him not guilty because he had connections in high places. No one said fighting against the ‘Man’ would be easy, but that was fucking ludacris.
Laurence then began walking over to his post with the rest of the pigs on scene.

“You know, you’re going to give yourself more gray hairs if you keep this up” I said to him.
“Better a head full of gray hairs than a balding one” he joked, as we both then parted ways.

The howl of Sal’s wrath echoed within the corridors of the warehouse, so I quickly made my leave without incident, making my way into the door of my beat up red stingray parked along the curb. I had one more contact that I could trust for some dirty intell. Eddie Gustave, a man who made a living off of picking up pieces instead of picking sides. He was a full-time packer for some meat factory, while making part-time success as a cleaner for the mob. His job was simply to dispose of bodies and make it look like it never happened, whether it be for the mob, the cops, or a rival gang. It’s just what he did best. On top of that, he sold some of the best hash and white pony in town, figured I’d see him since I was already out of juice, and maybe get the latest gossip within the inner circle while I’m at it.

I reved up the engine and began my journey into the chrome heart center of the shadiest part in the city. A once prosperous avenue, now tainted with the remains of a shattered American dream laced with heroin addicts and underage prostitutes. If you keep driving past Sal’s infamous whore house; The Devil’s Cauldron, you’ll eventually make your way towards the ‘Slums of no return’, a long forgotten haven for finding honest work, turned into an oasis for villainy and the everyday people who constantly struggle against it.

Not that I would ever consider what we're doing on a daily basis as "living" anyway. Our way of life as a species is the equivalent of taking up empty space. Sure, you may be breathing, eating, fucking, and paying bills to be part of a system that takes more than it gives, but none of it actually proves that you were ever alive to begin with. How can one truly validate the worth of one's own existence when their potential is being blocked by nonsensical, man-made limitations? Limitations that were created for the sole purpose of making sure that the balance of power never shifts in your favor. And what's worse, is that it's a power that doesn't even exist...and this is how societies are typically born.

Just before taking that final left on Main St., I lined up my last snort’s worth of cocaine the best I could, trying to savour as much of this feeling as possible before turning a blind eye to the horror’s of down down-town. It was business as usual for this neck of woods, though my strong stance against the war on drugs that won me an honorary writer’s award last year was simply for the paycheck that helped cover the expenses of my latest addiction. Hypocritical of me, I suppose, but I’ve come to find that the most important rule to any line of duty is to keep your friends close and your enemies closer, especially if they’re one in the same. Not that I had anything personal against Eddie, but let’s face it, when you have a tendency to push the limits of your tolerance, that last snort of the bag can remind you of your mortality real quick.

I parked the Stingray just outside the back entrance of the meat packing factories cooling facility, where you can usually find Eddie cranking one off at the end of his shift, and if my math was correct, it should be about that time. The cloud of my breath brought slight warmth as I rubbed my knuckles and hand against each other over and over while pushing aside hooks of skinned cattle like walking through a midnight horror show come to life.

“Well, fuck me! If it ain’t my favorite lunatic reporter! What the fuck brings you into my frozen den? You all out of hash already!?” Eddie shouted over the sound of a rattling refrigerator in the backroom as he hosed out hunks of ripped meat down the center drainpipe.


“Yeah, well, uh...that, and I was hoping you might be so kind as to tell me what’s going on these days in the dirty underworld of your employers?” I replied.
“You working on another story? Well then, I guess you already know about Monty, huh?” he asked rather subtly.
“Shit, how did you hear about that already? I literally just came from the crime scene”
“Ha! You know news travels fast on my turf, especially when it’s the death of Monty fucking “Mad Dog” Gambino! And believe it or not, the head honchos have been trying to keep this whole ordeal on the downlow for some time now.” he replied, peaking my curiosity as I began running out of room on my pad, and there wasn’t any paper left for rewriting over old notes. I really should cut back on the hash.

“Seeing as how I’m feeling generous, this bit’s at no extra charge to you, Hunter, but I highly recommend keeping it to yourself!” he chuckled.
“I knew the risks of this job when I covered my first war, so let me have it, goddammit!”
“Balls over brains! That’s why I like you! Well, just remember that I warned you. But a few years back, before Sal was “Snake Eyes”, he was just starting to rise to power with his two cousins; “Vicious” Vinny and Danny “Blackhand”, when he first came in contact with these vigilante psychopaths. They didn’t think much of em’ at first, but after they kept causing trouble and sabotaging their business, they put in all their resources to hunt them down. It’s been going on like this for a few years now” I made him pause in that instant,
“You mean to tell me that this isn’t the first time these killers have been fucking with the mob!?” I shouted.

If the devil were hiding in the details, then his hiding spot was about to be exposed. If these outlaws can stand up to the Gambino crime family for this long and live to fight another day, then there might actually be a chance to do what no other drug infested city has done before. I tried to pen down what I could on the back of my arms, but resorted to making as many mental notes as possible. God forbid this fucking short term memory bullshit clears up when I need it to now more than ever. Should have been sober today.

“They all call themselves by some fucked up codenames, but only the head guys know what they are” Eddie kept going on as I tried my best to lip sync his mumbling. “If you’re looking to score some more dirt, I’d try this gal named Rosa who works nights over at The Devil’s Cauldron. If you need to get through the front doors, just tell em’ Eddie sent ya! Oh, and just so you know, Vinny owns the joint now, so the place is gonna be packed with heat.” he said.

“You mean “Vicious” Vinny?” I asked.
“Bingo! After Monty took over the prostitution ring, Vinny’s been in charge of Sal’s favorite gentleman’s club, while Danny “Blackhand” makes a successful business blackmailing the lawyers and judges, and keeping the pigs in line” he finished.

“Sounds like a bunch of stand-up guys. I’ll check it out.” I responded, taking my leave outside the meat cooler.

“Oh, and uh, one more thing before you leave! I heard a rumor that Sal and the other head honchos are gonna have a big meeting soon. Something about the Turning Rock Fair & Casino later this week. I guess they wanna try to clean up this fucking mess as soon as possible. They gotta reputation to keep after all. Something to look into though!” he shouted out to me as I waved him off in my Stingray, heading down towards The Devil’s Cauldron for my next trip.


My mind was so intent on digging up more pieces to this puzzle that I completely forgot to ask Eddie to restock my supplies. Too late now, I guess. But I haven’t felt my heart race and blood boil like this in some time now. Who knew there would still be this much fun to have in this job? Though I guess the idea of actually fighting corruption with words of truth has always been what set my teeth on edge every time I struck ink to paper. It’s like I’ve been put back on the frontlines again.

I might not even need the hash to finish this story, though it does help put things into perspective in the long run. I feel I have to constantly reconstruct myself from the inside out just to keep myself afloat, only to wake up two hours later and find myself undone once more. And so the cycle continues, forever to rearrange my ambitions while miscalculating the motives, all in hopes of rekindling an internal resolve that persists on eluding me with mocking transparency. The questions remain the same, though the answers keep drifting further and further apart from the cause. Who am I? Why am I here? How did I get here? What’s the purpose? Repeat.

The sky was already consumed by the pitch black of night by the time I made it to the strip joint, just in time for happy-hour, but you could hardly see any stars in this light polluted and soot filled city of madness incarnate. No time like the present though, so I grabbed my trusty tape recorder from the glove compartment, blowing off dust and cigarette ashes as garbage and condom wrappers spilled everywhere on the passenger’s seat. I tucked the recorder in my front coat pocket after rewinding the tape, figuring I’d just record over some old nonsense sessions of me and my attorney locked in a backwater cottage from years back during my first drug binge days. Just as I was about to knock on the front red painted cast iron door of The Devil’s Cauldron, I took a moment to mentally prepare myself to enter into the lion’s den. Then, as I raised my fist up for those first few hard bangs, I felt the edge of my shoes moistening as the heels began absorbing a thick wet liquid seeping through the bottom of the door’s crevice. I stared down at my feet, slowly lifting up my heel covered in blood as it came pouring out like a stream.

The fog in my mind started to sober up real quick, and though my spine tingled in what could only be described as fear in pure sweat form, my body couldn’t help but act instinctively out of a curious itch as I pushed myself through the door. What greeted me soon after made the skinned-cattle slaughterhouse look like a winter wonderland. Bullet holes, slit throats, and severed heads came with every other body that sat mounted on top of each other, all of them dressed in suits with shell casings surrounding the ghoulish scene. “The packed heat” that Eddie mentioned to me earlier, was turned inside out, all of Vinny’s men torn to shreds. They didn’t stand a chance. There were no signs of dead pole dancers or strippers though, just the mobsters, so whoever made the mess made it clear that this message was strictly for the head honchos.

I again tiptoed my way over endless puddles of blood as I made my way past the bar, grabbing a bottle of scotch that I then proceeded to down like candy, trying to wrap my head around this chaos without giving in to its sheer vulgarity. After shoving almost half the bottle down my throat, I veered my teary gaze at the center stage, only to see a strung up body hanging from the pole that got extra attention compared to the others, with his eyes and tongue that were gouged out being only a few things missing from his corpse. I held on tight to the bottle as if my life depended on it, making my way over across the dance floor and onto the stage. There was an owner’s name tag over the top of his front suit pocket that read “Vin”, with the rest of the name being smeared in blood. I knew better though. It was “Vicious” Vinny, one of the elite’s of Sal’s underground crime ring. The bullet hole in Monty was the declaration of war, but this was the first real blow to the backbone of the mob. The true battle has finally begun.


“Goddamit! We’re all out of snacks again!”
“Yeah, like your fatass needs more junk food! Poke, poke, motherfucker!”
“I am not the Pillsbury fucking doughboy, you sack of crap!” distant voices echoed through the hallway of one of the backdoors leading to the make-up rooms, as I instantly lowered my head in terror so not to be seen.

They were still here; the outlaws. It was them, I just knew it! I couldn’t miss this opportunity. I acted quickly and quietly, sneaking my way down the hall and staying hidden in the darkness as the voices became louder with every step, until finally making my way to a slightly shut door with light peeking through the crack as I slipped one eye in to see what was going on. As expected, they were just on the other side.

“Look, man, all I’m saying is that we could use the extra muscle since we’re gonna be picking fights with the elite now, and from what I hear, the kid has potential. Gekko seems to trust him, besides, he’s not that much older from when we first started cleaning up the streets. We’ll break him in with something small! Come on, whaddya say?” a scruffy lookin’ guy said to his partner, who I couldn’t seem to find. Must be blending in well with the darkness.

“If you’re not the pizza guy, I’m gonna be fucking pissed” a rather mellow voice called from behind me, causing the hairs on my arms to stand up straight as my ears quivered to the sound of a pistol hammer being pulled back with the cold tip of a barrel gently grazing against the sweating skin of my neck.

I then found myself being kicked in through the door without any time to react or explain, tumbling in hard on the dirty whorehouse floor, and trying to pick myself up while the scruffy hippie-looking one lifted me by the shoulders and set me down on a chair.

“No, I didn’t think so. You’re not the pizza guy” the man who kicked me said, walking up closer to me as I got a better look at his bold chin and spiked jersey cut.

“You mean you actually fucking ordered delivery to this place!? What the fuck is wrong with you?” the twisted hippie shouted.
“I was hoping the smell of cheese would make you have a seizure so I could have something to laugh at while I ate!” the other lashed out.

I was scared out of my wits and way too buzzed for this shit, but still my mouth insisted on spewing out words anyway. “Hey, uh… listen, guys, I’m just a reporter, see?” showing them my name tag, “and, uh, in all honesty, I think you guys are doing a bang up job, really! I’m all for upstanding Americans like yourselves who take matters into their own hands!” I couldn’t stop myself, I knew I was fucked, but I just couldn’t shut my mouth.

“Oh, I see, so you’re Hunter!? You know those assholes out in the bar were actually waiting for you to show up. They thought that we were you!” the heavy chin stated, and much to my bewilderment.

“Come again?” I asked hesitantly.
“Yeah, they said something about snuffing out a pain-in-the ass journalist who kept poking his nose around where it wasn’t wanted. I take it you are him” he finished. Eddie, you fucking bastard! You sent me off to the fucking sharks and smiled, you prick!


“So how bout it, darling? You know some dirty secrets that the mob doesn’t want us to know?” the strange hippie whispered in my ear as he hugged his arms around me. This was my chance. To go above and beyond my call of duty and actually contribute to a cause that meant more to this country than invading some foreign land for a senseless political agenda. This was the kinda action this nation needed to push it back on the right tracks of fulfilling the American dream and the promises we made so long ago. This was the start of a revolution!

“Yeah, as a matter of fact, I do have some intel I wouldn’t mind throwing your way. There’s some big things going on soon at the Turning Rock Fair & Casino, and you guys need people you can trust, right? Well, I’m one of them! Me, and believe it or not, the one and only good cop left in the city” I proclaimed with pride, as if to make myself an official outlaw member right off the back.

“And why should we trust you?” a desolate tone echoed with the most horrid vocals imaginable from beyond the shadows of The Devil’s Cauldron, sending shivers up and down my spine as I slowly turned my gaze to a tall, dark figure creeping his way out from underneath a flickering light bulb, adding an already nightmarish atmosphere to his menacing presence. He came out slowly, wearing a black leather jacket over his shoulders.

That woman was right, it was like he was a demented action movie figure from Hell itself, with the most visually striking part being his dark eyes looming from under his alpine wool felt hat. My lips began to stutter as I tried to muster out a sentence. Say something cool, say something tough, say anything! I repeated in my head over and over again.

“Nice hat”




End of pt 3

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