YNs

2025

Water cascaded in the shower. Memories of traveling in the sunlight illuminated in his mind. In her mind, she considered the future and what would shine in her soul. Gertz Lockman felt his body but his mind kept traversing the streets of Wilmington, Delaware. Julisia Montoya thought about plans to come up amongst the spasms of ecstasy she experienced with the water on both of their bodies. Lockman felt the rush of his mind speeding up the vehicle over the streets. Julisia sustained those pangs of pleasure even more as she looked at the calendar in her thoughts. Then, the day switched back in time to the day they had recognized the weight of this act and she slammed the calendar shut in her head. Lockman stopped his car in his own at the apartment complex.

After toweling off, the eighteen-year-olds stood naked before each other. Their glances remained frank and to the point. Lockman kissed Julisia while her hair remained wet. She kept toweling. Finally, he broke the silence.

“I’m going to stay low for a couple of days,” he remarked without apprehension or dryness. It was like he was telling her he was getting water ice down the block.

“Okay,” she replied. Her tone seemed to carry with it both curiosity and disinterest in the same breath.

“I’ve got this stuff that’s going to make the block bubble. It’s called fent.”

“What’s that?”

“They’re pills. They’ve got more power than morphine and even heroin.”

“Wow,” she acknowledged but didn’t fully recognize his words. Only in her mind, she knew that they were drugs and that she would be the one to know how much she knew when she would inform the police about him.

“I’m not selling them out of this apartment, though. Right now, you’ve got a serious role. I’m going to get my plug to spot me a thousand pills. I’ll move those and then come back to get you here.”

“What if I’m not here…?”

“You will be.”

After they dressed in matching all black except for his white Iverson Questions with the gold tips and her Adidas shelltoes, they went to their respective phones and engaged in social media sessions like it was a ritual performed by mythologists. Right on time, they posted, liked, shared, commented, followed, subscribed, and at last checked their account balances with their online banking. Yes, they checked their feeds before they found out if they could feed themselves.

The amount of money they had between them could sustain a few more years in the apartment and then progress on to a larger house. Julisia remained silent for a large chunk of time, scrolling through her phone. Lockman looked down at his own and found the coordinates for him to pick up the package.

“I’m leaving now,” he announced.

“Okay,” she responded. He tried to kiss her mouth but she turned and allowed him to kiss her cheek. She continued to peer into the digital world in the palm of her hand. At the sound of the door closing, she turned in her high heels, blue jeans and white blouse. She looked outside the window and made sure his Lexus GS 350 had vacated the area. In an instant, Julisia found herself tapping away at her phone.

In text, she sent a message to detective Bimmy Caulder. He called her phone.

“Where is he?”

“Do I still get the fifty-thousand?”

“Yes, just let me know when the transactions are going to take place.”

“He didn’t say but he’ll be back at the apartment in a few hours. He’s expecting me to be here.” A hurriedness entered her voice. It seemed colored not by fear but by excitement.

“It’s alright, you can calm down now.”

“I just want my money.”

“It’s yours. Now tell me,” Caulder directed. “How many fentanyl capsules did he say he was going to pitch to his couriers?” She told him the figure.

“It’s going to be tough trying to understand what’s about to happen. I want you to be prepared. We’re going to swoop in and take him down with efficiency. You’ll be spirited away from there and you won’t have to worry about it. Tell your family you’re going on vacation. It’s going to be a long one because witness protection is for life. If you step out of the bounds of the protection, we may not be there to help you.”

“Okay,” Julisia replied.

“You don’t sound like you comprehend….” Caulder acknowledged.

“I do. I just want my money. And a nice place in WP. I want the deluxe edition.”

“We can do that. We just need you to be there when he gets back and to set up those cameras and microphones. While he’s away, that will give you enough time to see him with the bundle. The Bluetooth and the WiFi will become our friends as they pick up where he plans to distribute. That’s key.”

Julisia’s brown face looked relaxed as she looked in the mirror.

“What if I don’t do this?” she asked, her voice rising slightly.

“Julisia, we’ve been planning this for weeks. Gertz is a bad hombre. You don’t need him. You’re going to be helping out your community and under the banner of altruistism.”

What if I don’t want that? What if I wanted to be selfish?”

Caulder let out a low sigh. “Julisia…stay with me. We’re going to go ahead. It doesn’t matter if you do it for your people or yourself. We’re going to get scum like your current boyfriend off the streets. He’s pumping poison on the corner.”

Julisia rolled her eyes and held her palm parallel to the deck as she talked into the phone. “Give me a man.”

“You can meet someone in WP.”

“No, not a man, a million dollars.”

“That’s not what we agreed on and is out of the purview of this department. Now, if you wish to give up his associates….”

“The fentanyl is flowing all over Wilmington. It’s everywhere now,” Julisia claimed.

“So give us specific names and locations, and we’ll be able to track down those who are doing this damage,” Caulder instructed. “Maybe we can work out another figure if you tell us about the others.”

“Okay,” she mentioned.

*****

Lockman dealt mostly in credit and debit cards. He used CashApp and PayPal primarily. The clientele trudged with digital transactions to his runners and then they passed the funds to him. He completed these agreements in small increments, because in his mind, he couldn’t be tracked. He stayed in a parking garage just a few feet from the corner where the pills found their way into the hands of the customers.

He watched this on his iPhone. He didn’t even bother with burner phones as he possessed the insolent idealism that he could evade the authorities. He leaned back in his custom leather chair. He looked onward while he noticed that his car started to rock. A severe violence ripped through the garage as bulky orange men standing at about seven or eight feet flipped his Lexus.

The crunch of metal and the tinkling of glass caused Lockman to scurry out of his car. He looked at them. Large muscle groups and glowing green eyes towered over him and he began to run.

Out of the garage, he kept going in his Questions, feeling like Hermes’ Talaria on him. The block seemed vacant. Except for a few people who had just copped, it appeared as a wasteland. Three of the orange men ran over to him and he ran just a bit faster and found himself in a department store down the block.

“Excuse me sir….”

“Shut up!”

One of the orange men slammed through the glass and cornered Lockman. He pulled out his .45 Magnum pistol and blasted. The sound thundered throughout the department store. The orange man backed away showing his wounds while collapsing to the floor. Still, another man jumped from the corner and widened his mouth and chewed off Lockman’s head.

The sales clerk hid behind a desk and slowly rose to see the scene of carnage.

Her shriek echoed with pain and surprise and ugliness. She passed out.

The police arrived and found the orange men had vanished from the premises. Blood streaked the floor and some of the corporals started retching at the sight. The sergeants laughed. Then, they became deadly serious as Lieutenant Sade Sill appeared. She flashed her badge at one of the various crime scene investigators. She had inky black skin and braids tied into a bun.

“They’re still here,” Sade asserted. Her eyes surveyed the place. “Go around see if you can find one of them either shot or wounded in some other way,” she commanded.

Julisia sat in an interrogation room.

“Your boyfriend is dead,” the tone of voice sounded like a bartender saying last call for alcohol. It seemed final and tinged with a sense of warning. Detectives Larry Peaks and Glenda Crock looked straight into the young woman’s eyes.

She didn’t cry. Her head lowered like she prepared to pray. When she brought it back up, a smirk colored her face.

“Do I still get the money?”

“No, once the perpetrator is neutralized, that cash reward and witness protection are no longer on the table.”

Dismay then darkened her features. “So, I get nothing? After sitting down and telling all of you that he was about to make this move, I get nothing?”

“Those are Delaware state rules, Miss Montoya.”

She snickered and looked at her watch. “I was in a room like this for six hours detailing every bit of his actions. How he planned to go to Panama, what kinds of fent he was pushing, how many pills he would be flooding the street with in the next few months….” Julisia almost cried. Her voice wavered a bit. “Now, I’m stuck with a dead boyfriend and no money because of some law. Goddamnit!”

Her exclamation didn’t come down as a fist but with a whimper. It sounded hushed rather than thundering.

“We can extend you clemency under the witness protection code which states that you can’t receive any of his assets or anything,” Crock addressed Julisia.

“But he had just started a few years ago. He doesn’t have any bank assets or stocks or bonds or anything. He might have about twenty thousand dollars, tops,” Julisia explained.

“It’s not yours,” Peaks shot back.

Crock continued. “That’s usually the case. He was no kingpin. He was about to make that leap from street warrior to capo status with this run, but the monsters got him.”

“Monsters? They’re real? What do you mean monsters?”

They’re tall, muscular, men who feed upon mainly drug dealers. We’re still investigating where they came from and how they plan to continue to do our work for us. We’d rather resolve the issues, though,” Peaks sighed.

“We’re no financial advisors, but you might want to trade in the car, get the value for that and then see about purchasing a home. You’re in no danger, had you been on the stand and stated all that you’ve already said, WP would’ve been necessary. Now, again, it is not.”

Julisia looked at her watch. Her fair skin almost glistened in the fluorescent light and contrasted the metal table and chairs of the room.

“It’s the best we can do. I’m sorry that it has to be this way but it is.”

“I want to know more about these monsters. I remember hearing something about them from over a decade ago and a few times in between there.”

“We may have said too much. The rest is classified. We can only tell you the details of the scene and what took place,” Crock observed. “Other than that, the files are sealed on the origins and activities of these orange men.”

Julisia burst out laughing. She got up from her seat and proceeded to the door. Peaks and Crock opened it for her.

“If you want some coffee or a bagel, we can get––” Crocks started but Julisia had already opted in her mind to go to the morgue at the hospital in town. She wanted to see the remains. In her mind she saw the grisly picture before she could even reach the body. She imagined a savaged corpse without a head and marks all along the cadaver. When the authorities granted her access to the room where Lockman’s body lay, she had a straight face. She didn’t become overcome by emotion or any theatrics. She viewed the teeth marks and the gashes that dug into his skin. Like earth removed by an excavator, the flesh had been torn. Julisia winced. She turned to go back out of the place. She remembered that Lockman had prepared her for this. He had written down all his passwords to his accounts just in case something like this happened. As she walked the halls of the hospital, she felt the coldness of death envelop her and she screamed.