Sin City: Friends Sin City: Friends

By Brian Campo

Disclaimer: This is fan fiction. Sin City and all of it's characters are owned by Frank Miller and I do not in any way contest
that ownership. This story is in no way official and should not be taken as such. This is just my way of showing my affection for
what is one of the best comics series of all time. If you haven't made a trip to the Town Without Pity, I suggest you do so soon.

Warning: This story contains harsh language and adult situations. If you think your mom might drop a load of hurt on you for
reading it, don't. Consider yourself warned. (knowing Miller's stand on cover advisories, that just felt wrong to write)

"Dwight." he heard Shelly say, and he felt a tapping on his shoulder. "Wake up, Dwight."
He opened his eyes and looked up at her. "Huh?" he managed while he rubbed his eyes.
"Phone, babe." she said, and handed him the cordless receiver. He looked at his watch as he put the phone to his ear. It was four thirty in the morning. Rule of thumb in life, phone calls at four thirty in the morning could never be good.
"Hello?" he said.
"Dwight?" a man said on the other end. As soon as Dwight heard his voice, he realized that he had been expecting this call for quite a while.
"Yeah. That you, Doug?"
"Oh, thank god you're there, Dwight." There was a panic in Doug's voice and he sounded like he had been crying. "I think I did something real bad tonight. I need you to come over." He gave a shuddering little sigh, and Dwight heard him whisper, "Oh, fuck."
"Just calm down." said Dwight. He sat up on the couch, and ran his fingers through his short reddish blonde hair, trying to get the unruly stuff to lay down a little. "What happened?"
"I don't know." said Doug. "I woke up earlier and there is blood all over the fuckin' place, and I can't find Sandy anywhere. I think I did somethin' really bad here."
"Ok, Doug, are you listening to me?"
"Yeah, I'm listening."
"I want you to sit down, calm down, and leave everything alone. I'm going to be right over there. Just leave everything alone. You got it?"
"I got it." said Doug. "Just please hurry, ok?"
Dwight hung up the phone and picked up his Reeboks from beside the couch. Shelly came out of the kitchen, smoking a cigarette and sipping at a microwave heated cup of coffee.
"What's wrong?" she asked.
"Just an old friend in trouble, that's all." He pulled on the shoes and grabbed his keys off of the coffee table. "I gotta go."
Shelly shrugged as she headed back to her bedroom. "Hell, I didn't know you were here in the first place."
Five minutes later, Dwight was driving through the outskirts of town in his blue '68 Camaro, headed toward coyote country. He had a pretty good idea of what he was going to find when he got to Doug's house. These events were a long time in coming.
He had known Doug and Sandy since they were all just punk kids at Basin City High. Sandy Phillips leaned to the plain side of "cute", but had a great personality working for her. She and Dwight had dated for a while back then and had even done a little back seat fumbling in their time. He remembered that she had this little quirk back then. Sometimes, during the heavier sessions of heavy petting, she would start giggling, and not be able to stop. At first, it had pissed Dwight off. He took such things seriously, and couldn't understand what was so goddamn funny. As he got to know her better, he learned that it was just her way of handling really intense emotions. Dwight had been there the day she found out that her younger sister Marietta had died, and she had broke out in giggles while tears rolled down her cheeks.
Doug Clark played varsity football, which seemed to be the only thing he was really good at. He was a little too big and clumsy to run track like Dwight did, wasn't quite smart enough to excel scholastically like Sandy did. When it came to running over people carrying a football, though, he was an ace. Dwight was just about his only friend, and they hung out a lot. Doug had a car, but had no idea how to keep it running. Dwight, on the other hand, loved to work on them, but didn't have a ride of his own. It seemed a perfect match, and when they went to the local parties, they went in style. Dwight scrounged and stole parts and turned Doug's old Dodge Charger into a thing of beauty.
Doug, it turned out, was a lousy drunk. Dwight couldn't count the number of times he had dragged his semi conscious form out of a party, or stepped between his drunk friend and some giant he had just pissed off. He had watched many a sunrise out in the desert listening to his friend empty his stomach into the sage brush.
After High School, Dwight took a job in Phoenix, taking pictures for a newspaper. When he came back to Basin a few years later, Doug and Sandy had wound up together and married. Dwight had mixed feelings on the subject, but kept his thoughts to himself. Doug was a nice enough guy, but he had a temper with a hair trigger. He also had a manner towards women sometimes that was anything but respectful.
Sandy said that she was happy, so maybe Doug had grown up a little. Wishful thinking. Over the next few years, Dwight watched Sandy become withdrawn, and saw the same old behavior out of Doug. Getting blitzed, getting bounced out of bars now instead of dragged out of parties. If Dwight happened to see him stumbling toward his car, he would head him off at the pass and stick him in his own car. Sandy would meet them at the door when Dwight got him home, a none too happy expression on her face.
"Why do you put up with it?" Dwight would ask her every once in a while.
"Because I love him." she always replied with a little shrug.
Sometimes, when Dwight was dropping Doug off, he would see bruises on Sandy's arms and wrists. Once she had been sporting a nice shiner on her left eye, which she said she got from an open cabinet door.
"You know, if you want to leave him, I would help you." he told her.
"It's nothing, Dwight." she had said. "I just hurt myself, that's all. Please. Just leave it alone, ok?"
He would have done anything for her, including leaving it alone if she asked.
Dwight had read somewhere once that one of the unwritten rules of writing was that if a gun was introduced into a story, before the end of the story the gun would be put to use. Doug was that gun, with it's inevitable discharge. It was only a matter of time, sooner or later, he would go off.
It looked like tonight was the night.
Dwight reached Doug's house at five til five. The eastern sky was a healthy pink color and he had plenty of light to see by as he walked up the short drive way to the house. Doug's car was parked out front, and Dwight could see bloody hand prints smeared all over the lid to the trunk. A bloody smear wound it's way up the side walk, up the front steps, and through the front door. He pulled his hand back into his jacket sleeve, so as not to leave finger prints when he opened the front door.
Inside, Doug was sitting on the couch, a dazed expression on his face. Dwight closed the door behind him, and took in the room with one long look around.
"Aw, shit." he muttered. There were some broken lamps, and an end table was sitting in pieces on the floor. A bloody trail lead out of the kitchen, and Dwight could see hand prints on the walls.
"I killed her, didn't I?" asked Doug, his voice strained and cracking.
"I don't know what happened, Doug but it sure looks that way. You remember anything?"
The man on the couch shook his head. "Last thing I remember was going to Kadies to get a couple brews. After that, it's all blank." He paused for a couple of seconds, and then he said, "There's a knife on the kitchen floor. It's covered with blood. I figure that's what I used."
Dwight nodded, and walked toward the kitchen, taking care not to step on the bloody trail leading out of there. "You got the keys to your car on you?" he called back to Doug.
After a minute, Doug said, "I don't think so. Do you want me to find them?"
"That's ok. Ten bucks says that they are in the ignition." He grabbed some paper towels and used them to pick the knife up off of the floor. It was a ten inch chef's knife. The blood on the handle and blade was already turning a dull brown color. Short, light colored hair were sticking out of the mess. Blonde hairs, like Sandy's.
"What am I doing?" he asked himself. Simple. He was helping out a friend. A guy had to stand up for his friends.
He came back out of the kitchen with the knife carefully wrapped in the paper towels. "I'll be right back." he said and went out the door. Sure enough, the keys were hanging from the ignition. Blood was smeared all over the seat and the steering wheel. He pulled out the keys and walked around to the back of the car. He looked back up toward the house, and saw Doug standing in the window, with the curtains held back. Dwight stuck the round key into the trunk's slot, and turned it. It clicked and he lifted the trunk lid. He stared into the trunk for about ten seconds, and then closed it again. Doug met him at the door when he came back inside.
"What? What was back there? Was it her?"
"No." said Dwight. "It was just a lot of blood, and a bloody shovel. Looks like you took her out and buried her somewhere."
"I don't remember any of it, I swear. I don't know where she is."
"Yeah, and it's a big desert. You could look out there for years and still never find her. Goddamnit, why didn't I do something?"
"What do you mean? What could you have done? You didn't know."
"Don't be stupid." said Dwight. "I've known for a long time. Sandy and I talked about this just two weeks ago."
"What?" said Doug, and Dwight could see some of that old Doug Clark rage creeping up. "She talked to you about us?"
"You better calm the fuck down." said Dwight. "You fucked up, not her. She called me a couple of weeks back and asked me to come to lunch with her. She said that things were getting bad between you, and that she was scared. I offered to help her leave you, and she said that she didn't think you would let her leave. She thought that you would track her down where ever she went."
"That bitch!" stammered Doug. "She had no business goi-"
"Oh, shut the fuck up. You tell me. Did she have reason to be afraid? Look around this fucking house, man." Careful, Dwight told himself. You're getting him pissed. You don't want to make him do something stupid.
Doug was looking around the room. What he saw drained the rage right out of him. "Aw, shit, man. My life is fucking over." He sat back down on the couch and dropped his head in his hands. He began to sob uncontrollably, his whole body shuddering as he cried.
Dwight sat down in a nearby recliner and took a deep breath. "We can fix this." he said.
"What?" said Doug, raising his head, and wiping at his eyes.
"We can get you out of this. You're going to have to leave town, but we can keep you out of jail."
"How? I don't..."
"Just shut up, Doug, and let me think. We can clean everything up. Get rid of any evidence. We pack your bags, and pack a bunch of her stuff, too. Then you cut on out of Basin."
"Why do I gotta leave town?"
"Cause she told me that she was scared of you. She may have told somebody else. Now if she comes up missing, people are going to get suspicious. If you leave town, and take some of her stuff with you, they'll think that you guys just pulled up stakes and moved on."
"I don't know, man. I got my job here, and it's a good one. It's not like I can just pick up and leave."
"Look." said Dwight. "You are going to leave town. There is no question. I am not giving you a choice. You have no idea what control I am exhibiting right now, keeping myself from killing you right here and now. I loved Sandy very much, and it's just the fact that you and I have been friends for so long that is keeping you alive. You are going to pack your bags, and you are going to get the fuck out of town, cause otherwise I'll turn you in myself. Are we clear on this?"
Doug stared at him for a moment, trying to decide whether it would be prudent to argue with Dwight, right now. "All right." he said. "If that's what you want. I'm sorry."
"Also, I think it would be in your best interest to stay away from women in the future. If I hear that you have even frowned at a girl, I'll fucking kill you. Are you clear on that?"
"Yeah, I got it."
"Good. Then let's get this shit cleaned up and get you ready to go."
Half an hour later, the house smelled of pine sol and disinfectants. All traces of the murder had been meticulously cleaned up. Doug was backing the freshly cleaned car out of the garage, soapy water still dripping from the trunk. Dwight came out of the house with a garbage bag full of bloody rags in one hand, and the paper towel wrapped knife in the other.. He popped the trunk on his Camaro, and threw the rags and knife in with the shovel he had retrieved from Doug's car. He shut the lid and walked over to Doug's driver side window.
"You got everything you need?"
Doug looked at the pile of clothes in the back seat and nodded, "Yeah, I think so."
"Good. Don't ever come back."
"I won't. I want to thank you, Dwight. I don't know what I would have done."
"No need." said Dwight as he walked back toward his own car. "What are friends for?"
He followed Doug until he got to the on ramp for the interstate, and then turned to go out the the tar pits. The sun was well on it's way into the sky when he pulled his car up amongst the amusement park dinosaurs and killed the engine. He popped the trunk and pulled out the knife and the shovel, which he threw out across the tar pit as hard as he could. Next went the bag of rags, which he weighed down with some rocks so it would sink. Lastly, he pulled out the garbage bag with the coyote's carcass in it. He swung it a couple times to build up some momentum, and then sent it sailing out across the tar.
Shelly was in the shower when he got back to her place, so Dwight helped himself to one of her cigarettes. After lighting it, he dialed up the Basin City Hilton, and asked for Sandy Phillips' room.
"Hello?" she said when she picked up.
"This is Dwight. He bought it. Hook, line, sinker."
"He's gone?"
"Yep. Last I saw him he was headed towards Arizona. It was made clear to him that he should not come back."
"I'm still not sure we should let him keep thinking he's a murderer. It just seems so mean."
That was Sandy for you. The guy never even questioned the fact that he murdered her, and she was worried that they were being to mean to him. "You said yourself that he would never have let you get away. Besides, maybe this will scare him enough to keep him away from other women."
"I suppose you're right. Thank you, Dwight. I don't know what I would have done without you."
"No need." said Dwight. "What are friends for?"
She started to giggle then, and Dwight didn't know if she was laughing, or crying.

That's my story, If you have any comments or curse words, email me at bcampo@hotmail.com If you liked this story, you might like my other, they are available at my site, Bad Monkey Comics!!!