The short bus ride was the longest one of my life. While it took me pretty close to the Narrows, I was still a good distance away. The entire time I was practically bouncing on the heels of my toes, simmering in my anger and thirst for revenge.
From here, the Narrows was practically a straight shot through several burrows. I went completely on foot after hopping off the buss, running half the time, through the hidden shortcuts and back alley streets I had learned throughout the years. The entire time I had to fight off the overwhelming sense of dread in the pit of my stomach, driving my thoughts mad.
Inhale, exhale. Remember, Jones tried to fuck you over.
Rationalize.
It probably took me close to an hour and a half at a sprint half the time, until I blinked and I was standing outside the bar. I was practically shaking with anger that had consumed me, so I took a moment to catch my breath and cross myself before kicking the door open.
I'm not sure what I expected, like a five foot barely three inches, starved at one hundred pounds white girl with a tiny knife was really gonna fuck shit up. But I went in blazing anyway, shouting at the top of my lungs-
To an empty room?
I froze and looked around, my face scrunched up in confusion. Not even the intense looking bar lady was standing there staring at me. Plus, the lights were flickering in one corner where a bunch of tables and chairs had been turned over. For some sick reason, the jukebox was still playing some loud campy tune from the fifties into this empty scene.
My stomach twisted into knots then fell through the floor when I noticed the long, smear of blood trailing to the back rooms. Heart pounding in my ears, I crept forward with my knuckles gripping the handle of the knife until they ached.
It was pitch black in the hallway. My boots crunched over broken glass scattered on the floor. All of the doors were left hanging wide open and teetering off their hinges. I glanced in each one and tried not to let my eyes linger on the bodies inside.
I stood outside the door to Jones office, the only one left intact, shut like the big guy was inside waiting for me. My palm closed around the doorknob and I resisted every urge to turn around and run. But curiosity got the better of me. The door flew open and smacked against the other side of the wall.
Vomit rose then lurched inside my gut, but there was nothing there to upchuck other than the bile. Jones sat at his desk, missing half of his head. I would have given a large, hearty, genuine laugh at his end, because fuck him, but the other body in the room sent a torrent of emotions through me.
Red was face down on the ground, his chest was rising and falling pitifully as he was minutes from death. A pool of maroon colored blood spanned out from the bullet holes riddling his chest.
Holy shit.
Someone had been pissed or excessive. Probably both.
"Red?" I hovered carefully over his body, feeling extremely helpless as he tried to hold onto breath. His eyes swiveled to face mine as he tried to say something, but could barely get the words out. I wanted to close my eyes, to look away and plug my ears until the bad part was over.
"I'm sorry." I swallowed through the knot in my chest. There wasn't much else to say, I saw him regularly, but never hung out with him, never even knew his last name. Here it comes again, people like him die all the time. Arunaway kid from nowhere to begin with, who never really hurt anybody. It was the grotesque, bordering on cartoonish, violence that had me sick to my stomach.
This easily could have been me, then the realization: it was supposed to be.
"H-he, he was-" Red manages to gurgle out his voice, deep from the back of his throat and through the fluid filling his lungs. I lean in closer, and I can see my own reflection in his eyes as they glaze over.
I stand up so quickly the world begins to spin around me. There is a part of me that does not give me time to properly grieve, takes the traumatic moment and puts it away in a box. And that is that for now.
Apart from the bodies and the knocked out lights, it looked like everything had been left intact. For some odd reason, nothing had been rooted through, like this whole thing had been visually planned out. Another twisted scene for someone to find.
I had to act fast, the police would more than likely be here soon or someone else may arrive and blame me for the carnage. Pulling my sleeves above my hands so I wouldn't leave fingerprints, I started to dig through Jones stuff myself. His desk was full of papers related to the bar, invoices and things like that. I turned on the book shelves lining the walls, tossing each volume on the ground after flipping through the pages.
Just when I was about to give up, I grabbed a large, leather bound book that was way to light. I threw it open and a fat wad of cash fell out from a hollowed out cavity. My heart lept, I snatched at the bundle and counted it quickly. While it wasn't close to the obscene amount of money Jones had promised, it was about half that amount but still just enough to get the hell out of Gotham.
Whoever had done this was after me as well, and whoever they were, I did not want to meet them and find out why.
I snuck out of the bar through a window facing the alley way. It was nearing one in the morning, and the Narrows was coming alive with its own version of entertainment. Junkies, petty thieves, and prostitutes haunted the grimy streets in clusters. Fog was rolling in off the river that isolated the island neighborhood from the rest of Gotham, bringing with it an undercurrent of excitement in the air. I had to get the hell out of here, get the hell of out Gotham itself.
Looping around the block, I went straight to the nearest subway station and waited for the quickest train towards Downtown. I couldn't leave without the few possessions I had hidden away. Besides, how was I going to break the news to Jenna? Hey, your wanna be crime lord uncle, ya know the one that sells you cheap drugs, yeah, he's dead. No, I don't know, he tried to have me killed or kidnapped and when I went to confront him, he was missing half his head. Sooo, whoever his boss is is mad, and who knows who that could be, with all the weird-
Wait, what if Jenna was in on it? No, frankly she wasn't smart or sneaky enough to help plan something like this… More than likely, if someone was after me, they would have gone to her apartment.
Oh, shit. Shit, shit, shit!
I sprinted away from the subway station as soon as the doors slid open. My heart pounded in my ears the entire ten minute run to her apartment building, praying I would not come across a similar scene from the bar.
