Byrd Man — Roleplayer Guild

Year 2000 Music

Compton
2000

Antonio took a large bite from his roast beef sandwich and surveyed the action on the corner from the stoop across the street, that new Outkast joint blasting from the boombox beside him. The junkies shuffled down the sidewalk with the same strung-out gait, the same glassy look in their eyes that seemed to reflect in the dim lights hanging above the street. Cars also came through, mostly white folks from the nicer areas of Los Angeles. A few rode in from Long Beach, plenty still from the other side of the city looking to score. Willing to put up with LA traffic just for a fix was proof that his shit was the bomb.

A small queue of women stood off to the side of the action by the alley between two houses. They were the junkies who didn't have enough money to get anything. If you were a dude and rolled up to the corner without any cash and looking for a fix, then you got told off and maybe got your ass beat for fun. If you were a woman and didn't look too used up, then Antonio's boys might work out a deal with you. Antonio saw one of the dealers walking out of the alley, zipping his pants up while a woman walked ahead of him and wiped her mouth. The dealer winked at one of his friends and passed the woman a baggie of powder. All in all, a normal Saturday night on the corner.

The car people that rolled through mostly copped coke, a few here and there got crack or weed. Crack, which had been almost like a literal bomb back in the day, wasn’t in fashion like it used to be. The junkies now days always went for the Double Drop. A little bit of coke and horse mixed together on the same spoon and shot straight into the veins. Mixing the two together seemed futile to Antonio. Dope was a downer, coke an upper. The two didn't seem like a natural fit, but he'd never touched the stuff and it kept the fiends coming back so what the hell did he know?

Antonio finished his sandwich and wiped the crumbs on his navy blue pant legs. The five-man crew he managed were among the best dealers the Crips had in all of Southern Cali. The shot callers who ran things never had to come down here to beat somebody's ass for skimming money or product. The count was never short and Antonio knew how to handle his boys. He motivated and inspired them, pushed them to keep going and keep making money. In another life, he would have made one hell of a sales manager at some car dealership. But he was a black man born and raised in an American city like Compton. As a drug dealer and Crip, it was a motherfucking miracle that he was twenty-five and still hadn't seen the inside of a jail cell.

Rico, the youngest member of his crew at twelve, flashed a hand signal at Antonio from across the street. He held up two fingers three times, their sign that they needed more product. The stash for that night sat in a large gym bag in a hollowed out section underneath the stoop Antonio sat on. He was the only one who went in to get more product. Anybody tampered with it or even went for it, no matter who, Antonio pulled the 9MM in his waistband. That was what the big businessmen with their MBAs called asset control and loss prevention, ten dollar words to describe something that was common sense to a lowly dealer who dropped out of Compton High at the age of sixteen.

Antonio stepped off the stoop and surveyed the area. Everyone around was too busy conducting business or going about their lives to notice him preparing to open up the hollow side of the stairs. He still held one hand on the gun in his hands as he opened up the panel and rooted through the open gym bag with bindles of coke and dope strapped together. In terms of street value, it was easily ten grand in packaged drugs ready to sell.

"5-0! 5-0!"

Antonio's head snapped up at the warning. A black SUV pulled up to the corner where the junkies and dealers alike were starting to scatter like roaches when a light goes on. Antonio cursed and shoved the bindles and gun back into the hidey-hole before covering it. Goddamn Compton PD. The people above Antonio paid good money to keep the cops off their back, but every so often they had to roll up and show some force. They would cruise through and bang some heads, take in a few junkies and maybe one of his crew, but they never hit the stash or took Antonio in. That was why he ditched the gun and the dope. They wouldn't take it. Like all cops, bent or otherwise, they did just enough to say they were doing their job.

Antonio got ready to be thrown to the ground, but stopped when the four men came out of the SUV. They were dressed head to toe in black clothing, balaclavas over their faces and submachine guns in their hands. They sure as hell weren't cops.

"The fu--," were the only words Antonio got out of his mouth before a burst of bullets tore through his body.

He hit the ground, blood pouring from his chest and throat while the men went through the street, gunning down the rest of Antonio's fleeing crew. They were not blindly firing on anyone running, instead they took time to pick their targets and fire. They knew exactly who the dealers and buyers were.

With his vision fading, Antonio saw a pair of black combat boots step over his body. A moment later, the same boots stepped back over him with the gym bag in their arms. Rough hands went through his pockets. He let out a protest that only came out as a gurgle thanks to his neck wound. His mind was fuzzy but Antonio had at least two thousand dollars on him from that night's work.

“Sup?” the man in the mask asked as he stood over him. He slung the submachine gun over his shoulder and looked down at Atonio. He could make out black skin underneath the holes in the ski-mask. The man’s gloved hands contorted in a gang sign that Atonio knew well. His twisted fingers spelled out the word BLOOD.

“Piru for life, nigga.”

Antonio tried to put up a fight as the man dug for something underneath his black turtleneck shirt, but his body wouldn't respond. The man pulled out a plain medallion that hung around his neck. It was simple gold with a blood red gemstone in the middle of it. The red stone flashed a bright, crimson light. Antonio gasped as he felt the light pulling at him. A cold feeling set in and made his body numb. At the same time, he could hear the blood rushing in his ears and pounding as hard as it ever had in his entire life. 

He could suddenly look down at his dying body from above. He saw how young he looked and how scared he was, breathing heavily as blood spurted from his chest. A sharp panic went through him as he started to pull away from his body. He turned and saw he was being sucked into the red stone. He screamed as numbness and adrenaline mingled together in his body for something close to a high. His last thought before his soul went into the medallion was that maybe this is what the Double Drop felt like.

---

East Los Angeles
Now

“The Nine goes brra, brra, brr, brr! All these girls out here know who this dick for. Yeah, I keep that red flag hanging on my back side, but only on the right side yeah that’s the Blood side! Fuck with me think I’m gonna let it slide? Kill so many niggas they gonna call it genocide!”

“You call this shite music?” John Constantine looked up from the phone on his kitchen table. On the screen was recently departed hip-hop sensation K2, wearing a red bandana around his neck while rapping on a couch. He had an AK-47 in one hand while he gestured with his free hand. On a coffee table in front of him was a stack of hundred dollar bills.

“Fuck you, you Gordon Sumner looking motherfucker!” The spirit of recently departed hip-hop sensation K2 said from the corner of John’s kitchen. “You probably had some shitty garage band back in the day." 

"Were were shitty, alright," said John. "But we were more than a garage band, that's for sure."

"Whatever. Meanwhile I got a following.”

“Had,” John said with a smile. “Need to start speaking about yourself in past tense, mate.”

K2 looked sullen at John’s crack. It wasn’t a good look on him. He was tall and gangling with dreadlocks dyed purple. There were face tattoos under his his eyes, spiderwebs, and an upside down cross on his forehead. John thought of him as a kid, more in a literal sense than any attempt at condescension. He looked to be all of twenty years old. A fucking baby, or at least the ghost of one, with a tight grouping of bullet holes in his chest.

“This is a first for me,” Charlie Rembrandt said from his spot leaning against the kitchen counter. “As you can imagine, homicide detectives never get the opportunity to interview the victim.”

“Then why do you need me? Let our tattooed friend here tell you his tale and then you fit up the bloke who did it.”

“Not that easy,” said Rembrandt. “Because K2 here has quite a story.”

“Oh yeah?” John asked, looking at the kid. “So, tell me, who shot ya?”

“That nigga Pooh Bear,” said K2. “I saw him in the club hovering nearby, but didn’t think nothing of it. He’s tight with my security guys so they had their guard down. I saw him pull out a piece and tried to say something before he pulled the trigger. But I was too late.”

“There you go,” said John. “Sounds like you need to find that… African-American gentlemen, Pooh Bear.”

“Keep going,” said Rembrandt. 

“If Pooh Bear shot me, then he did so on Lance’s orders,” said K2. “Pooh Bear don’t wipe his ass without Lance’s say-so. If Lance killed me, that means that scary nigga is gonna be after me.”

“Lance?” John asked with a laugh. “In my experience, Squire, nobody named Lance is a threat.’

“Lance is his nickname,” said K2. “Lancelot Rawlings. Nobody knows how he got the nickname, but the last nigga who gave him shit about it ended up in traction.”

“Lance Rawlings is K2’s producer,” said Rembrandt.

“Was,” said John. “And why would this bloke be after you if he already had you killed?”

“Lance dabbles in scary shit,” said K2. “Like, robes and candles and pentagrams and shit. He’s more than a record producer, dawg. He runs Piru, a Blood set out of Compton.”

“LAPD and FBI both have files on him,” Charlie said. “I looked him up on the computer on my way over. He's suspected of gun running, drug dealing, money laundering, and a dozen other scams at local, state, and federal levels.” 

“Busy bee,” said John.”All that and he dabbles in magic.”

“More than that,” said K2. “I’ve only seen a little bit of it with my eyes, but I’ve heard stories. Niggas who really piss him off get their souls snatched. I seen a living body without no soul in it. Shit will shake you to the core.”

“I bet,” said John. “And let me guess, you wanted out?”

“Fuck yeah,” K2 said solemnly. “He was scaring me, and I was getting too big for him. The contract I signed was dogshit, man, so I started working with a lawyer to get out of it. That's why he sent Pooh Bear after me. Lance couldn't abide my disrespect. He wants my money, my music catalogue, he wants my fucking legacy and all that comes with it.”

John leaned back in his chair and thought it over. Music as magic ritual was nothing new. If K2 had a fanbase like he said he did, then his death would cause outpourings of grief, creating a sigil of power even the most elementary of mages could tap into. Even if Rawlings had one foot in the occult world, he could still with harness a lot of power with K2’s soul.. John looked over at Rembrandt and raised his eyebrow.

“What do you say we pay this fair Lancelot a visit?”
Byrd Man Member

El Hombre Pájaro

Status

Recent Statuses

Bio

Most Recent Posts
