jack_babalon | Ultra-Violet Memory: Pt 3: Living on luck with a Dead Mans Name

"He's not coming back is he?" She whimpers. I don't know what to say, I never do, not when it counts. Once I loved her with all my heart. Then I hated her. Now I just feel pity and that's a lot worse than hate and a lot like love all at the same time. There is a long silence while we both stew in our thoughts. Finally she coughs out a question.
"Do you remember...y'know that one time.. when we were all running around Oakland Cemetary playing hide and seek ..." Her voice is lighter now. Recalling those times when we were better people living in a better place.
"Yeah like that old Tom Waits song I guess"
"Yeahhhhh... how'd that go again..."
"What? You mean 'You're innocent when you dream'.."
"Noooo! Sing it!"
"I can't sing Violet"
"Please... just this once."
I breathe in deep and close my eyes. I remember her head in my lap a few thousand mornings ago and I sang it to her while she came down from a bad trip. The sun was coming through the windows and her cats curled up with us on the couch and I sang to her with a faux blues rattle in my voice. But now I only know a few of the lines off the top of my head:
"Ahem....ahh lessee umm...
It's such a sad old feeling
the fields are soft and green
it's memories that I'm stealing
but you're innocent when you dream

running through the graveyard
we laughed my friends and I
we swore we'd be together
until the day we died...."
"...until the day we died"" she whispers with me.

"Step out of the car please, sir."
Jimmy complys. I'm left sitting alone in the car waiting. I start doing the math in my head. Mohawk + Voodoo Town + One in the morning + the fact that my boys got the kind of rap sheet they base Hip Hop songs off of = Me having to call his old lady collect from Fulton County to bail him out. I don't like that option though. Jimmy's woman has been on a steady diet of Nutrasweet, pizza & meth for the last two weeks straight. While she'll greet Jimmy with open arms, i'll end up with a slap across the chops for letting him get busted. I don't know... sometimes I really hate all this 'Am I my brothers keeper?' shit. Still if he plays it cool and we stick to the story like glue we just might...
Three taps on the window: "Sir!"
I roll it down.
"Yes officer?"
"I need to see your license please"
I go to open the door to step outside.
"Please remain seated sir"
"Oh...um... ok" I shrug, peeling the corner of my ass off the seat and fishing out my wallet. I produce it and the officer steps away. I glance in the rearview mirror and can see Jimmy getting patted down. Luckily he managed to get his piece tucked under the drivers seat when we got pulled over. So now it's down to the fake ID Rodney got him. It's a real license with a dead mans name on it. It cost Jimmy more than I make in a few months and it's been worth every dime because that one card has been the difference betweeen a night on the town and a night in jail. So now our fate is in the hands of another mans name. This reminds me, oddly enough, of what i've read about the Western Lands- the Egyptian land of the dead. There demons and gods sit at the various gates to the roads to paradise. You gotta be clean to pass by them and keep in mind that they can smell sin the way we can smell a fart. There's no way around them really, not if you want to go forward, not if you want to live forever. And what man at the end of his life is really 'clean'? But there is a way through them though. The pilgrim soul can't prove his innocence but he can fake it. All he has to do is remember the names of the dietys asking the questions. Call them out on it. Name them right there and then because once you do that you have power over them and they must let you pass. One of the great rules of magick - 'fuck the truth, the name shall set you free'.
"Could you step outside the car please..."
I do. The cop is a baby faced brother with unbluffable eyes. He wants to know what the story is. I tell him: A friend of ours got into a bad fight with his woman. He stormed off with his head in a bad place. That was hours ago. The woman called us and begged us to go find him. We were on our way to Lenny's to see if he was there when we were stopped. Lenny's is right on MLK so that gives us a motive outside of scoring rocks... I hope. If the officer so much as blinked when I told him this then I must have missed it. I got 'Robocop' here. He checks his notes. I figure Jimmy gave the same version of the story since we came up with it on the fly while the first officer walked over. He looks back up at me with those unbluffable eyes.
"You a Skinhead?"
"Nope... male pattern boldness, sir."
"A nazi?"
"I'm not even a Republican, officer"
His face registers the slightest hint of a smirk. He hands me back my license with a nod and tells me I can sit back down. A few minutes later Jimmy joins me in the front seat. None of us say anything, afraid that the slightest word will trigger the truth. He starts up the car and as we slowly pull out of Voodoo Town his cell phone goes off with a shriek that almost gives the pair of us heartattacks!

"What n****a" He barks into the phone
"------------...------....------"
"What?"
"-------..._----!"
"You're sure?"
"---....---!!!"
"I don't fucking believe it! Alright I need you to hold him, ok. Don't let that bitch go anywhere you hear?"
"---...---"
He clicks off the phone and hands it to me. There's a smile on his face and it's the kind of smile you hope to never see on a sane man.
"That was Germ" He says through a grin.
"Uh-huh"
"Pretty Boy just showed up at the Creature's..."
"You're shitting me?"
"Nope. Apparently he tried selling some scripts and was looking for a place to crash. He's sitting there watching a movie!"
Clear of the pigs Jimmy floors it back towards Little Five, towards Goldsboro where the Creature lives.