Mad Maxxx Read online

  “I told ya’ll I’m my own person. I don’t need no fucking babysitters.” I grabbed my black New York Yankees baseball cap off the bed and walked toward the mirror. I looked at my face. I looked like a corpse.

  “Yes you do,” Gage said. “You been gone for five days, Mad. What kind of shit is that? You know they trying to find you behind that Rose Midland murder.”

  “I didn’t kill that bitch,” I yelled stepping up to her. “Wicked brought her to that fucking building and set me up. You know that.”

  They looked scared of me and I backed down.

  “You know we believe you,” she responded. “I don’t know why he trying to set you up but I believe you.”

  “I don’t know why either, that’s your boy not mine!”

  “We not the enemy,” WB said in a low voice. “But if you don’t slow down and stay low, you not gonna be able to prove your innocence.”

  When the door opened, Fierce was standing on the other side. Fierce was a cool black kid who was scrawny and always sickly. I don’t know why but I connected with him and Spirit the most. “We gotta get out of here. I think the police roaming around out front. Come with me.”

  My heart dropped.

  I can’t go anywhere or do anything without the cops looking for me. I have to stay in hiding because I don’t wanna go to jail, especially for some shit I didn’t do. My life’s a mess.

  I slammed my cap on my head, and we all ran out of the room. I followed Fierce toward an old black Buick. “Whose car is this?”

  “Something we picked up along the way,” Spirit said. “Now come on, we gotta roll.”

  I slid into the backseat and Spirit eased on my right while Gage caught my left side.

  Fierce grabbed the steering wheel of the stolen car and WB dipped into the passenger seat.

  This is what my life was about these days…always on the run.

  “Is Wicked there?” I asked, referring to the place I knew they were taking me.

  “Yes,” Gage responded. “He’s there with our mother and father.”

  I sighed. “I thought we agreed that we wouldn’t do that bamma shit anymore,” I said to her.

  “What shit?” Gage responded.

  “Call Daze and Killer your mother and father just because you was once in their clique. If they not your blood they not your parents. So cut the dumb shit.”

  Gage looked at everyone else and then back at me. “You’re right, Mad. From here on out that term is done.” She looked at everybody else. “Agreed?”

  One by one they nodded.

  Although when I first met them they explained to me how they went about referring to the people in their crew, the terms mother and father was reserved for the leaders and I never took well to the terms.

  “So, Mad, let me tell you what you missed while you were gone,” Gage said excitedly. “You know Fortune be wearing them fake ass diamond earrings right?”

  I don’t respond.

  “You know, the ones she be trying to pass off as real,” Spirit added.

  I just nodded hoping they would move the story along.

  “Well anyway, we was out front of the Korean’s spot last night. Spirit had some money from selling them CD’s he yanked off the bootlegger out southeast and treated everybody to shrimp fried rice.”

  “I had the beef and broccoli, ya’ll had the—”

  “Spirit, shut the fuck up and stop interrupting me,” Gage yelled across me at him. “You know I hate that shit when I’m telling my story.”

  These two were always fighting with each other. Truth be told Spirit was feeling Gage but Gage was still in love with her ex-boyfriend Wicked so she didn’t notice.

  “Girl, go ahead and finish,” Spirit added. “You take too long to tell a story anyway.”

  “Like I was saying, Mad”— she rolled her eyes— “so we out front of the Korean store the other night, and Fortune was swinging her hair real hard trying to show us that she can move like Beyoncé and shit. When one of the earrings popped out of her ear, Gypsy, the store’s dog, ate the mothafucka”— Gage broke out laughing but I didn’t catch the joke — “she tried everything to get this earring back from this dog including opening his jaws. She acted like the thing was real.”

  “That mothafucka almost bit her hand off too,” WB laughed as he lit a blunt.

  “So when she couldn’t get it out, please tell me why she kidnapped the dog later on that night and fed him all these laxatives that she stole from the pharmacy? She was up all night feeding the dog pills like they were candy and shit. It was so sad.”

  “She had the dog in her cubby and everything, my nigga,” Fierce laughed taking the blunt from WB. “Fortune was on a mission.”

  “The dog shitted on everything in her room,” Gage continued. “Man, I’m talking about wet shit, the kind that smells so bad it don’t clean up even after you wash it. You know Nic who lives across from Spirit?” she paused. “Well anyway he got mad cause the dog broke down his door and shitted on his pillow. Nic thinks it was done on purpose, you know he be on his conspiracy shit, but I think the dog was dehydrated and tired and just ended up in there.”

  “Nic is fucking crazy,” WB said in a low voice. “Always thinking a nigga out to get him.”

  “The thing is all that shitting and she still didn’t get the earing out of the dog’s ass,” Spirit added.

  “So then she tries to take the dog back to the Korean’s but now it won’t go away. She drops the dog off but when she gets back, he’s right in front of her cubby…shitting. Man, she tried beating him, yelling at him and everything but nothing worked. I think it fucks with her now or something. I just…”

  I zoned out of the conversation at this point. I knew what she was doing. They did this type of thing all the time when I was down. They usually did it on the days I would wake up silent with nothing to say. Even though I would sometimes go five days without talking, I never woke up and said today is the day I’m going to be mute. I just didn’t have it in my heart to speak. And no matter how hard they tried they would never understand who I am and the hate I feel inside.

  “…So it was so crazy,” Gage continued, as if I heard everything else she said.

  Before long, since I ain’t respond, they abandoned their show and left me to my silence. I liked it better this way. That’s how I knew they were true friends because they could sit with me in silence even if they didn’t want to.

  After driving for a while, when we made a left and then a right, I knew we were close to the place I was becoming too familiar with. The place I left because the dude Wicked, who also lives here, makes me wanna kill him.

  Fierce stashed the car around the corner, Spirit and Gage wiped off our fingerprints and we ditched the stolen ride. When we were done we walked toward the DuPont Circle tunnel, which use to be home to underground trolleys. Now its full of dust, rats and people like us.

  The moment we reached the East Wing’s entrance, I was met by Old Man Young. Dirt and his gray hair took over so much of his face that the only thing you could see was his piercing blue eyes. He never went anywhere without his long and dusty green trench coat, which stank of piss and cigarettes.

  He smiled, revealing his black teeth.

  “Hello, Mad, welcome back to The Catacombs.”

  CHAPTER 2

  MAD

  When I walked back into The Catacombs I felt hopeless. First let me say that living in The Catacombs ain't no luxurious experience. It takes a lot of getting use to and a life so terrible that being here is your last option, and unfortunately for me both situations apply.

  Let me give you a little history on myself. I was born to a whore named Harmony Phillips about twenty-something years ago, and spent most of my life believing I was a boy. I didn’t believe it because it was something I imagined. My fucked up mother told me I was a dude. It wasn't until I caught my period in class while writing on the blackboard that I learned I was something else - although to this day I disagree. In my heart
I’m all man.

  I was born a twin, but my sister and me disconnected shortly after my mother moved us to Washington DC from Texas - that's another long story. When I was growing up it was nothing to see roaches, rats and spiders in my bedroom. My mother didn't keep a clean house and she didn't buy supplies for my sister and me to clean up neither. The toilets were always backed up, forcing us to pee on piles of dirty clothes in our room. If number two hit us, we would grab a dirty pot out of the kitchen sink, shit in it and dump it in the backyard. The reason the toilet stayed stopped up was because of the amount of used condoms my mother use to flush down it.

  So I got some experience living in fucked up conditions if you know what I mean. Still, nothing I experienced in my life could prepare me for this shit right here.

  When you walk into The Catacombs the first thing that hits you is complete darkness. I'm talking about blackness so deep you can’t feel your own body. It’s like you’re floating in outer space, with no walls or ground, and you’re immediately dizzy. If you don’t belong here, unless you’re just crazy of course, you’ll turn around and run. But the residents who do live here know that just a few feet up from the entrance, on the left, are flashlights stashed behind three large grey cinder blocks. We use them to brighten up the pathway leading deeper into the tunnel.

  Going a little further inside, down the middle of The Catacombs, are trolley tracks that Old Man Young said were used about a hundred years ago to transport people in and around Washington DC. Now they are just in the way, and make it difficult to walk in the darkness for the people who live here.

  Everywhere you step there are large piles of cinder blocks, that if you aren't careful, you can trip and twist your ankle like Fierce did a year back, when he was running from a pack of stray dogs who were trying to kill him. He was down a whole week, and needed people to help him do everything, including walk to the Shit Pot, which I’ll explain later.

  If you still want to push forward after the darkness, trolley tracks and cinder block traps, then you better be ready to deal with the smell. This is what usually keeps outsiders away because the odor is so strong it burns the hairs of your nostrils and never goes away. Before they brought me here, Gage tried to describe the scent to me. She said it was a cross between shit, piss, rotten fish and mold cooked in a cast iron pot, with a gallon of chitterlings soaking inside.

  If The Catacombs’ perfume doesn’t make you jet then maybe the human size rats that feel they have just as much right to be here as you will do the trick. They'll steal your food, chew your skin and if you let them, give you dirty diseases that will kill you in the middle of the night, like they did to Miranda’s baby when he was sleeping one night. The baby died because the rats ate him to death.

  Once you get past the front entrance things get a little more organized. The Catacombs is shaped like a big plus sign with four different wings—the East, West, North and South. Spirit manages the East Wing, where everyone walks through to enter The Catacombs. That’s where I live, with about twenty-two other people.

  We got rules in our wing, which limits the amount of problems we run into. For instance all cubby holes, which some call apartments, have steel meshes at the doorways that you have to step over to get inside of your place. It’s a little irritating when it snags onto your shoes, but it keeps rats from bothering you like in other wings. The only thing you have to do is dispose of all food at night or else.

  Each cubby is made out of any material you can find, and connected to the wall of the tunnel. The doors are usually made up of cardboard and the threat of bodily harm is enough to keep other residents out of your space, instead of locks.

  Now on the opposite side of us, way down the other side of The Catacombs is the West Wing. About thirty something people live there. On that end of The Catacombs anything goes. Fighting happens at all hours of the night, people die for no reason, and it’s so dirty that everyone who lives down there has an extra odor to their bodies, in addition to the one that’s already in the tunnel. You can smell a West Winger coming because they don’t do anything to stay clean.

  Although Spirit gets mad at the residents in the West, because of how they keep their hall, they still leave food all over the place. Half of the rats in the tunnel are because of them. Wicked, whom I despise, is in charge of the madness over there so shit ain’t never right.

  Standing at the end of the East Wing, also known as The Crossroad, is where all of the wings connect. There are two light posts that extend above the ground where a father and son team we call Engineer One and Engineer Two, (nicknamed E1 and E2 for short), tap the power lines so we can have lights in our cubbies when the streetlights come on. All of the power leading into the cubbies inside of The Catacombs was stolen and set up by them. Without lights I wouldn’t be here.

  Standing at The Crossroads, if you look straight ahead you’ll be facing the West Wing. If I walk left I'll be in the South Wing, also known as The Shit Pot, which is the place where residents use the bathroom and dump it after their done in holes within the ground. I never go down there though, I hold mine until I can’t stand it no more, and then I use the bathroom at Lenny’s Restaurant a few blocks up the street, outside of The Catacombs. Besides, the smell in the Shit Pot is so strong that if I do gotta go I can’t because the only thing I can think about is the smell.

  If I look to my right in The Crossroads, that’s the North Wing, but no one lives there. Now if you keep walking in the North Wing, until you can’t go no more, you’ll be outside. You can’t get into The Catacombs this way from the North Wing, because trees and a narrow pathway, which is blocked by a green flatbed crane dump truck, surround it. So we kind of feel safe out there. We call this area The Pit, which is where we light fires in trash cans, talk shit, and try to make sense of our world. The dump truck sits a little ways out and has a truck bed where some people go to have sex if they got somebody willing.

  So that’s my world now. It’s where I ended up. The crazy thing is if you can get past all of the grossness something strange happens. Old Man Young said its like people who know they going to die and make peace with it. He says once you know you're going to die the horror in it is gone. It's just like The Catacombs. Once you know this is all you got left, and nobody else wants you, you deal with it and get on with life.

  I was standing in the doorway of Spirit's cubby in the East Wing, where everybody who's family hangs out. He got a bed made out of an old couch, straight ahead against the wall, and a long seat that he made by stapling pillows on a slab of wood, to the right. He also has lots of fold up chairs for his guests and a red rug with black writing that says Yin and Yang that sits in the middle of the floor. At least five candles are burning at any given time and the smell is so sweet you almost forget where you are. Almost. To the left are a bunch of cords running from outside of his cubby, leading to a small fridge. Beside it is a table, with a hot plate, and paper cups that he uses if he has food, which we rarely do.

  I walked inside and sat on the long seat against the wall. Gage sat next to me, and WB and Fierce grabbed chairs and sat in the middle of the cubby.

  Spirit walked inside, stood in front of us and said, “We gotta find something to eat. Anybody got any money on them?”

  Since I already spent most of my fifty on a bottle and the room I stayed quiet.

  “Naw, but I got some CD’s I’m gonna try and move later on tonight, maybe I can get something then,” WB responded rubbing his dark brown heroin track ridden arms.

  “What about you,” he asked Fierce.

  “No, I don’t have nothing either.”

  “What about you, Gage?”

  “I’m out too, Spirit,” she said. “Sorry.”

  As she sat next to me she rubbed her leg against mine. I think Spirit caught it because his expression went from business mode to kind of sad. WB told me that Gage was feeling me but I hoped it wasn’t the case because I’m not feeling her at all. That’s the last thing I’m thinking about so I moved a f
ew inches away from her.

  “It’s been a rough month,” she continued, “we gonna have to find a better way to get our paper around here or we die.”

  Although I been gone, I dug into my pocket and pulled out the few bucks I had and slammed them onto the floor by my feet. “Ya’ll can have that. It’s all I got left.” I pulled my cap down over my eyes.

  “Mad, we ain’t talking about you,” Spirit told me. “You haven’t even been here.”

  I left the money anyway. I don’t need it because I’m not hungry and it ain’t enough to buy a bottle.

  “You so fucking sweet,” Gage said rubbing my leg again. “You always looking out for us. I’m gonna start looking out for you too.”

  I moved away from her again, and everybody pretended not to see it by turning away. Gage was bugging out.

  “Hey, I wanted to talk to Gage for a second,” Wicked said entering Spirit’s place with a small paper bag in his hand. He looked at Gage who was sitting next to me before his eyes stopped on my face. “So when did you get back?” he asked me.

  His friends Daze and his girlfriend Killer were behind him.

  I didn’t respond. I have no words for the white boy. Gage’s pale skin reddened and his grey eyes stared directly into mine.

  “So you not gonna answer me?” he stepped into the cubby. “You had my friends everywhere looking for you and you not going to answer me? What the fuck is up with you bouncing every time you get an attitude? Either you with us or you not.”

  As bad as I wanted to tell him where to go I remained silent.

  “Just leave it alone, Wicked,” Spirit said. “He back now so let it go.”

  Wicked sighed. “Why do ya’ll keep referring to this chick as a he? She ain’t no fucking he, she’s a bitch.”

  I knew what he was trying to do but he could do it alone. It was because of Wicked my life was on the lam anyway. Had he not brought this chick into this abandoned warehouse where I went to with Spirit and the gang one night when I first met them, and had she not gotten killed, I wouldn’t be on the run now. The thing that got to Wicked more than anything though was that Spirit, Gage, WB, and Fierce all took my side, even though they’d just met me at that point.