Control, page 26
“Wait a minute. Not right now. Not right now,” she warned twice. She could feel anger boiling up in her spirit.
This motherfucker had something to do with this! she told herself. Now I gotta find out who it is.
She stood up and walked out of the room, immediately pulling out her cell phone for BJ’s number. She had exchanged numbers with a bunch of the guys at the studio for music purposes.
“What are you gonna do?” Tammy asked, hesitant to follow her.
Dark & Moody ignored her again. First, she just wanted to talk to BJ.
He answered her call on the first ring. “Hello.”
“This is Dark and Moody.”
As soon as she said her name, BJ went off on an angry tantrum of his own.
“Shit, man! These motherfuckers out here in Atlanta! It’s getting worse and worse out here. This is fucked up!”
Obviously, he knew about Mrs. Melody’s murder and was on his way to the hospital as he spoke. But Dark & Moody had other ideas.
“Melody said somebody had texted you a picture to try and throw shade on y’all relationship. Who was that?” she asked him.
“What? You talking about Gary?”
“Is that his name, that she used to deal with before you?”
“Yeah, why?” BJ asked.
Tasha started to tell him what she knew and stopped herself. Instead, she asked, “Can you give me his number?”
“Why?” It was a natural question that she couldn’t get around.
“I just wanna ask him some questions,” she answered.
“About what?” BJ needed to add it all up, but Tasha didn’t know if she wanted to include him in on what she was thinking.
“Are you gonna give me his number or not?” she questioned. She was trying to keep her cool with him.
“You think he had something to do with it?” BJ finally assumed.
“I don’t know yet. I just wanna talk to him.”
BJ calmed down and thought about it. What difference would it make? Melody was gone.
He said, “Aw’ight, I’ma text it to you. And you let me know if you find out something. ’Cause I wasn’t even thinking about him.”
Tasha nodded and was full of emotions as she wiped the tears from her eyes.
“Aw’ight. Thanks,” she told him.
As soon as she hung up the phone, Tammy was right there behind her, eavesdropping.
“What are you gonna do?” she repeated. “You think her old boyfriend had something to do with it?”
Dark & Moody shook her head and walked away toward the bedroom to change back into street clothes from her comfortable sweats. Tammy continued to follow and interrogate her.
“Tasha, what are you planning to do?” she pressed with more authority. But it didn’t work. Dark & Moody had tuned her out with a one-track mind for a blood mission.
She walked into the bedroom closet and pulled out all dark clothes, topped off with a black hoodie, just like the man who had shot and killed Mrs. Melody was dressed. Dark clothes at night made it nearly impossible to identify an assailant.
Dressed and ready to go in a matter of minutes, Tasha checked her cell phone to see that BJ had texted her the phone number. He had even added the last name, Gary Pinkston.
Good, she told herself with a nod. She still didn’t have any words for Tammy. Not any positive words. Mrs. Melody had become far more important in the hierarchy of her life, where Tammy had been reduced to a meantime girl.
At the front door, Tammy pleaded, “Please, don’t do something you’ll regret,” with tears in her eyes. In her mind, she was ready to tackle Tasha to stop her from leaving, but she didn’t want to start an all-out fight between them. That’s how seriously Dark & Moody took her mission. Only God could stop her.
She marched toward her car in her dark assassin’s gear and black carry bag as Tammy watched, helplessly, from the front door.
“Please, God, have mercy on her soul,” Tammy prayed with urgency.
DM made her first phone call as soon as she pulled out of her parking spot. After four rings and no answer from Gary, she hung up and called him again, eager to have a few words with him.
“Hello?” he answered on her second call.
“Did you make that happen?” she asked him. She was prepared for it.
“What? Who is this?” Gary asked immediately.
“A friend of Melody.”
He paused. Then he said, “I didn’t have shit to do with that, man. She just happened to be on the phone with me when it happened,” he admitted. There was no way of getting around her cell phone records. But Gary knew that he was innocent. So, he was ready to defend himself.
“But you put it all in motion,” Tasha countered, with fresh tears rolling down her cheeks. “If she wouldn’t have been so concerned about calling you, she wouldn’t even have been out there.”
“Aw, you can’t blame that shit on me. It was just bad fucking timing,” he blurted.
“Yeah, bad timing for you too,” she told him before hanging up.
If it’s gonna happen, it’s gonna happen, she convinced herself. There was no turning back. She was tired of hardheaded, egotistical guys. In the rap industry, that’s all she seemed to deal with. Mrs. Melody had been a breath of fresh air. And her fresh air had been snuffed out already.
Pumped with adrenaline, Tasha wiped her face with her right hand and made a second call.
“Hey, what’s up? You still selling that heat?”
Another pause. “You serious? What’s going on?”
“Yeah, I’m serious. I got two hundred on me right now,” DM told her gun connect.
“You gon’ need three hundred. That’s the smallest I got right now.”
“All right. Give me that.”
“Cool. Call me when you get here.”
* * *
It’s amazing what a person can do when they put their minds to it. The main ingredients were willpower and courage. In other words, what are you willing to do that you won’t back down from?
It’s all about walking the walk after you talk the talk, and Dark & Moody had finally been inspired to do it, to actually kill someone. So, she got Gary’s picture from BJ, looked him up on social media, and called around to people she knew with questions on where she could find him.
“Yeah, he live up in the Buckhead area. I’ve been to his place before. Let me find that address for you.”
As Gary had told Mrs. Melody hours earlier, the city of Atlanta was indeed small, particularly for the movers and shakers. So, by the time it had turned 1:30 AM, Dark & Moody was sitting across the street from the man’s house with a .38 Special handgun in her lap that she was fully prepared to use.
On alert from the craziness of the evening, Gary still had friends over the house and was nowhere near ready for bed. He was still explaining things, while dressed in his day clothes inside the kitchen.
“So, I hear gunshots firing in the background, and I’m like, ‘What the fuck is going on?’ ”
His friend Mike was over at the house as well, the first one to catch Mrs. Melody creeping with BJ.
He said, “That’s crazy. That was just bad timing for her.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m saying,” Gary agreed.
Off instinct, he eyed the name TASHA SAMUELS and the number that she had called him from earlier. But he didn’t share that story with his guys. He didn’t want to look paranoid after her call. So, he kept it to himself. But he still thought about it.
“It’s been a crazy-ass night,” he commented. “I need to walk out and take me a smoke.”
They had freshly rolled marijuana blunts on the kitchen table, and all four of his friends were strapped with pistols, including Gary, who held a 9-millimeter Glock inside his waistband.
Sometimes the circumstances of life can line up too perfectly. Just as Gary grabbed one of the rolled-up blunts to smoke outside on the back deck of his house, Tasha quietly slipped out of her car and headed to the back as well, which often gave you a clearer view of what’s going on inside the house than the front. Sometimes doors and windows at the back of the house could even be left open.
And what a surprise it was for Dark & Moody to make it around to the back just in time to catch the man of the hour walking outside in plain view to smoke a blunt.
Oh my God! I guess it was really meant to be! she thought to herself. Why else had everything fallen into place for her sacrifice? So, there was no hesitation.
DM aimed the gun at her target and started firing as she ran forward to get closer to him.
BOP! BOP! BOP! BOP! BOP! BOP!
With much better aim and a closer distance than Melody, Tasha hit the target with three of her six bullets, striking Gary in his left shoulder, his neck, and his back as he attempted to duck and run away.
“SHIT!” Mike yelled on his way out of the house with his own gun. The other three friends followed, all with their pistols drawn, and started firing at the dark object that scrambled back toward the front of the house.
POP! POP!
BOP! BOP!
POP! POP! POP!
BOP! BOP! BOP! BOP!
With no time to reload her six-shooter gun, and a lack of foot speed to make it back to her car with four guys in hot pursuit of her, Dark & Moody realized that it was a one-way mission.
Fuck it! They got me! she panicked as she ran clumsily, while expecting their bullets to rain down on her. And they did, with the first bullet catching her in the leg, then her arm, and her back, and her ribs, until they were able to walk up on her and spray her body into a bloodbath.
DESTINY FLOWERS
Reflection 42
“WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?” I ASKED MYSELF AT MY OFFICE. “Four of my clients all die in the same damn week? What the FUCK? And they’re all from my movie idea!”
I didn’t know what to think. I was shocked! Could you even imagine something like that?
NO FUCKING WAY! I thought. It was unbelievable!
I just sat at my desk and stared forward. What else could I do? It was obvious that something in my universe had gone very wrong. And I had no control over it. I was too stunned to even cry for them. How unlikely was it for all of that to happen so drastically?
My office phone began to ring while I sat there and stared at it. Who could it be . . . ?
“Hello?” I answered skeptically.
There was a long pause. Then she said, “You still don’t get it yet, do you?”
Destiny Flowers! I thought.
Next, there was a knock on the door.
I looked toward the doorway and asked, “Who is it?”
“Open the damn door,” Destiny told me over the phone.
I looked at the phone and then back to the door.
“Is that you?” I asked her over the line.
“Open the damn door and see.”
I froze and panicked. Did I have a gun? Did the building have security? Did I need to be ready to fight? She had just popped up at my office out of the blue? Who does that?
“Open the damn door, Victoria. You been asking for this for a long-ass time.”
I took a deep breath and composed myself. If I needed to be ready to fight, then that’s what I had to do. So, I stood up and walked to the door, like a Camden girl. When I opened it, I stood back and looked her in the face with my hands up like a boxer.
“You,” I stated, confused. It was Tyrell Hodge’s live-in girlfriend with her expressive eyes and hair. She grinned at me and walked in, as if she owned the place. Then she sat down in my client’s chair. She wasn’t concerned about me at all.
She said, “Okay. Talk to me. I’m your client now.”
I studied her and moved slow, working my way back to my desk, while keeping my eyes on her. I had no idea what this woman was capable of. But she had my same size, even with our heels on.
I sat behind my desk and just looked at her.
She said, “Well . . . what do you think? Do I look good enough for you now?”
“Good enough for what?” I asked her over my desk.
“To play in your movie,” she answered. “And I want one of the lead roles.”
I paused. “I don’t have a movie anymore,” I told her. “All of the people I had in mind for it died.”
“Because you fucked it up,” Destiny snapped at me. Her anger was so sudden and acute that it jarred me. So, I listened to her in silence, knowing that she had more to say.
“Try’na fuck up somebody’s relationship,” she stated. “Who even told you you could make a movie in the first place? I did. That’s who. But you think you know something. And you don’t know shit but what I tell you.”
She still had style, too. She wasn’t dressed like a crazy woman. She had sizzle like a fashionista with her own podcast. But she was still angry. So, I didn’t move.
“You don’t know a damn thing about Camden,” she continued to rant on me. “And you ain’t ever been there. But you gon’ start having all these ideas and shit, like you more important than somebody, just ’cause you think you a damn doctor.”
She began to smile, wickedly, as I continued to listen and stare at her.
“I’m not a doctor?” I asked her. “I’m not a psychologist?”
At that moment, she had me doubting everything.
She leaned forward and pointed to her head with both of her index fingers. “You are a figment of my imagination. You are nothing without me. You don’t exist.”
That’s when I smiled back and gathered my thoughts.
I said, “Yeah, you really are crazy.” I wasn’t going to let this woman walk into my office and tell me I wasn’t a real professional. Fuck her! She didn’t know me!
She leaned back in the chair and nodded, calmly. “Yeah, I know. I been crazy. And so are you. ’Cause you’re a part of me.”
She said it so calmly and straightforward that I damn-near believed her. But I couldn’t. That didn’t make any sense!
I shook my head and said, “I’m not a part of you. I don’t even know you. I’ve never seen you a day in my life. And obviously, you’re much younger than I am.”
I wouldn’t give her a day past thirty-two.
She glared at me and said, “Really? Then how did you just recognize me at the door, like you saw me before?”
It was a question that I couldn’t answer. I seemed to know a lot of things that I couldn’t explain. It was like . . . I just had it all in my mind, sitting there.
As I reflected on everything I thought I knew, this woman pulled a gun out of her carry bag, the same colorful gun that Mrs. Melody had.
I drew back in my chair, alarmed by it.
She said, “Does this look familiar to you?”
It did, but I had never actually seen the gun. So, I stared at it, wondering how I knew.
Destiny smiled at me again. “It’s all in your damn head,” she told me. “Because I put it there.”
I slowly shook it off. “You can’t put things in my head. Melody probably told me about the gun. Or maybe she showed it to me before.”
Destiny started laughing. She said, “Really?” Then she nodded to herself. “Yeah, well, like I said, I let you borrow my shit, but now I want my mind back. ’Cause you dun’ got too powerful.”
When she said that, she leaned forward again with the gun, and I had nowhere to go to escape her. So, I pulled my desk drawer open to see if I had a gun too. But there was nothing inside my drawer. I mean, nothing, which confused me. I didn’t even have a pen or paperwork inside.
Destiny looked at me and winced. She said, “What are you doing? You don’t have anything in there. You still don’t believe me, do you? You don’t exist without me. But I exist without you. So, it’s time to put you back.”
I jumped up out of my desk chair and dodged right and left, as if she had already started shooting at me. I screamed, “HELP! SECURITY! I HAVE A CRAZY WOMAN IN MY OFFICE!”
I did all of that, just for her to sit there and stare at me. She didn’t even flinch.
She said, “Ain’t nobody coming to save your dumb ass. It’s just me and you in here. But you still don’t realize it yet. You still think you’re more important than me. So, I had to show you. And you just got all five of your clients killed.”
Five? I counted four, I thought to myself. Then I panicked again.
“Oh my God! What did you do to Tyrell?” I asked her. Did she really have that kind of power? Was she a witch? What was going on? She had even warned me before it all happened.
“Yeah, you would ask about him, wouldn’t you? Had a little crush on somebody,” she said with a smirk. “You thought you was gon’ get some?”
I ignored her and asked, “What happened to him?”
She eyed me, real serene, with the gun still in her hand. And she told me casually, “You got him killed like the rest of them. In fact, you got him killed first.”
I didn’t want to believe her. And since I didn’t see it, I didn’t believe her.
“You’re lying,” I told her. “You wouldn’t have done that. You still love him. Why else would you live with him for that long?”
I was trying to make it make sense. Something still had to be logical. Would she kill everyone just to prove a point? I still couldn’t believe it.
She said, “You’re still in here try’na be a doctor? I thought you just called me crazy. Well, crazy people do crazy things . . . right?”
I felt anxious, as if I was ready to fight her. But first I had to get the gun out of her hands.
“How did you kill him?” I asked. Maybe I could jump her and grab the gun while she explained it to me.
But then she rocked the gun in her right hand, as if she knew what I was thinking.
When she held the gun steady again, she looked me straight in the eyes and said, “I shot him. I shot him right in his heart.”
She even pointed the gun forward to reimagine it.
“Why?” I asked her.
She glared at me again. “Because he deserved it. He should have known how special I was when he met me. But he started taking me for granted, and only wanted me for sex. So, I stopped giving it to him. And he could have walked away whenever he wanted to. But he didn’t. Because he wanted to keep using me.”
