Skullcrack City Read Online Free Page A

over again. New bank, new gig, maybe the first shark I feed finances a fake identity. Bank after bank collapses.
    At the end of it all, my fortune well-secured, I turn on the bloated old bastards I’ve been working for and release all their attack info to the public. The Fed is forced to act, anti-trust laws kick in, deep corruption is made public, and maybe this time instead of “Too Big to Fail”—and its latter sequel “Still Too Big to Fail, Seriously, You’ve Got to Trust Us On This, Guys, Just Roll With It”— maybe the people rise up and tear that last bank to pieces.
    This was my mission. My heart was filled with a newfound righteous fire. One man against a corrupt system and I knew I could win!
    And Hindsight would like to point out I wasn’t even on the really hard drugs yet.
     
     
    I’d been stabbed twice in my life, which is precisely two times too many. The first knife-wielder was the aforementioned, now restraining-ordered ex-girlfriend. The second person to stab me was my Hex dealer Hungarian Minor, the man I’d become desperately anxious to locate. My brain tried to apply logic— Do you even still own that old phone? This seems unwise. The dude stabbed you. —so I quickly countered and convinced myself that sometimes a guy might deserve a little cutting, maybe even a two-inch flip-knife stuck in his left butt cheek after almost pushing his dealer in front of a speeding cab.
    Eight absorbable stitches. A thin white scar which developed a red rim and phantom stab syndrome on cold days. Hungarian eighty-sixing me from his services, saying next time he saw me I’d end up with a “blood moustache.”
    I didn’t even know what that was, but I got the message. ER with an ass wound, ostracized even by my sketchy dealer, fearing a mysterious injury—that was my last rock bottom.
    So calling Hungarian was not ideal. But I was a man on a mission. Some risks would be required. And I knew my old phone was somewhere in my apartment.
    I hit my fridge for a new round of cold-filtered coffee and a handful of earthworms. Pounded the coffee, slipped the worms into Deckard’s glass enclosure. I moved too fast—he retracted into his shell and hissed. Five years together and he was still hissing at me.
    “I love you too, bitch.”
    I gave his shell a water spritz from a spray bottle—marked YOKO H2OHNO! during the late hours of a bender—and lightly touched the top of his head with my index finger.
    I knew he couldn’t really smile, but I liked the look on his face. Loneliness is a hell of a drug. A week prior I’d misted up when a grocery clerk told me, “Take care.”
    “Have you seen my old purple phone, Deckard?”
    No response. Just a dry shuffle indicating he’d noticed the earthworms.
    “Go get ’em, Deck. Fuck ’em up.”
    The earthworms died quietly, as always. Bisected, gut trailing, trying to wriggle away from the maw. Soon enough their friends would be filtering through their turtle-rendered remains.
    I flipped on all the lights in the apartment. Too bright. Drank that coffee too fast. Cracked a twenty-two of stout to counter-balance—I rode the chemical teeter-totter roughshod, all day. I assumed the ride was over when I was asleep, but I often woke to soaked sheets and a sore jaw which said otherwise.
    Digging in my bedroom closet yielded a thin collection of suit jackets, dress shirts and pit-stained undershirts, a few pairs of crumpled jeans, and external hard drives marked “Turtle Movies,” “Family Pics,” “Kung Fu,” and “Big Booty Only Vol. 1.”
    The kitchen was even more spare—a randomized collection of Tupperware, plastic plates, and mismatched utensils. All the same stuff I’d looted from my parents’ house when I got my first apartment over a decade ago. Flashlight search under the fridge and stove revealed dried old Choco Loops and uncooked macaroni. When I was dating someone, it was very much about going to restaurants and staying at her place whenever