Sad Day
Crime Fiction By Dick Johnson
It was a sad day in a house full of assholes, and I was dying. It wasn’t always sad, like it wasn’t always daytime, but they were probably always assholes.
It was a house in St. Louis. It was one of those slum houses. I’d tell you where, but no one really cares. It was a crack house and I had gone there for a buy.
I parked at an old church down the street which was the way T-Bone and the boys wanted it. When I exited the car I felt like I was being watched so I looked at the church building. A brick structure that looked like it was built in better times, but was run down from lack of money or lack of care in the ghetto.
Someone stood outside one of the doors and watched me. It was either the preacher or the janitor. I’d say preacher because he had that smug look on his face, like someone who had stepped in dog shit. He shook his head and went back inside his church. He was probably going to pray for another lost sinner going to the crack house.
I patted the .380 in its holster in the front of my ratty jeans, and pulled the torn thread bare coat tighter around me as I walked up the street. The road was a slope up from where the river flowed, and all the houses along it were no better than shacks.
