Back To Black

By Lazarus Finch

A collection of short stories and poems.

A couple of junkies, in search of a hidden stash, find more than a bag of narcotics in the basement of an abandoned crack house: a timeless creature just as deadly as the drugs coursing through thei

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bachman books
• Release date: Aug 7, 2021
• ISBN: 9781087983462

Lazarus Finch

*Under construction*

Book preview

Also by Lazarus Finch

Fantasies and Nightmares

Whispers in the Dark

Where to Find Lazarus Finch:

https://www.instagram.com/lazarus_finch_author/

On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LazarusFinchAuthor/?fref=nf

Email: [e-mail]

For Jose.

That night broke me in so many ways, and despite how hard I’ve tried since then to piece myself back together, I’m forever fractured by your loss.

You’re my greatest failure . . .

For those that laughed in my face when I told them of my intentions to write a book someday, or rolled their eyes when I mentioned it in passing: thank you for providing the fuel that kept my furnace burning all throughout the nights I spent working on this collection.

For that one person that never wavered in her support of my visions, despite the darkness within so much of it: I wish more people were aware of your definition of the word support, which entails being around not just when the ship’s sailing smoothly across serene waters, but sticking around when the damn thing gets gutted along its side by whatever goddamned obstacle placed in its path.

Back To Black

By Lazarus Finch

Copyright 2019

License Notes: All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Author’s Note: this is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business, establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Introduction

I’m going to tell you this story as if you were a close friend, sitting across from me at a local diner we both adore, and most importantly, as if you’ve never betrayed my trust.

And on top of that, which I believe is equally as important, I’m going to speak to you sans filter, with a candor I know isn’t always appreciated for the breath of fresh air that it is, being that we live in a world where too many people care about how they’re perceived.

So, let’s talk. Oh, I’ve taken the liberty of ordering us a couple slices of strawberry cheesecake (it looked too good to pass up).

I began writing Back To Black in September of 2017, taking periodic breaks to handle life beyond the spine of a book. Nothing complicated, the usual shit life flings your way as you tread the many long roads she’s put at your feet.

My feet ache and my body’s tired, I just you want to know that. I’ve walked through streets at night homeless (the first time I hit rock-bottom) and scavenging half-eaten chicken wings from a trashcan on Kings Highway, and Coney Island Avenue in Brooklyn.

I’ve walked through Resurrection Cemetery, out in Staten Island, New York, visiting my mother’s and older brother’s plot, seemingly drifting across the blades of grass like a melancholic wraith. They share the same hole in the ground, and, because it was cheaper, the same tombstone.

I’ve walked away from a friend of my mother’s luring me into his bedroom when I was seven, and grabbing my ass over my pants while he jerked off. I still vividly remember him warning me not to tell my mother what had happened, or he’d kill us both. He then pressed the burning tip of his cigarette into the back of my left hand. The scar’s still there. I hid it from my mother till it healed.

Not too long after that, my mother took me on one of her strolls along the boardwalk on Brighton Beach, always searching for people she knew that could possibly loan her some cash. We met up with a guy she messed with named Chulo; I remember he was handsome, always smiled my way and handed me quarters to use on the arcades (I loved Street Fighter). Right after Chulo handed me a few quarters, I told my mother I had to piss. She told me to go under the boardwalk, and I remember feeling scared of heading down there. There weren’t lights down there, it reeked of piss, and bums squatted in these cement-paved basements that were extensions of buildings long since abandoned, about a city’s block worth of thought-to-be deserted real estate. It wasn’t safe. And it definitely wasn’t deserted. But still, she told me to relieve myself down there, and I wasn’t old enough to tell her otherwise.

I remember the sand wasn’t as soft once you were under the boardwalk, it was harder, and your feet didn’t sink under inches of sand. I remember seeing no one around before unzipping my pants, standing behind a support beam about to do my business, anxious to get the fuck out of there. And then an arm curled around my neck like an anaconda, squeezing tightly on my throat. I felt his hard cock pressed against the crack of my ass. It was a white arm coiled around my throat, and the man kept telling me to stop struggling as I kicked and squirmed in his hold. He started dragging me towards those abandoned rooms and I tried to scream. He put a hand over my mouth. I bit the fucking palm and, once he let go, I took off for the stairs. I ran up there, never looking back, and told my mother. Chulo ran down the stairs, came up a short time later, and said he couldn’t find the scumbag. I dodged a bullet. But not for long.

I never told my mother I’d been sexually abused by not just her friend, but by one of her own sons. Part of my reluctance to tell her about the abuse and rape was shame on my end, and the other part was fear for her safety. Especially the rape—at the hands of my older brother, that would’ve killed her inside.

Older siblings tend to protect their young brothers and sisters, not rape them.

I thought about how this could affect my older brother should he read it—or someone close to him does, and then brings it to his attention—and I came to the conclusion it’s time I stopped being silent about the past he and I will always share, even if he’d rather it stay muzzled and in the dark.

A dark past. And it’s time to shine some much-needed light on it.

My older brother, Junior, anally raped me in my mother’s bedroom.

I was ten.

This was during the first year we moved into the housing projects in Coney Island, sometime in ’93.

It was the third and final time I was sexually assaulted, all within four years of each other.

Imagine having to live with an older, stronger sibling who’d raped you. For a while I was terrified of being left alone with him, or if my mother was going to a friend’s house and left me in Junior’s care. I’d tell her in Spanish I’d go with her just to be far away from him, even if she intended to walk a couple of miles there and back again. For a short fat bastard, I’d take my chances walking with Mom if it meant Junior wouldn’t be around.

The rape itself was in the afternoon, we’d just finished watching Ghostbusters on channel five—I remember this because it was my favorite channel for cartoons; X-Men, Ghostbusters, and Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers (I had a crush on Amy Jo Johnson) kept me glued to the tube—and Junior had slipped into bed with me, which at the time struck me as strange. But as odd as it was to have my older brother lay in bed with me, I never thought it’d lead towards what came next.

His right hand wrapped itself tightly around my throat. Junior then instructed me to be quiet or he’d ‘fuck me up.’ I didn’t struggle much, not after that. Our two older brothers were in the other bedroom, Rob and Jose, listening to house music on blast. Junior pulled my shorts down till they hung below the crease of my ass, and I immediately felt the tip of his hard cock pushing against the opening of my asshole. I’m not going to sugarcoat this, because rape isn’t tempered by the mind, body and soul when it’s tearing you up from the inside out. He thrusted into me—in the spooning position—choking me, in so many ways Junior stretched me out to the horrors of this world, and that’s a narrative inked in reality. A bloody reality. Physically, the strangling didn’t register as much as the pain coming from my asshole being thrusted into, and the blood I’d later wash away from that area confirmed my agonies at the hands of my older brother’s sinister lusts. After it was done, he told me to never tell our mother, or he’d hurt us both, and then kill himself. The same speech I heard years ago from my mother’s friend, after he’d gotten off to violating my young, innocent body. A child’s body. I cried. I cried in that bathtub on 2832 West 23 Street. In that fucking apartment, while my mother was away and Rob and Jose were busy in their own room listening to Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam, I tried to cry the pain away.

I never told my mother. I never told Jose. But I’d tell Rob years later, not too long after our mother’s murder. And he’d call me a faggot right after I’d tell him, but we’ll get to that soon. Let’s follow a straight path there, because I want to write this out with some kind of chronological order.

A short while after Junior raped me, I came into the living room to find him there watching TV, sitting on a chair stroking himself off. I tried to walk back to my bedroom, but he told me to stay and watch. I stayed, tried hard not to watch, and he came with some perverse satisfaction that I’d been the voyeur to his sick fantasies. It still bothers me. And if I told you that years would pass (but the trauma never dissipated with the changing seasons) between us, somehow diluting the concentrated anger I had built up for Junior, you’d think I was letting him off the hook. But I wasn’t. I was biding my time. I remembered, vividly, what he did to me. But I wanted to love him too, to have an older brother. I just wanted something normal and familial to love, having seen shows on TV where siblings didn’t rape each other, and pregnant mothers didn’t try to kill themselves.

Yeah, my mother tried to kill herself while carrying me. She had her own secrets. A close friend of hers, who took care of me like a son, opened her Pandora’s box the first day of her wake. I was shocked, obviously. But after a couple of days, it dawned on me my mother wasn’t any different than most people struggling: she wanted an easy way out. During her funeral, I met her sister (the first time I met my aunt on my mother’s side), and she told me how my mother left Puerto Rico pregnant with twins, leaving behind my older sister and another brother.

I met my sister once, and she left here upset with my mother over a phone bill, and that was it. I haven’t seen her since. I’m assuming she knows our mother was killed, and if not, maybe she’ll find out someday.

Magdelena Sanchez was shot dead by her ex-boyfriend, Antonio Rivera, in his apartment in June of 2000. She was pregnant. No one but the killer survived. Antonio had stabbed her in the back of her neck with a pair of scissors in a barbershop, in the afternoon hours. Apparently he knew she was seeing someone else, my mother said something to him that wasn’t friendly, so Antonio felt the scissors to-the-back-of-the-neck statement would get his message across. She came home that afternoon with a hand over the bloody bandage, a restraining order in her other hand, and tears in her eyes. I asked her what had happened and she told me and Rob. I told Rob we should do something, if only to send a message back. But Rob said no, it’ll make things worse if we did anything to him, to just let it go. And so we did. But Antonio didn’t. He started riding his bicycle behind the building, purposely standing out there with the bike at his side glaring up at her, mocking the restraining order. When I’d look down, he’d hop on his bike and peddle off towards Neptune Avenue. I told Rob, but still, he wanted us to leave him alone. I think it was too soon after Jose’s murder, and Rob wasn’t ready to meet violence head-on again. He’d just seen his twin brother shot three times a few months back on a wild night that almost got him killed too, so I could partially understand his trepidation towards getting dirty again. But it’d lead towards our mother’s death.

My mother, in spite of the restraining order, went to Antonio’s apartment deep in the heart of Coney Island, and she’d only leave his living room in a body bag. Antonio shot her three times, eerily in the same three places Jose had been shot ten months prior in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. I woke up that day in June to my mother putting my clothes away in the bureau, where I kept a wad of cash in plain view. I went back to sleep, woke up a short while later, and there she was on the futon in the living room with her face in the palms of her hands, crying her eyes out. She was sobbing, talking in Spanish about how brutal Jose’s murder was. I felt awful hearing it as I walked towards the bathroom to piss, not knowing if I should let her be or comfort her somehow. I went back to bed after the bathroom, unsure if I should’ve gone over there and said a few words. I had a dream I was at another funeral. I woke up that afternoon and my then girlfriend wanted to hit the beach, and since there had been so much darkness in our lives recently, I felt it’d be a good change. I went into the kitchen, and there was my mother on the phone talking to someone, who was instructing her to visit Antonio. I waited till she was off the phone and told her not to, to leave him alone. She didn’t listen.

As I was heading out the front door, she asked me if I had a few dollars (completely forgetting she’d seen my cash on the dresser). I said I was broke, shrugging my shoulders to accentuate my lack of cash. She gave this sad, brokenhearted look I’ll carry with me till the day I die and beyond. I fucked up, and that’s on me to carry. Those eyes . . . they’re burned into my soul, man. I can’t describe the pain I saw in them.

I closed the door and that was the last time I’d see my mother again . . . alive.

I left the beach when these dark clouds rolled in, and Noel suggested we head to Blockbuster, rent a couple of movies, and order in chow. We took a break between movies to sit on her stoop, and then my friend’s little brother came racing up the block towards us. Panting, and pulling at my shirt, he tries telling me through his rapid, short breaths that my mother had been shot dead. I thought he was kidding. A bad attempt at humor. But he told me he wasn’t, and Rob was driving around Brighton and Sheepshead looking for me to be the bearer of bad news. I couldn’t believe it, but then my brother’s friends drove past Noel’s house offering their condolences. It started to hit me: my mother was killed, and Antonio took her out.

Rob finally met up with me at the corner of Noel’s house—she’d been crying once it seemed too real to be a cruel joke—and he told me, from the passenger seat, to get in the car. I sat back there with Noel, and Rob told me, coldly, that ‘Mommy was shot. Antonio killed her in his apartment. We’re jinxed or something.’

I didn’t cry because Jose had taken all my tears. Remember how I mentioned Lisa Lisa back there? Well, I literally was All Cried Out. My mother ended up making that evening’s late news on Telemundo; a photo of her smiling on the couch was used, as a graphic of domestic violence popped up underneath her cherry face. I couldn’t believe it. The apartment had lost her laughter. The dogs looked sadder than I’d ever seen them. The silence in there spoke volumes, man.

I felt like shit, knowing I’d denied my mother cash, and imagining she went to Antonio’s place under the pretenses he’d buy her cigarettes or lotto tickets. To this day, and for all days I’m above ground breathing, I blame myself for my mother’s senseless murder. I know her, and I know that $20 would’ve kept her content with cigarettes, Pepsi, lotto tickets and a small roll with yellow American cheese and cheap, generic ham. But I fucked up, so I’ll deal with it. I imagine her face as those bullets pumped into her, and Jesus, knowing how frail she was, it hurts me. I know her face must’ve been twisted in shock, realizing Antonio just blasted a few bullets into her, the burning, penetrating pain of those bullets ripping through her flesh and insides . . . and the realization settling in she’d never see us again. Not alive, at least. That look of horror, that mask of terror gnarled across her face: I see it in my nightmares. I hear her back there, in the recesses of my subconscious asking me to help her, belching out blood with holes along the sides of her pregnant belly the size of golf balls.

Her eyes go flat, but they stay open. Her mouth goes slack, and her tongue dangles out the corner of her bloody mouth like a dog that’s been put out of its misery. I jerk myself awake free of one nightmare, but a prisoner to a waking one that’s inescapable.

I spoke at my mother’s burial, a poem I wrote for her, and I can’t lie to you: I don’t remember a fucking word I said back there. I never shed a tear for her, because her murder came on the heels of Jose’s homicide. It was too close. When I looked into her coffin at the wake, I remember noticing how wax-like my mother looked laid out in that wooden box, her eyes sunken into their sockets, a lump on the side of her head, and her arms crossed over her swollen belly, with rosary beads clutched in her hands. She was wearing a black Puma jumpsuit with the brand name stenciled in red across the left breast pocket. I bought it for her at Forever 21 a couple of days before the wake, with the cash I denied her the day she was shot dead. Fucked up, isn’t it? But that’s life, man. She got the cash, just not the way we had in mind.

Let’s change the subject, because I’m honestly emotionally exhausted, OK?

Let’s get back to the stories and poems you’re about to read in the book, either paperback or kindle, that you’re holding in your hands right now.

It’s a collection of my work that I hope will provoke some kind of emotional response within you, while also keeping you entertained for every cent you paid towards that fact.

Because if you’re not entertained, or left feeling nothing at all after reading a word or two I’ve published in this book, then I’ve failed terribly as a storyteller.

I’m hoping you’ll miss your stop, forget where you are, feel something wet collecting in your tear ducts, or something getting