"San Diego"

A short story

Photo by Christopher-Lorenzo C on Unsplash

The following is a short story I wrote earlier this year. It will be published in the forthcoming Sunshine/Noir III by City Works Press. The presidential election prompted me to pull this from the archives.

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I waited for Chainsaw to get up, as I did every morning, and when I heard his door fall open I unzipped my sleeping bag and tent and saw the most handsome man that ever was. He was always handsome, but that morning he glowed. I asked him if he got Botox in the night and he gave me his famous half-laugh. It sounded like a chainsaw starting up. He told me to leave my stuff and get in and I listened to him. We killed ten people that day.

He didn’t even want me to shut the door. The latch was busted—some idiot in the camp had tried to break in—so you needed to bungee it closed or else it would swing and slam into the side of the RV. It would go “smack!” then creak a bit, then “smack!” Our entire ride down Market Street, that’s what that door did. The cord dragged on the pavement alongside us, and I tried to reach for it, but Chain told me to stop because I might fall out. I climbed into the passenger seat and he didn’t say another word the rest of the ride. We banged off of cars and ran red lights. I had never seen him so focused. Our case worker had been on him for months about leveling out his “peaks and valleys.” The meds helped, but sometimes Chainsaw’s RV wouldn’t start and he couldn’t pick them up or he forgot to or someone would steal them.

The accelerator stopped working in Golden Hill, and we couldn’t see through the engine smoke, but thank God for gravity. We rolled to a stop at 15th. Chain came to and laughed. “I just needed a break,” he said.

I tugged his long beard. “You really did it now, kid.”

At least they told us we killed ten people. We didn’t hit any pedestrians. I would have remembered that and Chain would never. The police said our recklessness made two cars full of passengers crash head-on, full speed. I can’t say that I’m sorry. Me and Chain, we lived under the 805 on Federal Boulevard. I can’t count how many friends of mine I’ve found dead. No one’s arresting no one for that.

The jury found us guilty, and the judge sentenced Chain to life and me to ten. With our hands cuffed behind us, the bailiffs gripped our elbows and lifted us to our feet. Chain looked down at the table in front of him and did not move. His long, thin hair was combed and pinned behind his right ear, and the gray bits in his beard were shaved off. He looked like a model—if models didn’t have front teeth haha. He asked the judge if he could have a last word, which surprised everyone and made me cry more than I already was.

“Your honor, when the sheriff sits me in the chair, sir, and pulls the switch, can you make sure my pretty baby, on my left here, sir, is sitting on my lap?”

“Son, capital punishment is no longer carried out in the State of California.”

“Oh,” Chainsaw said. “Why not, your honor?”

“Because it’s inhumane,” he said.