From the outset they could tell he was losing it. His welfare was down to under three dollars and he needed a cigarette. He was pacing back and forth in a room upstairs screaming vulgarities. It was Antonio, and none of the men sitting downstairs getting wasted knew he was brandishing a machete in one hand and a bottle of Popov vodka in the other, taking wild sips and occasionally projectile vomiting it against the wall. When the last drop of vodka was dripped precariously onto his long extended brown tongue, the glass bottle was flung against the wall, where it shattered violently. Clutching the machete in his bloody fist he sprinted down the stairs and out into the street, literally foaming at the mouth. He strode down the dirt street and into a commercial zone, past honking cars, some of which swerved to hit him, before he ducked into a nearby McDonalds and approached the men at the counter. "Give me your fucking money or I’ll slash every fucking throat in this store” He was swinging the glistening blade around in front of a terrified cashier’s face when a gallon of boiling french fry oil splashed into his face. He screamed and staggered back clutching his face when a baseball bat came down upon his skull one time after another. A second joined the party smashing him across the face with a crowbar, blood sprayed against the wall and began to drip down towards the floor, as he stumbled back screaming, holding the machete still as a defensive maneuver and suffering blow after blow upon his skull and face. The cashiers said nothing as they followed him into the parking lot, and into the street, where traffic slowed, then stopped, to watch, as they followed him, beating him violently. He finally turned and ran, into suburbia. They followed him, and finally stopped and watch him disappear into the dusk.
*
He walked seething, gushing blood all over his tattered clothes grinding his teeth and spitting vermilion wads into the humidity that sat and hardened on the street. Blood poured down his arms and dripped over the handle of the blade and a single droplet ran down the blade falling off of the edge at the tip. He walked up to a nearby house and kicked open the screen door. He burst into the adjoining kitchen in which stood a portly middle aged woman who looked mortified. Furious at her purported abhorrence he swung the machete at a horizontal angle and put half the woman’s skull and brain on a large family photograph mounted on the wall. He stormed around the house kicking open doors, scalping a sleeping and then screaming man, and then finally turning around to see a young girl watching him, lifted the machete and fell her, with a burst of crimson on either side of the hallway wall. Satisfied the ransacked then house for cash and booze, loaded it into the young girl’s backpack and left, walking in the direction of a local drugstore.
*
He entered the drugstore, covered in blood and flesh and selected a case of beer and a bag of chips from the aisles. He then went to the counter and paid a terrified night clerk for the goods, and left. When he arrived back at the house he played the bigshot and walked in to a room full of crack smoke and the stench of vomit and urine. "Pass the beer” someone moaned from the decadent cloud swirling in mid air. Droplets of blood ran slowly up and down Antonio’s mashed face and skull, his scarred torso. Droplets fell to the carpet, and you could hear them hit. They sounded like firecrackers going off. "I’m not giving out any fucking beers” Jerry approached him, wildly stoned and began gesticulating and wailing in his faggy voice. "Please give me a beer, I’m on acid, I smoked pcp, I’m broke, I’m starving, I just want one beer, please just one beer, you gotta give me just one, please please please daddy”- it stopped there, with Antonio dropping everything he was carrying and punching Jerry in his fat fucking face. The guy shook all over and stumbled back crying. Then Antonio pushed him down, crawled on top of him, chewed off his nose, and swallowed it.
