12:22AM June 15

The clock struck 12:22 in Geralds car, He was right on time. He had to be, he was watching his grandkids and needed to get back soon or else his wife would know he wasn’t getting distilled water for his CPAP machine. One would argue that he shouldn’t be there at all, but hey you have to indulge yourself every once in awhile. Gerald exited his car and headed towards the small pavilion in the desolate park. He had done this sort of thing many times, each encounter was smooth but that didn’t stop him from always being ready for “complications”. He reached the door to the bathroom, Geralds heart couldn’t stop beating.
“This is it” Gerald thought to himself as he opened the heavy metal door.
He quickly scanned the seemingly empty bathroom. Gerald then found the sign that everything was alright, a pink backpack.
“Morgan?” Gerald said to the cold room
“In here” replied a timid female voice
Gerald then saw the fuzzy image of a teenage girl’s shoes peeking out from under a stall. Especially in his old age, Gerald had a hard time seeing after going from pitch black to a bright fluorescent light. He pulled the condoms out of his pocket and slowly walked over to the stall where the girl was waiting.
“Let’s get this done quickly. You gonna let me in sugar?”
“It’s not locked, I’m all your’s.”
Gerald opened the door to see a man wearing a pigeon mask  and pink sneakers waiting on the other side of the stall door. Gerald pulled the knife off of his belt. After all, he was always prepared for “complications”. Before it was all the way out the man kicked the stall door, effectively crippling Geralds arms. Gerald fell to the dirty floor in pain. The man was standing over him now.
“Wow! I can’t believe you bought my voice, I thought it was a bit too squeaky but I guess old-timers like you don’t have the best ears.” The maniac said
“Please...I-I’ll go home and you won’t ever see me again…” Gerald pleaded
“It’s a little too late for that.”
The last thing Gerald saw before blacking out was the pink shoe collide with his face.


Gerald woke up and only saw black. There was an immense pain in his arms.
“Sorry if the mask startled you, but we can’t have you giving a profile to the cops.”
“I won’t talk to the cops, just let me go.”
“Ooh, I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
“What do you want from me? And what did you do to me”
“Well, I want scum like you off the streets, you’re doing hard time. I have the transcripts, phrases like: My dick is as wide as a coke can, I’d like to lick you all over, I want to feel your insides.”
“What did you do to me?”
“Don’t you have a family? You shouldn’t be saying things like this man!”
“You fucking maniac!”
“Well, I should go. I’m just going to leave this transcript right here.”
As Gerald screamed and cussed, the man just walked away. The only thing the man could think of was how excited he was.


After last night’s events, Simon was exhausted. He just sat on the couch watching TV. With a sharp ring Simon’s phone alerted him.The text said “I’m here”, it was from Penelope. Simon lazily walked to the door of his apartment and opened the door. Her blonde hair was always the first thing he noticed.
“What took you so long?” She inquired with a bitchy tone
“I just got out of bed.”
That was a lie but Simon had come to learn that it was easier to lie than to tell her he just didn’t want to see her. How he stayed with Penelope was a mystery in the first place, and so was how their relationship soured in the first place. They met in high school. She truly was beautiful and captured Simon’s attention from day one, he couldn’t believe that he captured hers. College separated them before anything real could materialize between them. She went on to get small acting roles in local indie films, he went on to get his law degree only to stay in his small apartment. As they moved to the couch Simon could tell she was there to nag him into getting a job.
“You have your degree, why don’t you look for something? Call my uncle if you need to?”
“Don’t worry, I have enough to afford this place, food, and anything I need. I also have the house.”
“You can’t live on your inheritance forever.”
“Says who?”
“Says math! Simon, you can’t do this.”
Simon got up from the couch. He couldn’t take this much longer. She got up to get some water, as she moved towards the kitchen Simon got wide eyes. She didn’t notice as she opened the cupboard to get a glass.
“Don’t open tha-” Simon protested
She opened to cupboard, reached above her head and retrieved a glass.
“What? I can’t have any water?” Penelope replied in her classic tone
Simon regained his composure.
“Oh nothing, I just thought you wouldn’t like how dingey the glasses are, the dishwasher has been  acting weird.”
“You’re here all day and you can’t bother to fix it?”
The short lecture on laziness that followed was a small price to pay. If Penelope had reached to the left or right of that glass she would have found the knife from last night and Geralds wallet along with other wallets from previous encounters. She got her water and the rest of the visit went normal for them, she nagged and they had flat boring sex. It was already dark outside. They were both sitting on the couch when she pulled out a small bag of cocaine.
“Want some?” she said while making a line on the coffee table
“No thanks, you’re back on that?”
She gave Simon a look that made him instantly regret using his tone. She snorted her line and fell back on the couch jittering. Simon could only sit back and watch as Penelope got up to leave. As she waved goodbye there was a drop of blood running down her nose.


If cities were living organisms,  Crestview was a corpse feeding parasites. Once a home to all, the crime problem rose and now the decent folks were almost all gone. For a while Crestview was the kidnapping capital of the United States. With that title the city spent a lot more on the police force. With their new toys the cops started to think they were exempt from their own law. After a few PR incidents their prestige melted away, then the bribes started to roll in. Once cops were paid to turn a blind eye the crime only spiked. Shopkeepers had to put bars on their windows, even that didn’t help much. Simon recalled a pretzel shop being robbed twice in one night, the second guy was surprised to see that the police were around the corner responding to the overnight security system, This guy was not rich enough to bribe the cops and ended up getting three revolver rounds to the chest. He arrived just as the cops were about to leave. Luck is funny that way. Some of the decent people too stubborn, poor or stupid to leave moved into a little neighborhood on the North side of town. Heavy security from a private company. That still was not enough to deter all the crack addicts who needed something to sell to get their fix. But with the people who had the money to bribe the cops usually moved there too. They kept their activity low in the neighborhood, only doing anything worth hiding in their slum buildings on the other side of town.The North side of town was also home to the factory, the place for honest work. It bottled up soda,water, and tea for outside companies. Simon worked in the office there during college, he didn’t want to work at his parents company, he thought it was “too easy” on him. He regretted that decision once his parents died. They had a jewelry shop on the southeast side of town, a tweaked out meth user came in with a gun. Everyone in the store was killed except one man who sustained enough trauma to put him into a coma. The guy made it out with three duffel bags of diamonds, his mistake was that most of the were not made for jewelry and had certificates of authenticity that he didn’t get. When he tried to sell them he got caught, the cops came and he put up a fight, that one of the first cases of “police brutality” that came about. The guy bit an officer and got beat so hard he became brain-dead. Simon went to the hospital he was at once, they said it would help him get closure. It didn’t. After that Simon sold the business and invested it in various commodities, used his inheritance to get a small apartment building all to himself, at first. He began renting the rooms out to people he deemed good that were too poor to afford a place in the deep north. This area was right on the border. Owning this place is what started his relationship with Penelope.

	Penelope was back from school. Only coming back for Christmas for six years really made her realize how much the city had changed. Her parents owned a lot of it, They had cashed in and bought a nice estate outside of town. She was bar hopping on account of it being the first month of being 21. Her friends were trashed by the first stop, she took a little longer. By the end of the night her friends and her were flirting with the bartenders to get free drinks. This led to attention from the wrong people, She tried to get her friends to leave. One thing led to another and they ended up being chased by unfriendly patrons of the last bar they were at. As they ran to the car only Penelope and one other made it. She drunkenly tried to drive away. Simon was walking back to his house when he saw a car swerve into a fire hydrant and stop, it took him a couple seconds to realize Penelope from high school. He helped her out just in time to see the pickup truck swerve onto the street and stop blocking all traffic. The man that came out started shouting at Simon to let her go and that it was his “tasty treat”. Normally Simon would have been too apathetic to confront this man but tonight was different. The place Simon was coming back from was the hospital where the man who robbed the business was. Tonight this guy represented every evil in the city to Simon, something snapped. He took the telescopic baton out of it's’ holster for the first time. While doing this he just dropped Penelope but she had passed out by that point. The man was shocked by the baton but still looked like he was ready for a fight. The man landed the first blow, and the second one, Simon only got one good swing in the confrontation. The end of the baton landed right on the side of his eye. He held his bloodied eye and ran off shouting obscenities. Simon got Penelope back inside, he laid her down on his couch. When he returned to get her friend out of the car he found that she was gone. There was no point in calling the cops, there was no evidence of where she went and the police force was not known to be great at solving cases like this. In the morning Penelope woke up and recalled the events of the previous night, left for home. She stopped by the apartment complex a few weeks to thank Simon, they hit it off reminiscing about high school, from there they started a relationship. When she wasn’t working on her two-bit acting career, she worked at a local nightclub. You would think that her encounter that one night would make her more cautious of that sort of scene. The nightclub rode the line between the respectable part of town and the hood. It became a portal so both sides could see how the other lived, where they co-mingled. If Simon ever stopped by there he would probably see Penelope lead a young man wearing a bandana into the bathroom, not to come out for a while.




Simon walked into the small coffee shop, he hated the smell but he had to meet someone. He ignored the young lady at the counter who asked what she could get him. He took a seat and waited for his guy. Soon enough June 20