Dirty Eden Read Free

better deal, so, my advice is to meet the Devil willingly, listen to what he has to say and happily adhere to his wishes.”
    He stopped, turned and eyed me contemplatively. “We can give you some time to think about it, just tell us how much time you need.”
    “Yes, we’re in no hurry, really,” the woman said stepping up closer. “We’ve been standing in this alley for decades; a little longer won’t hurt.” Secretly she winked at me, still trying her best to charm me in her favor.
    “And do you have anything you’d like to say?” I offered the twins. Of course, I wasn’t at all really entertaining this bullshit.
    The twins’ expressions never changed. They didn’t seem to know emotion of any kind, or to understand the meaning of conversation.
     
    “Sickness of the mind comes and goes,
    daggers it carries near its toes.
    Tossed about voices within its head,
    in its path, the living become dead.
    It is certainly kind on the eyes,
    but this red fox is a master in disguise.
    Trust not the things you do not know,
    lest you blindly become friend of your foe.”
     
    “Ah, yes,” I said. “I understand that perfectly .” I turned my head at an angle, pursing my lips in a bewildered and stupefied sort of way.
    The sounds behind me toward the busy street briefly faded back into my awareness. I watched people drift by in their suits, clutching briefcases and cell phones. A city bus halted at the corner; the squealing of its brakes pierced my ears. In the distance, the roar of another obnoxious train whizzed by and I could taste the city pollution on my tongue, never noticing how evident it was before, or how poisoned by it I had become over the years of my meaningless existence.
    I didn’t know what was happening, or why I was still entertaining ‘it’ at all, but in the moment, it seemed the better alternative.
    “One hour,” I said looking back at my strange company.
    I really just wanted my wallet and I had a feeling that the man from before, the mastermind behind this whole goddamned thing, was the one who had it.
    I would play along for now, at least until I had the thief in my sights again.
    The boy nodded, his face serious and even professional if one could call it that. The woman licked her lips and smiled a hooker sort of smile, apparently still trying to buy her way into my decision.
    “An hour it is then,” the boy agreed. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the ball. Then he took his seat again on the ground, crossing his legs carefully so as not to disturb the golden jacks placed strategically in front of him. Back to the eerie bouncing he went.
    The twins hobbled back to their spot a few feet away, canes propped to steady their awkward, uneven weight.
    “You’ll need this,” said the woman stepping up. She held out her hand, placing a folded slip of paper into my fingers. “Don’t open it until you’re ready to meet him.”
    I tucked the note deep in my suit jacket pocket and warily left the alley.
    Repetition. It had been broken. I thought about it heavily as I walked away from the prison where I spent five days a week. Work was a distant memory. Marjorie, the butch security guard that waited to scan my employee I.D. at the lobby of my building, would look down at her watch in exactly thirteen minutes and wonder where I was. And in fourteen minutes, my absence would be forgotten, replaced by Carlton Finks who always arrived at precisely 8:15 a.m., scanned his card and never looked anyone in the eye all the way up to the twenty-third floor.
    I didn’t know why, but for the first time since I left home at age twenty, I felt different, alive, real . As I walked past the doughnut shop again, I noticed cracks in the sidewalk I had never seen before, street signs with Sharpie graffiti I had never read. Someone’s phone number. I wondered who they were and where they’ve been and if anyone had ever called them. There were faces everywhere that I never had the opportunity to study;