Marcus awoke to a bright and sunny morning, much unlike what he was accustomed to. Baltimore did have a very good bit of good weather, but Marcus hadn't seen it in a minute. He stepped out of the front door of the building and grimaced, shielding his eyes from the intense sunlight. Through the grapevine he had heard about some hobo's death the previous night. "That was a hell of a storm," he thought to himself. It was ironic how beautiful a day it was today. Whatever. He had seen way worse back in his native Colombia. As he turned to go back into the building and get dressed, Manuel heard an all too familiar sound, that of a gun cocking. After what he had been through, Marcus turned cool as the other side of the pillow. "What now," he voiced to the agent dressed in a solid black suit. The only response was the resounding crack of the pistol as it bashed against his head and dropped Manuel into an unconscious heap onto the ground.
Manuel awoke in an apartment room not unlike his own. Except this one was a lot nicer. A plasma TV rested on the wall before him, and as he rolled off of the king-sized bed, his feet connected with a mahogany hardwood floor. "Where am I," he wondered as he touched his head. His hand quickly jolted back from the sensitive skin covered with a thick layer of gauze. He stepped into the parlor. "So nice to see you Manuel," a voice in a chair said. "Please, take a seat." Manuel sat down. The chair quickly turned and revealed an short Asian man. Manuel did not recognize the individual, but did recognize his voice. He had received hit calls, drug locations, and alibi instructions from this voice countless times. "You're.... you're the leader of the Bandanistas," Marcus muttered. "That's right," responded the man. "But what you may not know is that I am also second in command of the DEA. Did you ever stop to think about how in the hell you got away from the most elite tracking team in the United States? You? It was me. I called off the raid." Manuel just sat, puzzled, wondering why this man was telling him these fanatical stories. "But why... why do you think I would save you? Because you were employee of the month." This joke sent the Asian man into a fit of laughter. "Well you'd be wrong. The reason I've saved you is that killing you would be too easy. You tried to double-cross the Bandanistas. You tried to break the code of the streets. And that is punishable by much, much worse than death. First, I'd like to inform you that your family back home is all dead." This the man said with such ambivalence that Marcus was paralyzed beyond the point of reaction. "But next you must know this. Around every turn, every time you wake, and every time you sleep. Every breath you take and every step you take... I will be there. Watching. Waiting. Knowing. The rest of your living days will be lived in fear. Fear of me. And one day you will experience the pain that can only be felt when the streets return the disrespect that you have shown them." "Now," the man said, "Gilberto will show you out. Have a nice day." Manuel turned to the sight of a large man coming down on him with a baseball bat.
Manuel woke up again back into his apartment. This time he remember exactly what had happened. He shivered to his feet and looked around. "WHERE ARE YOU? WHERE ARE YOU?" He checked under the bed, in the closet. Nobody. He checked in the fridge, he unscrewed the legs off the table, he ripped up the couch, and destroyed the TV. Nobody. "I SWEAR TO GOD I WILL FIND YOU AND MURDER YOU! YOU HAVEN'T WON!!!"
Henry Dupont walked by the apartment, apartment 212, and heard the maniacal shrieks of a man beyond institutions and medicine. He heard a man entirely consumed with fear.
"Damn, I sure as hell won't be missing that in fashion school"
Henry walked on into his endless horizons, leaving behind the inhabitants of Washington Heights to rot in the graves that were their everyday lives.
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