Lesser of Two Evils

Bobby Lawson knew that he was one of the true terrors of the world. He held many people in awe and fear of himself. He had power, and a black enough heart to use that power. But things change.
Bobby Lawson knew he had to keep running. It's wasn't that anyone was after him, at least not yet. But if the found Jake then they would be coming. Yet what else could he have done? Sometimes you have to go to extremes when someone disrespects you.
Jake had disrespected him alright. He tried to withhold money and that was just bad stupidity. There was no way Bobby could let that slide, no way no how. So he had dealt with it. But now he was running. What a bad twist all this had become. Cause Jake hadn't been just another wastehead. Jake was the son of a cop, and things like that didn't stay buried for long.
So Bobby bought a ticket for the bus. He used cash to keep from leaving a trail. He didn't want anyone seeing his name on a ticket slip, that was how they followed you down according to the tv shows. He knew that if he could just make it down south, down where the sun was warm and the water was blue. not like up here in this dirty city. Not like where he had lived the last twelve years of his life. He should never had moved up this way. But he had thought that he could make it big in the big city.
In a way he had, just not the way he had planned. Yet he had been the go to go. The guy who could get it through. The man the cops didn't notice, didn't stop, didn't search. He'd been doing drives and drops for six years and had plenty of money saved up. That was one of the big mistakes that the other dealers made. You don't go spending it on bling or shine, you could always steal that crap or get some wastehead to give it to you. You sure didn't flash things. That's why the cops left him alone, he looked boring. 5"6", brown hair, brown eyes, scruffy beard, he just had the kind of face you could ignore. He didn't spend money much on clothes, jeans and a nice t-shirt had always done for him. You didn't waste it on whores, they would do just about anything you asked for a sniff of the white gold. If someone did wrong you dealt with them quick and hard. That way others would learn to not do wrong. You kept your head low and kept the money in your hand. That's why he had so much in the fake bank account that one of the wasteheads who was a banker had set up for him. Enough to run and hide and live life nice and quiet for a few years till maybe Jake had been forgotten.
So he sat on the bus, the one headed south. He figured that there were still places in the Keys where a man could work on one of them boats and just lie low. Find a nice place, wait for time to do it's job. If only that stupid loser Jake had paid up then none of this would be necessary. But that was life.
Well, not for Jake it wasn't.
The bus rolled through the night. Bobby dozed off and on, sometimes reading the book he had brought. It wasn't a very good one, he'd picked one pretty much at random from the selection at the little store in the bus depot. Mostly though he just stared out the window. The scenery changed as the bus traveled, yet in another way it was all the same. Just an endless array of houses and trees and grass. In a way Bobby wasn't really seeing anything. His mind just kept going over the last few days. How quick things changed. He could still see the look on Jakes face as he brought the bat down again and again. He could see the blood splash across the walls. It took forever to clean the room up afterwards.
Bobby got off at every stop they made, to use the bathroom and get food or drink. He always used the bathroom, just because he hated the idea that he might have to go during one of the long stretches when they weren't stopping for a while. Unfortunately Bobby did have to go during one of the stops. Not a nice quick stand, but a good long sit down. Too long of a sit down in fact. By the time he got out the bus was nowhere in sight. That was bad. What was worse was that this was a little piss town stop, there wasn't even any ticket person on duty. Just an old soda machine and some bathrooms.
Pissed off at something other than recent events Bobby decided he might as well crash at the terminal for the night. By sleeping on the bench near the drop off point he'd get woken up by the next one to stop in and he could just buy a ticket off the driver. While the bench wasn't the most comfortable thing he' ever been on it definitely wasn't the worst either. At least it was long enough for him to stretch his legs out, unlike the bus seats. Glad that he didn't have any luggage to worry about, and that he always carried his book in his jacket pocket, Bobby lied down and was out cold within minutes of his head hitting his curled up jacket that he was using for a pillow.
When he was woken up it wasn't by a bus. It was still very dark out. In fact there was a heavy fog out that made it impossible for Bobby to see very much. It was like he was cut off from the world. If he was in a better mood this would have pleased Bobby, he never did like the world that much. Instead it just got him aggravated, a state that Bobby was spending a lot of time in lately. He rolled over and was about to drift off when his mind asked him what it had been that had woken him in the first place. He sat up, streaching the night out of his sore muscles. Seemed like his back hurt far worse than it should have, but the cold and damp of the air could do that to a man. Wiping sleep from his eyes, Bobby tried to look around. Nothing but the fog met his eyes. He got up and went to get a soda out of one of the machines. The sound the coins made seemed very loud in the dark, and the thud of the can as it fell inside made Bobby jump. He cursed at himself, both for being silly and for the whole situation. Drinking his Coke he went back to the bench and lied down again. Yet still he didn't close his eyes. While he couldn't see anything his body seemed to be trying to tell him something was wrong. Sitting up again Bobby closed his eyes and listened. It was an old trick he learned when he was talking to some of the wasteheads, ignore them and pay attention to the words and sounds. It was in what they weren't telling him that the resal information was, in this case it was in what he couldn't see that the real info was.
It was quiet. Maybe a bit too quiet. The kind of quiet you get when someone was trying real hard to be quiet. The bugs were holding their breath, which meant that something was close enough to them to make them shut up.
Bad vibes. That's what his Dad would have called it back in the day. Bobby checked the Glock 9mm that he had ticked into his pants leg. It was a smaller, and most importantly, mostly plastic gun that could still do a share of damage. Pulling it free from where it had stayed during his long journey Bobby made his way back to the building. The fog was so bad that just standing at the side of the building he could no longer see the bench that should have been but about a little over a dozen feet away. Bobby tried to think about who could be out there. Seemed like a far cry from where the cops would try and nab him if they had found Jake. None of the drug dealers he'd dealt with had any reason to track him down. Maybe someone connected to Jake himself. Either that or some local nut who just didn't know who he was screwing with.
Tucking himself away in the shadow of the building, as far back from the street light as he could so that anyone coming up the area would be backlit. He wouldn't have much time to spot them, the fog would cover them quite far into the bus terminal area. He didn't savor the idea of shutting down some unknown in a town who's name he didn't know with no idea how to put some distance between him and the place. There were far too many unknowns for Bobby. Part of him wanted to just turn and fade. Find somewhere in town where he could do a break and sleep. Check the bus stop in the morn.
Then he heard a noise. But it wasn't the right type of noise. A footstep he could deal with. He expected a shuffle perhaps. What he got was a slither. Like some thing slimy dragging slowly over concrete. It only lasted a second or two, just long enough to hear but short enough to make you think maybe you didn't hear it.
Bobby strained his eyes, trying desperately to see what was out there. He listened hard as he could. Yet for several heartbeats there was nothing. He could smell the ocean out there somewhere, off in the distance. Then the slither again. Soft, wet sounding. Not the sort of noise you should hear at a bus terminal. Bobby realized that he had goosebumps on his arms. That made him mad. He had never been a coward, and he wasn't going to let some small town jack-off make him shake. Instead he decided that he was going to put the fear of Bobby into this damn hick. Crouching low, Bobby made his was down to the side street that the bus terminal was attached too. He figures that whoever it was must be trying to sneak up on the terminal, having seen him there earlier. So if he can swing low and come up behind them then he can give them a night they'll tell the grandkids about.
Staying low Bobby crouch walks towards where he thinks he heard the sound. He moves slowly, thinking about how some small time bad boys were about to meet the real thing. He was big time, bigger than anything this town had ever seen. A dark god come to smite the unbelievers. Maybe after he'd done his fun tonight he'd stick around for a while. He had been a big player, but in a small town he could rule with a smile and blood. Jake could be forgotten, and he would set up here and stay awhile. Rock the boat and change this into his own personal motherland. The more he thinks, the cockier he feels. He can hear his blood pumping in his ears as his adrenaline pushes him to the brink. He loved this feeling. Knowing that he was one bad man about to perpetrate some cruelty on the world. He couldn't remember the name of this town, but he did remember the sign saying the population had been a small number. He covered more people than lived here in maybe four square blocks of Harlem. This was a duck pond, a spit spot on the map. Just the type of place he could stay low while still standing tall. If he had to bury a few more bodies to do it then so be it. He would show this place terror as it hadn't ever known.
Bobby heard the noise again, just in front of him. He thought about running up screaming, guns blazing like in a movie. But another part of him felt it would be better to sneak slow and whisper in the ear. Freeze their water in their bladder. If he had to shoot, he'd do so quick, and bury the bodies in the fog.
Suddenly Bobby could see a darker patch in the fog. Yet it seemed far too big. Had he miscalculated and was approaching the building from the side? Could he have overshot in the deep fog and dark? Moving closer Bobby watched the fog thin until he caught sight of what was ahead of him. Just as the glow of the streetlight caught it he once again heard the slither noise.
The fog cleared, Bobby's eyes took a moment or two to adjust to the sight ahead of him.
Then Bobby Lawson screamed.
And screamed.
He raised the gun, still screaming, and fired.


Bobby Lawson's body was discovered later that night after calls to the police brought someone out to investigate the noises. His body was brought back to offices of the local doctor. It was determined in a very short amount of time that death had been caused by a single self inflicted shot to the underside of the jaw, the exit on top of his head removing most of his brown hair. It took very little time for his ID to be discovered from his drivers license.
Yet the doctor, who had seen far too many corpses for such a small town over the years noted in his log that while the death was obviously suicide, the look of pure horror on the victims face suggested that what ever he had seen just prior to his death must have been truly terrible.