Jasmine's Tears
by
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She twisted the knob. It was locked. Curtis hammered his fist of the door for her. Jasmine didn’t appreciate it of course and followed up with her own knocking. Curtis banged on the door again and she looked up at his grinning face. He had gained so much of her attention that she barely noticed the door open. The change in expression on Curtis face snapped her back to reality and her head spun to see Mark standing on the other side of the slightly open door.
“Who the fuck is it?” Mark said in an aggravated tone of voice. “Curtis? Man what you doing…” The next face he saw and recognized was Jasmine’s standing next to him. “Shit, girl, I thought you was gone out…”
She saw he was shirtless and pushed the door all the way open. “Yeah I bet you did.” Jasmine walked into the room that doubled as a TV slash spare bedroom. The room was illuminated by one lamp in a corner with a dim bulb. There was enough light in the room to see that the couch that folded out into a bed was opened out. The television in front of the bed flickered with the sight of a music video that had been muted. Other than that the most important thing in the room besides the rest of the furniture was the girl standing beside the television stand pulling her shirt down over her naked breast. “What’s up, Amy?” Jasmine knew her.
Hearing the name she called out, Curtis stuck his head inside the room to confirm his suspicions. It was Amy Bradshaw. He watched as Mark grabbed hold of Jasmine with both arms as she lunged at the girl who was straightening her clothes. The obscenities she shouted soon turned from Amy to Mark as Jasmine struggled free from his grip. Mark’s attempts to explain were over shadowed by Jasmine’s verbal abuse and shoves at his chest with the palms of her hands and sometimes closed fists. She shook off his hands that clutched at the sleeves on her shirt and left the room, shoving Curtis with her shoulder as she walked out. Her cup lay spilled on the floor at his feet. He took a sip from his and faded back into the crowd outside the room.
Curtis tasted the last sip from his glass and sat it back on the table. Michael was nowhere near done with his drink that was ordered a half hour earlier. He seemed more concerned with the game of pool going on at the table in front of him and Curtis than the glass of Hennessey that became more and more diluted with by the ice that began to melt inside of it. The match was between Phillip Conrad and James Everest. Michael didn’t have any money on the game but still he constantly faded out of his conversation with Curtis to the trash talking between the two competitors.
“I ain’t seen you two niggaz in like three days,” Michael was talking to Curtis again. He took another sip from his neglected drink. “Ya’ll at it full time or something?”
“I do what I can,” Curtis said. “Can’t speak for Jimmy. He’s doing his thing when I get out there and stay doing it when I get ready to leave.”
“Sounds like him. So what happened, man?” The ice rattled in his glass as he took another drink. “How ya’ll blow up?”
“I couldn’t tell you.” Curtis toyed with his empty glass, pushing it around the table. “Supply and demand I guess. Figure it’ll be over as quick as it started and I’ll be back to pulling jobs for Eddie’s punk ass.”
The waitress came by and left with Curtis’s glass and order for another drink. “Look like you making some money,” Michael said. “At least your clothes been looking a little more decent lately. The fuck you worried about Eddie
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About the Book
The Crestwood Heights apartment complex plays host to some of the more seedier elements that Chicago has to offer. The cracks and crevasses between the buildings are a breeding ground for prostitution, drug addiction, and the mediums who profit from such decay. It also happens to be the place Jasmine Fisher calls home. Trapped in its world of over indulgence and self destruction, it’s all she can do to keep her sanity and hold on to what passes as her life while struggling to break free from the hold that the dark corridors and crime-ridden alleyways of Crestwood Heights has on her.
With no father in the house, a kid sister looking to head down the same decrepit path that engulfed her, and a mother who barely scraped by with enough money to keep them living in the cramped one bedroom apartment, Jasmine was left with no other decision but to take it upon herself to secure a way out of this wasteland. Jasmine adapted to life there quite easily. After hooking up with a variant of unfaithful boyfriends that ranged in economic value to everything from drug addicts to fake wannabe ballers, she finally came to the realization that if she was going to make it off the streets of Crestwood Heights then she was going to have to do it on her own. When she hooked up with Curtis Jasmine didn’t know if it would improve her situation of seal her fate. A petty criminal by trade, Curtis had access to certain resources that she was going to find useful in her venture as they waded through the decadence together. It was a union that proved to be most profitable, but the effect that he would have on her life was something neither of them expected.
About the Author
Elliot Graves came into existence in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and seventy five. Rumor has it he wasn’t actually born and is simply the living embodiment of the darkness that resides in each of us. Still, others speculate that he’s an awakened spirit summoned into this world by unknown forces for the sole purpose of ferrying unwary souls across the river Styx to the isle he calls home. The nature of his origins aside, all seem to agree that to view his scripture is a privileged, and to hold a piece of his work is to touch God in all his glory. What particular myth you choose to believe is entirely up to you. I’m simply here to warn you that you haven’t heard the last of him. By any means. Thank you.