The Masonic Mercenary

I was brought by fate to a choice that forced me into a vengeful and spiteful world where I didn’t want to be, but that’s the price I had to pay so that I could follow in my father’s footsteps. I was pulled into the unappealing position, I begrudgingly found myself in, by a mighty man of power and respect, the two universal keys to any kingpin’s kingdom. The man of power and respect was the self professed leader of the White brotherhood, the group that offered the only real protection for the many white men whom felt naked and vulnerable in a prison system comprised of mostly African Americans.

The group comprised of helpless victims that were pushed towards bigotry because of their own self interest, had started in the early sixties and now they bragged about their impressive numbers. Staggering numbers that reached into the hundreds of thousands. Their sick cause being bolstered by every member giving their cunning ruthlessness and unquestionable loyalties to the organization that believed in old school values, taught in the dim light of hatred.

I didn’t make a big to do over the situation that placed me in my current debacle, as I lazily waited for a planned chat that was going to take place between the well respected Aryan and myself. I accepted the role that had been given to me by the wealthy directors of the dirty little play in which I found myself performing in. Like most things in prison, choices and the free will needed to make them, were luxuries that could only be bought with a blind brutality that didn’t stop for morality and I was still a nobody in prison, who would at times hear the painfully faint whispers of a righteous soul that tried to bring me back to the innocence I had as a boy.  To the system I was just another unfortunate statistic and to those who commanded me from afar, I was just a tool to be used as an unwitting means to whatever ends they had in the willingly wayward works, brought by their depravity and greed.  

The beckoning that brought me to the beast that ran the white population of my prison, was void of any excitement or adventure. It was as bland and boring as everything else in the massive gray tomb, which kept me from friends and freedom. I was just merely asked by a large pale tattooed inmate in his early sixties, to follow him to his much younger ruler, who was patiently waiting to give me words that would decide my destiny in a world where you don’t get a second chance at survival.

The infamous stranger whom I was brought to for important instructions, looked as one might expect a man in his position to look like. Cliché Ku Klux Clan, would actually be the most fitting descriptive phrase I could use to quickly describe the man who had obtained more power by his twenty first birthday, than most men acquire in a lifetime. He had the infamous shaved head of a man in the brotherhood, he had yellowish jagged teeth that appeared sharp and menacing, and the leader of the local brotherhood had the misfortune of having a lazy eye that looked longingly towards the left of me as he spoke with me.

The young leader in his early twenties acted surprisingly gracious for a man in his position. He offered me a cheap cigarette when I first walked into his immaculate cell and he shook my hand professionally, with a devilishly devious smile that stretched it seemed, from one of his small ears to the other. The man’s demeanor which lay in between professional and warm, didn’t fit the physical form that stood before me as we spoke. Besides the man’s pasty alabaster face, every visible inch of the man was covered with inked signs of hate, however, nothing but love seemed to flow from the man who earned his high rank fast in the brotherhood due to his affability and lack of arrogance, as well as his legendary thirst for murder and mayhem that had been spoken of a lot by my Hispanic cell-mate recently.

After courtly male pleasantries were exchanged politely, between me and the local leader of white hate, the man turned his words towards the reason for my brief mandated visit. The friendliness of the proud white man soon excused itself when it was time to talk business, but nothing rude was mentioned, he just got to the point and stayed on it hard while I listened intently. Kill Dominic straightforwardly came from the Aryan to start our discussion, which surprised me a bit.Who is that I simply asked, in retort to the serious question that had been directly presented to me without an ounce of hesitation.

It looked as if those on high had been planning meticulously or fate, possibly, had been diligently at work while I had rested for the last thirteen months. The man who was mentioned by the mellow monger of malicious malice, was none other than the nameless cell-mate who had befriended me with gossip and quiet chances for moments of self reflection, in our small two bed apartment of imprisonment where I had spent most of my last year. My thoughts swirled a tad at the mission that was mentioned, but I surprisingly felt no fear or shame at what I intended to do for the men who had landed me in the big house, with all the other cruel cutthroats and tyrant thugs who never received loving hugs in their wayward youths. 

After a very short description of my upcoming job that had been presumably planned out by the men whom rested high in their ivory towers built on deception and murder, I received from the leader of the homeland hate group, a small homemade knife, no bigger than six inches. Though I was asked to kill, nothing was promised and no guarantees were given by the man whom instructed me, or by those who pulled the strings of the puppet who personified white power’s dogma of dominance and arrogance. Killing hadn’t yet become a habit for me, but I approached the upcoming murder as a means to an end, nothing more or less, like a seasoned vet whom knew that loyalty, like that I was about to show, didn’t go unrewarded or unpunished, though I was of course hoping that I received more reward than punishment for the sin I was actively planning on committing. The Hispanic who shared my cell with me didn’t appear to be a bad guy, but at the end of the day none of that bullshit mattered, I had a job to do and that was that.

A lot of social anxiety forced its way into me as I tried to act naturally when sitting across from my target while he went on about the torrid cell block love affairs that he had just learned the details of. While my brown buddy described who loved who and what sissy boy was jilted and what pillow biter was bitter over a jail house divorce, I sat with my big ideas and my little knife, waiting for the right time to strike. The perfect opportunity to kill didn’t present itself easily, that is until the man I had grown accustomed to, decided to shower in the late hours, only thirty minutes before lights out would be called by the few men who stood guard over the many of us men who were hungry for good food and freedoms long forgotten. 

When Dominic left for his nightly commune with cleanliness, I hoped his soul was as clean as he had hoped his body would be, by the end of his shower, showered in the communal showers that were most likely empty due to the time of the night, the time of night when lonely showers bring fright to all the lonesome young men who stand unguarded by affiliations. I waited a minute before following Dominic to the bath house for cons, where his last memories of life would take place if I fulfilled my duty properly to the forces in control of the brutal criminal world. I walked slowly as I headed towards the death of Dominic. I wasn’t agonizing over the upcoming killing, but I sure as shit wasn’t going to relish in the man’s untimely demise. If getting stabbed in the back wasn’t bad enough, the fact that a friendly face would be the one slowly turning the blade in his bleeding back, would create an unnecessarily rude end to the man’s almost unknown existence.

I wondered as I made my way to murder, what had gone wrong in my life to place me on the delivering end of a brutal blade. I wondered what wrong turn had been unexpectedly and unwittingly taken by me, to put me in a position where I had to take a life, for nothing tangible except perhaps for an addition to my impeccable street rep. What was the thing that forced me into a corner, where I had to choose my life over the life of another? All I can say honestly to myself is that I am a gangster, and with that label comes certain responsibilities, responsibilities that come from the past outcomes of situations that were out of my control.

I have been a gangster for as long as I can remember and I am still a young man. I made my way up the food chain of the underworld while I was just a young snot nosed brat trying to make a name for myself in middle school. To earn the respect of my peers I started fights, constantly, and I stole what I pleased as though everything in this world was free.

My need for respect distorted my beliefs in my younger days that were full of mischievous mayhem, which led me down the path that has brought me here. I no longer commit petty crimes with petty friends, but I still fit in with the worst of the worst in my wayward city of Jacksonville Florida. I made the devilish hobbies of my youth my career as I progressed past the boys in my class who weren’t prepared to increase the level of evil in their sins committed for respect and honor. Small fights led to killings in time and the theft of small little nothings led to every racket imaginable within years of traveling the path I began to walk when I was more of a boy than a man.

My high school memories are not jammed-packed tight, full of nights filled with aimless joy rides fueled by a few beers that were scored by an older classmate and I don’t recall ever sitting alone, bored while waiting for the nerve to call a pretty little cheerleader that was out of my league. I also have no memories of studying for tests or of waiting in anticipation for the boring dances and pep rallies that were so monumental to most teens in the last few years of high school. Those teenagers that spent their time fostering friendships that would last a lifetime and those high school students that pleasured their parents with their great grades, were not the kids that I would spend time with or even speak to, unless, of course, they needed some Adderall to concentrate for tests or they needed some pot to smoke so that they could relax while escaping from the many pressures that came with trying to be perfect. My high school memories are a bit more exciting and little more gruesome than the average person’s recollections of those days where our minds are still grappling with the harsh realities of life, while our parents prop us up with their money and love. If I dare to travel back to the time when I was shackled by youth, I must admit that my experiences allow my senses to revisit such demonstrative deeds as: gang bangs with grown men and young school girls, fights that led to me and many other men beating down the one or two youths brave enough to step to my ego and I can still vividly remember letting my mind fly free as I experimented with cocaine and weed.

I was not an average kid going through the average experiences of youth, nor did I have the average family and I most certainly wasn’t coming of age in an ordinary time in America’s history. I was part of that generation that fed off of the wickedness provided by the rappers of the day and in a way, I fed off of all the wickedness provided by the wayward youths around me that emulated the pimps and thugs that wore oversized clothes on M.T.V during the time when M.T.V played nothing but music. I guess I was like my father in the way that I became the times in which I found myself in. My father had been a notorious drug smuggler in the days when cocaine ruled our nation. Since I was a very young child, my father had been doing time for his part in the delivery of a product that served as the means for exciting parties thrown by teens, in the early eighties, and I heard that before he began doing his bid, he made a fortune off of the product that allowed middle aged club goers to dance the night away as their children spent their nights entertained by young coke addicted babysitters.

My dad had a reputation for being the best of the best in his field and he and my close knit family still possessed the many connections my father had gathered during his time in the drug game. I wasn’t allowed into the secretive world where my many uncles and father spent their time, but I knew that if things didn’t work out for me in a conflict, then I would have the backing of some of the hardest men in my city. My uncles varied in age, size, and personality, but they all shared the common threads of courage and decency that I hoped would one day help me if I ventured into the exact same dark waters of deceit that my father had swam in during his younger days, when I had been nothing more than a babe in the woods of need.

I am twenty three years old right now, at this very moment. I am not so far from my younger days that I am uptight and unoriginal, but I have been letting the maturity of adulthood work on my impulsive nature and wicked tendencies. To make money right now I am involved in as many things as possible. I don’t trap myself with definitions and I don’t pigeonhole myself into just selling one type of drug or committing just one type of crime. I try to spread myself as thickly as possible, across all things that take a rebellious nature and a willingness to stare down the law, while keeping a developed caution when in dicey situations. My caution and I had quickly surpassed all of the other young undisciplined guys in my fields of expertise, but they don’t know its my maturity that kept me free and almost rich.

As I said I am a gangster. I tend to squeeze more pleasure out of a day than most do in a lifetime, but I’m also very susceptible to the pain that comes from being in a battle with the most well equipped criminal group in the land, the police of my fair city. I understand the need for the police and I understand that they are just the duality of the criminal world in the spectrum of things, but, since I first landed on their radar as a juvenile delinquent, they have gone out of their way to keep my projects at a minimum level. Some of my colleagues hate the police in my city, however, without them you wouldn’t have crime, in a way they keep my profession alive, plus they really only care if bodies are left in full view for citizens to see and they only usually go out of their way to shut down a drug ring if the ring gets too large and out of control. I have learned to try my best to stay away from the things that police hate and I believe that the police have learned to stay away from me if I do not show signs of brutality.

My daily life is simple really and it is far less dangerous than civilians can imagine, in some ways my life is actually a lot easier than the average rule oriented life of a working class stiff. I am usually not pushed under the rigorous pace found in the legal world that is filled with the strict corporate slave masters and I don’t have to work with anyone that I don’t trust, respect or approve of. Some days my biggest problem is just killing the ample amount of free time that my profession provides. When I’m not on the grind trying to provide for my needs, I usually find myself having to go out of my way to fill the time void that swallows some days whole. My life as a gangster is, at times, truly a gift from God, because I am spared from those brutal demands placed on any man that gives his free will away to the beasts that run the day in the immoral legal confines that keep most men bound and blind, in the invisible shackles that are purposely placed on all those that diligently work at a fast pace for the meager living that is earned from hard work and knowing one’s place.  

Most men I know, can go find me on a boring slow moving day, passing my time away, with the favorite pastimes enjoyed by most all of the notorious individuals that claim to be gangsters, in my grimy city and around the whole God forsaken country. Since adulthood first accepted me into its privileges, I have always loved to fill my free hours with emptying drinks containing high end top shelf beverages while playing the wall in overpriced nightclubs, I have always cherished gambling with more money in my hand than an average sap makes in a month, and I absolutely adore more than a word can describe, whorishly wayward young women of every shape and size. While most in my generation sit around playing video games all day, my crew and I usually spend our days with the hobbies had by most men worth a damn, since the beginning of our nation. During this time when being a real man has been all but outlawed by political correctness, I feel as though I am one of the last few survivors of