Vigilante of the
Century’s End
This
is a fictional story based on true events that took place in NYC in the early
to mid 1980’s.
In
1983 in my native city of New York, our world was strikingly dissimilar to the
one we know now. It’s difficult to believe that this is the same city I surprisingly
survived from growing up in twenty years ago, yet subtly symmetrical in
diabolically clownish fashion, that was without humor at all to the city’s
involuntary victims. A masochistic mask of enjoyment or excitement was expected
of you to survive and nearly everyone who wasn’t murdered, raped, abused or
damaged surrendered to this nightmarishly unwritten rule of the streets of that
time. I was one of the few that remained untouched or victimized. I ‘ve
witnessed so many horrors through the eyes of the few friends and loved ones I
had as they spoke of evils that would damage them for years to follow. I made a
silent vow such a darkness would never consume me. Since the odds of that
happening were slim to none due to my physical and emotional shortcomings along
side my preternatural vulnerability that haloed around me, I decided to even
the odds. I did what most New York victims were usually unsuccessful at
obtaining at the time. I bought a gun. I bought it from another state of
course, not registered in New York, which technically made me a criminal.
That’s how it was at the time. All hero’s either became too old, were
mysteriously killed or publicly shamed. Now all that was left was the rampage
and massacre of innocents by the dominance of New Yorks’ filthiest cops and
criminals alike. Most cops were criminals alone. They had to be for their own
survival, since they’d lost the street wars of New York ten years ago to New
Yorks’ filthiest, ruthless and merciless. My father became an integral part of
the emerging dark empire with an almost insatiably greedy flare for undeserved
wealth and power in the streets of New York. I hated him for that. I despised
him for abandoning my mother and I to the nightmare he’d chose to help expand
it’s overwhelming shadow over all of the wide-eyed, honest, hard working people
left in our city. I made another vow to myself that I’d never become twisted as
he allowed himself to let the corruption warp his spirit away.
My mother started out as a bank
teller. She was the strongest, most confident woman I knew and I loved her to
the point where some psychiatrists might conclude was too much for a child to
develop healthily. Fuck them. What would they ever know about barely growing up
or growing up too fast in one of the most notoriously gang ridden parts of the
Lower East Side? Nothing at all. These fat overfed, overpaid liberals just
snuggle up in their cozy homes upstate patting their bulbous shoulders
believing they’re providing an overly expensive yet somehow noble service.
They’ll never have to worry about getting robbed at gun point for something as
little as four dollars or your old sneakers. They’ll never have to comfort
their wife or daughter after having been mercilessly, brutally raped and beaten
in a dark wet filthy alley in the early evening under an indifferent moon
surrounded by hell smoke. They don’t even have to worry about their rent,
mortgage or utilities, so fuck them. Damn them straight to hell along with the
mindless violent creatures that continually terrorize New Yorkers even in broad
daylight. Perhaps they won’t be able to deny the pure evil that has infected
this city as their fat flesh is being insatiably gnawed off by the demons these
liberals choose to ignore. The fact that they are able to confidently diagnose
a child as emotionally disturbed for loving his mother as unconditionally as
she would, brings me to conclude how little they know of love in any fashion or
how precious and delicate our lives truly are.
Since my father left us, my mother
and I lived on the brink of poverty. Although we didn’t have much money, my
mother always provided us with a decent meal or two everyday. She even made
certain I received a present every Christmas and Birthday. She read me stories
every night until I was eight years old. That’s when everything changed. She
was just promoted to head teller at the bank she dedicated her time and hard
work toward. She was doing much better. Our lives were becoming easier. The
first progressive move she made was pulling me out of that atrocious public
school where teachers and other light skinned or relatively peaceful, sound
minded students were continuously harassed by predominantly young, unreasonably,
irrationally angry black kids. The next day I was surprised and relieved to
find myself within the refreshingly safe and respected confines of a renowned
Catholic School on the borders of Chinatown. The teachers were firmly in
control and highly intelligent. The quality of my education tripled along with
my grades.
My mother, Sarah Tombs was so happy
with my amazing grades, uniform and blissful smile, she treated my new friend,
Tony Chin and I to a movie and ice cream. It was astonishing. We never expected
to see a movie as incredible as ‘star wars’. My mother was making plans for us
to move into a safer neighborhood in Queens like Astoria or Forest Hills. All
of her dreams of a better life for us would come crashing down like shattered
glass that now covered our streets more and more each day.
A
few months after her promotion, the bank where my mother worked was viciously
robbed, painted in blood and violence from street creatures with cold black
void eyes. My mother was not only held at gunpoint along with her manager but
witnessed his gruesome death inches away from her as she felt the thunder clap
of guns puncturing her boss with light speed invisible bullets. His right eye
became an instant explosion of blood. They blasted his genitals into nothing
and pierced his torso with several thunderous rounds. He barely survived the
relentless assault. He became paralyzed for the rest of his life, all just for
doing his duty to protect the peoples money at the bank and his employers. Then
they turned to my mother with a gun shoved fiercely against her nose. I don’t
know the rest of the story but according to what I overheard from her story to
the police, she was hysterically screaming about blood being everywhere,
including all over her person. All I know is that she had come home alive but
somehow permanently destroyed mentally. I sincerely hope that nothing was done more
to her by those demons other than frighten enough to open the vault, not to
mention her bosses brains being splattered across her face. Story and Characters created by Jesse S. Montalto
All Rights Reserved, Copyright © 2014 by Jesse S. Montalto and Ikuko Hotta
