Chapter 1

I always remember my twenty-first birthday. It was a good day and I was happier than I had been for much of my life. I was born as Aiden Ademir Gomez in Barranquilla, Colombia, in the new year of the twenty-first century, or the last year of the twentieth, depending on your point of view and arithmetic.

My parents had moved there from Medellin in the late eighties, to get away from the very violent world of Pablo Escobars’ drug cartel. My father, a chemistry teacher, had been approached a few times about joining them to work in one of their laboratories but had resisted. He knew that the next time they came for him he would be kidnapped and forced to work for them while my mother would have been taken to one of the brothels to earn her own keep.

They moved to Barranquilla, near the Pacific coastline and everything went well until I was about five; that’s when Los Rastrojos set up a similar business around there and the next move was north – a long way north. We got into America in a time that we came to think of as the good years. We were what they called ‘undocumented’ and both of my parents had to take on menial work as none of their qualifications were accepted. In time they started, and expanded, a cleaning service with my father making industrial strength chemicals that they didn’t sell in the shops.

We lived in Oakland, California, where speaking Spanish was an advantage. Although I became fluent in American, I still spent most of my days speaking Spanish. When Obama was elected we saw a glimmer of light as we may end up becoming proper citizens at last. Of course, that dream was shattered after the election in twenty-sixteen. By that time it didn’t really matter to me as I had dropped out of school and was running with a small street gang that we called Seventeen Boyz. Not very original, I know, but it did define us and gave us a family feeling. Not that we were a very nice family.

We stole, we intimidated, dealt in drugs, girls and anything else that may have value. My own part in the gang was nowhere near the violent side, though. A fight in school where I got my nuts handed to me on a plate had caused me to remain on the small side. It had been a bit one sided, me against six, and I had put down three before I was hit in the head and went down. That was when they kicked the shit out of me and took my future with it.

My mother nursed me until the bruising left my groin and we all knew that what was left of my gonads would not break any records when it came to creating a family. However, remaining small was a big advantage in my part in the gang. I was the one who could get into small spaces and open up doors from the inside. I made a good living and was able to help out with my family, seeing that I now had four sisters, all in school.

One thing I didn’t do and that was take drugs. My mantra was to have a clear head at all times as you never knew when another gang may come by to make a point. By the time I was eighteen we had joined up with the Nortenos and we were kept pretty busy with our break and entering. One day, though, we made a tactical error. The building we entered was a very lucrative haul but the fact that it was actually a Surenos property was brought home to us when two of the gang disappeared and another was stabbed in the street. The word was out that Seventeen Boyz was not long for this world.

I had always been aware that the police may be after me but the thought of the Surenos on my trail was another thing altogether. At home I made my peace with my parents and told them that I had to get out of town. My father suggested that anywhere overseas may be a good place to go to so I took my birth certificate, my cash and a knapsack with my gun and some clothes in it. I left my phone and my burner with my parents; to get the cards changed and to give them to my two oldest sisters. I left my gaming console and all my games but packed my gold chains and my chunky rings that I thought may help if I got into any situation where I had time to defend myself.

Oaklands being one of the biggest ports on the Bay my immediate thought was to find a ship and get going. I went down to the dock area and asked some questions. It seemed that there was a coastal freighter in dock which did have a crew problem, some of the old crew now resting in jail after a particularly violent fight which left a local dead and a few more injured. The three crewmen were not going anywhere for a very long time. I got myself signed on as a general hand in the shipping office, the guy that helped me had a big smirk on his face as he co-signed the paperwork. I found out why when I arrived at the freighter.

For a start it was the most decrepit piece of shit afloat; I say afloat with my tongue firmly in my cheek. The other thing was that I was not going to be anywhere strong enough to do deck work. The captain looked at me with a resigned smile and told me to get my arse down to the galley where I would help the cooks. So that’s what I did. One of the cooks showed me where I could sleep and I dropped my knapsack there before being taken back to the galley to peel potatoes, parsnips, onions and anything else that had a peel.

When we did set sail we went south down the coast, pulling into odd ports to drop off cargo and pick up new. By the time we got to Balboa I had discovered that a seamans’ life was not for me. I just could not get used to the movement of the vessel and everything I ate while we were not in a port was rejected a little while later. The Captain did take pity on me and, after we had gone through the Panama Canal, he let me go when we got to Barranquilla, my birthplace. The immigration guys took one look at my birth certificate and a few high denomination notes then let me through as a local and I was home again, not that I knew anything about the place and remembered only snippets from my very young days.

Like every big city, it had its tall buildings and its rich folk. There were the workers and then there were the dregs, the ones that I could relate to. Here was a city with over a million good folk, the birthplace of one of my favourite singers, Shakira, and, at the bottom of it all were tens of thousands who lived day to day. I lived on the streets for a year, trading my gold chains for food and then did something so stupid I look back on it with a sense of wonder, and, if I am feeling good, a small sense of pride.

The day started out as usual. I woke up snuggled in my one blanket under a railway bridge near the port. I ate with the stevedores at the food van and then went into the city to see what was going down. I stopped to have a pee and a wash in a public toilet and then blended in with the rush hour to try my luck. I was not tall enough to be a good pick-pocket but I was quick enough to take things from open bags while backs were turned and fleet enough to be away before the loss was noted.

I had a fairly good day as there seemed to be a lot of people around. I listened to some talking and discovered that today was a day of protest. It was part of a movement I had heard about, aimed at rooting out corruption and putting a stop to police violence. “Fat chance” I thought; with the first there will always be the second as the police thought that they were unable to be disciplined.

I was near the main shopping area and the crowd was very thick; the better for me to make a few choice grabs. Then there was a sudden hush and a worried murmur from the throng. The police had arrived and they had come in force and ready for anything. I was nicely placed between a lamp-post and a mail box and was left untouched as the protesters shrunk back from the approaching police. I had seen them in the riot gear before but never in lines across the road, beating their batons on their shields, with an armoured car behind them with water cannon on the top.

I was about to beat my own retreat when I saw a woman, frozen with fear, standing in the road with a guy on the opposite side calling to her. She had a pram with a crying baby in it and, as I watched the police get closer, she finally realised what a spot she was in and started running towards the other pavement. As she moved, her heel broke off and she almost stumbled and let go of the pram, which promptly fell over, tossing the baby into the road.

She kicked off her shoes and rushed to safety, not realising that she had left the baby behind. I didn’t think, but just launched myself across the road, scooping up the baby and throwing it, underarm, to the father. That was when the first line of police reached me and I was hit by a baton and went down. It was my school fight all over again but this time it was a whole lot of very large policemen using me for a doormat. I tried to curl up and protect my face but the damage had been done. I was in a lot of pain and blacked out.

I slowly surfaced from a blackness which was interspersed with vivid flashes of boots and batons. I found it hard to open my eyes and grunted a bit and tried to move my hand to wipe them. My left arm felt incredibly heavy and it was a little hard to breathe. I then felt a damp cloth on my eyes and, when I did open them, a smiling nurse was looking down at me. She said, “Welcome back to the world, young hero. You had a lot of good folks worried and we had a few prayer vigils in this room for you. Don’t bother with questions, just yet; someone will be coming to let you know just what those brutes did to you. I do want you to be strong; you deserve to know it all but it will not be what you expect.”

She gave me a sip of water through a straw and fussed around me a little while. I just laid quiet and took stock of things. I could not lift my left leg but my right felt normal. Likewise, my left arm weighed a ton but my right seemed OK except for the fluids I was being given through it. My chest seemed very tight and I could not breathe easily but my groin did not emit any feelings whatsoever. Now I could concentrate I did not need a mirror to know that I had a black eye but the rest of my head felt good. I remembered curling up on my right side so it was no wonder my left got all the damage.

I then just laid there and wondered where I was and why was I there. I could not afford hospital care, certainly none as good as this. It then struck me that, by now, someone would have been going through my knapsack and discovered my days’ takings. Perhaps this was a prison ward and I was being made better so that they can bang me up and hurt me again. The only good thing was that I had a soft bed and a pillow under my head, the first time in over a year.

Eventually a gowned and masked man came in and took a few minutes to examine me before standing next to my bed and introducing himself as Doctor Rodriguez. He then said that he understood that I would want to know the truth and laid out what was wrong with me. As I thought, I had my left arm broken in three places, my left leg in two. I had three broken ribs and severe bruising all over my body. The thing that he left to last was that X-rays had shown that my testes, now shrivelled to almost nothing, showed symptoms of possible cancer and would need to be removed. Then he said that the extra stomping on my groin area had damaged my penis to the point where it would need to have some serious work to repair or remove. I had been in an induced coma for three weeks while the swelling around my brain went down. “Other than that” he said with a smile “you’re in good shape for a vagrant thief.”

Marianne G © 2021

This one has taken a long time to come to fruition. I was moving down one path and could not see beyond the turn I had made so went back and started another path that my characters demanded six months later. This will take us to Christmas and I will have a bit of a break from posting. I do have finished stories ready to roll next year so will hope that I can entertain some of you through 2022. My thanks for all the positive comments, it makes all of my time at the keyboard worth it, even though my doctor tells me I need to absorb more vitamin D.
I wish Merry Christmas to all and a very Happy New Year.
Marianne Gregory