Of Daughter and Demon Read Online Free PDF

to respect you though, Mikey, you whipped me good. If I’d
crossed you when you wasn’t all junked up, when you wasn’t so
scared that just last night you shit your pants, well, you’d have
had me for breakfast and picked your teeth with my bones.
    That’s a lesson for me, Alice. A lesson I
learned time to time throughout my life but forget soon enough.
Most people are like that, I figure. Most hard-case lugs that been
around the block a time or two like me, we figure no one can touch
us, we figure we’re made a iron and that may be, but some day you
run into someone who makes your iron look like butter. That’s what
happened to me, and this time I think the lesson will last me the
rest a my life.
    I clean up best I can in the little sink in
the one room flat, my nose makes a crack when I bring it back more
or less to straight. I pick my lead pipe up off the floor and put
it back in my pocket and leave out the back. Two gunshots in ten
minutes and I don’t hear a single siren. There’s so many fired down
here though, the boys probably don’t know which ones to check out
first.
    I walk back to my car and I’m already getting
sore, I’m gonna feel this tomorrow for sure. I might not be able to
walk in the morning. Feels like the bastard cracked a couple ribs,
too.
    Just when I was getting in my car the little
boy on the bike came riding over.
    “See mister? It’s fine, like I said it would
be.”
    “You done good, kid. Thanks.”
    “Couple Big Kids tried to rip you off,
mister, but I whipped them asses to the moon. Boom, kicked them
muhfuhs right up over the house. An man, they look bout like you
look, mister. You tryin to rip someone off too or what?”
    “Nah, but remember what I told you, huh? Stay
away from that house.”
    “Shit mister, you needa listen to yo’seff,
man, I tole you they goan kill ya in there.”
    “I’ll remember that, too. Thanks kid.”
    I took the back streets cuz my head was
pounding and my sight was going a little fuzzy on the edges. When I
got back home I fell getting out of my car but Fifties Chick was
outside smoking and seen it happen. I don’t know how she did it,
she weighs maybe a hundred pounds, maybe one-ten, but I opened my
eyes and she was dragging me to my feet.
    “Come on Harry.” she grunted. How can you
sound ladylike when you grunt like that? I don’t know, but she did.
I helped best I could and she yells for Donnie, who’s always in the
bar, and so the two a them, a tiny bartender and a fat drunk,
helped me up the back stairs and laid me on my bed and that was the
last thing I know, cuz Alice, my head couldn’t take no more a the
pounding inside it, and that was when I passed out.
FOUR
    It was dark when I opened my eyes again, so a
few hours had passed, hell, maybe it was a whole day, or maybe a
month went by while I slept, comatose and dreaming nothing. But no,
I can tell by the burning in my bones and in my muscles, by the
sting in my ears where that Nazi bastard grabbed me, by the dull
ache in the back a my head where he slammed me into the floor, I
can tell it’s the same day, because if more than that had passed I
wouldn’t feel so bad.
    “What have you got yourself into, Harry?”
Fifties Chick asked. Her voice is like an angel’s, Alice, you can
tell that, you’re up there with ‘em. She was sitting on my chair in
the corner of the room, next to the window. The light from the
street-lamp outside was shining through the blinds and I can only
see her outline, the slim hip, the swell of her breasts, that
beehive hair-do she sports, and her delicate fingers holding a
cigarette to her lips.
    “I found her.”
    “Jesus Harry, when?”
    “Last night. She’s dead.” I paused and lit a
cigarette for myself. “But she ain’t missing no more.” I wanted to
cry, and I did a little, but I didn’t mind so much crying for you,
Alice. Every tear I ever cried been for you.
    “Is that who did this to you?” she asked,
“The person that had