Letting Out the Devils

by Kelby Losack

Ari swears he could cut my face off with this shiv he fashioned out of a soup can.

Men in fire retardant overalls buy cases of Lone Star and dollar scratch-offs. They try their luck right there at the counter and slide the tickets back for me to toss in the trash.

You know how a kid will grin like he’s trying not to when he knows he’s done something wrong, but he just wants the world to move on without acknowledging whatever he did? That’s Raymond. A little kid smiling his way out of trouble. I imagine him smiling like that with his jaw wired shut.

“Gotta take Donatello to the vet,” he says. “Nigga been acting all lethargic, moping about.” I say, “The tortoise?”

Spider-Man and a Luchador come in waving guns around. A .22 pistol and the type of shotgun you crack over your knee to reload. These gotta be some kids. But they wave the guns they stole from their parents and they shout at everyone to get on the ground, so that’s what everyone does.

There’s a giant deflated alligator gar at the mouth of a storm drain. Belly up, throat slit. Emery jumps up and down, tugging on the hem of my shirt. She says, “Dinosaur!”

I slip off the two-by-four and fall through the ceiling. I land on my back on the kitchen table. That fresh, fluffy insulation and little pebbles of broken drywall rain down from the me-sized hole in the ceiling. I tell the toddler and his grandmother who just sat down for Spaghetti-O’s, I tell them, “My bad.”

I don’t know why I went back this far, why I’m telling you this, but maybe it’s just ‘cause like, I was thinking about Raymond, how he would preach the gospel in this dilapidated church when we were kids, and also how he used to tear up strips of construction paper and eat them and swear the different colors had their own flavors, and now we’re both grown and he’s done time for cutting some nigga’s face open with a beer bottle and I have a kid of my own. It’s wild to think about.

Raymond says I won’t need any drugs if I drill a hole in my head like he did. Or holes, more like. An ellipses of raw meat dots his forehead. He touches the freshest of the scars, says, “This is the one. This time, it’ll last.”

she’s screaming at him just like she’s screaming at me now to hurry the fuck up, to empty the drawer in one of those plastic bags with the smiley face and shove it under the glass—THANK YOU COME AGAIN—The Used as soundtrack to armed robbery—“I’ll be just fine pretending I’m not.”