by Jeremy Roller

Keith Carabel is thirty-two years old, he weighs an underwhelming one-hundred and twenty- two pounds with his Doc Marten’s on, and is considerably tall. The weight discrepancy could be attributed to his use of crack cocaine. Every single monetary denomination was given to his curbside messiah over the deli clerk. Nassau County Correctional Facility claims he’s 6’8” without his Doc Marten’s on.

Nassau County Correctional Facility also wrongly claims he’s a danger to society – when the parole board let him reconvene with his peaceful society, they warily attached some strings that he’d quickly fray. One was obvious given his criminal history, the requirement to abstain from any illicit substance use. This cautionary was knotted with string number two – that he was to remain in a sober-living facility. Again, while not under the influence of illicit substances. He immediately cut the first string which destroyed the integrity of the second.

Thus, he moved into Plaza Inn Motel. It was in this declining and seedy motel off of the interstate that he came to meet Donna Sultz. Donna’s underwhelming weight can be blamed on crack cocaine as well, although she never owned official United States currency. Instead, she paid in flesh.

Keith didn’t have to utter a single vowel to Donna to get her in his room. He stepped outside, opened his pack of Camels, and she stopped working the Interstate to ask him for one. His door was slightly open to air-out the smell of burnt cocaine that any ordinary passerby would mistake for sage. The familiar scent led her inside his room. There they spent a week scraping pipes, searching for sparkly white crumbs, and peeking out of the blinds. Each time she cracked the blinds, she was sure she saw a police cruiser. And each time, he would open the door confidently to yell out “Any cops out here? No? Good” and continued the scraping, searching, and spending.

You’d think that Keith would be particularly worried about the possibility of law enforcement provided their classification of him. He didn’t care in the slightest, he just wanted his pipe’s tip to sizzle. Donna, although severely paranoid, sought the same resolution and returned to bed each time until she was ready to peek again.

They turned on the television to give a sense of community in the room. The newscaster provided a conversational tone to his voice which made the two feel less lonely.

The newscaster was attempting to make light of a double-homicide.

A young man, about the same age and build as Keith, had just murdered his mother and brother before fleeing the scene. The newscaster politely asked the two addicted lovers to call the police they loathed dearly if they happened to see the crude sketch of the young man. The newscaster also asked the Plaza Inn attendant who was drinking a much-less powerful, watered down version of cocaine, to do the same if he’d happen to cross paths with this illustrative murderer.

Luckily for their peaceful society, and unluckily for the drawn young man – the front desk clerk gave the suspect a key to room eighteen an hour earlier. He immediately phoned it in.

Some time passes with Keith and Donna. When smoking freebased cocaine, an hour feels like a minute and a minute feels like an hour simultaneously. Donna made her way over to the windowsill, taking a break from the scraping, searching, and spending in order to settle her paranoid delusions yet again.

This time she really did see uniformed cops, pistols drawn. She relayed this vital information to Keith. Like a reflex, he sighed audibly and moved toward the door to disprove her drug fueled hallucinations.

He swung it open with the remote control in his hand, making eye contact with her throughout. He didn’t even have to look outside to know there wasn’t anybody there.

As he began saying, “Any cops out —“ bullets riddled the doorway. Confusing the number eighteen with eight, and a remote control for a pistol, every officer unloaded their firearm to administer Keith with nickel-sized holes.