QR Code Murders: Portrait of Words

The digital camera focused on the tip of the e-cigarette. As it glowed, the apparatus exited from the mouth of the witness and a cloud billowed out from the user.

Yawquisha focused on Mable George. Her hair was white and starkly laid on around her brown paper bag colored skin like a halo. She wore a blue dress with silver stars that looked almost too formal for just relaxing on the porch. Her eyes still burned with a fire of intense acuity. The vlogger focused.

“What did you see?”

“I saw them both. It was just across the street. The two of them were arguing. It sounded pretty low. Then one of them pulled out a pistol and fired it at the other. He then took off slowly, like nothing ever happened?”

“Did he use a suppressor?”

“A what?”

“A silencer,” Yawquisha reiterated.

“Oh, it must have been. The way that boy just walked away so coldly and without passion…I had to call the cops.”

Mable had been the neighborhood informant for at least six different incidents before this one. She drew in more nicotine.

“I couldn’t just sit here and not be a responsible citizen.”

“Again.”

“Again.”

“So what do you find most important about viewing these actions?”

“If you’ve got some kind of device, you should be ready to inform anyone who has violated the law. It’s disgusting when people say ‘stop snitching.’ It’s about the self. Nobody wants to snitch until it’s somebody’s auntie, cousin, mama, sister, or brother. It’s a shame these young people don’t have anything better to do than to kill each other.”

Yawquisha kept the camera on her. She didn’t move at all. She just trained the lens on the septuagenarian. Mable laughed a bit which startled the vlogger.

“What’s so funny, Miss Mable?”

“I just remembered a sad, sweet story. There was a boy, who couldn't have been more than sixteen years old. He had diamonds and gold on his chest. He sparkled. Good kid. He just ran with the wrong crowd.”

“He was a rapper?”

“I think that’s what he called himself being. Anyway, he had a birthday party at his house and he invited his other friends. They came through in cars that kept getting bigger and bigger based on their rim size.” She laughed a little and drew in some vapor. “I then saw him trying to get into one of the vehicles and he just couldn’t make it. He kept pulling up his pants and trying to hop in the thing. Finally, one of his friends got a step ladder and allowed the young man into the car. Chino Rawlinger. That was the last time I saw him alive. He was killed the next week as part of this tattoo mess.”

Yawquisha never erred. She let the woman speak and recorded for posterity the grim realities of the Wilmington streets. The power behind the woman’s ability to make a portrait with words was the color and sound that painted and amplified the stories she showed.

“I will be on this block and posted up until I pay the piper. That’s for sure. No one’s going to run me off of my block. I’m going to keep on calling these killings. It really is all I can contribute. I don’t have a family. My friends are ghosts. I really just sit here and observe. I take it upon myself to be a guardian for my neighborhood. I’m not going anywhere. Not at least in the foreseeable future.”

“I thank you.”

“Thank you, young lady.”

Yawquisha switched off her camera and retreated from the porch. She headed to Kim’s car and stashed her equipment in the back and then entered through the passenger door.

Kim offered Yawquisha a sandwich.

“What’s her story?”

“You’ll see when I’m done editing.”

Kim was not stung. She had built up an immunity to Yawquisha’s curt answers. She smiled softly. Then, she shifted gears both metaphorically and literally. They found the highway and traveled to Newark. They were headed to Delaware Institute of Technology for a radio interview.