Street Metals

Jasmine never considered herself a bad bitch. On the contrary, she always considered herself an odd duck. A nerd so to speak. But neither to her benefit nor detriment, she would fully take ownership of the fact that she has always had a slick ass mouth. And sometimes the outcome of that slick ass mouth was bad. Like the near death execution, she narrowly escaped.

She called it an execution because that’s exactly what it was supposed to be. She had been on the planning end of what went down too many times in the past for it not to have been an execution.

Even if it was poorly executed.

Nevertheless, with Jasmine’s knowledge of all things criminal and seedy, came the staff to execute all facets of the plan.

That is once Jasmine came out of her shock and made the call for the cleaners to come make the house spotless after removing the bodies. She knew she had exactly twelve and a half minutes to go upstairs back into her en suite, grab her go bag, go down into the garage, remove all of the drives for the cameras, get in her truck and head out.

She headed south on I-55 to her childhood home in the historic Treme. Jasmine pressed a button on the dashboard of her truck and just the beginning of the ring of a telephone could be heard when it was quickly interrupted by a nervous sigh that was later peppered with profanity.

“Gat dammit Jasmine, what …in…the ENTIRE…fuck…took you so gat damn long to fuckin call me. You said twelve in a half minutes you would call me….”

“Mags…” Jasmine tried to interrupt her older sister.

“But it’s been over a fuckin hour…”

“Mags,” Jasmine was now rolling her eyes while reaching into the glove compartment to grab a pre-roll. She allowed her sister Magnolia to berate her while she found her lighter and lit her much needed medication. After she took a long hard pull off of the Super Sherb and slowly pushed the exhale through her nose.

“Maaa aaaagss?” Jasmine now sung her interruption of her sister’s admonishment.

“What do you have to say for yourself, Jasmine?” Magnolia said still upset.

“I’m free.” Jasmine bit her bottom lip and looked into the rearview mirror and if anyone were to ask her she would deny it , but she saw the most miraculous sunset in the reflection of her tears.

Magnolia nodded to no one but the saints, licked her lips and swallowed hard to keep her own cheeks from being stained with tears as she whispered,

“I know.” But then as if she dropped something on her toe she stomped the kitchen floor with pointy toe of her shoe. “And I know I done got the timin wrong heffa, but one thing’s for certain and two things fa sho, you need to take yo time durin this half a day trek home. T’ain’t say all dem prayers while castin them intentions to break the chains that devil man had my baby sister in fuh her to flip that truck over and end up dead in a ravine.”

Jasmine wiped the tears off of her face with the back of one of her hands. She had to keep the other on the wheel cuz the exhaustion was about to hit her like a truck. So, the last thing she needed was to hit an actual truck.

“The only way that will happen is if you hang up this phone, Magnolia. You have been recruited to talk to me the whole way back…”

“For good?” Magnolia asked hopefully.

“For now. We’ll see.”