Fucking Derrick! I swear that if I meet him in my next life, he is a dead man!
Even now, with my life flashing before my eyes, Derrick is the most prominent figure in it. Even in death, he causes me grief!
I first met him when we were both about 12 years old. I was sitting in class, and the teacher introduced a new kid. He was pretty normal-looking for a 12-year-old, but just like me, his clothing was too small and a little tattered.
He said his name was Derrick, and when the teacher asked him what he wanted to do when he grew up, he said wanted to be the greatest mobster in the world, and have a movie written about his life.
Most of the class just looked at him confused, but it got a chuckle out of me, and we became fast friends. We bonded over the fact that we both had pretty shitty home lives. In his case, his dad was a womanizer who would cheat on his mother and spend all their money on prostitutes.
In my case, my father had died when I was young, and my mother had turned to drinking. She lost her job soon after, and to put food on the table, she faked a back injury and became dependent on the state.
If she didn't have enough money to buy booze and keep the lights on, she would sell her body while I was next door studying or something of the like. She would spend her hard-earned money on instant ramen for me and cheap vodka for her.
Derrick was my best friend until we were about 15, when a kid in school started making fun of my mother, and saying she should just sell herself to Derrick's father, and we could be brothers. We got in a fight, but Derrick broke the kid's arm by stomping on it when he was already out cold on the concrete.
They expelled him for that, and he ended up in a juvenile detention centre, labelled as a violent offender. He didn't get out until he was almost 17, but I didn't see him until quite a bit later.
The day I graduated from high school, my mother told me I had to get a job and start paying her rent. I hadn't even taken off my cap and gown, and she was already listing off reasons why I should be grateful to her and pay back her kindness with cash. I left home that day and never looked back. I crashed at a buddy's place for a few days and landed a job as an apprentice bricklayer a few days later.
The pay was terrible, so for 2 years I lived in a shared apartment with 10 other stinking dudes. In my room, there were 6 of us on 3 bunk beds. There were no wardrobes or cabinets. Everybody had a bag that they would keep under the bed or hang from the corner of the top bunk.
I am sure there was some kind of rule about it being illegal to have so many people living in such a small space, but I didn't much care about that, the rent was dirt cheap, and I was able to save up enough money for a security deposit to rent a small studio apartment.
I landed a job as a full-time bricklayer with a decent construction company, and managed to score a modest salary and some benefits. I wasn't rich, hell, I wasn't even middle class, but I had no kids, no debt, and I lived alone. The years with my mother had taught me how to make every penny go as far as possible, so I could provide for myself without any worries.
One day after work, I was walking home when someone shouted out my name. I turned around and who else but fucking Derrick was running down the street towards me. We exchanged numbers, reconnected a little, and hung out a few times, until one night he came to my house all battered and bruised, begging me for a loan.
He had gotten in with the wrong crowd and owed them money for drugs, I didn't want to support his habit, but I also didn't want to see my best friend from my teenage years get killed over some mistake he made, so I gave him what I could spare out of my meager savings to try and help him out.
Another 2 weeks after that, I got a call from him saying that he had been arrested and he needed someone to bail him out of jail. I posted the money, and he swore up and down that he would go to court and pay me back when he could.
The money I had given him wasn't enough to clear the debt, so he had been roped into being a lookout during a robbery and got himself arrested.
The day of the trial came, and he was nowhere to be seen. He had disappeared, and the bail money I posted disappeared with him. My savings were now officially at zero, and I had nothing to show for the kindness I showed my old friend.
6 months after that, I got another call, this time from an actual prison. Derrick had been caught. He skipped bail, but the moment he got some money from selling some illicit substances, he went to the strip club and bragged about how his life was on the up now that he was the new Scarface on the block; they tracked him down the next day.
He called me because one of the prisoners in his block was from the old gang he owed money to, and he wanted me to give him 25 dollars a week in protection money. They had some kind of system inside where family members could put money on an electronic card, and prisoners could buy some items to make life easier. Instant noodles, chocolate, and chips, that kind of thing.
I again relented, because I figured that 25 dollars a week was a small price to pay to make sure nobody bashed his head in, and once again he swore up and down he was receiving treatment for his drug habit inside and was getting an education.
And now here I am, coughing up blood on my kitchen floor because of fucking Derrick! He had the guy in the prison smuggle some stuff in for him, claiming I had agreed to cover for him. He overdosed, died in his cell, and left me with the debt. The prisoner who smuggled it in had his sentence increased to life with no parole.
The gang came knocking on my door demanding money to pay the debt and to compensate the gang for their member lost to incarceration. I don't see how their guy getting caught is my fault, but that's neither here nor there.
I have nowhere near the amount they want, but instead of offering me some kind of payment plan, they start beating me. Feet and fists rain down on me in my own kitchen, snuffing out my life.
I scraped and saved and struggled just to survive, and all that hard work has gone down the drain because of that bastard. I wish I had never met him.
Fucking Derreck!
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Ding!
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