Excerpt
Boom! Boom!
My body twisted and fell to the ground.
Don’t let me get up because I’ll kill you…
Before I could react, I saw him standing over me with a smug look on his face.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
I took all the energy I could muster and tried to get up, but something was wrong. I couldn’t move. That’s when it hit me that I won’t get up. I wanted to shake it off to show how hard I was, but I lay as helpless as when I came in to the world, wondering which shallow breath would be my last.
It’s true what they say, when you’re dying, your life really does flash before your eyes. That’s when it hit me. With all my money and clothes, I don’t even own my own breath. With every inhale and exhale, heart beat and off-beat, and even the blood pulsating through my own arteries weren’t even mine. I couldn’t control it. God, I need you!
I swear if You let me live through this, I will change my life. “God, I don’t want to go to hell! Please don’t let me die.”
He spared me so that I can share my story with you…
I remember the day that I finally decided to go to church. It was nearing the time to go to Bible Study and I was selling the last of my cocaine so that I could be through with it. One of my boys came by for some dope and we went in the house to get it.
Suddenly, my brother said, “There’re two guys coming across the yard.” As I got to the door, they were standing there with a gun. I put my hands up and backed back into the house thinking of my next move. Before I could think, I was smacked in my temple with the gun. One of them said, “Take off all yo’ clothes and you, lil’ man, take off yours, too.” We took off our shirts and I told my brother not to take off the rest of his clothes. They told us to lie down, but I refused so the guy tried to hit me in the head again.
My boy who came in to buy the drugs was supposedly a friend of mine. The guys looked at him and told him he could leave. I realized that he set me up. I could do nothing but stare at him as he walked out. “Where’re yo’ keys? Where’re the drugs?” they asked me. I gave them $150 worth of dope and my car keys.
By this time, my grandmother called me from the back room and one of the guys started to go back there. I jumped in front of him. “Yo, I got some money outside in the car,” I lied. I needed to get them out of the house and I knew I had a 9MM 15 shot pistol in between my seat.
I went to the car and started reaching in between my seats. They must have searched my car because my gun wasn’t there. It was in the afternoon and it seemed that everyone on the entire block was either in the house or not home! There was no way out of this situation, no distractions, witnesses or nosey neighbors. I got out of the car and was standing in the driveway and out of the blue, this guy walked up and I shouted, “Yo, man! These niggas are trying to rob me!” That’s all I needed and I took off running.
Gunshots rang out behind me. One guy went up the street and the other got into my car. I turned around and saw him in my car and I got so furious that I picked up a cinder block. I started walking back across the street. The guy picked up his gun but before he could take aim, I slung the brick into the car and hit him in the head. I started running and a gunshot was fired. The bullet missed me, but it ricocheted off the fence and hit me in my back and I fell right there in the street.
The guy walked over to me and shot me six more times. He shot me in my head, arm, hand, and hip. Then he walked away. People started to gather around me. I told someone to get the money and drug paraphernalia out of my pockets. I didn’t want to die with drugs on me. I was familiar with how you’re treated when you die with drugs on you, they put it on the news and I didn’t want to die like that. I realized that the people who were getting stuff out of my pockets were crack fiends. They started robbing me. They took my money, shoes off my feet, pants, and left me with nothing on but my boxer shorts.
As I started taking my last breaths, my body started going into shock and shaking real bad. All I kept thinking was, “I’m going to hell.”
The ambulance drivers came and turned my body over. My arm was folded up against my head because it was snapped in two with nothing holding it together but skin. I grabbed my private parts because I wondered if I was going to be able to have sex if I was to live at all. All of a sudden, my breath started getting short. “I’m getting ready to go to hell,” I thought.
They put me in the back of the ambulance and I heard them say, “We’re losing him!” I remember taking one big breath and it was like everything went on pause, I saw people over me, but it seemed like they were just standing there, not even moving. At that moment, I knew that I was dead. I said, “God, please accept me in to your kingdom, God please accept me into your kingdom.”
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