DRAMATIC RECREATION BY SANDY CARSON

had been really partying hard for weeks. My apartment was trashed. Daniel came over and we had some beers, and then we went to this strip club called Jumbo’s Clown Room. We had some more beers, and around midnight we were drunk and out of money, so we decided to head home.

We were literally at the end of my block, and these kids who looked like they were about 14 or 15 years old were sitting on the steps of an apartment building across the street. They said, “Hey. Give us your money.” We were like, “Sorry. Don’t have any.” Then they got up and started coming up to us like, “No, man, we’re serious.” And we were like, “What?” We were totally taken off guard, and we just didn’t know what was going on.

So one goes to me and one goes to Daniel, to kind of split us up. The kid who had me took out a gun and said, “Naw, dude, for real, give me your wallet.” I said, “I don’t have any money in it.” And he said, “Give it to me anyway.”

So I did. I was like, “Take it down to the Coffee Bean, and if you get two more coffees, get ’em to punch that card and get a free one.” I didn’t say that. He had a gun. But you know, that was all that was in the wallet. I was pretty nervous. You always hear that a 15-year-old kid is going to be the one who’ll pull the trigger, because they’re—whatever. I just gave him the wallet.

So while this was going on, the other guy had Daniel. And Daniel basically wouldn’t give the guy his wallet. The guy was like, “Gimme your wallet,” and he was like, “No, there’s no money in it, I’m not giving you my wallet.”

And then the guy starts getting pretty aggressive, and it looks like he’s punching Daniel. It was winter, and Daniel had a big coat on. I was just thinking, like, “Why doesn’t Daniel give him his wallet?”

So my guy, he calls to the other guy, like, “Come on, let’s go,” and I just grab Daniel by the jacket and we run. Daniel was not right. He was grunting, like, “Oh my God. Oh Jesus.” I was thinking, “Something is fucked-up with Daniel.” But Daniel’s kind of a hypochondriac. Something is always fucked-up with Daniel. This had all happened in like a second, so I was just like, “That was, wow, that was… fucked-up.”

So we run into my apartment, and Daniel lifts up his shirt, and he’s cut up. He’s got seven cuts on his chest and back, and two of them look pretty nasty. Two of them look like wounds. You know when you see pictures of Jesus getting cut in the side? That’s kind of what it looked like. It was gaping and blood was streaming out.

So we called 911, and the cops and the ambulance got there so fast. They came in, and my apartment was fucking wrecked. There were beer cans and empty bottles of Jack Daniels everywhere. I had this little studio apartment, and it was just fucked-up. And we were drunk, and Daniel was bleeding, and there were like four EMTs and two cops.

So they put Daniel on a stretcher and he was off.


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