Ernie Jr.

Ernest Mott Junior, who’d been a guard in Providence about three weeks, said on his application for employment that he’d had “experience” with fire-arms. This was true, but also deliberately deceptive, as most of Ernie Mott Jr's “experience” had come in the form of shooting, and killing, an unarmed Mexican man, accessory-murdering his entire family, and then efforting a clumsy cover-up of the whole affair.

Roslinda and Jesus Diaz had attempted an illegal crossing of the Mexican / American border fourteen years ago in 1995. They paid a man named Coursin $376 for a hand-drawn map of a safe, hidden route between Odessa Texas and the Mexican high northern dessert. They traveled light, having been relieved of most valuables during a pre-flight garage sale. The Diazs were, however, a family of five, herding along not only their children - Javier and Ilsa, five and six respectively - but also a 40-pound sack of laundry, Roslinda's 76 year old mother Inez, and a pet parakeet named "Jeeto". The going was difficult, the path hidden and indistinct in the darkness. The poor Diaz family, exhausted, starving, and confused from the complicated map, popped out of the dessert almost a mile away from the unguarded hollow through which (Coursin's map indicated) they could pass safely into the United States. Searching in the dark to get back on course, Jesus Diaz ended up leading his family to violent death in the shape of the Odessa, TX redoubt of one Ernie Mott, Sr.

Ernie Senior had been away that weekend, leaving his only son - Ernie Jr. - house-sitting the palatial home base. The house was an adventure unto itself, with a sauna/spa/popl setup, tennis and basketball courts, and three well-stocked wet bars. Ern Jr.- perhaps knowing he'd never be able to handle the job by himself - called a few friends to help out. Jr.'s friends - solely in the interest of thorough, detilail-oriented housesitting - had procured a few hookers and a lot of cocaine to help them help Ernie Jr. The music was loud, the clothing sparse and the partiers well-geeked by the time poor Jesus Diaz stumbled from the tree line of the Mott domain.

Motion-triggered floodlights bathed Mr. Diaz in shiny whiteness, blinding him momentarily. Ernie Jr. had been fucking one of the hookers outside, (because he liked to see the stars as he fucked) and saw Diaz emerge from his brush. Ern Jr. kept right on fucking, reaching for his pants and his Colt .380 just as Jesus sprinted for the shadows across the sea of well-kept Texas. Junior reached the pants at the same time Jesus reached the shadows, and Jr. - still pounding away - emptied six chambers in into darkness, partly in frustration, but partly because it felt cool to fuck and shoot at the same time. The funny thing is, Ernie didn’t miss, connecting with four of six hollow-point rounds and killing Jesus Diaz dead before his corpse hit the ground.

Now here comes Roslinda, sweating and running, swearing in Spanish, but not for Jesus. Instead, She goes booking across the lawn after Ern Jr. And his hooker. The girl is still getting fucked, but she's a Tex Mex whore and it's not her first rodeo. The whole way, she sees the crazy Mexican bitch ridin’ down on her and keeps on bone-dancing. She waits until the last second, just before Roslinda Diaz makes contact, the whore rolls, ducks, thrusts, and surprises the Mexican bitch with a low tackle. Down they both go, spitting and yowling like feral cats.

Meanwhile the other find the Diaz kids cryin’ under the full moon. Now they got 'em all tied up, deciding what might work, when that same crazed hooker who downed Roslinda says:

"fuck this shit"

and goes the fuck off. She went in the kitchen, grabbed a big tin funnel, and shoved it down the Mex bitch’s throat through teeth, tongue, and everything else. Before anybody can stop her, she’s got a big handle of Drano from the cleaning closet, and she’s pouring it on Roslinda, tryna get it in that funnel with the Mexican still choking and hollering and convulsing.

Well that was about the cruelest thing Ernie, Jr. had ever seen. He’d never meant for things to get this out of hand. All he’d wanted to do was to fuck a hooker while shooting an invading Mexican family. Watching Roslinda screaming and burning like that drove Ern Jr. to a very poorly timed attack of consciousness. He put Roslinda in his car, her family still crying, and tied up in his kitchen, and drove her dissolving ass 78 miles to he nearest hospital. She had shit and blood and Draino leaking out of every pore, and she about ruined the interior in Ern Sr.'s new Lexus.

They got to the hospital and the girl was dead, her face and head half turned to soup in the Lex. Ern Jr. was a mess, physically and otherwise, and he told the hospital the whole sordid story, including that he shot a guy, and the psycho bitches still having the Mex family tied up at the ranch. For three days the Texas Rangers and Odessa PD combed Ernie Sr.’s grounds, coming up with the dead, hacked up body’s of the two children and Jesus, and the dead hacked up bodies of the two hookers, and then two more older hacked up bodies that nobody knew shit about, and aren’t really part of the story. Ernie Sr. remained on VK, but his lawyers sat down with all agencies concerned and hammered out some terms they could all live with (excepting - of course - Roslinda, and her family, and the dead whores). The specifics aren’t important but the upshot is that Ernie, Jr. had to come north and start fresh.

***

And he did just that. Ernie left Odessa the very next day. For a guy whose had his share of weird luck and bad breaks, youd've thought the sailing would’ve set up smoother for ‘ol Ern Jr. But youd've been wrong: Three years, almost to the day, that he and Roz Diaz had crossed paths, here was Ern, dying of drunk Drano, leaking rancid fluid from holes both old and new. far from home, at night, and nobody knew shit.

Ernie was surprised: The pain didn’t seem to throb or ebb and flow in any way. Instead his entire being seemed to have been re-calibrated to ONLY be concerned with pain. A decaying pain, a pain that bellied some terrible progress deep inside him. The only movements his limbs would commit to were the jerking, death-throw spasms smashing through his body every few seconds. His back was arched all the way, and he’d thrown both arms out of the sockets early on. He was bent and contorted as far as his body would twist. Still the pain came stronger. He felt organs, bones, complex structures liquefying. Fluid was running in buckets out of every pore, every orifice. It was seeping out of his ass and eating the flesh from the outside in, and still the pain worsened. He had a psychotic break, totally shut down everything not involved in pain. For six hours he melted and twisted and burned and prayed for death. His assailants had underlings throw his remains into the Providence river. Gladiator Assassin perimeter security found him just before sunrise. They dug a hole, buried him still twitching.

There had been too much drama all day and all week, they decided. The press didn’t need to know about every fucker who shot their way into GA. This weekend there would be bodies. This was the first weekend Gladiator Assassin started going out live to the world.