Trick of the Mind

== “Trick Of The Mind” A West Side Chicago Story ==
=== by Quincy Leonard ===
Published in StoryStar 2014
It’s a rainy night in Chicago, 2001, around 1:00 a.m, as a 26 year old
African American male named Travis Westbrook walks at a fast pace up a dark
Chicago block in an area locally known as “k-town” on the West Side of Chicago.
He walks with his chin tucked to his chest in an effort to dodge the rain
blowing in the breeze towards his face. In the distance he notices a strange
dark hooded figure dressed in all black walking slowly in the rain towards him.
This figure was walking as if he did not have a care in the world. off first
sight Travis knew something was very different about this person. As Travis
passed the strange being he could see through his peripheral that the figure
had stopped and was turning towards him staring him down with a feeling of
anger and resentment. Travis turned to fully look at him and the figure was
gone, completely gone as if he vanished into thin air. Travis was frozen still
as a chill was sent through his entire body. He no longer noticed the pouring
rain drenching him as he stood in a daze swarmed with flashbacks and emotions
of his past sins. Then he quickly shrugged it off as he thought 'maybe too many
blunts' and continued walking home quickly. 
Arriving at his apartment Travis could not help but think about the
incident with the strange black hooded man. “I had to be tweaking” Travis said
to himself as he paced back and forth through his dimly lit 1 room apartment in
which he lived alone, but in the back of his mind he knew he saw something.
Upon thinking back on what he’d seen he was struck again with a flashback of
bad things he'd done in his past. Travis was a violent individual and did not
get along with others too well. he was the secluded secretive type and made his
money by robbing drug dealers or anybody he felt had money or something worth
money. He was about 5’10”, 170 lbs, brown skinned with small deceitful eyes
that did not blink as he was once again stuck in a daze flooded with
flashbacks. He reminisced on a robbery he did a couple months ago where he had
to shoot and kill one of his victims. surprisingly Travis did not really
reflect on the murder until this day. He could still hear his victims last
words “bro this is all I got” as the victim was sneaking reaching for a gun on
his waist. Travis realized what his victim was trying to do so he shot him two
times point blank range in the face. He could still hear the sighs let out by
the dying man as his consciousness left his body. Travis had shot and hurt
people in his past but this was the first time he’d killed someone. 'Damn maybe
I just need to get some sleep' Travis thought after a long night of smoking and
drinking. He prepared himself for bed, he carelessly tossed his half lit blunt
onto his dresser which rolled onto the floor as he sat down on his bed,
realizing he had not had an appetite all day. All he could think about was the
strange man as he said aloud in a low stern voice “how could a person just
disappear like that”. Once again he tried to shake his thoughts off and get
some rest so he said his prayers before he laid down but felt as if his prayers
were falling on deaf ears. as he just laid in his bed in the dark he eventually
began to fall asleep. 
Almost instantly he is plagued by the nightmare of the murder he
committed but in his dream it was as if he was seeing it from a third person’s
view watching the whole thing. “Bro this is all I got” POW!! POW!!! The
gunshots in his dream woke him up in real life. He popped out of bed feeling
his way through the dark to the bathroom in the pitch black apartment. He goes
to the sink and takes a sip of water then goes to the toilet to urinate. While
Travis pisses he notices a low voice choking as if the persons being
suffocated. 'It sounds like a man’s voice' Travis thought. The sound seemed to
be coming from next door. He walked into his living room and noticed the sound
got louder. “Shit I know I’m tweaking now that shit sounds like its coming from
the closet” he said to himself, and his closet was diagonally across from the
doorway entrance of his apartment. Travis always walked around his apartment
with his 40 caliber handgun close so he felt fairly safe opening the closet
door. He swung the door open only to find an old shirt and a couple hangers but
he noticed the choking sound had stopped, “Could this just be all in my head?…
Maybe I’m just paranoid” Travis said looking at the empty closet, when BOOM!!!
his front door flies open with a black hooded figure standing in his doorway.
The same black hooded figure he walked past earlier. He knew it was the same
figure because he felt the same anger, fear, and resentment that this figure
had towards him. There was an intense warmth that took over the room as if hell
had been delivered to his front door. He could see the strange figure’s head
twitching side to side. This was an entity, the body of the entity shot towards
Travis at the speed of light with a devilish growl. As the entity came closer
and closer the warmth became more and more hotter and intense and he noticed
that the strange entity had 2 holes in its face with dark voids for eyes that
were darker than a solar eclipse. this was Travis’s murder victim coming back
for revenge. Third degree burns covered Travis’s body as the energy of the
entity passed through him….
Within less than an hour the entire apartment was filled with smoke.
Neighbors rushed from their homes in fear their apartment would catch fire
also. Fire fighters and ambulances rushed to the apartment where they
discovered Travis’s body. Travis and his house were severely burned. Autopsy
report read Travis’s death was due to a house fire. Coroners investigated the
apartment and later concluded that the fire was started by the half lit blunt
Travis had tossed onto his dresser, unaware it was still lit, which set the
apartment ablaze as Travis slept through the roaring flames in a drunken
nightmarish realm of reality. The mind had indeed played a trick of karma on
him.
-QLakaL’z
Category:StoryStar
Category:Leonard
Category:Web-published