Dexter Pepper and Bookie

The adventures of Dexter Pepper in the Party Crashers saga continues here! make sure and collect them all!

Chapter Two: Run

Saccharine pulled his car into the first handicapped spot he saw, snatched out the briefcase, and headed into the Stop and Shop.
Johnny grabbed a cart, tossed the briefcase in and headed for the sweetener aisle. He began to throw every type of artificial sweetener he could find into the cart. He was getting low at home, anyway.
He bumped into a young woman as he tossed the sweetener into the cart. She turned to offer up an apology, but instead only got the type of scowl kids get when they are one comment away from the beating of their life. The woman grabbed a few boxes of cake mix and pushed her cart hurriedly from the aisle.

Outside in the parking lot, her husband nodded a bit as their baby cooed happily in the back seat. When she opened the door, he snapped to attention and cranked up the car as she put all her bags in the backseat.
She put the briefcase up front with her.

The two men in the front seat were both dressed in black suits. They both sported black fedoras and dark glasses. As they crept along the suburban streets, the two brothers both lit chesterfields and shared a quiet knowing as they looked into the rearview mirror at the businessman in the back seat. The businessman seemed unfazed, even calm as he rested in the back of the 1972 dodge sedan; his $30,000 suit, his solid platinum cufflinks, even his Gucci loafers soaked in blood that was only partly his own. There was a sort of child hood innocence in his smirk, one that the brothers knew all two well;
He had the childlike innocence of a bad seed, an Omen or, say, Rosemary’s baby.

The car pulled to a stop at the intersection, and almost immediately the businessman was kicking the back door open and running down the street. The eldest brother stepped on the gas and followed the bloody businessman as long as he could. The businessman also ran like a child, all lanky and free, until he jumped a row of bushes and disappeared into the night.
The youngest brother jumped out of the car and began to fire past the bushes into the dark until his gun was empty.

Dexter parted the hedges and shiftily made his way through the suburban neighborhood. This was a particularly quiet night, Dexter thought as he scouted out the homes. As he ran his fingers through his blood caked hair he thought that maybe, one day, he and Bookie might live in one of these fancy two stories with the middle class elite.
When he rounded the corner, the shock of recognition filled him as the brothers turned their attention to him. Big brother hit the gas pedal leaving the younger, and giving chase as Dexter tore ass in the same direction as the childlike Businessman. The younger continued on foot as he made out Dexter leaping over a wire fence and into some unknowing families back yard. Little brother followed, running like life itself depended on it. This guy was supposed to be dead, and he was going to kill him. He was going to stay dead this time!
The older brother circled the seemingly identical blocks and streets in the neighborhood until he was lost. He stopped at an intersection that looked vaguely familiar to him, and punched the roof of the car.
He looked left, he looked right, but there was no sign of his little brother or Dexter. Suddenly there was a bumping, then a thump. Then Dexter came running across the top of the car. After the surprise, Big Brother jumped from the car just as Younger ran past him chasing the ever-elusive Dexter. He started to unload his gun in Dexter’s direction. Younger stopped in the middle of the street, took a second gun from his coat, and opened fire also.
Big brother jumped in the car and started to pull off again, but the car wouldn’t turn over. He punched the horn again, and continued to punch the horn as Dexter disappeared into the night followed by younger- yet again.
Dexter’s lungs burned as he ran for freedom. His heels were on fire, and every nerve in his body was on the verge of exploding as he hit some sort of runners high you could only get when you were a heavy smoker forced to run for your life. Dexter was now jumping fences like hurdles as he ran for who knows where. The main hurdle, though, was escaping the two Hammer brothers and finding Bookie.
As he sprung over the last fence, he hit the wall. Not a literal wall, but the wall of exhaustion that allowed him to catch his foot atop the fence and plummet to the ground below in the third most painful experience he’d had in the last twenty-four hours. The first, of course being the gunshot, only slightly edging out the hit he’d taken form the car only two hours ago. He just lay there on the ground, the moist cold ground, as his threshold for pain was reaching its summit. Soon, the brothers would be right on top of him. He hoped they would do him the common courtesy of a bullet without a beating. Maybe these two idiots could finally get the job done right. Dexter cradled his now bloody face, and checked his mouth. Miraculously he still had his teeth. Loosing his teeth could kill his career, of course so could the Hammer brothers.
Amazingly enough, though, he didn’t care anymore.
He just lay there waiting for the inevitable. That’s when the younger brother jumped the fence. He jumped the fence and continued to run towards the other side of the yard. The he jumped the fence again. As soon as he had entered the yard, he was gone. The brother had jumped right over Dexter, missing him completely. As much of a shock as this was to Dexter, it was no real surprise. It fit right in with his special brand of luck. Because no matter how good those on the outside believed it was, he always suffered for it, be it a gunshot a fall to the hard concrete or a head on with some anonymous car. That’s when he decided to close his eyes, if not for just a moment, and try to remember where he’d gone wrong.

Dexter Pepper and Bookie. They’d gone up against the best of the best and come out on top every time. That was probably the problem. When a man gets it in his head that he can’t lose, then that man is in for a rude awakening. But what if it’s true? What if a man has it in him somehow to never lose? And to define losing, I would say to absolutely hit rock bottom, with no possible, conceivable options but to throw in the towel, surrender, or die. Rock bottom would be the end all, be all pits, no opportunity to get any lower.
This never happened to Dexter and Bookie.
There was always a silver lining, always a way out, and a place a lot worse than where they were. This was more of a curse than a blessing. Because if you get it in your head that you’re unbeatable, chances are you get sloppy in your work. If, though, you truly are unbeatable, you realize real quick that you still come up short, though not so short that you hit rock bottom, because there is no rock bottom for you, because you can’t lose, not ever entirely.
It was mixed up logic like this that gave Dexter his headaches. He rolled over and found that it was no dream. He was indeed lying in a pool of his own blood in the backyard of a suburban home. He stumbled to his feet, trying to keep his balance, and lit a cigarette. This time when he felt the back of his head, it had a sticky film on the wound. He chalked this up to the healing process and swaggered from the yard. The list now went as so…find some clothes, find some guns, find Bookie, and kill anyone who complicates the list.