A Memory Forgotten, Chapter 1-"Stay Home"

Well, here's the new story I'm working on. Hope you guys like it.

Chapter 1: Stay Home


"Look Charlie, I know you're not the new guy anymore around here, but you're still not ready for a job this big. Besides, you'll get yourself killed and we need you alive, you're our best driver."

A big mob-like figure was sitting in a black leather chair, smoking a cuban cigar and explaining to a younger male how it was in his best interest to just be a driver for a bank job they were setting up.

The young man being Charles Remy, known to his friends as Charlie. The mob figure being Big Mike, gang lord of the southside of New Jersey. Charlie had only been in the gang for about 8 months now. They had him starting out doing small jobs like mugging people or robbing convenient stores, then had moved him up to picking up packages from scumbags in dark alleys. He'd kept climbing up the ladder, working his way up to bigger jobs with more payoffs. He was told he was gonna be the get-away driver for this bank job, but he'd already been doing a lot of driving for the past two months and he wanted more.

"Big Mike, I appreciate you lookin' after me and all, but with all due respect, I do believe I am ready to do something bigger than being the driver. Just give me this one chance and I promise I won't disappoint you," Charlie said, with the with hopes that he could, for once, get out from behind the wheel and get some of that cold cash locked up in the safe of the NJB.

Big Mike took another puff of his cigar then looked Charlie in the eye and responded, "No Charlie, you're the driver, that's final. If you do ok tonight, I might consider you for a future job, but not tonight. I already got Davey, Joey, Lugs and Bobby doing this job. Another figure will just get in the way and screw things up. Now, go get some rest, you're gonna need it for tomorrow night."

Charlie sighed and nodded in agreement with his boss. After all, who was he to argue with the boss? He'd get his head blown off for such a blasphemous thought. Lesser men had been killed just for looking at Big Mike the wrong way.

Charlie walked out of the office into a garage area where some of the gang was working on choppin' up cars so they could be sold for parts. On the other side, there was another room which lead to a poker room. Bobby and Davey were in there playing Texas Hold 'Em with some of the new guys. Knowing Bobby and Davey, they had some plan to swindle the new guys out of their money. Charlie went outside of the garage to the back, where there was a fenced off area where they kept some pit bulls as guard dogs. Charlie looked down at them, they knew him well enough by now not to bark at him. He reached into his pocket, pulled out some slices of beef jerky and threw it to the dogs who fought each other for a bit of something more than typical dog food.

Charlie leaned against a metal wall, grabbed his pack of cigarettes and a Zippo lighter. As he lit his cigarette he kept thinking how good it would feel to finally get into the big times with this gang. To be one of the top dogs, so to speak. He took a drag of his cigarette and exhaled the smoke through his nose. His breath was so cold that he couldn't tell if there was any left-over smoke coming out his mouth or not.

"Well fellas, enjoy the jerky, I'll see you guys tomorrow night." Charlie said to the dogs as he started walking away from the building to a set of tracks as he headed for his lower eastside apartment. He started to zip up his jacket and adjust his gloves and then wiped the ashes from his cigarette off of his pants.

The next morning, Charlie had a knock on his door. He was already lying in his full sized bed, his top sheet covering his lower half of his body. He raised his bare arms to rub his eyes as the knocking got louder.

"This better be important of someone is gonna fuckin die!" he said to himself as he tried to get enough strength to get out of bed. "Just a fuckin minute!" Charlie shouted as he tried to get a pair of pants on. He sluggishly walked to his door and unlocked the locks, opened the door and said, "What the fuck do you want?"

The UPS delivery guy was a lil' taken back from the question, but quickly regained his composure and answered, "Just got a delivery for you sir. Can you sign here please?"
Charlie looked at the envelope and then looked back at the delivery man and replied, "Damn dude, I'm sorry, I'm just not used to being woken up this early in the morning and I wasn't expecting a package. You're just doing your job right?"
"Right, sir, and it's 3 o'clock already,", the delivery guy replied.
"So you guys do shipping 24 hours now? This is the first 3am delivery I ever got." Charlie asked.
The delivery guy looked a bit confused and said, "No sir, it's 3 in the afternoon."
Charlie's look went from a bit zombified to a bit of shock. He just realized he'd been asleep for ten hours straight. Guess a shot of Jack and a sleep-aid pill do wonders for insomniacs like himself.

"Thanks man, again I'm sorry for yelling at ya earlier" Charlie said.
"It's ok sir, I've heard worse. Thanks, have a good day," the delivery guy said as he handed Charlie the envelope and then headed to the stairwell down the hallway.
Charlie went back into his apartment and shut the door behind him. He locked all seven locks on the door. When you're in a gang, you have to take all precautions you can. Security is one important thing to have to keep your home safe in a line of work such as his. For Charlie, seven locks was just the icing on the cake. Next to the door was a table with an assortment of weapons. Knives, guns, brass knucks, nunchucks, throwing daggers, Chinese stars, and a baseball bat. Next to that was his rifle closet. Anything from pump action handles, to A-K47's, to 12 gauge shotguns. Above his front door was his pride and joy, his elephant gun. Ever since he'd watched the movie "Tremors" he wanted one. He figured if Reba could handle one, so could he. He'd never used it once.

Charlie went into the kitchen, grabbed some eggs and a frying pan, turned the stove on, sprayed the pan with some cooking spray, then cracked the eggs onto the side of the pan and let them drip out of the shells. He threw the shells into the garbage can. As he stood there cooking the two eggs, he reached for his cigarettes and zippo. He lit a morning smoke for himself, then looked at the envelope he had just received. It was addressed to him as "Charlie". No last name, no return address on it, either. He was assuming it was from one of the gang. He opened it up to pull out a plain white sheet of paper. He flipped the paper over to see that in black marker, it read "If you want to keep your memory, then stay home tonight Charlie." His expression went from curious to confused in half of a second.

"What the fuck?" Charlie said to himself. He quickly grabbed his cell phone off the night stand next to his bed and called someone. "Hey Bobby, is this some sort of joke? What do you mean 'what?' I got the package delivered to me. Is this some sort of pre-job prank or something? What do you mean 'you don't know what I'm talking about'? Ok, do you know of anyone who sent me a package today? No? Alright then. I'm gonna bring this letter tonight at the meeting then you'll see what I'm talking about. Ok, later." Charlie ended the call with Bobby, who apparently had no clue as to what Charlie was rambling about. 'This is fuckin weird,' Charlie thought. A loud sound all of a sudden started going off. It was his smoke detector. The eggs were burning. "Shit!" Charlie said out-loud as he took the frying pan off the stove and threw it in the sink and ran cold water over the now ruined eggs.

"Just pefect." He said to himself. He stood there shaking his head in disbelief, more so of the letter than his ruined breakfast.