It's amazing to me how bad the barrel of a gun tastes when it's being jammed down your throat.  I don't mean bad in the sense of "oh my god, I'm going to die and this is the last thing I'll ever see," but rather bad in the sense that you've just tongue-kissed someone who forcefed themselves the contents of a newborn baby's diaper.  Yeah, that kind of bad.  How did I wind up in this predicament?  Well, that would almost be a funny story, provided that it happened to someone else and that it wasn't true.  Except that in this case, it didn't and it is.  Every word of it.

The day started off like any other day does, usually with the sun rising, though sometimes if it's really cloudy, you can't use that as a barometer.  I woke up in a puddle of what smelled like a mixture of gasoline and urine but, surprisingly, tasted like neither.  I smelled.  Bad.  I smelled like spoiled laundry soap (if such a thing were possible) and what I can only imagine an chimpanzee smells like after reproductive night at the zoo.  In other words, I smelled exactly like that kid who I used to make fun in grade school.  I needed to learn to not sleep on the streets at night.  God, how low my life has sunk.

My throat was dry.  I made a mental note to myself to not make a habit of eating condoms for dinner, regardless of how edible the package says they are.  The cherry flavor didn't even taste like cherry!  I needed a drink, preferably something a lot stronger than water.  Maybe like holy water.  I'd never had it but I can only assume that blessed water would quench a thirst a hell of a lot quicker than standard Aquafina.  It's funny, there's a church on every damn street corner in America, but good luck finding one when you're thirsty.  Religious convenience my ass.

The city of the day was Seattle, something that I knew absolutely nothing about.  I don't even remember how I got here for the most part.  Sure, after a bottle of 151, injecting methaqualone directly into your heart sounds like a good idea, but those ideas don't often translate into good practice.  Still, it did what the man promised: it got me out of Los Angeles and it cured my hangover.  I was pretty much on my last leg in LA.  Granted, I'm not much better here in Seattle but at least people don't know me or what I've done.  Call it a fresh start, even if I don't feel so fresh at this very moment.  If only I had something to cure that not-so-fresh feeling.

I didn't figure that it would take long for me to run into trouble again.  It seems that I have a knack for it.  I'm like the Jack Bauer of the real world, except slightly more retarded and definitely not as popular.  Plus I think my days are a little shorter than his, at least in the metaphorical sense.  I needed to get out of these clothes.  Hell, I needed a lot of things, but without any money and smelling like a carnival aftermath, I wasn't going to get much.  I suppose I could panhandle for a little while; post up on a street corner and yell about the forthcoming apocalypse.  Yell about how they put fluoride in the water to control our thoughts or how George Michael was a CIA operative and the bathroom incident was just a part of his master plan.  Maybe I could sell my soul and dance like an idiot for anyone with some spare change or I could just sit there claiming to be a war vet with a revoked pension.  Any of those would have worked.  Any of those would have been preferable.

I was stumbling down 125th Street, having asked a passerby where the nearest church was.  There's a mennonite congregation up the road, he said.  I didn't know much about anything mennonite but I did know that they practiced pacifism and nonresistance, if such a thing is still possible under present religious zealotry.  That's probably the easiest place for me to score some holy water and maybe dip into a coffer or two for some change if no one was looking.  What's the worst thing they could do, kick me out?  I'm pretty sure that I'm already going to hell anyway, assuming that I'm not already in it here on earth.

I was about a block or two away from where the man said the church would be when I passed what appeared to be some kind of social club.  I wasn't trying to pay too much attention -- or at least look like I wasn't.  I didn't need any trouble right now and I was in no shape to fend it off should it come looking.  A shadow of my former self.  From what I did see, it looked to be a lot of expensive suits mulling around.  Suits with accents.  Suits that suddenly got quiet as I shuffled by.  Suits with wary eyes.  And if it wasn't for that slight dip in the concrete, suits that probably wouldn't have bothered me at all.

Such as it was, I tripped, compelling my face form a sudden relationship with the pavement.  In seconds, before the pain in my head even seemed to register, pairs of hands were on me, yanking me off the ground.  I stood, feeling sheepish, staring at an army of suits, suits that glared at me in distrust.  It was awkward, like listening to another man go to the bathroom or having uncomfortable sex with your sister.  Ok, not that comfortable sex with your sister is any less awkward, but still it's possible to find a happy medium.  Ok, fine, scratch the sister thing.

"Why you smell like cow?" asked one of the men, my mind desperately racing to place his accent.

"I- uh," I managed, feeling about as stupid as I sounded.

"You need job, stink man?" said the voice of another man, though the accent was similar.  "We got real job, easy."

I wasn't up on my Eastern Bloc countries but the accent was definitely Russian.  Well, more broken English than Russian but you get the idea.  About the only thing I knew about Russians was the fact that I once tried "kotlety pozharskie" and it was ok.  Not great, but ok.  I bought it once at this international all night diner but I really don't see how that is relevant here.

It was true, I did need a job but I did have to ask myself just how far I was willing to go.  Looking and smelling like I did, it doesn't take much for one to think that the job they had in mind wasn't entirely on the up and up.  Or safe and legal for that matter.

"How do you know that I don't already have a job?" I asked, partly to buy more time to think and partly to be sarcastic.  I'm never a strong conversationalist when I'm nervous.

"Ha ha," came what amounted to forced laughter.  "Stink man think funny."  His demeanor changed considerably.  "I not joke with you.  I have job to be done.  You want?  And no joke."

I watched the hand of the man next to him slowly creep toward his waistband and it didn't take a rocket scientist to know what was coming next.  What I said next determined whether I was to live or to be dragged off into some alley, disposed of, and forgotten about.  Human refuse.  I briefly wonder what day is trash day around these parts.  I'd hate to be found on a Wednesday.

"Fine, sure, I'll take.  What's the gig?"

"Take package and deliver three blocks west.  Turkish bathroom house."

"Uh, 'bathroom house?'"

"Yes, bathroom house.  Where Turk people take bath and oil each other."

"Oh, you mean a bathouse?  A Turkish bathhouse?"

"I say that, yes.  Stop the repeat.  Checkov, get man package."

The man who answered to Checkov went inside and returned quickly with a plain box wrapped in brown paper.  It wasn't any bigger than shoebox.  Payless, size 9.  You could pay more, but why?  In my hands, the box felt heavier than it looked, much like that girl that I took home for a one-night stand after an all night drinking binge.  These things happen.

"You return after box drop," said the nameless Russian.  "Return for money payment."

I took one look around again at the sneering suits; the collection of Russian individuals gathered before me, the majority of whom I'm sure were entirely fine and upstanding members of the community.  There was a big yellow sign in the window (written in Russian, of course) that was far too long for me to even attempt to translate.  I nicknamed it "the shop."

After telling Checkov and the unknown man that I'd return shortly, I shuffled off in the direction of the bathhouse.  Sorry, "bathhouse room" as it was so described to me.  What would a pair of Russians want with a bunch of greased up Turks?  The box was far too small to carry a sheep, so this couldn't have been a peaceful offering.  Not that I had any clue whether sheep were actually traded as peace offerings but it sounded suitably stereotypical so I stuck with it.

I had never been to a bathhouse before.  I'd seen them in the movies and as the butt of many homoerotic jokes, but to actually step foot into one was something else.  Heck, maybe if they enjoyed their gift from the Russians, I could step in a take a shower before I left.  Or bath.  I don't know if they have showers in a bathhouse, just like you wouldn't find a snake in a birdhouse.

As I neared the bathhouse, the scene was eerily familiar.  The same suits, the same muted tones.  The same sets of wary eyes.  Christ, what did I get myself into?  I made no effort to conceal the box, that having not been a part of the instructions that I was given, and approached the first suit I saw.

"Hi, I'm from-" was about all I got out before I was grabbed from behind, a hand placed over my mouth, and the box snatched from my hand.  A split second later, I felt the pressure of a gun barrel against my temple and I was ushered inside.

"It's from the Russians," I heard a voice behind me say.

The hand released itself from my mouth and I toppled to the floor in a truly queer fashion as I was pushed from behind.  Unseen hands grabbed at my hair and yanked me to a kneeled position.  The main entree of steel gun barrel was jammed down my throat.  When you're kneeling and sucking down the barrel of a gun, you get a real good look at it.

There was a lot of commotion and voices behind me, most of it either unintelligible, in Turkish, or both.  There was a brief burst of loud shouting and then sudden quiet.  Well, relative quiet.  I could hear the people behind me breathing deeply.  My mind began to wander.  I start the day waking up from a quaalude-induced hangover in a strange city and a sore throat.  I'm miles away from anything I know and I'm eating a gun barrel for breakfast.  Things could be worse I suppose.  What in the hell have I gotten myself into?  How did I get myself into it?

Just as suddenly as the quiet came, it went.  There was fevered commotion going on unseen by me.  The gun barrel was withdrawn from my mouth slowly and I turned my head slightly to see what was going on to my rear.  A mistake.  Something that I can only assume to be the butt of the recently extracted gun came crashing down into my skull.  Blackness.  When I awoke...

To be continued...