Prologue
Most people go through life never knowing pain. Theythinkthey've felt pain, but they've never feltreal truepain. Trust me.
I know pain.
Right here, right now, in this warehouse. This warehouse—with its humid air that breeds that slick, slimy sweat over your flesh—this is where I feel real pain.
And I know with this much pain, that scorching burn, then that numb feeling—where the only thing you hear and feel is the slowing hard thumps of your dying heart. I know.God, do I know. My breaths are numbered.
I only have a few left in me.
You know what's weird when you're dying, those last few thoughts you have? They're not:Oh shit, I'm gonna die. Not for me anyway. My last thoughts are a distinct memory—me and my friends watching the carnies set up for the Feast of San Gennaro.
While the rest of the world went to Little Italy, my neighborhood celebrated the feast and the end of summer in the vacant lot right off the bay, across a sea of tall ragweed. We'd stand there with our fingers weaving through the chain-link fence, smelling like sweat and ocean salt, thunder rumbling behind us.
Me, Angelo and Giana. My sisters were too young at the time to tag along with us. I remember like it was yesterday, the big steel arms of the Scrambler and sticky leathered seats of the Tilt-A-Whirl being put together like some complicated mechanical puzzle. My eyes squinting in the hot summer sun. Just to the left of us, the sky heavy with black-bottomed clouds and streaks of jagged electric heat slashing across them. My fingers biting tighter at the links of wire on the fence trying to get a glimpse of the big Ferris Wheel; that great whir of monstrous machinery that let you touch the stars. The one I planned on taking Giana on and getting to feel the heat of her lips against mine for the very first time.
"I heard they were putting up a big roller coaster this year. One even faster than the Cyclone at Coney Island," Giana said. The sweet tang of her sweat mixed with the salty air made my muscles ache, parts of me to wake up, harden. "Corrado, you goin’ to go on the big roller coaster?"
"You asking me to take you on the roller coaster, G?"
"Maybe I am." A fine mist of rain began to settle over us, a relief from the scorching sun that was somehow still burning bright, side by side with the storm.
"Yeah, well, I'm asking Margo to go on the coaster with me. I'll put my hand around her shoulder and grab onto her tits," Angelo rumbled next to her, walking closer to the big mechanical monsters.
Giana tilted her head back and laughed. It was one of those things I liked about Giana Acerbi, she wasn't a normal prissy little princess. She was grinning up at me, those pale blue eyes of hers dancing, small droplets of rain sticking to her dark lashes. "You're not scared of a big coaster, are you, Corrado?"
"I ain't scared of nothing, G."
She was thirteen years old, and had a pair of lips that had me waking up in the middle of the night with sticky warmth spurting out of my body, fireworks behind my lids. Her body was just starting to change into soft curves and it was all I could think about. Especially then, that moment, with the cool drizzle of the rain falling across her little white tank top, the dark rose tips of her nipples becoming steadily visible through the material. I wanted to rub my fingers in slow circles around them.
Suck on them through the white cotton of her shirt.
I bet she tasted like cherries.
But that was years ago, well, almost ten years, maybe less. I did get to take Giana on that coaster, holding her warm hand the whole time, and I did get to kiss those perfect lips. It was the last day I got to see her, though. It was the day she died. Her and Angelo. Her and all of them.
And now it's my turn.
Today's the day I die.
Lying in a pool of my own blood surrounded by monsters.
People don't usually believe in monsters, do they? Most people get told by their parents that there are no such things as monsters.
Let me tell you,
monsters
are
real.
My father taught me about real monsters. Giana and Angelo's father taught us all aboutrealmonsters. They're made of flesh and bone, hidden deep inside the minds of men. These aren't the kind of monsters that come fresh out of horror movies with the telltale decaying green skin and a penchant for eating flesh. No. The real monstersaremen. Men with hidden guns, violent fantasies, and greed that burns deep in their bellies.
I know these monsters well. I've lived in their world for so long that I easily forget where they end and I began. I'm a monster too.
We're all monsters here.
