"Liam, wake up, you have to go to work," is the first thing I hear when I wake up from my mother. Exhausted, I pick up my old, broken phone, seeing that it's already 5:00 a.m. sharp. Knowing that if I take any longer, the commute will be a total mess, I jump up and run straight to the bathroom.
After getting ready in a hideous uniform, I join my parents and sister at the table. The meal consists of arepas with egg and cheese. I eat as quickly as I can without speaking to my family at the table. I'm so late for those 10 extra minutes I decided to sleep in. Seeing how late it's getting, I decide to leave, knowing I'd have to put up with a scolding from my boss if I was late again. I grab my backpack and run to public transportation. By a divine miracle, a bus had an empty seat. I was happy to know I wouldn't have to stand for 40 minutes. I thought today would be a great day and took a nap, all of this without knowing the disaster that would come.
Arriving at work 5 minutes before opening time, I still think it's going to be a good day, until the shutters are raised and I notice a man sitting in the upper corner of the industrial workshop where I'm exploited. We exchange glances, and I can't help but feel disgusted and tense as he approaches.
"Hi Liam, the boss is waiting for you on the second floor."
Hearing this makes my blood run cold, knowing I'll be standing in front of that bastard again.
Walking up the stairs, seeing that gray, rusty metal door, I begin to hear the pitiful moans of several people.
Without even knocking, he bursts in, yelling, "Hey boss, the idiot's here!"
Wanting to punch him in the face, I decide to breathe and go through that door, entering a totally different world. There were several tables, many chemical instruments, a lot of cocaine being pressed into bales by women in their underwear, men with mini-Uzis in their waistbands and others with revolvers in their hands. Looking in front of them all, I find a middle-aged man, someone I wish I'd never met in my life, someone I'd like to make disappear in hydrofluoric acid. The bastard who destroyed my life, Eduardo Florez, or as we know those whose lives have been destroyed, "The Mechanic."
"It's time you paid me, you crappy engineer."
"I designed this entire lab, I gave you the formulas for the chemicals you needed, I gave you all the money I had. What else do you want me to do for you?" I respond in an obviously irritated tone,
and am met with a punch to the pit of the stomach from the idiot who brought me there, whom I dubbed "mangy dog."
On my knees on the floor, with part of my breakfast vomited in front of me and a rage that was beginning to consume me, I listen.
"For someone so smart, you do things that are really stupid. How about you shut up before I stab you in the back?"
Looking at the mangy dog, thinking about beating his face in, I hear footsteps in front of me approaching until he's right next to me, and he puts his hand on my shoulder. It was Florez.
"Look, kid, I'm the one who decides when your debt is paid off, and right now you're a long way from paying me, so stop thinking about it. You chose this. Of course, you can leave and disappear on your own at any time, but your debt will still be there, and I'll make sure to collect every last peso you owe me. Whether it's with you, or by making your mother a prostitute, selling your father's organs, or selling your little sister to another country. They pay very well, in fact. So do my homework, or maybe they'll do it for you."
With eyes red with anger and a voice like I'd chewed through glass, I respond, "What do you want me to do?"
"It's not complicated at all, really. There's a vacancy for a delivery driver since the last idiot couldn't read the addresses and ended up taking an order from Doña Blanca to Jackal territory. Obviously, he didn't come out alive. I hope you know how to read addresses well."
Not wanting to listen a moment longer, I respond.
"I understand what you want, now tell me what the fuck you want me to deliver and where."
"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA That's why I'm happy to work with smart people. Here are two kilograms of Blue Dragon hybrid," he says, handing me two packages of blue-spotted weed, perfectly pressed into a rectangular shape. "Take them to the Bahía Real shopping center. He'll be waiting for you on the second floor. Ask for Miguel Sinley at location number fourteen. Just deliver the package and come back. Simple, right?"
He takes the package. I get up and angrily leave to make the delivery, unaware that it would be the most dangerous day of my life and the beginning of my journey as the world's greatest drug dealer.
Wanting to save some money, I decided to walk, crossing the city neighborhood by neighborhood, street by street, under the hot sun that never goes away in my city, sweating profusely from every part of my body, I think about the day everything went wrong.