Marathon
by Billy Dorsey
It was a night like all others before in 5th Ward, Houston, TX, at 2929 Des Chaumes, in the wee hours of the morning, with the smells of mold and old marijuana smoke hanging in the stale air. Tellas, his wife Michelle, and the rest of the Down 2 Long crew were in the front room of the studio, playing Grand Theft Auto on PS2, or watching some sporting event on the big screen tv they orbited frequently when it wasn't their turn to record, while I sat in my usual black leather chair in the studio control room, just down the hall. Big Dwight, a mountain of a man, sat in the back room of the studio, a makeshift bedroom that reeked of rat urine and old dog feces (and hosted the sometimes-operational security camera monitors), counting the money from his latest hustle. Keetron, a gravel voiced young rapper from southern Louisiana who'd recently become affiliated with Down 2 Long, was in the recording booth, a huge padded room with a large glass window cut into the wall directly facing me, spitting a verse for the compilation album Tellas had paid me (handsomely) to produce and engineer, and, as Keetron was a gifted artist but still learning to lock in his timing on the mic, we'd settled in for a long night of recording.
However, around 3 AM, hours from wrapping our session (we usually recorded until the sun came up, and then slept much of the next day until time to return to the studio after nightfall, like musical vampires), I saw the door to the booth swing open, inside the room with Keetron, to his right (my left). The next few events unfolded as in slow motion; Keetron glancing at the door, then doing a double take...him raising his hands in the air and backing away from the door as a silver .45 came into view pointed at his chest, and the rest of the person holding the gun walking into view, ski mask on, and looking directly at me. Now, guns in this studio were nothing new; pretty much every artist who came thru the doors to work with me was a drug dealer, many of whom hustled alongside the owner of the studio, and as such, I'd become inured to the sight of people with guns tucked in waistbands, guns in pockets, guns everywhere. I can even recall on the night of 9/11/01, one of the rappers, J.T., high on marijuana dipped in formaldehyde and pistol in hand, walking into the studio control room where I sat, running a session, as he screamed out, "I'ma KILL him!!" Since he said, "him," and not, "you", I relaxed, just a bit, and asked him who exactly it was that he intended to kill, thinking that someone in the front room of the studio had ticked him off or something. He replied, still high out of his mind, "Bin Laden!!! I'ma KILL him!" It appears that the news channel on the big screen tv in the front room of the studio was incessantly showing footage of the planes crashing into the Twin Towers, and so J.T. took it upon himself, in his drug induced haze, to hunt down Bin Laden.
So pistols were commonplace for me by this particular night, but what was not commonplace was the ski mask. When the masked intruder looked at me, I tried to slide down in my seat, but with the large glass window separating the control room from the recording booth, there was nowhere for me to hide. He motioned to someone I could not yet see in the hallway leading from the booth to the control room, and I knew I'd run out of time. I had, earlier that day, been paid by South Park Mexican, a prominent artist in the Houston Hip Hop scene who regularly purchased tracks from not only me but several up and coming producers in the city every Tuesday and Thursday. This money was enough to pay 2 months of my rent (which was behind at that time), as well as utilities, and I tried to hide it under the old cloth covering of the seat next to mine; unfortunately for me, as soon as I tried, the door to the control room burst open, and another two armed intruders with masks on ran in, looked around, and, upon finding me, pointed their guns at me, telling me to get my hands in the air. Rather than appear to be reaching for a weapon and getting myself shot, I did as instructed, and watched in horror as one of the intruders grabbed not only the wad of cash I'd earned from South Park Mexican, but my box of disks which contained all of my music production files, and stuffed them into his pocket as they motioned me back out to the hallway.
Upon stepping down out of the control room into the hallway and being pushed towards the front of the studio to the tv area, I noticed at least 3 other gunmen herding everyone else in the studio to the same area, and forcing them, with gun muzzles pressed to the back of everyone's heads, to lie face down on the floor. I heard the sounds of a struggle from the back bedroom area, where two other gunmen were trying, unsuccessfully, to break the door down into the area where Big Dwight was holed up with his money and likely a stash of dope, but due to Big Dwight's size, they were making no progress in their efforts and ultimately gave up, heading back down towards me. Next thing I knew, the gunman whose pistol was pressed against the back of my skull told me to put my nose on the floor, as did the other gunmen with all of the others in the studio lying on the floor, and I instantly knew that we were all dead. My first thought was of my mom, who I knew was somewhere in Shreveport praying for me, and of the fact that I would never get to tell her how much I loved her, and my next thought was of the fact that I would never have any kids to carry on my name. I said a prayer to ask God to forgive me for all of my sins, so that when the bullet tore thru my brain, I'd be with Him in Heaven...
Wow , th spirit of th Lord came upon you as your spirit cried out to Him ,thts powerful , and to say th power flow of a praying parent ... Thks for sharing .
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