“Are you listening to me?” Titi Felicia said. Her stern eyes bore into mine. As always, she wore a white scarf on her head and a housecoat decorated with sunflowers. “This will save your life.”

  My aunt was a santera. Some said she was a bruja, a witch. Others christened her a spiritualist. Yet others said she was clairvoyant. Regardless what they labeled her, Titi Felicia earned a great reputation in the ’hood for inventing remedies that actually worked. A lot of the people on the block didn’t go to doctors; they came to Titi Felicia when they were sick. For the past five years she’d been mixing all kinds of crazy concoctions, hoping that she would cure me of my HIV. They were all duds. This new version wouldn’t be any different.

  I glanced at the altar behind Titi. Catholic saints with black faces, rosary beads and multi-colored candles in nine-inch-tall glass jars with the words “Las Siete Potencias Africanas-Seven African Powers” etched on the front. There was no such thing as a miracle cure.

  “Come on Titi, we been through this before.”

  “Listen, mi’ja. I think I finally got this one right. But if you take it, you can never do heroin again.”

  “Why? I’m a tecata. Gonna die a tecata.”

  “Don’t say that. Trust me, this will work.” She squeezed my hand. “Make me a promise. Drink the potion. Wait twenty-four hours and don’t touch that street poison. If there’s no change, then do whatever you wish to do.”

  “Fine.”

  I chugged the blue liquid and gagged. It tasted strangely metallic.

  “Now can I get the ten dollars?” All I could think about was scoring some dope and shooting up.

  “No. I want you to stay here tonight. See how the potion works.”

  Agreeing too easily, I said, “Sure.”

  Later, while watching cheesy telenovelas, Titi Felicia fell asleep, and I stole a twenty from her purse and snuck out the apartment.

  I scored a couple of dime bags at a drug spot near New Horizons and went searching for Pito. He was most likely at our makeshift living space in an abandoned building on Morris Avenue.

  The shithole apartment was on the third floor of the dilapidated tenement building, which would collapse any day now. I sat on a milk crate and shivered as steamy breath spouted from my mouth. I studied the ugly puncture scars decorating my arm. The burning candle in the yellow and red can of Bustelo coffee flickered and creepy shadows undulated along the cracked, graffiti-covered walls of the funky room. Wind howled through the boarded-up windows like tortured spirits crying for help.

  I started thinking about back in the day when I was beautiful, healthy and hardworking. They said I could be an actress. Or a dancer. Off to Hollywood. They often forgot how smart I was. I was into reading and had excellent grades and was set on more realistic ambitions: becoming a social worker and helping my community. I earned a partial scholarship to attend Hostos University and my life was full of promise.

  Until I fell in love with Choco, who turned me on to dope, and I ended up chasing my heroin high all the way to oblivion.

  I watched Pito, who was parked on a stack of yellowing newspapers, hunched over, methodically laying out his “works” on top of a milk crate.

  Syringe.

  Bent spoon.

  Alcohol swabs.

  Two small bindles of H.

  Pito reminded me of those concentration camp survivors I saw in a documentary in high school. Skeletal and pasty, vacant eyes, mouth agape all the time. Might as well be the walking dead. Pito was my occasional lover. When he could actually get it up.

  It was okay. I’d lost interest in sex a few years ago, when I was cruising Hunt’s Point Avenue, the hooker paradise, turning tricks, and was snatched off the street by a group of thugs who dragged me back to an apartment and viciously ganged raped me for two days. There were six of them and when they grew tired, they used whatever was handy to keep raping me: broomstick, beer bottle, even a baseball bat. After they were done, they dumped me naked on the street in the middle of the night. After that ordeal I didn’t care about anything anymore.

  Pito cooked the heroin. We shot up. I waited.

  And waited.

  Nada.

  Odd. By this time I should’ve been kissing heaven and God, lost in my private paradise. Pito was already nodding, so the manteca was okay.

  Wrong.

  I dropped to the floor and my body went into violent convulsions. The spasms abruptly stopped after about a minute or so. I sat up, doubled over, and then gagged and heaved. My intestines felt as if they were tangled in razor wire and were getting shredded from the inside out.

  Blue bile spewed from my mouth. It glowed and oozed and seemed to be alive.

  I gawked at my arm. Underneath the scars and blistered skin, there was movement; it was as if giant slugs slithered up and down, distributing ripples of fiery pain through my body.

  I screamed and screamed, while Pito was lost on a blissful journey to heroin nirvana.

  Shafts of resplendent sunlight streamed through the gaps in the boarded up windows. I squinted and focused and realized Pito was standing over me. His eyes were crazy wide and his mouth was frozen in a terrified scream of silence.

  “What the fuck is your problem, yo?” I said.

  Pito pointed at me, tried to speak, but no words came out, just illogical babble. Then he jetted as if he’d seen the reaper.

  ‘Why was he trippin’?

  I sat up. No more pain. I brushed strands of hair from my face. Hey, wait a minute, my pelo was supposed to be short and matted, not shoulder-length and smooth as fine silk.

  My fingers crawled along the floor and picked up a piece of a broken mirror.

  What I saw made me scream again. But this time it wasn’t from pain; it was from shock.

  Because the face in the mirror wasn’t my own … .

  The bionic fingers pulverized the bowling ball, turning it into a pile of dust.

  “Out-fucking-standing!”

  Grande chuckled and nodded as he admired the swift, smooth motion of his new arm. Straight out of a Jim Cameron flick.

  In the vast study of the mansion, Dr. Wharfton stood in front of Grande, anxiously tugging on his scraggly salt and pepper beard. He didn’t look like much of a scientist with his cheap plum-colored polyester suit and uncombed curly hair. Grande leaned back in the plush leather chair behind his elegant mahogany desk and lit a cigar.

  “When will the steroids be ready, Doc?”

  “In a few days, we can test it.”

  “Chilly most,” Grande said. He wore a red tracksuit, a little too snug for his mass of muscle. Always wore tracksuits. Three hundred pounds and six-eight, he was a sight to behold. His head was crowned with a huge honey-hued Afro. “Make the doc happy, Carlos.”

  Carlos handed the doctor a duffel bag full of cash money. Wharfton raised his eyebrows and flashed a devilish smile.

  “I’ll call you as soon as the new steroids are ready, Mr. Grande.”

  “Excellente. Now why don’t you go buy yourself a nice suit, have a nice dinner, and get yo’self some nice pussy?”

  “Those are fine suggestions, Mr. Grande.”

  Grande held up his hand and admired titanium fingers as they performed a nimble dance. They’d eventually put latex skin over his arm. In some ways he liked the naked metal. It’ll inspire fear.

  The legend of how Grande lost his arm was well known on the streets of the South Bronx. His pops, Chucho “El Malo-The Bad One” Grande was a major player in the Bronx heroin epidemic of the seventies. He rolled with the likes of Harlem’s Nicky Barnes. Wasn’t around much. Johnny’s mom, Joanne, was schizophrenic. Most of the time it was like living with a zombie.

  One day, Johnny attempted to steal some money from his mom’s purse to buy some candy and comics. Though El Malo was pulling in huge sums of drug money every week, when Johnny’s mom caught the boy red-handed, she went berserk.

  As punishment, she held his hand over the flame of the gas stove. He shrieked as tender flesh burned and the sleeve of his flannel shirt caught fire. He rolled on the floor and his mom threw a pitcher of Kool-Aid on him and extinguished the flames. Johnny’s arm was badly burnt but Joanne didn’t take him to the hospital. She haphazardly bandaged him up and locked him in his room.

  When El Malo returned home and found his son with his arm burned and badly infected, he scooped his catatonic wife in his powerful arms, calmly carried her to the kitchen, said, “Basura,” which meant garbage, and flung her out the fifth-floor window.

  The doctors had to amputate ten-year-old Johnny’s arm due to infection.

  Soon after, rival dealers gunned down El Malo as he emerged from an evening of partying at the legendary Salsa nightclub El Corso.

  El Malo would have been proud of the criminal empire his son built from the ground up. Grande was the biggest drug kingpin in New York. Heroin, cocaine, ecstasy, weed and crystal meth. He was the Wal-Mart of the drug world, and like Wal-Mart, he was relentless about squashing the competition. American capitalism at its best.

  Carlos’s cell phone rang. He flipped it open. Grande noticed his lieutenant’s face turned pale as he listened to the caller. He hung up and his gaze became despondent.

  “I got bad news.”

  I strutted my way through throngs of pedestrians who pulled up coat collars and pulled down wool hats, protecting themselves from the mercilessly frigid wind. Each side of 149th Street was lined with mostly ugly, beige and brown brick commercial buildings featuring cuchifrito joints, 99 cent outlets, liquor stores, beauty parlors and cell phone emporiums. All the usual fine ghetto establishments.

  Energy pulsed through my body. There were no more aches. No weakness. Vision like a hawk’s. Heightened senses and reflexes.

  I noticed people checking me out. A beautiful babe in a torn-up bubble coat and crappy clothes. A crew of papi chulo homeboys whistled at me. No one had whistled at my decrepit ass in years.

  What did this mean? Was I still HIV positive or did the potion cure me? I needed to go to New Horizons and get tested.

  Lost in thought, I wandered into the middle of traffic.

  Heard screams.

  Blare of car horns.

  Screech of tires.

  A tow truck slammed into me. I lost my bearings for a second as I soared through the air. Landed on the roof of a parked Toyota and the impact of my body flattened the roof and the explosion of shattered glass sent onlookers scurrying for cover.

  “Dios mio! She must be dead.”

  Every bone in my body should’ve been broken and yet there was only the slightest pain. I wanted to giggle, I felt so fucking alive.

  Like a ghetto phoenix, I climbed out of the wreckage.

  A huge crowd had gathered, expecting to see a corpse.

  Not today, people.

  They backed away, stunned that I was still walking and didn’t have a goddamned scratch. Many of them made the sign of the cross or kissed the crucifixes hanging from gold chains on their necks. Latinos thrive on superstition. Must’ve figured God saved me.

  Or maybe the Devil.

  Sirens. Time to jet.

  I broke out. Last thing I wanted was the cops hauling me in for questioning. Needed to get to Titi’s so she could help me figure this surreal situation out.

  I sprinted down a side street and suddenly noticed the world seemed to move in slow motion as I zoomed past moving cars. I had no idea how fast I was going, but the soles of my sneakers started to smoke.

  I never made it to Titi’s crib. Ended up back at the abandoned building. Withdrawal symptoms sucker punched me something fierce and I thought I’d pass out. Last thing I wanted to do was shoot up because I was afraid it might reverse the effects of the potion.

  But it was happening anyway. I was changing back. Track marks and scars magically reappeared. Gauntness returned. I couldn’t deal with the excruciating anguish of withdrawal, so I shot up and prayed for the best.

  “This is the piece of shit that killed my godmother?” Grande asked Carlos as they stood in an abandoned garage near the Terminal Market.

  Carlos nodded as he studied Pito, who was sitting on the floor hugging his body and rocking back and forth. Ghosts in his eyes. The junkie had no idea what he’d done and what a terrible price he was about to pay.

  Bionic fingers reached down and dug into Pito’s skull. Grande lifted him and held up the junkie as his arms flailed and his legs kicked at the air.

  “You know that old lady you killed? My madrina. Nice lady never hurt anybody.”

  Pito’s eyes bulged with fear. Carlos noticed that the pathetic junkie finally realized why he was there.

  Grande squeezed, and just like a bowling ball, Pito’s head was decimated. Bone and blood and brains splattered all over Grande’s tracksuit.

  Carlos turned away in disgust. He’d whacked plenty of people in his day, but it was with a gun or a knife. What Grande was doing made him want to vomit.

  His boss flung the little man’s body, which crashed against the concrete wall leaving a splash of crimson.

  “Doesn’t he have a girlfriend?” Grande asked as he wiped gray and red matter from his face with a handkerchief.

  “Yeah,” Carlos said. “Another junkie. Bitch named Mildred Sosa. On the street they call her Dred.”

  “Find her. Bring her to me.”

  I was jolted out of my sleep by a gang of rats scurrying around. Felt a hundred percent. I got on my feet, checked out my reflection. I was back to my old self. My new self. The heroin mixed with potion somehow gave me back my youth and these strange powers? The very thing that destroyed my life, was now saving me?

  Men laughed.

  “Please … no … please,” a woman’s desperate voice cried out.

  Before this day, I would’ve minded my business and kept moving. Instead, I picked up a rusty, three-foot-long pipe from the floor and went to investigate the calls for help. I stepped into the hallway. The noises were coming from the apartment next door. I peered through the open doorway and saw a skinny teenage girl pinned down on a filthy mattress by three burly men, who laughed as they ripped off her clothes and slapped the shit out of her.

  “We’re gonna fuck you ’til ya pass out, ya little ho,” the black thug with the bald head said.

  Rage swept over me as images of my own rape flashed before me. Same kind of despicable predators. I stepped into the room, twirling the pipe, and said, “Leave her alone.”

  My voice sounded so different. Soft, eloquent and seductive.

  The three men turned, shocked at first. I recognized them, though they didn’t recognize me. They were neighborhood scumbags who’d been snatching girls off the street and violating them.

  The black one grinned. “Holy shit,” he said, as he stood up. His pants were unzipped and his prick was erect “What have we got here, boys? We hit da fuckin’ jackpot, yo. Lookit this fine piece o’ ass.”

  “I’m yours if you can take me,” I said.

  He laughed and drew a switchblade. “I dunno what you thinkin’, but youse in tha wrong place at tha wrong time.”

  “Speak for yourself … .”

  I raised my arm over my head and flung the pipe like a spear. Thwack! The thug’s eyes widened in shock as the pipe was impaled in his throat, the other end protruding from the back of his neck. Blood gushed and he toppled over.

  An intense erotic charge hit me and I found myself aroused. My powers were intoxicating.

  The rest was a blur. It was over in a matter of seconds. The other two men were also dead. Necks broken with barely any effort.

  The girl rushed out while I studied the two corpses. Their heads were completely twisted around. What have I become? Some kind of beautiful killing machine? I didn’t feel bad the three predators were dead. They got what they deserved.

  Screw ’em.

  Titi Felicia was on her knees and muttered the Lord’s Prayer as Rolando shoved the barrel of the automatic against the back of her head. She shut her eyes tight. The last thing she saw were her cracked, blood-drenched dentures skittering across the warped linoleum floor of her kitchen.

  She’d told them nothing. She didn’t know where Dred was, but Johnny had ordered them to whack her anyway.

  Carlos watched Rolando pull the trigger. The old lady’s body dropped to the floor. Rolando unscrewed the silencer and slipped his gun in the waistband of his pants.

  “Where to next?” Rolando said.

  “Stay here with Eddie. See if she shows up. I’m gonna hit the streets with Lucky.”

  Rolando shrugged, went to the fridge, took out a plate of leftovers and started to eat an empanada while standing over the old lady’s body.

  “You’re a class act, Rolando.”

  “Whaaa?” Rolando said between bites of the meat patty.

  I went up the stairs of Titi Felicia’s building and was overcome with a sharp sense of apprehension. I pulled up the collar of the military trench coat I’d taken from one of the rapists I smoked.

  I knocked on Titi’s door. No answer. Knocked again. Stomach tightened. I turned the knob. The door was unlocked. Bad sign. I slipped into the apartment and silently tiptoed down the long hallway, paintings of Jesus Christ, and other holier than thou Catholic saints watching me from the walls.

  When I saw Titi on the kitchen floor, my heart broke into a million pieces. The puddle of blood was still spreading, so she’d been executed only moments ago. Why? Why would somebody torture and kill her?

  “Stand up and slowly turn around, puta.”

  I obeyed. Two men with big guns aimed at me entered the kitchen. One appeared to be Mexican. The other Dominican.

  “Who the fuck are you?” the Dominican said.

  “Dred.”

  “Fuckin’ funny, yo. We was tole Dred’s a butt ugly tecata with a scarred up face and no teeth.”

  “Was.”

  “I dunno whachoo been smokin’, mami, but tell us where Dred’s at and you die quick. Otherwise …”