“Oh no, lame he ain’t,

My Man be bringin’ the pain—

Bitchez, bringing what yo cain’t,

Whooping yo bitch-ass with raised cane.”

-Insane Woman, Asquith and North

Such-like she sang, naked beneath the cloud-framed moon, grinning in its narrow way, her singing having evolved from garbled tongues, to gibberish and finally to a throaty butchery of the English language.

He then noticed that the naked woman, breasts spilling over his forearm above where his palm rested on his cane with every heaving of her chest, was clutching at him with her long red nails, gyrating against his leg with her loins, snaking her legs around his bleeding shin, the shin concealed by his fine black trousers.

He looked down over his shoulder to her as the wide man lay dying and she looked up at him with magnetically lurid eyes, yes full of lust. The fight had wrought a wicked transformation in this woman, now naked but for a G-string.

“Maaaaaay Man, with the heavy han!” she sang, as she released him and strutted over to the dying man, reached her hand into his open belly, clawed around as the whale-of-a Latino quivered and shrieked. Her hand snaked down into his wound to the wrist, then the elbow, until she finally seemed to grasp that which she sought and yanked it out, pulling a long sausage casing with it, reeling out his guts and laughing diabolically, musically, as that poor creature—evil though he had been—wailed out the remaining strands of his life as his intestines were reeled, hand-over-hand, from his body by the gleefully cackling woman.

At length—a pun Tom failed to appreciate, at all, in the midst of his mounting distress—the boorish brute slipped from life. The woman then cast aside, with a haughty sneer of contempt, the yards long intestines, and strutted over to him, licking her lips, hefting her breasts before her in offering.

“Latio shmino—muvafucin’ Latan Kangs ain’t shit. Dey thank dey gotz da right ta all my dick-suckin’ bread—I don’t think so!"

“Ha!” she barked into the sky, the moonlight playing obscenely off the contours of her sweaty, blood-smeared body.

She then turned to the bodies and shouted, "Bitchez thought you could run me, rip me. Naw, She got da Devil on her side!”

She then turned with a wide flash of crazy eyes, and smiled wickedly up into his face, “An a handsome White Devil at that! I neva sucked no Devil dick. It’s about time, don’t you think, Master?” she groaned askingly as she kneeled and reached out for him with her red finger nails.

Tom backed away in dismay.

“No?” she shouted, as he backed away and she gained her feet in a building rage.

“No? Really? Dat what kina Devil yo is? A bitch offa her soul to ged out of a jam, and you withhold?’

“I don’t understand,” Tom pleaded, as he backed away and she slunk closer, flexing her sharply nailed hands

Her voice took on a vast quality, echoing through the street, "When dem kings came collectin’ did I, or did I not, say, “Oh Devil, if you be real, en ged me outta dis shit, I will suck yo dick!?”

“Is that not what I said yo evil muvafucka?!”

“Ah, ah, surely you mistake me for somebody...”

She then screamed like a banshee and charged him and he ran like hell!

Turning and running straight down North Avenue, due east, toward the Baltimore Municipal Cemetery, the second largest homeless camp in East Baltimore, Tom Jones was running like the wind, the tap of his silvery heels— never mind the shoes, Tom, the old pimp must have swapped with you—that’s why this misunderstanding!—clicking along at great speed, running faster than he had ever run in his youth, never looking back.

Eventually the sound of her panting—for when she ran it sounded as if she were having intercourse—gave way to his singular tapping stride. At length he made it to Clifton Park, and decided to walk that route home to dear Betty, for Slippy was lost to him for this night at least. He would come back tomorrow—during the day perhaps.

He hit the grass in the overgrown park, expecting the song of crickets to return. He was on the greenway. It would stay this way for the immediate future, as long as the drones flew. The Park Authority drones shocked and zip-tied anyone caught cutting live wood. There was plenty of habitat for crickets, it was their season of song and they were gone.

Tom then noticed that he was not limping, had just sprinted over a mile and was carrying that accursed cane which had gotten him into a killing—the first killing of his life of over 70 years—and involvement with an insane voodoo woman of some kind.

Tom cast the cane away and felt a dark spark of some kind depart his mind’s eye, for a part of him had entertained a tryst with the night lady, which was what had made her advance so horrifying for him, what made him run, the fact that a portion of him was receptive to her wicked charms. He fancied, that by throwing away the cane, he was divesting himself of that evil spark.

The hat began to grow heavy, the goddamned derby hat he had never asked for, never consciously even accepted as a gift. He took that hat by the rim and sailed it off into the grass. Without a backward look, Tom turned and walked on, walked up through the middle of Clifton Park, haunted by the homeless, some of whom were known to be cannibals.

After the events of the past few hours—which felt like less than an hour—Tom Jones was beyond caring about peril, walking with a lightened heart, his human soul uplifted with every tiresome step. For the first time in his life—and a long life it had been, much of it passing slowly—Tom was glad to be weary, welcomed the upwelling tiredness like an old friend.

As Tom walked on, the song of the crickets resumed, gracing the late September night with their living symphony.