Slide Forward
by Melanie Hemry
Bela Megyery loaded his gun and stuck it in his pants—snug up against the small of his back. At 21, he was a full-blown heroin addict. He was also a realist. At $200 a day, his addiction cost him $1400 a week and $73,000 a year. That was before he bought a single tank of gas or bite of food.
It wasn’t rocket science. Sure, he’d been a truant child, cutting more classes than he attended, watching cartoons while his parents worked, and building tree houses by the railroad tracks in one of the roughest areas of Chicago.
He’d taken advantage of his parents who had fled the Hungarian Revolution as refugees in 1956, bringing him as a toddler to a country where they couldn’t speak the language. Even if they saw the notes he forged to his teachers, they couldn’t read them.
But just because he’d been disinterested in school, didn’t mean he hadn’t learned.
This was simple economics. He wasn’t pulling down enough money working with his parents in their catering business to support his addiction. As Bela saw it, he was left with only one choice.
He had to steal to get it.
He didn’t like the idea of robbing honest people, so Bela had come up with a brilliant plan. He needed large amounts of cash and drugs.
Who had that?
Drug dealers.
He robbed drug dealers!
No one cared if you robbed a drug dealer. And they weren’t likely to call the cops and report the crime.
Bela added a large wad of cash to his stash and went to get more.
Only, this time the robbery didn’t go as planned.
“Give me my money back,” the dealer demanded in a soft voice as dangerous as the hiss of a rattlesnake.
He fired the first shot above Bela’s head, but Bela was too high to heed the warning. Drugs coursing through his veins, Bela charged the man.
The bullet knocked him off his feet!
On the way to the hospital, and clinging to life by a filament thinner than the needle he used to shoot heroin, a slideshow played in Bela’s mind. He saw himself as a child in Hungary. He saw his parents bringing him to the U.S. for a better life. He saw the highlights of his childhood…then his teenage years.
Somewhere deep in his subconscious, Bela realized his life was flashing before his eyes. This is what you see before you die! Gathering all his strength, he screamed one word. “Jesus!”
The slideshow stopped. Everything stopped.
MAY '14 : BVOV : 11
