I consider myself one of the lucky ones, as if some unseen force was always watching over me. In my day, I danced with the devil on the edge of the abyss. A renowned party kid and raver, I played games with my life—games that killed others or landed them in jail. Yet somehow, I managed to escape those fates. I’ve lived a good life, even though my actions could have easily led to incarceration, or death by over-dose.
Now, in the twilight of my years, I feel compelled to confess my sins—not out of guilt, but as a ritual of the upbringing that shaped me. In truth, I don’t regret what I’ve done. In fact, I often revel in the memories of those years and the deadly scourge I helped rid the world of. So, even though I am, without question, a killer, I’m at peace with it. After all, I know exactly who I removed from this world.
It must have been 1995 when I met Jake the Snake. On the surface, he moved unnoticed, slipping under the radar. At first glance, you’d never suspect his true nature. He was remarkably small—just 5’4” and barely 125 pounds. His frame was wiry, his presence unassuming. But beneath that fragile exterior lurked something far more sinister.
He lived just a block over from my parents’ house. At the time, I was caught in what I called a "reset spell." That was my term for the inevitable cycle I kept falling into—losing a job, not being able to afford my bills, and being forced to move back home for a stretch. I’d stay just long enough to scrape some money together before moving out again, only to repeat the whole process. It was a sad rhythm I fell into fresh out of college, and in a city like Miami in the 1990s, making a living was anything but easy.
That’s when I turned to selling weed and ecstasy. I was already a seasoned raver, so it only made sense. The scene was my home, my people. Selling was my way out—out of my parents' house, out of being broke, out of the cycle. I didn’t want to be stuck. I wanted freedom, fast money, and the kind of life that didn’t involve punching a clock.
During that particular reset spell, I would take daily walks to a friend’s house, passing by Jake’s place almost every time. My style back then was pure “club-kid” swagger—oversized JNCO jeans, a long wallet chain, Adidas from head to toe. It was the look, and I wore it well. Jake noticed the raver vibe and sought to befriend me.
At first, it was just a nod, a casual "wassup" as I walked by. But one day, he finally called me over. Up close, he was small and scrawny, with an easy confidence that made up for his size. He introduced himself, and we started talking. It didn’t take long before the conversation turned to drugs.
I let him know I could supply quality "stuff." He didn’t hesitate. No questions, no skepticism—just business. He immediately put in an order for a 10-pack of rolls (MDMA aka ecstasy). At the time, that went for about $400. Most people would try to haggle you down, especially in those broke days when everyone was scraping by. But not Jake. He tossed the cash over like it was nothing, not even blinking at the price. Jake always had money. That was the first thing I noticed about him.
And in Miami, a guy with endless cash and no hesitation? That usually meant one of two things—he was either someone to keep close or someone to be very careful around. Soon, he started ordering more pills and bags of weed for his lavish parties—parties he began inviting me to. That’s when I realized this unassuming, small man with an odd mustache, a crooked smile, and oversized glasses was far more than he seemed.
One night, I delivered a large amount of weed and ecstasy. When I stepped inside his house, I found it packed with some seriously shady individuals. There were prostitutes—not just some random girls from the neighborhood, but actual working girls—having sex right there in the living room as men tossed money over them. In the kitchen, people were doing rails of coke on the table. The whole scene was straight out of a depraved fever dream—chaotic, raw, and completely off the rails.
This wasn’t my kind of party. Not even close.
I handed off the drugs, and Jake asked me to stay and hang out, but the whole vibe was too wild for my taste. I liked to party, but not like this. Without hesitation, I made my way out of there—fast.
For a while, I ignored his calls, unsettled by the chaos I had glimpsed in him. There was something about his energy—reckless, unpredictable—that made me keep my distance. But fate has a way of weaving people back into your life when you least expect it.
One night, I was lost in the music at The Edge, my favorite nightclub in Ft. Lauderdale. The bass throbbed through the air, neon lights slicing through the haze as bodies pulsed in sync with the beat. And then, out of nowhere, there he was—Jake the Snake. He must have recognized how deep I was in the scene, how my name carried weight in those circles. It didn’t take him long to realize that if he wanted in, I was his golden ticket.
So, he started ordering large quantities of pills, using them as a way to ingratiate himself with me, as if money and rolls could buy his way into the culture. At first, I kept him at arm’s length, but the more he offered—money, favors, exclusive boat outings with strippers—the more I let my guard down. Over time, we started hanging out, and against my better judgment, I began to see a different side of him. He was sharp, funny in that dry, biting way, and oddly charismatic when he wanted to be. Maybe he wasn’t so bad after all. Or at least, that’s what I let myself believe.
***
As Jake the Snake and I grew friendlier, I quickly realized that he was a different person with each drug he consumed. His transformations were unsettling, like watching an actor slip in and out of roles with eerie precision. When he was high on weed, he was mellow, almost philosophical, waxing poetically about life and the universe. On MDMA, he was euphoric and affectionate, hugging strangers and professing his love for the world. But cocaine—cocaine turned him into something else entirely. It made him hyper-verbal, erratic, and sharp-edged, like a wind-up toy that couldn’t stop spinning.
It was this singular substance that pried open Pandora’s box, spilling secrets I had no business knowing. The first time I caught a glimpse of what lay beneath his polished façade was on a frenzied night, the music pounding in the background, sweat clinging to our skin like a second layer at The Edge. The neon haze of the club blurred the edges of reality, and in my reckless curiosity, I made the mistake of asking the question that had lingered in the back of my mind for months.
“How do you make your money, Jake?”
He grinned, sniffed hard, and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “A little bit of this, a little bit of that,” he said with a wink, the ambiguity of his answer as slick as his persona. Normally, that was all he ever gave—vague hints, half-truths, playful dodges. But that night was different. That night, he was running through an entire 8-ball at breakneck speed, and the more he consumed, the looser his lips became.
Finally, he leaned in, eyes darting around as if to make sure no one else was listening. “You know why I never stress about money?” he whispered, voice a mix of pride and paranoia. “Because I’m in the business of luxury. People will always want what I got.”
He paused, inhaling another long, aggressive line, his pupils like black holes. Then, with the kind of smug satisfaction that only comes from knowing you’re untouchable, he told me everything. And that was the moment I realized I was in far deeper than I had ever intended to be.
Jake began to open up, boasting about his trade with a casual arrogance that unsettled me. He claimed he was more than just a car thief—he was a high-end specialist, working for a sophisticated chop-shop operation. The business front was a legitimate body shop, run by a crew of gifted mechanics who knew cars inside and out. But behind the scenes, they were running a million-dollar racket, fueled by stolen luxury vehicles.
The operation was as clever as it was illegal. The shop would purchase high-end cars—Porsches, Mercedes, BMWs, Lexuses—that had been totaled in wrecks. With these cars came salvage titles and enough remnants to build a façade of legitimacy. Jake’s job was to find an exact match—same make, model, and year—steal it, and deliver it to the shop. There, the mechanics would meticulously strip its VIN numbers, and replace them with those from the wrecked car. Once the transformation was complete, the stolen car—now with a clean title and a new paint job—was resold at a tempting “priced-to-sell” rate, drawing in unsuspecting buyers. Each car Jake delivered earned him a cool five grand.
But it wasn’t just a side hustle. It was a relentless grind. Jake wasn’t lifting a car here and there—he was getting lists. Sometimes five, sometimes more. Every week, he scoured the streets, locating, stealing, and securing cars for his employers, keeping their business running like a well-oiled machine.
I wish he had stopped there. But he didn't.
He leaned in closer, lowering his voice, as if to pull me deeper into the shadows of his world.
“You wanna know the real reason I make the big bucks?” he asked, eyes gleaming with something between pride and something much darker.
I wasn’t sure I wanted the answer. I staid quiet.
“I stop at nothing to get the car I am looking for – that means – I got some bodies.”
I didn’t know what to say. Jake admitted that not all of his jobs were smooth, in-and-out thefts. Sometimes, things got messy. When he spotted a car he needed, his driver would pull up alongside it, waiting for the right moment. Then Jake would jump out, pistol in hand, and confront the driver.
“For the most part,” he said, “people see the gun and they give up the car.”
But then, his expression changed. A flicker of something colder, more detached.
“Thing is,” he continued, “sometimes people panic. They freeze up, start resisting. Or they go for something in the glove, their purse. And when that happens…” He made a quick motion with his hand, as if pulling a trigger. “I put ‘em down.”
I felt my stomach turn.
Jake spoke of it as if it were routine, just another step in the process. He admitted that, at first, it had shaken him. The first few times, he could still see their faces when he closed his eyes. But after a while, it stopped bothering him. It became just another part of the job. He had even lost count of how many people he had killed.
And the chop-shop guys? They didn’t care. Blood, brain matter, the occasional bullet hole—it was all just another part of the business. They cleaned the cars, repainted them, and sold them like nothing had ever happened.
I sat there, horrified. What had this man just revealed to me? More importantly, what kind of person could say these things without a trace of remorse?
I realized then that Jake wasn’t just a thief. He wasn’t just a two-bit-hustler working a dangerous game. Jake was a killer. And he was proud of it. I excused myself to the restroom of the club, and left through the backdoor of the place, just to avoid him after this absurdly dark revelation.
***
Naturally, I didn’t hang out with Jake after that—not for a while, at least. But in the months that followed, he started blowing up my pager relentlessly. I ignored every page, made myself scarce, and even avoided visiting my folks since I had already moved out. It unsettled me that he knew where they lived, a fact that lingered in the back of my mind like a persistent shadow.
Then, trouble found me. A routine traffic stop turned into a moment of panic when I had to ditch a bag of pills on the side of the highway. I never recovered them, and my supplier didn’t care about excuses—only the money I now owed. I was desperate. And just as if he could smell my desperation, Jake reached out again, tempting me with a large order for one of his notorious, lavish parties. I should have known better. But against my better judgment, I went to his house, hoping to square my debt.
When I arrived, the house was eerily quiet—just him and me. The moment I stepped inside, I could tell he was already deep under the influence of several drugs, his pupils blown wide, his movements loose and unpredictable. LSD, at the very least. My nerves spiked. Transactions like these were best handled swiftly, but Jake wasn’t in any hurry.
As I tried to move things along, he suddenly shifted the conversation. “Why’d you ghost me?” he asked, his voice wavering between accusation and insecurity. I shrugged, making up some excuse, but he wasn’t buying it.
“I get it,” he continued. “I was high that night, ran my mouth. Probably scared you off.” He let out a dry chuckle, then leaned in slightly. “You think I’m a monster, don’t you?”
I said nothing, just focused on finishing the deal.
He exhaled sharply, then started talking—faster now, as if unburdening himself. “I’m not heartless, you know. Sure, I can push the memories out of my mind most days, but at night?” He tapped his temple. “The dreams don’t let me forget. The blood. The faces.”
I kept my expression neutral, but every muscle in my body was coiled tight like a viper, ready to bolt or strike.
“Sometimes,” he said, “I wish the cops would catch up to me. Just end it all. I even wrote a confession once, was going to leave it behind to explain my suicide.” He nodded toward a desk in the corner, where a folded letter sat untouched beneath a fine layer of dust.
For a split second, I considered grabbing it, running. Maybe even turning it in. But before I could process that thought, Jake’s mood flipped.
“But I never went through with it,” he continued, grinning now, his teeth flashing like a predator’s. “See, I’ve got the balls to take someone else’s life—but not my own. My will to live is too strong.”
That was the moment everything spiraled out of control.
Jake reached into an old desk drawer with an eerie calm, his fingers wrapping around something black and metallic. When he pulled it out, the room seemed to shrink around me. A menacing nine-millimeter pistol gleamed under the dim light. My breath caught in my throat.
His expression was unreadable—too steady, too collected for someone about to take a life. That scared me more than the gun itself.
“Now, I know I fucked up,” he said, his voice disturbingly even. “I told you a lot of shit I shouldn’t have. But you haven’t said anything to anyone, have you?” He tilted his head slightly, studying me like a predator does its prey. “You didn’t repeat what I told you… right?”
My stomach lurched. My heartbeat pounded in my ears.
“No, man!” I blurted out, forcing a weak laugh that died in my throat. “Of course not.”
I was lying.
I had told a friend—just one, just a single person, retelling that horrifying revelation at The Edge in the way people share ghost stories, as if speaking it out loud would make it less real. But now, staring down the barrel of a killer’s gun, I prayed he couldn’t see through my lie.
“That’s no one’s business but yours,” I added quickly, my mouth dry as sandpaper.
Jake’s gaze didn’t waver. His grip on the pistol tightened just slightly, the weight of it shifting in his hand. Then he sighed, almost disappointed.
“I don’t believe you, man,” he muttered.
My stomach twisted into knots.
“You said something,” he continued, nodding to himself as if confirming his own suspicions. “You shared my secret.” A slow shake of the head, as if lamenting the inevitable. “And now… I have to kill you.”
A cold dread gripped my spine. This wasn’t a threat—it was a statement of fact.
I couldn’t believe what was happening. Yet there I was, staring down the barrel of an admitted killer’s gun.
What happened next is difficult to put into words. Time seemed to slow, yet my body moved with an instinct I didn’t know I had. I was close enough—I could reach him. And in one explosive motion, I did.
My hands clamped around his, twisting the gun with a force that felt almost inhuman. The barrel swung toward his face in an instant, and before he could even register what was happening, his own finger pulled the trigger. The shot echoed through the room like a thunderclap, and in its wake, silence. His skull erupted, painting the wall behind him in a grotesque mural of crimson and bone. His body dropped like a sack of rice, hitting the floor with a sickening “thump!”
I stood there for a moment, my breath heavy but steady. Then instinct took over. I wiped down every surface I might have touched, erasing any trace of my presence. My hands moved swiftly but methodically—I couldn’t afford mistakes.
Then, just as I was about to leave, I spotted the suicide note. A thin layer of dust clung to the paper, and despite the urgency of my escape, I couldn’t resist. I had to know. I brushed it off, unfolded it, and read the words of a man whose crimes were far worse than I had imagined.
The confession was sickening. So vile that bile burned at the back of my throat. My stomach twisted in revulsion, but there was no time to dwell on it. I had done what needed to be done. I placed the letter near his body.
As I stepped out of the house, the weight of what I had done pressed down on me. Would I spend the rest of my life in prison? Had I just thrown away my future? I didn’t know. But one thing was certain—I had erased a monster from this world.
In the end, I was never implicated in a murder that never happened. It was ruled a suicide, and with that, I walked away. My life stretched ahead of me, untouched by the crime that had, in many ways, set me free. Afterwards, I changed my direction and lived a respectable life.
Now, all these years later, I can finally tell the truth about that night—about the moment I stepped back from the edge of the abyss and sent someone else tumbling into it.
The End
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