◀ Prev • [ All parts ] • Next ▶

Part 6-23: Vandalism

It starts with a small gesture of vandalism. A mark on the glass of my hand painted windows, etched in with almost artistic precision.

“What is it?” I ask Deluxe, as we examine it in the long, bright rays of the rising sun.

“A sigil,” she remarks, tracing her finger over the mark. It looks like a thin, upside down triangle with a semi circle growing out of its base. An ice cream cone with a sad half scoop in it, maybe.

“Looks kind of sci-fi. Or like desert,” I yawn, thoughts not quite organized at the early hour. Deluxe has insisted on brisk starts as part of her optimization plan and I am still adjusting. The coffee machine will be the first thing I activate once inside.

“No. It’s a Tear of Shrapnel. Organized crime syndicate. Smallish, new. Locally at least.”

“Sorry? Did you say organized crime?” I hope it is a euphemism or her being weird, but her tone is solemn.

“They like acid,” she responds. I am far from comforted.

I hustle her inside the shop and demand more details. She doesn’t know much, only what she’s picked up from occasional eavesdropping on police scanners and morbid news stories. Basically, we have a gang sign carefully burned onto our glass and it is likely not random, given the care taken and the habits of the folks behind the deed.

“What the hell did we do piss off a— oh.” The answer is painful in its clarity. To date, I’ve only come close to urban violence once before, and the memory is as fresh as the recipe for Neptunian Carrot Medley.

“The robber wasn’t marked, but it was likely he was to be,” says Deluxe.

“You had said, yeah. Gang initiation. So like, what happens now?” It is still too early to be seriously considering being under any kind of threat.

“Keep your eyes open today. I’ll patch something through to the police. I doubt they’d risk a major outlay of resources for a pair of soupy entrepreneurs like ourselves. It’s likely more a personal vendetta.”

“Keep my eyes open? So if a crowd of machine-gun toting thugs show up I can what? Scream more efficiently?”

“They’re typically more subtle in their methodology, so I believe.” She knits her fingers together. “Dagger or poison for a hit, that sort of approach.”

A pit of gravity cuts into my bowels, and the empty shop’s temperature seems to plummet. Last time I’d faced down death, it had arrived in a flash, froze my heart, then was gone again. Now, with the privilege of having the time to think about my mortality, the quaking chills revealed their deeper textures—a dizzy cocktail of regrets, disbelief, anger, and a devastating sense of being woefully unprepared. They wouldn’t really kill me right?

“You’re scaring me, Deluxe,” I say, meaning to inject my words with admonishment, as if she were playing at a prank, but it comes out in a raspy whisper.

Her top two teeth make deep marks in her bottom lip, and all she can do is shake her head, saucer eyes beaming apologies.

Now my guts really start to give, and the eggs I’d wolfed down after my shower start to think they’d like to head out early. But what if the killers are waiting in my washroom? What if that’s where the dagger flashes, and I die quaking and disgraceful in a pile of my own shit?

This line of catastrophizing triggers a new feeling—I suddenly am convinced that we are not alone in the place. There is someone in the bathroom. My rising fright and un-caffeinated brain conjure the image of a faceless man. His skin is blue. He is there, in the washroom.

“Wait,” I say, as more thoughts arise, unbidden. I am rationalizing: I’ve faced worse than mob toughs before. Way worse. But it doesn’t make sense. Maybe in dreams… maybe I’ve fought monsters in my dreams. I cannot shake the idea of fighting off something huge and hulking with a rapier. Punching a black knight. Oh hell, have I already ingested the poison? Did the mob spike my eggs?

“What?” asks Deluxe, brow knitting.

It is too long ago. This shop, this conversation. The thought of death and the image of the blue man have jammed a hunk of deja vu the size of a locomotive into my consciousness. I hold up my hands and see a sparkling yellow band around my middle right finger.

◀ Prev • [ List of parts ] • Next ▶