Everything Is Personal: Tales From Intersect City

[Vail_Indigo]

“Its a nice view, isn’t it? I mean, this isn’t the tallest building in Intersect, but its the tallest we can get to easily. Whenever one of you shows up, I like to bring you up here. Up near the ledge.

“So, over there, to the north east, thats the warehouse district. Docks, the river, cargo and all. I dunno, maybe you can find some work up there. And, of course, plenty of cheap bars just to the north. I like a drink just like any working man.

“See those lights in the center, the clock tower and all? You probably won’t be spending much time there. Money and all. At least, I hope you won’t be. If you get my drift.

“The one place down there you might go, you won’t find on your own. But here’s the card. Its called Flux. No sign, no ads, nothing. But they’ll let you in. Little Vegas, I guess. Even you deserve a little fun. Don’t want any explosions all pent up.

“But most importantly, look there, to the west. You probably can’t see it, but thats the Hinterlands. The prison. The big house if you want to be dramatic about it. Its designed to be almost invisible, to just fade into the background. Gotta bunch of scientists and shrinks to build it just that way. But once in a while, if the light is just right, and you are looking in just the right way, it’ll just out at you. A monolith. A warning. You get me?

“None of that matters much. You’ll learn it on your own. But you’d do well to remember one thing: In the Big Juncture, everything is personal.”

[Vail_Indigo]

I’m rapidly running out of rooftop.
“There’s always a fire escape in the movies. Movies, movies, movies,” I chant to myself as the ledge gets closer and closer. My ‘friend’ is closing just a bit faster. Then I’m there, and I drop.

It hurts like hell and my shins feel like they might split open, but dammit if there wasn’t a fire escape!

He tries to follow me, but his momentum betrays him and he overshoots, landing, somehow, on the railing. His arms swing as he tries to find some balance, too stupid to just let himself fall backwards.
It could go either way.
But I can’t let it. I reach out.
He falls forward before my hand gets to him.
Before I could push him myself.
He hits the railing below with a sickening thud and that puts an end to his screams.
It seems to take an awfully long time for him to fall the eight stories.
***
I find things. Important things. I don’t know how, I’m just walking along and I’ll see something and I’ll know it needs to be somewhere else.
It started out as a game, really. I was a cabbie, you end up with time to kill and so I just started…indulging my whims. A canister of film to the The Daily Scrawl, a box to Knuckles Moynahan, a little doll to Athena, daughter of the richest family in Intersect.
I found myself wandering in patterns on my days off, finding and delivering. Sort of a courier, if you will. Lots of times, cash changed hands. More than I made driving a cab.
So thats what I do now.
Its been dangerous before, but not like this. I had no idea where this envelope was supposed to go, I was ready to put it on the shelf with the others that were waiting for a home, but you learn something is important real fast when a bullet comes through the diner window.
So now I’m running and being chased.
Classic.
I should find Garrote. She owes me a favor, and can probably protect me, but that’ll only go so far.
I should get rid of the envelope, but thats never worked before. It’ll just end up in my hands again somehow.
So I run, until I find the path that leads home.
Or I run out of rooftop.

[Drunken_Angel]

Nephthys

Prologue

Somewhere between the the warehouses and the money sits a large building made of glass. It is a classy, modern structure whose sides eschew stuffy straight lines in favor of avant-garde curves designed to make one think of flowing water. Its a pretentious display of wealth and power if you ask me. I don't see the water, I see the tits, waist, and hips of a faceless woman, an executive's caged and gilded whore.

I should know. Its taken me three years to find the place. You’d think with a name like Neptune, someone would get its underworld connection. It should have a company slogan like: “Neptune Customer Care, when we say we’re swamped, we mean it.” See what I did there, and they say I have no sense of humor. Neptune is owned and run by the Shikon Corporation and they have their dirty little cocks in everything from black-market pharmaceuticals to human experimentation, but that's just rumor. They guard their research so carefully that little more than their name pops up, even among the shadows. What is known, however is that twenty three years ago an experiment known only as 257 was conducted. That's it, just a name and a year. The rest I've pieced together over on my own.

I know that twenty-one years ago, fifteen privately run orphanages began reporting deaths, most from brain tumors, all showed signs of nervous system degradation.

Ten years ago, Intersect City received a small and almost unpublicized nod from Mensa International as having the largest concentration of prodigious savants of any city in the world: five of the estimated fifty in existence.

Six months ago, three of the five disappeared and just thirty days ago, an email arrived. It was a spam offering me a larger cock in just eight weeks with their new, patent pending, cocksersize program; apparently calisthenics for dicks. I was about to delete it when I noticed that six of the letters were glowing. Now, glowing words and objects are a part of everyday life for me and I’ve learned to rely on them. Sometimes its as simple as the exact food I’ve a craving for - usually chocolate - glowing as I walk down the isle. Sometimes its more complicated, like the homeless guy’s way-too-clean undershirt. Disguises are all in the details. In this case, the letters in question spelled BASTET, the Egyptian goddess of fire and cats. I only knew her by reputation, but that reputation was enough to get my juices flowing and have me begging for more. My eyes scanned every word, caressing rounded vowels, rising and falling over hard consonants. I almost purred when found the two company names, Neptune and Shikon, together.

That's why I’m here. Today the secret comes out.

[Ausus_girl13]

He tastes like salt and sweat and I'm thinking of puking down the front of his cheap ass walmart jeans. He grunts above me.

Fucker, better not touch me.

He's quick. Two minutes and his hot cum pours down my throat, I swallow, not out of some loyalty to the guy above me, but because if he sprays his load over my face or hair, then I'll have to fix it, and dammit, it's still early.

He hands me a wad of cash and stumbles off with barely a thanks, but it's no big deal. I pull a cig out of the pack sitting my cleavage, and stand, the smoke and heat clears out that semen aftertaste, the nicotine clears my head. I take a minute, but not too long cause then old Jim will be looking for me, wondering why after fifteen minutes, I'm not out there covering my beat. The cigarette is smashed between my cheap plastic heels and the dirty asphalt I just was kneeling on.

Worshipping the prick god, I count my cash. Sixty. Not bad. Wish it was more, but a good start for the night. The city is just waking up in my neck of town, the sound of traffic slamming into me when I appear out of the alley. I look over to see Roxy leaning against the wall, she nods twice. Jim is about. Knew it.

"Where you been cunt, I saw him stumble out of here a while ago." Jim said softly, from just behind me.

A sigh escapes my lips, I straighten my dress, red. My brown hair is covered by a platinum blonde wig. No matter if I tell him to fuck off, if I tell him that I was scurrying after money, that I was screwing an entire hockey team, nothing will matter. I hold out forty of the sixty I just made and say nothing.

Without a word he takes it, he slinks off back to his car to keep an eye on us ladies.

A minute while I look up at the city and how beautiful it is at night. The lights bright and hopeful, even here. I suppose there might be others who feel sorry for me. Even wanting to help me out of this "lifestyle". But, whatever, I can work with it.

A packed car pulls up on the curb, and I move to the car side, acting marginally interested, but not going anywhere until I know the particulars. The particulars being, whether or not there is a cop, whether or not they have money, if they are sober, and how many I might have to take on at once.

"Hey baby, we got your money right here." The college kid gyrated his hips lewdly for my "benefit" apparently.

Reaching my hand into the window, I press the front of his jeans without preamble.

"Nope sugar, I'm more than that. What else you got?"

"Three even." This time it's his friend. The one in the driver seat. He has an expectant expression, and is exited and nervous, I can tell from the way he clenches the steering wheel. He wants this. The friend is armor.

"With your buddy, you get an hour. Get rid of him and you get two." I'm being stingy but, I want the cash.

The driver looks at his friend. "Get out."

His friend is dismayed. "But I thought- Dude!"

"Now." The words are sharp and clipped. No playing here I thought. This man means business. The friend gets out and shoots me a dirty look.

"Whore."

"Thank you." I take the door and step into the mini-van. Always cracks me up to be in a model white picket fence car and fucking some guy.

"Where?" He asks and assumes I know where to go in the city so we can be alone. He's right. I do.

"Straight, take a left at the next light, and then head to the bridge, look for the turn off on the right and pull in. We will be left alone."

He does, and I watch his profile for a few minutes, but he's silent and concentrating. We are there in a very short order.

He turns to me, and looks to the back.

"I want to be ridden, I want to see your tits and I want to be dirty." He says this without passion in his voice, like a business deal.

"Then get back there and get hard." I rearrange my top and pull out a condom, handing it to him, I remove my cigs and my phone, where I see there is already a text from Jim. Rolling my eyes, I head to the back and watch as he has already lain across the back seat, his pants around his ankles, and his cock rapidly hardening, his eyes are also closed. Whatever he's imagining he is good at it. His cock is very nice, and I move closer and slide a condom over it, before straddling his hips and sliding him inside me.

There is a single moment for me where I do actually like my job. For some girls it's when they get paid, for me it's the moment I get a man inside me, a man who is clean, healthy, and of good size. It doesn't happen often... but when it does, it's fucking awesome.

"Ride my cock." The words leave no other options for me. I do. Sliding him and out of me. Sometimes I can do this without even paying attention to the guy under me, I make plans with my friends, or daydream, saying the 'ooh baby' and 'you're so big' without thought or feeling, but I don't think that will be the case tonight.

Every inch of him widens me, and I can feel every inch spearing into me. I surprise myself by getting wet, he slides in and out with ease. His hands grasp and squeeze my tits, pinching lightly at my nipples accompanied by the little sigh that escapes my lips.

I pick up the pace, and lean down next to him.

"Squeeze my cock, little bitch. That's it. Fuck me, ride me harder. You know how I like your cunt wrapped around me."

And that's when it happened. I stopped riding him for work, and did it for myself. I forgot the city outside and paid attention to cock inside me, to the finger in my mouth, his hand on my breast, squeezing moans from me.

Everything feels so good, even in the back of this dingy mini van. I hold onto the nameless man beneath me, I ride him for my joy, taking from him my own needs. My cunt sucking at his cock almost joyfully, enjoying something that is not ever really enjoyed. My eyes are closed, my head thrown back, and I moan and whimper for his enjoyment, for my own. It's freeing this moment.

"Cum." I don't know if this order is for me. I don't know if he is warning me, but I reflexively tighten around his girth, and my fingers make their way to my clit where they rub in time to his thrusts. Then I do cum, with lights behind my eyes, and the rolling moans that fill the small space, While my cunt gushes around his length. The man under me, groans out his release but I barely notice. He pushes me over, as he climbs out from under me, bent over he pulls his pants up and sits in the driver seat, starting the engine.

I take the hint and pull my dress up and down as I take my seat, pulling my seatbelt on. In short order we are back on the street the lights glaring down like sentinel judges.

He hands me the wad of cash without looking at me.

"Thanks."

He takes off into the night, the city swallowing him up.

I hold out sixty of what I just made, and when it disappears I know, I will be fine, especially on this night, in my city.

[Vail_Indigo]

“No, thats fine, but tell them if it isn’t ready at 8:30 sharp, they should expect to see a significant drop in their popularity.”

My Dara, my PA, will phrase that much less diplomatically. Thats why I have her. Its no cliche when they say that the PA to the CEO of any major corporation has almost as much power as the CEO themselves. And, for all my ego, I know better than to try and bed her. If I did, then my wife would be the least of my worries.

I spend the rest of the day going through the endless reports. The numbers look right, and finance has confirmed them. Three weeks until the new delivery systems are ready and we look to be under budget.

Yeah, I actually am that good at my job.

The suit, new, the wife, gorgeous, the paparazzi, endless.

We can’t make it to the car without having two dozen flashes go off.

I wave, I give a smile, I say something witty and charming. Something Dara wrote.

We’re in the car less than 5 minutes before she straddles me, taking me deep inside her.

I let myself groan.

And again when she slaps my face.

“Say it,” the words drip from her lips.
“I fuck them, I fuck them whenever I want, but nothing feels as good as your cunt.”

And its not a lie. I love her, and lust her, and she’s the single greatest lay in the universe.

I can go for however long I want with the others, but Karen, she does this thing, and I cum on command, like a boy his first time.

Then I hungrily clean my cum out of her.

If we had more time, if there was more traffic, I’d be in her ass making her regret that slap.

The cameras are at the Sakto’s too, but its expected. I head inside, letting her work the crowd a bit. Boys and no few girls flock to her. One of them may get our number and passcode.

The food is marginally undercooked and unacceptable. We eat, though, and talk, and share secrets. Her and Dara, they are the only ones who know me.

Tonight’s chef will be fired before the end of the night.

So says me.

Back in the car, I make her pay. Much to both our delights.

And at 3am, she slips from our bed, silently, to not wake me. Dara is waiting for her.

ArcTech Industries runs the city in ways I don’t even always understand, and I run ArcTech, and will for the next two hundred years, if things go as planned.

I am Elliot DeTerge. And I am the most important person in Intersect City.

[Drunken_Angel]

Nephthys

Chapter 1: Seducing Babylon

The plan is simple; walk in, get the data, and walk out; but the devil is in the details.

Wrapped in secrecy, Shikon Corp. has kept its secrets because its computers are completely off-grid. There is no outside access anywhere: no email, no Internet; nothing.--they don’t share research, they don’t write in academic journals. Physical entry is guarded by both retinal and facial recognition scans, neither of which I am prepared to counter. While Shikon is inaccessible to a frontal approach, Neptune corp is a different matter entirely and I find myself approaching the gates of Babylon herself.

Today, I am Melody Smith. I am one of five new temps sent to fill in the rank and file. My normally spiked, red and black hair lies flat under a blond wig, and Doc Martins have given way Nine West Pumps. Everything about me is subtle, subdued sexuality, from naive lips with just a touch of pout, to the browns and golds that add soft depth to already hazel eyes. My reflection passing through the front doors is part confident and capable, part compassionate and vulnerable. She also seems to have forgotten that top button that keeps her push-up cleavage caged and bound. Eyes or tits boys, anything but my ID.

I slide past security with a coy smile and a demure drop of my gaze, and am soon moving along Neptune’s halls coated slick with money and power; it’s everywhere. Stainless steel and glass give a clean, almost antiseptic feel, while modern art pieces suggest the same subdued sexuality, bound in line and form. Metaphor, this place is rife with it, from the elevator that spreads her legs for anyone who pushes her buttons, to the row-after-row of dressed up drones, chosen as much for their figure as their ability to type. And now, I am one of them, just another cubicle whore pressing keys, only my keystrokes are eloquent and expressive. Hacking is seduction, each keystroke luring data betwixt here and there; one and zero, on and off.. moan and whimper.

Five point two minutes later and I am teasing the last little bits of code. This is what I came for:

Experiment number 257, Congenitally Induced Savantism through embryonic chromosomal replacement of segment 7q22 to 7q31.

Abstract.
The human mind receives approximately eleven million bits of information every second from its senses. Of these, ten million come from the optic nerve, another million from sound, a few hundred thousand from the others- 1.25 terabytes of information per second, stored and processed by the subconscious, while the conscious mind can only process about fifty bits per second.

Fifty bits per second. That’s being generous, if you ask me.

Researchers have long looked for ways to exploit the unconscious mind’s raw computational power. They’ve tried occultism, psychotherapy, hallucinogenics and even direct cortical stimulation - colloquially known as electric shock therapy. They’ve had little success.

My monitor flickers again, this time an angry red; took them long enough. No time for snail reading, I page down again and again pausing only milliseconds at each screen. Words fly, nothing but data etched in my brain.

...amniotic induction....prodigious savantism … eidetic memory...
ninety-five per-cent mortality... neurological degradation.. tremors....subconscious projection....

What the fuck am I?

I have perhaps a minute. No time to close the file or erase my tracks, but then again, I don’t intend to.

These computers are called dumb terminals: network access only; just a monitor and a keyboard. It’s a setup designed to keep a tight lock on what comes in and what goes out. No ports or drives meant I had to work on the fly, the first stage being nothing more than a few lines of active X in Excel. A tiny snippet polling buffer seventy-seven at precisely the same time as the watchdog scanned for malicious code. Computers are so easily fooled. Following that, I had but to suppress and simulate the watchdog’s period handshake with the mainframe and I was in.

See, while I knew I couldn't just hop into the dragon’s belly and expect to get out again, I also knew that, as a front, Neptune has to appear to be a normal modern customer service organization with normal corporate security. Start issuing military grade crap and people are going to notice. This was their Achilles heel. Using their own firewall as a backdoor was pure genius and there was no way I was deleting that.

You don’t erase art, you sign it.

Zero-One-Zero; three numbers hovering dead-center on a blank screen. The drones will wonder why someone would stick a zero in front of a ten, while tech support will read it as two and snicker at non-Vulcan inferiority. None of them will realize they’ve been flipped off-- knuckle, finger, knuckle. Fuck you.

On the surface it was just a bit of fun with the intellectually challenged, a custom screen-saver embedded with a simple but effective virus. It will do little more than fry this machine’s minuscule cache to make it look like I wanted to cover my tracks. The real message lies within the virus code itself: alternating hex, binary, and octal numbers threaded throughout. Those in the know-- those who I want to know--will find this. They will decode the letters one by one, N.E.P.H.T.H.Y.S.

I stand slowly and a quick glance highlights the scene, three suits glowing softly from behind their office window. Soft glows are good, it means that they have not yet been alerted and that means that security wants this tight. Don’t spook the rabbit. No, it’s glaring colors you have to watch for and there are two at the moment, the one on my monitor and the one above the elevator ticking numbers, thirty-two, thirty-one, thirty; ten floors left. I’ve got precisely fifteen seconds before those doors slide open, but I am already moving down the hall. I fall in with a group of five others and walk brazenly out the front doors, just another drone leaving for lunch. I hope they got a good view of my ass on the way out, because that’s the last time they’ll see it.

~

I finally know what I am. I am a synesthete. Relationships between things are shown to me in light and color, an overlay of data onto a mundane world. Everything from the prison tattoo on the security guard’s arm, to the clean undershirt of the cop disguised as a bum, its all data. It all has a story to tell. I am also one of five survivors of the costliest experiment ever conducted in the Shikkon Corporation’s shadow labs. I am their savior. I am their nemesis, and I am marked for retrieval.

I am Nephthys, and this is my world.

[Vail_Indigo]

“Jesus, Leah, this isn’t about last month? I told you...”
“Don’t be stupid DeTerge. I don’t get upset because you don’t want me to be your girlfriend.”
I do get upset because of the stupid pride he took in making me cum.
Finally.
After longer than I’d like.
Some day, men will realize that if it takes them forever to get us there, its a problem with them.
Anyhow, Karen is a much better fuck.
And his pride is aesthetically displeasing.
“Then why?”
“Same reason I always go.”


Call me what you want. Sometimes its VP Of Internal Operations. Sometimes the Executive Assistant that really runs the company. Sometimes the advisor to the govenor.
I like being in back.
I like my secrets.

“Leah, baby, I don’t know what you want, what makes you happy.”
“I know.”
“I’m leaving.”
“Too late.”
And so ended Tori.
Just like the others.
Magic words.
‘All there is.’
‘What next?’
Those end everything.
I quit.
Get myself fired.
Get one of us to walk away.
I won’t stand still.
Ever.

I love the city. I always have. I wasn’t born here, but I...travelled...a lot when I was growing up. I always made sure to come back here, often as possible.
I was here before the Midnight Quake, and after, after the rebuilding.
It looked different, but it was still the same city.
As cliche as that sounds.


“Kid, you keep looking at the Hinterlands like that, you’ll end up in a room there.”
“How’s that so different, flatfoot?”
“They hate cops in there.”
“Lots of’em hate us out here.”
“Yeah, but you can get hookers out here.”

There’s lots of easy locks in this city. If you know the right passwords. More, still, if you know the witches.
And I do.
The witches like me for some reason.
The whispered a name in my ear.
I will find it.

[Vail_Indigo]

For those who care, Rebecca Garrote and Intersect City can now be found at Silk And Stiletto Stories

[Vail_Indigo]

(new stories should go up on Saturdays)

[Fish_Tales]

He’d heard it called the “Concrete Jungle” and he’d even been to many. He wasn’t easily fazed, either by concrete jungles or vegetative ones, but this was different.

This was Intersect City.

Towers, buildings, full of lights.

Fuck me, he thought, haven’t they heard of global warming?

Intersect City, where everything and everyone comes together, like the rivers into a basin…. like the Nile into the Delta.

Or like sewers to a shit farm.

He didn’t want to be here, but he’d done a lot of things that he didn’t want to do. A guy walked past him, his hair done up like a cockatoo, filled with more gel than a roomful of Elvis impersonators. The guy was talking to himself as he walked past, and his voice was only slightly less grating than that of a cockatoo and made less sense. If Cramer had cared, he would have shaken his head in pity.

But he didn’t.

Care.

He kept walking, past Cockatoo Man, through the night, the wind blowing up the street, channelled by the buildings around him.

Concrete. That’s what the buildings were made of and they were more solid and had a stronger core than any of the humanity he saw around him.

Yes, he thought, night is the best time to walk through Intersect City. You couldn’t see the grime, the cracks, the lost dreams of a once optimistic vision that had long died. The darkness also brought the cover he needed, the cover his prey needed. He was looking for someone and they only came out at night.

If you lay down with the dogs, then you wake up with the fleas.

He smiled to himself.

The flea hunter.

Cramer was not a naturally nocturnal man. He liked the sun. He liked the day. There was less that could be hidden in the bright light. But sometimes, he had to come to the city and sometimes he had to go out at night. He shrugged his shoulders as he walked.

A job is a job.

He might have come to the city only sometimes, but he always got what he wanted.

Always.

He could surf tomorrow. He could swim tomorrow. He could run tomorrow.

Tonight….well….tonight he had to be in the city, the Concrete Jungle, with the sharks, the snakes, the spiders and the foxes. All of these were there where he came from, but the predators here were different. The predators here all looked the same and they were less trustworthy.

A shark that was full, that was satiated, would never kill until it need to again. Here, in Intersect City, they never needed to kill, they just….liked it.

Killing.

Cramer was here, looking for a shark. He had to find one and prise it from the school. It wasn’t like he couldn’t handle a school, but he wasn’t being paid to do that, and he never did anything he wasn’t paid to do. He kept walking, against the breeze, the odd body bumping into his shoulder. No apologies, no sidestepping, just forward. He knew where he was going.

Scum on the surface of a pond always drifted to one end. He was headed to the bad end of the pond, the end where the scum was.

Then he’d be paid.

He stopped suddenly and someone bumped into his back and then walked off, muttering.

Cramer smirked.

I should be more considerate.

He looked into the door of a bar, focusing to look through the glass panels, grimy with dust and exhaust fumes.

It was the one.

He patted the outside of his coat and felt the automatic in the pocket. He didn’t need the reassurance of knowing it was there. He knew it would be there, but it was a reflex, a way of composing himself for what had to be done. He didn’t really need the automatic at all, it just made everything less….

….messy.

Cramer didn’t like messes. He was anal about it in fact. Cleanliness is next to Godliness. His mother used to say that. But then, she used to say crime doesn’t pay.

He shook his head.

Ignorant bitch.

He didn’t need the gun, but he liked to be ready.

Always.

Otherwise, there’d be no….

Always.

Or happily ever after.

[Fish_Tales]

A cliché.

Sometimes he was that.

Like now.

He could walk in there and do it the hard way. He could clean the place up and get what he came for, but that would be….

Cliché.

He smirked.

Talking French. Getting ahead of myself. Uppity fellow, aren’t I?

In the end, Cramer was more worried about the fact that he was talking to himself rather than he was thinking in French.

C’est la vie.

Fuck me. Stop that.

He pushed on the door and entered the bar. Obviously, the term “bar” in Intersect City was a loose description. The place was a dive of the worst variety, and Cramer had been in some of the lower ranking worst varieties. He scanned the room as he walked towards the centre of the bar, his feet sticking to the carpet, hundreds of drinks spilt, their residue making a small squeaking sound every time his shoes broke free from their hold. The carpet and its spilt alcohol were like sirens holding him to the floor.

Sirens?

He shook his head.

I’ve read too much Homer.

He smirked.

Someone had to.

There were about twelve people in the bar. Well, not about, there was never an about with Cramer: there were twelve people in the bar. He walked towards the bartender. Even in the dim light, he could see that the man was not in the best condition. His eyes were sunken and his face was a jaundiced yellow. The hair he had left was combed over his scalp and shone greasily.

“Beer,” said Cramer.

Please or thank you hardly seemed appropriate.

Or necessary.

Comb-over barman nodded and went towards the tap to pull him one. He grabbed a glass and then Cramer stopped him, looking at the glass and raising his eyebrows; it was dirtier than a blue-assed fly’s outhouse.

“Mate, from a bottle. Urquell.”

If I’m going to drink in Intersect City, I better get my hepatitis shots.

Comb-over barman nodded. He put the filthy glass back in the rack and then turned around to the glass-doored refrigerator behind him. He pulled out a bottle, ripped the top off on the opener fixed to the wall beside the fridge and then sat it on the bar, pausing in front of Cramer.

“I’ll run a tab.”

Comb-over barman shrugged his shoulders and moved back to where he’d been sitting earlier at the other end of the bar.

Things to do, places to go.

Cramer lifted the bottle and tilted the neck towards his jaundiced friend.

You need some fucking sun, mate.

Cramer took a deep draw on the bottle, enjoying the hoppy flavour. He turned and leant back on the edge of the bar, looking around the room slowly. His eyes stopped at a table in the far corner furthest from the entrance. He saw the shark. He was in a school.

He smiled and then took another swig of the beer, almost half of it was gone now, but Cramer had always liked his beer….too much, sometimes.

Not this time.

Business.

He’d drunk before in Intersect City.

With her.

But this wasn’t with her.

This was business.

He looked at the table of men. Four. Not many….

For him.

He slowly swung his head and looked across to comb-over barman. The bartender was watching him carefully. He may have been a shell of what he had once been, but he wasn’t stupid, and Cramer respected that. He gestured towards the refrigerator and then raised the bottle to his lips to finish it. As soon as he’d put the empty bottle down, there was a fresh one waiting.

He smiled at comb-over barman. He was developing affection for him, like a spider that you have in the corner of your porch. Just there.

“Might be best to take a break, mate.”

The less than hirsute bartender looked directly at him with his dull eyes and nodded. He took the empty bottle and then walked towards a door at one end of the bar. He opened the door and then walked through it, closing it firmly behind him.

Smart guy....except for his taste in hairstyles.

Cramer returned his gaze to the table with the four men.

A shark and three remoras.

To cliché, or not to cliché….

Homer. Hamlet. Alliterative. Well….technically Hamlet was Shakespeare, whereas Homer was….Homer.

Cramer’s face was impassive as he looked through the smoke-filled bar towards his prey, but he was thinking, not just about sharks and prising them away from the school. No, Cramer was thinking about what the fuck he was doing thinking of Homer and Shakespeare when he was about to end someone’s life.

Thinking about how he shouldn’t be thinking and not thinking of what he should be thinking.

Fuck.

Kill them all or just kill the one he was paid to kill? He patted the pocket of his coat and felt the gun. All of them would be easy. One of them easier still.

A dilemma.

It wasn’t often that someone in Cramer’s line of work had a dilemma that wasn’t life threatening or at least highly problematic. Usually, the decision could mean the difference between life and death. Sometimes, the decision was just deciding between the lesser of two evils.

The devil and the deep blue sea.

He smiled.

Aerosmith.

That’s better.

[Fish_Tales]

The beer went down easily.

Cramer took a smaller sip and focussed on the table with the four men, the one with the shark, Sonny Garcia.

It wouldn’t be hard.

A job.

Four or one?

Fuck, he wasn’t a franchise. He didn’t offer four for one deals. He was here to kill Garcia and that’s what he’d do. The others didn’t look brave enough to stand in his way.

That was the sad thing about human beings, especially those with nothing inside, nothing to fight for. Cramer wasn’t big, but he did what he said he would do and people knew that. Cramer was hard.

Fucking hard.

The guys at the table with Garcia were talking and laughing, drinking their beer and slapping each other on the back. Soon the beer would run out and they would look to the bartender.

My man. Comb-over man.

The barman wouldn’t be there and then they’d start looking. Cramer didn’t really have the patience to stay in the bar while they played hide and seek looking for the barman.

Now.

It had to be now.

Stop killing time.

It was time to start killing.

He kept watching them as he lifted the bottle to his lips and drank the last of the beer. Sonny would be carrying, but he wouldn’t have a chance. The others would freeze in shock. He didn’t know if they were carrying, but they would be so grateful it wasn’t them, that they would freeze.

Cramer smiled.

Fuck yeah.

Tough guys were tough guys when everyone around them was weak, vulnerable, low hanging fruit. It was all relative. Put one of these tough guys in the same room with him and they were fucked.

They were in the same room.

They were fucked.

Cramer decided he’d kill them.

Dead.

Like a dodo.

What the fuck was a dodo anyway?

Wikipedia that.

Yeah.

His back against the bar, he worked it out. He’d wait till they wanted the next beer. One of the lackeys would come to the bar. With the bartender gone, there were now eleven people in the bar. If someone used their mobile phone, the cops would be there in two minutes, maybe three minutes at the most. It wasn’t the best part of town and that meant the cops wouldn’t be too far away.

Cramer had no fear of the cops. He assumed they had no fear of him. He didn’t know exactly because they didn’t run into each other. That was part of the job….not running into cops. He didn’t intend to start now.

I'll wait.

They would run out of beer and one of them would go to the bar. He had two guns and four men to deal with. He smiled.

Easy peasy.

But he wanted Garcia to know.

Know why.

Know who.

Her.

That meant taking out the other three in thirty seconds and then having a minute with Garcia and then thirty seconds to get out of the bar and disappear.

Cramer started to count in his head.

One cat and dog.

One second.

Two cat and dog.

Two seconds.

He kept counting, getting into the rhythm of keeping time. He had to get the job done in ninety seconds. Ninety cat and dogs.

Sounds like a Disney movie.

Cramer leaned back against the bar, watching the table and one hand in his pocket, holding one of the guns. Automatics. Glocks. His favourite.

Taking them all out. She’d like that.

Her.

It wasn’t in Cramer’s nature to please, but he knew she’d like that.

The lot?

He could see her smiling.

One of the men pushed his chair back from the table and started to rise. Cramer placed the bottle on the bar carefully and stood up straight. He started to walk towards the table. The man got about three or four metres from the table and was nearly passing Cramer. The guy didn’t stand a chance; Cramer kicked his leg sideways, crunching his foot into the guy’s knee. It popped and the guy started to go down and then Cramer brought the butt of the gun down on the top of his head. There was a momentary resistance as the butt hit his skull and then it moved a little further and he felt a spongy mush.

The guy dropped face first onto the ground.

One cat and dog….

The men looked around, their eyes wide. Their eyes never got a chance to get smaller. Cramer had already pulled both his guns and aimed them at the men either side of Garcia and put a bullet into the head of each man. The back of their heads sprayed blood out onto the wall behind them and then one slumped off his chair and the other one fell forward onto the table, his head hitting the surface with a thud.

Three cat and dog….

He stood in front of Garcia and had the guns on either side of his head, a barrel in each ear.

Five cat and dog….

Garcia twitched.

“Move and you’ll fucking die,” Cramer said softly.

Eight cat and dog.

He had eighty two seconds. He could have more, but that wasn’t the game. The game was ninety seconds.

I did all that in eight seconds?

“What do you want?” asked The Shark.

Garcia didn’t look comfortable now, he looked scared.

“Nothing,” said Cramer.

They sat there, Garcia with the barrels at his ears and Cramer, looking at him.

No one had moved in the bar, just as Cramer had thought.

Eighteen cat and dog.

“I can pay you,” said Garcia.

Cramer smirked.

“She already has.”

Garcia’s eye’s widened.

“Her?”

Cramer nodded.

“Her.”

Twenty three cat and dog.

There were small droplets of sweat starting to form on Garcia’s forehead. Carmer stood there, guns pressed into Garcia's ears. He enjoyed watching him squirm. The man wanted to move his hands, desperately, but he couldn't.

Cramer watched him.

His hands are empty, but his ears are full.

Thirty cat and dog.

I have one minute.

“Please….no….”

Cramer smiled, his lips turning up at the corners of his mouth.

“Don’t beg. It’s weak.”

“Please….”

Cramer rolled his eyes.

Thirty eight cat and dog.

“Shut. The Fuck. Up.”

Cramer looked down at Garcia’s crotch and he saw a wet patch that was starting to spread over the front of his jeans. He rolled his eyes.

Weak cunt.

“Please….”

“You’re the spot,” said Cramer.

“The….spot?”

“Yeah. Lady Macbeth wants the spot out. You’re the spot. I’m the bleach.”

“Lady…. Macbeth? Who the fuck….?”

Cramer smiled, both guns on either side of Garcia’s head, the barrels in his ears.

Forty seven cat and dog….

“She's doesn't like problems. She needs you gone. She wants you gone....the spot.”

Garcia was shaking in front of him and he could see more sweat beading on his brow, the drops starting to link together into small rivulets, slowly trickling down the side of his head. He had a gun on him, Cramer knew that, but one move and he was dead.

“How….much?” asked Garcia.

“Not enough,” said Cramer.

“But, I can….”

Cramer pressed the guns a little tighter into Garcia’s ears.

“No. You can’t,” he said.

Fifty two cat and dog.

Shit, I still have time to….

“Woe, destruction, ruin, and decay,” Cramer said softly, “the worst is death, and death will have his day.”

Garcia looked at him, sweat dripping from his forehead and onto his cheeks.

“Please….no....whatever it takes….whatever….”

Cramer continued.

“Go thou, and fill another room in hell. That hand shall burn in never-quenching fire….”

Sixty three cat and dog.

Garcia’s eyes were red now and he was shaking.

“What the fuck is that?” he cried.

“Who the fuck is that, mate, who.”

“Who then….please no….”

“It’s Richard the second.”

Garcia was crying now, the guns pressed tight, his hands wanting to move, but frozen with fear.

“Who?”

“He came after Richard the first.”

Seventy two cat and dog.

Enough. Get the fuck out.

“Out….damn spot,” whispered Cramer.

He quickly pulled both guns to the front of Garcia’s face and placed the barrels on his eyes.

“Whaaaaaa…….”

Cramer pulled both triggers.

Seventy seven cat and dog.

I may still catch the news.

[Vail_Indigo]

CLOSED, moved to here.