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KattDclaw
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ArcticAvenue
Randomly Pawing At Keys
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Chapter 2 - The Dying of the Light
Midtown
11:36 PM -- The End of the Night
Hillcrest Cemetery
“Dylan Thomas is an ass, and if he was alive I’d kick him in the nuts.” Red sat on the muddy ground, leaning back against the stone wall. The air was thick with the night’s indecision to become a rainy mess or just to hang over them all like a threat of miserable. To anyone else, Red was just talking to himself, but that didn’t stop him. “You know Dylan Thomas, don’tcha? I used to quote his ass all the time. ‘Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage … Rage against the dying of the light.’” Red’s words slowed later in the phrase, words hanging like the gloom in the air. “Rage. I used to say. Rage was the way you can survive the darkness. I used to think it didn’t matter what would happen, you never quit fighting. You never stop raging. I could lose a fight, but I can never stop the fight.
“‘Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage against the dying of the light.’ I have that tattoo. Right here.” Red patted his shoulder. “You can’t see it. You wouldn’t have seen it. Got it before we met. Got it way back when I was a grunt. Now it’s covered with hair, so … just trust me alright? Seems as soon as it got covered up I learned that rage meant jack shit. Should have gotten T.S. Elliot on there instead, ‘This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.’”
He let the silence linger for a while. It would be hours before the sun rose, even if it found a way through the clouds and whatever filth was in the skies these days, but that being said it would be hours before this city sleeps. Even if he was here to see it, it would be better than the crappy air south of here in G-Town. They say, thought, enough G’s would move south until they start taking over Midtown too; which would make those up there in Downtown uneasy and start thinking about finding a new city all together.
Red pulled his hood off his head, freeing the thick rush of red hair hanging over his eyes. His ears tended to point backwards, but they sank fairly low towards his neck. When they did that, they looked more like orangish highlights running down the length of his head. He hadn’t learned to control them them to keep them down and to hide his mood, so every since he left the service he tended towards hoodies. He dragged the padded palms of his hand across the rounded cheeks coming away with a mixture of blood and water that he tried to convince himself was just rain. His finger tested his lip and the swelling around a canine; Red winced from the sharp pain and the taste of blood. He let his lips curl over the bleeding gums, soaking it with his own saliva, then lifting up to spit it over the wall behind him.
“Sorry,” he began again speaking once more to no one in particular, “I’ve had a bad night. Run in with your protector.” His voice took a sarcastic tone, and he shook his head. “That was only the worse part. Not the only part.” He reached for the hood and pulled it up over his head again, and pulled the jacket around his shoulders. “Maybe if I did rage, these nights wouldn’t be so bad. I may run out of those nights quick, but at least …” He took a heavy sigh and pulled his long arms around his chest. “I don’t know, its better to be in control when the whimper comes.” He laid his head back against the wall behind him, closed his green eyes, and let the darkness surround him; and he let the memory of the night come back to play in his bitterness.
Midtown
7:26 PM -- The Beginning of the Night
Happy Stop Corner Market
Seven people. Seven fucking people in this store. Three kids grabbing power drinks. One guy counting change for a single cigarette. One drug addict stumbling to the bathroom. One dude starting down the guy behind the register to time when he can slip something under his heavy coat. And Red was the seventh, minding his own business flipping through ‘Guns & Ammo’.
Who does the cashier give a shit about?
“Not a library,” he yelled in an accent that was as thickly Arabian as his beard. “You no stand there all night, you buy or you leave.”
“I’ll buy it if I need it,” Red responded. Red thought he could make this quick and not draw too much attention. His hoodie was pulled up high enough to hide the ears. He got a nice tailor job on the back of his pants that let his tail slide up his back around around his side. He could have done a hell of a better job hiding in plain sight here, but there is only so much you can do when you are a 5’ 9” anthro canine covered in red fur with a snout full of teeth to round it out. At some point of time you are trying to hide so much that you show everything. Sometimes he doesn’t care, but today he didn’t trust his contacts to do their fucking job right, so do what you can to protect yourself.
“No, you trouble” the Arabian yelled back at Red, calling out way too loud, “You trouble, you don’t stand here all night. All you G are trouble.”
“I’m trouble?” Red blurted. “Look around man, I ain’t the trouble.”
“You trouble, you buy or you leave.”
“Hey, you know me, Man,” Red said, trying his hardest to focus on the mag. “I’ve been coming here for years; even before I was G. I ain’t trouble to you. I just fucking got here and I’ll buy it if I need it. I Ain’t Gonna be Anything!” Red started flipping the pages faster, more furiously.
There was a bang from behind the counter, he had pulled out a bat and slapped it against the corner. “Get out my store if you be trouble, G.”
Red ignored him, digging through the mag. If this wasn’t the right one, things around here could get hot soon. Just as he spotted the handwriting on the right page, the mag was slapped from his hands.
Looming over Red was a tall black man, the one digging for change for a smoke. He was wide, maybe not athletic, but definitely no slouch. What he lost in fitness he gained in height - well over a half foot taller than Red. Throw in that the giant’s jet black skin and he would have made a grown man stuck cornered in an alley piss his pants.
Red though, didn’t even flinch. Having the magazine knocked out of his hands by this man, Red simply turned his head to look up at his height. His green eyes peering out from under the hoodie, Red spoke calmly. “Can I help you with something?”
The dark giant spoke in a deep voice, “The man said he wanted no trouble.”
Between his training and his enhancements, Red had about a 50-50 chance of holding his own against this guy. Throw in what is concealed in his belt, Red would have the guy dead in seconds. Red wasn’t the most honest or honorable GEH, but he wasn’t lying before, he really didn’t want to be trouble. “Alright, just let me buy the magazine then leave, that okay with you?”
Red reached for the mag, as he did, the black man pulled the hoodie from his head. His ears were pinned back already, and freeing them didn’t turn down what they portrayed.
The giant man sneared, “What the fuck you supposed to be, fuzzy?”
Rising to his full height, Red raised his head and peered into the black man’s eyes. There was a pounding in his head, and underneath all the hair he could his skin warm like when he first got his name as a child. “What do you think I am supposed to be, boy?”
Standing taller the man voice got deeper, and wandered into a growl sing-song. “You look like a faggoty fox. Can’t even be a wolf, you have to be a faggoty little fox boy with your fox boyfriends. Is that what you are, fuzzy?”
Turning his head, he looked around at the other witnesses here. Even the guy who was pocketing thing in his coat stopped to watch this. Red didn’t turn back to the man at first, he wanted them all to hear this. He smiled slyly and said, “The G-parlor don’t do foxes. Foxes are prohibited for civilians. You’d have to be a part of some military project, don’t you think? Maybe like a black ops. You probably would only see a fox if he was some kind of highly advanced death squad. Probably if they are doing that to some grunt, they trained him to end a life with just a quick snap before the mark knew what hit him.” Red turned back to the giant. Giving his head a tilt and feeling it pop, Red sneered. “You can find out.” He gave a casual shrug. “Or you can let me buy my magazine and leave.”
They stared each other down for a long pause. The silence was deafening. The air was thick with tension. The pause lasted forever.
Then the black man stepped aside.
Red moved to the counter, pulled some loose bills from his pocket, and gave it to the shaking cashier. He thanked the cashier as if nothing happened, wrapped up the mag, and slipped it into his hoodie pocket.
The black man called to Red as he went to leave, “you all ain’t welcome in this part of town.”
Red shook his head and said quietly, “Ahhhh, segregation lives on. Et tu brute?”
Midtown
8:06 PM
Corner of Hillcrest & Reformation
Down the street and out of sight of the store, Red flipped open the magazine to the page. ‘290 Junction Street, First Floor, only window’. He spit on the ground when he saw the location. For one thing, it was a good couple miles or so away, and he would have to walk the whole thing with the rain coming soon. Good news is that he could skirt the Pride Lands. Hillcrest was the unofficial border between Midtown and G-Town, and he could cut along that towards the waterfront dealing with any of the usual shit he catches with the King.
Picking up his step, he just got the mag closed when his night turned from bad to a dung beetle's dream. A cop car pulled up, whooped a siren as it stopped, and a fat asshole stepped out from behind the wheel. “Hey there Ratso,” it yelled at him like an old Irish fuckstick that is happy to see a fresh bottle of whisky.
Red groaned. “Come on, Donahey, not tonight.” He curled up the mag and slipped it into his pocket.
“What’s wrong Ratso,” the asscop quirked as it rounded the patrol car to the sidewalk. This thing was tall and overweight for a normal cop, but what he loses in physical ability he makes up by being a total dick. “Got big date planned? I hope not because I need to introduce you to my new partner.”
A younger latino woman, strapped up with bullet proof vest and a loaded gun belt, stepped out of the passenger door giving Red a hard look over. She tried to look tough, her jaw tight, her head lifted, her eyes slitted. You could tell she wasn’t all that tough, just trying to be, maybe even learning to be. Instead, she wanted to be something she wasn’t, and thought the badge made up for it. If Barney Fife was mexican and had tits, this would be him.
Red just shook his head, knowing the routine, by now. He stepped over to the trunk of the cruiser and began unloading his pockets. “I have plans, and they don’t include spending all night with you, Donahey. So can we just leave it with a rain check this time?”
Donahey maybe all smiles and laughter, but the rookie was all business. Except that when she talked she used slang they teach you in school books.. “What’s the perp’s rap? What do we roll him up for? This the scum that we bagged for B&E in District 6?”
Red shook his head, yanking his wallet out and throwing his license to her. “ The crime is W.A.B.G. The perp’s name is Red Samuels, aka Joshua Samuels. Red is just my nickname, but that’s only if you talk to me like I’m here. Like I am a real person.”
“Ohhh, Ratso,” it said to Red. “Haven’t I taught you that you ain’t no person anymore?” Donahey said it with a laugh, but in a way that it didn’t seem very funny.
“If you prick me do I not bleed?” Red asked placing the magazine on the trunk as non-discretely as he could.
“Shakespeare?” Sanchez asked, looking up from the license.
Red looked with a surprised smile to Sanchez.
Donahey, not as much. “Ratso think’s he’s a poet, spouting off quotes and shit. He thinks because he read some book once he is better than us. Before you think it’s cute remember that little ‘prick me bleed’ quote ends in something about killing you.” Donahey looked at Red, raised an eyebrow. “Where is it?”
“Red raised both hands above his head, and lifted the back of his hoodie, turning his backside to the asshole. Red’s tail unfurled from under the hoodie and dropped towards the ground. “It goes, ‘And if you wrong us shall we not revenge?’” Donahey pulled the gun from Red’s belt and opened it to look at what was loaded. “Leave the bullets this time, will ya Donahey?”
“What’s W.A.B.G.?” asked the rookie to the asscop.
“Walking Around Being G,” Donahey responded, shutting up the gun and placing it on the trunk. “Fucking joke you get from all of them.”
“G?” the rookie asked.
Red looked up at her shocked. Didn’t everyone know that by now? He even gave a look to Donahey as if saying ‘where’d you find this one from?’ With a bit of self-righteousness, he said “Rose by any other name, officer; that’s what that is.” He tried to flash her a smile but she didn’t buy it. “G, as in GEH, As In Genetically Engineered Humans, AS IN my genes are stewed up with another’s? Did you get me? Or do you need me to wag my tail at you.” He gave his tail a little wag just to rub it in.
She didn’t take it well, since she knitted her eyebrows and threw his license back to him. It fell short forcing him to reach to get it off the ground. “Seriously,” she said, “what are we picking him up for.”
Donahey laughed, shaking his head. “Not here. Just put him in the back, Sanchez,” the asshole said. “Ratso can have his stuff back, but I am holding onto the gun.”
Red grabbed everything he threw onto the trunk, stuffing it all back into his pockets randomly. “I want the gun back”, he said getting into the cruiser.
“You will, Ratso, You will.”
Midtown
8:46 PM
Hillcrest Avenue
As they drove, Red sat in the back seat and pulled his knees up to his stomach. The cruiser was like any normal cruiser, cop gear in the front, wide seat in the back, big ass cage fence separating the two. It was standard issue, but in the context of this cruiser it was embarrassing - two cops with the caged animal behind them. He could feel the heat of anger growing on his face. Everytime Donahey does this, he thinks this is the time Red will make it different, but he knows the odds and knows what will happen when he fights back. It’s one thing to have the satisfaction of beating up an asshat, and its another to spend your life running because you killed a cop.
“So, Sanchez, Ratso here is a bit of a celebrity, did you know that?”
Sanchez turns around to look at Red. Her dark eyes were barely visible in between street lights coming into the car.
“Yeah, he made the big newspapers, and all the talking heads. Created a whole buzz about our furry friends in general and how far they will go to cause good normal folks harm. You see, a couple years ago Ratso and a few of his fuzzy buddies were kind enough to give a little girl a ride home. A sweet, young girl who had her whole life ahead of her.”
“She was 19, asshole; and she was a hooker. She offered us handies for ten bucks a pop.” Red shut his eyes, holding back his anger.
“Naa, Naa, that’s not what they said in court,” it continued. “She had just left class at college and had to go all the way across town to get home, so these boys decided to give her a ride. She of course, graciously accepted, and off they went. All four of him. Ratso, his two wolf buddies, and the girl. What’s that girl’s name again, Ratso?”
“Mariah,” he replied. With his eyes closed he could picture her flushed face, blonde hair, pale blue eyes. She seemed small & young for her age, but that is probably why she drew so much attention in the press. He remembered everything about her, more than Donahey could ever describe. She wore this silver jacket, and the blue skirt was way too short for winter. Silver flats, with cotton socks that didn’t pass her ankle. It was always strange to see a full human in G-Town, even stranger that she was walking on any street. Above all else, she had a brightness about her that was without equal. She was beamed with energy & dazzled with her sweet laughing voice. But that smile --that slight overbitten, slightly wider than normal, smile -- that shined like the brightest of lights dug into his memory harder than anything else in his life.
“Yeah, Mariah, that’s her name,” the asshole continued. He turned down along the wharf, where he usually takes Red. Sanchez seemed to be focused on her partner’s story. “See, these boys decided that she should get a bit more friendly. So while our friend Ratso here did the driving, his fuzzy buddies stuck their paws all over her. When she didn’t want to play along, they started forcing her like some chew doll. Must have lasted a good long time because Ratso picked her up on Water Street, but they threw her clothes out the window on 30th Avenue. Traffic cam downtown caught the van, and you could see one of the boys forcing himself on the poor girl, his tail just a wagging. When they weren’t sticking their dicks in her, they were pounding her with their doggie paws. Seems both those boys took turns on every way they could, and felt like beating her up was the best way to do it.
“Of course, not our little angel. Not our boy Ratso. He just kept right on driving while they kept beating the shit out of poor Maranda.”
“Meriah,” Red corrected. In his mind, her voice passed through his head. The laughter. The moans. The screams. The pleading. As much as he tried to ignored the story, he runs it through his own mind nearly every hour of every day.
“I came across them as they were dumping her out just up here. Going to leave her for dead after they got done tossing her around.” The asshole pulls the car up to stop at the end of a pier, secluded and empty this time of night, where no one will find them. “If I didn’t come along they would have gotten away with it. Sadly, though, the girl was hurt real bad. Blood everywhere. She didn’t make it to the hospital.”
“They killed her?” Sanchez asked. “What the fuck is he doing out of jail then?”
“Ratso sang like a canary,” it replied. “Yep, Ratso ratted them out, just like his little fuzzy genes meant him to do. It took him a couple months to come around but he gave up his buddies.” The car just idled here. Every sentence he made left a longer, deeper pause, creating a greater gap in between them. “Now while they sit waiting on death row, he got off with time served. Turns out they couldn’t hang anything on him. He never got any of his seed in her like her buddies did.” Donahey turned off the cruiser and reached under the dash. All the power stopped, specifically those going to the dash cams. “Ratso is free, and our little Mary is dead.”
“Mariah,” Red spat.
“Just get out of the car,” it told him.
Dockyards
9:19 PM
Cargo Wharf 2, Pier Alpha
Red kneeled on the cement, his hands behind his head. His hoodie was off, his belt to the side, his pants drooping to the point half his ass was hanging out. Holding himself like this, his long lean form was almost bursting through his skin. In the dark light, Red could see Sanchez looking over his body, likely the first G she has seen, and likely wondering how much better looking he was than her boyfriend … if it wasn’t for being a fucking fuzzy. Of course Red wasn’t your typical G. Red was full-on. Enough mixed in him to still say he is part human, but one of the few that have so much of the other genes it can be tough, even for him, to know where one animal ended and another one began. Some just go half-assed: Ears, Teeth, Tail, maybe something that makes their pubes look like a bush. Not Red though, or more precisely, not those fuckers that made the call. While his snouted face was more brown furred matching his heavy tuft on his head, the hair growing from his neck down his back was a orange-ish red. Along his chest, the hair was much shorter but it streaked a bright white over his still visible pecs and washboard stomach. While he wasn’t one to show it off, he even gave the girl a taste of his tail, long like the other full animal Gs but bushy. Shirtless, it was clear that the cocktail that he was given had more on the fox side of the scale than the dog. Yet the process definitely didn’t leave him fat and lazy.
While Sanchez looked, Donahey paced, waiting for the right moment he used to say. Red guessed it was to make sure he didn’t fall on his ass. Red tightened his stomach as much as he could, but the first kick from the asscop slammed into his gut and felt like a getting a rock dropped on you. Donahey followed it up with a boot to his face, right across his cheek. Trying to right himself, lift his torso with his hands above his head again, Red looked up at Sanchez. He hoped that she would think this is crazy, or her cop instincts tell her that this is wrong. As Donahey set him up to take an elbow across the back of his head, Red hoped for compassion.
Donahey stepped off, and turned to Sanchez. Breathing hard from the best workout it probably had since it worked it’s pud that morning, it said, “remember what I told ya, but don’t be afraid to leave some bruises. Can’t see it under all that fucking hair.”
While on all fours, like the fox he was supposed to be kin with, he caught his own breath and spit blood from the snout. Her boots stepped across the cement until they were next to the pool of spit and blood building there. “What do you have to say for yourself?” she asked, still trying to sound tough.
“Be careful, Sanchez. The guy is ex-military remember,” the asscop said.
“I just want to hear it from him,” she yelled back still looming over Red.
“Officer,” he started, “you always see what’s wrong when you’re right. But you are never see what’s right when you’re happy doing wrong.” He turned his head to look up at her, his breath heavy from the asscop’s beating. “Just something I read.”
Contrary to the book, she wasn’t something he could read. She seemed to listen to him, gauge him, try to look into his canine infected soul for answers. Instead a question came. “Did you really rape that girl?”
Red sighed heavily, shaking his head. “Catch one infection in your eye, and a poison of another shall die,” he responded.
“What’s that G?” she replied. The last letter spitting out, venom of a new found curse.
He lifted his head to look at her directly. “Honestly, officer. I never laid a hand on her.”
Her lips pursed, eyes slitted, and she wound up a leg. The kick landed just under his chin, throwing him up and back. She stepped over quickly and slammed her foot into his ribs, two, three times. She lifted her foot and slammed it down onto his hip, noticeably trying to get his genitals but missed. She kicked him in the thigh as he rolled away from her. Donahey kicked his ass for fun, she was on a mission.
Red took two more kicks into the sides, before one made him scream opened mouth. “Watch it Sanchez,” Donahey yelled. “Don’t send him to the hospital, that will draw attention.”
Something in his words made her stop. Red couldn’t see any of it, he was lost in the intense pain in his ribs. Bruised for sure, broken maybe. She gave one last kick, probably aiming for the ribs but landing on his shoulder. “Fucking Pervert,” she said through spit covered lips. She was breathing in gasps, not from the energy needed for the attack, but like hyperventilation of a kid deep in tantrum.
Mid Town / G-Town
9:29 PM
Hillcrest Avenue to Mane (Main) Street to Junction Street
Sanchez hadn’t said a word since they got back in the cruiser, and she had a foot propped up against the dash laying her arm against it. The way it was positioned, it almost seemed that she was trying to block Red’s glare from the back.. A stale heat settled inside of this place, and for the most part it was quiet..
Red tried to keep moving in the back. Taking a beating was taking the a beating, but it leaves him with adrenalin rush still aching for fight or flight. The more he moved the less pain he felt, and less pain he would be in tomorrow.
“Don’t take me back, turn up here and head into G-Town.”
“What’s wrong, Ratso,” Donahey replied from the drivers seat. “Feel like chasing down another little furball for a fling?”
If Donahey was going to kick the shit out him, Red might as well have the asscop save him a long walk. “Nah,” Red replied, “got things to do. Take me down to Kingston Street.”
“Fuck You,” Donahey blunted back.
“What’s wrong,” Red laughed. “Afraid to go into the Pride Lands? You can pick on a dog, but a bunch of kitty cats make you shit yourself?”
“Fuck you, I’ll drop you off here.”
“Nah, you can let me off on Junction.”
Donahey shut up as he drove. Sanchez still remained quiet, and lost. Red leaned forward to watch the two of them through the cage between them.
“You tell your partner about the Pride Lands?”
“We don’t go to the Pride Lands without the Captain’s say so, and backup at the ready, that’s all she needs to know.”
She didn’t even react, she didn’t even move.
Red leaned closer and teased, “You see Sanchez, rumor you cops don’t go in there, because your bosses are on the Pride’s take. You mess with them, and your Captain will lose out on his tropical vacation fund; and maybe have to answer for two dead cops as well.”
“What the fuck you doing going into the Pride Lands anyway, Ratso. You working with the pussys now are you?”
“Notice how your partner didn’t even dispute what I said, Sanchez?”
Still, she didn’t even move.
Red paused before pushing it any more. He wiped a bit of blood from his lip, letting it soak into his hoodie. Asking with concern, with genuine concern, he said “You okay, Sanchez?”
Her head turned sharply, her eyes puffy and red, filled with the deepest of hate. She swung a fist and slammed it into the cage. “SHUT THE FUCK UP, G.”
The cruiser came to a stop in the middle of the street, and Donahey unlocked the door.
Red paused a brief moment and moved out of the car.
Before he got two steps, the driver side window rolled down. “Hey,” it yelled then pulled the gun out to hand it back to Red.
As he took the gun, Donahey got in a cheap shot, smacking Red in the snout.
“Fucking Pig,” Red yelled as he reeled.
“Pussy Lover,” it yelled back.
Red was ready to pound something, but he hurt way too much to do anything. Moving now brought much of the deeper pain back. His chest, his sides, his hips, his face, all of it pulsed and swelled under the pain. He managed to walk with a limp, but each step took everything he had. Still, he had a job to do, and the two assholes cut the time he had down to nothing at all. Rounding the corner, he pulled the magazine out again. ‘290 Junction Street, First Floor, only window.’ Trying the window he found it open. The irony of his life isn’t lost on the easy things to do.
Midtown
12:09 AM -- The End of the Night
Hillcrest Cemetery
“Hey … Hey Red. You in there?” The voice was a little above a whisper, but he recognized it enough to wake. He pushed himself to his feet, but practically every muscle in his body ached. A man stood there, shorter than he and his face covered by a black hoodie. Is this the new uniform for the furred masses?
“What took you so long, Randle.”
“I told you, Red, it’s Claw,” he responded pulling the hood down. His face was clearly feline, but not as developed genetically as Red’s. Street job enhancement. “You got the stuff?”
Red reached into his pocket and pulled out a box that clanked with the sound of vials. “We got a problem. You can’t drop the address at that store anymore. Almost had to pull my gun just to make the pick-up.”
The little kitty was too focused on the vials, checking and counting. “I’ll see if the boss is good with that. But we can’t meet here anymore.”
Red looked around, “why the hell not? you didn’t get followed did you?”
“No, it’s just, creepy.” Claw reached into his pocket and offered a stack of bills. “Hate graveyards, why’d you even think of this place.”
“Come here every day,” Red said checking the stack. “For that matter no one else does. So, we don’t get bothered, do we?”
Shaking his head, “Creepy. Alright, I’ll call ya when we have another lead.”
“Alright, see ya Randle.”
“Fuck You, It’s Claw!”
Red considered just sitting back down and spending the night here, but it was wet, cold, and he needed his bed to sleep in. Instead he turned, took a deep breath and said to no one in particular, “Sorry if I am a downer. Sorry for bringing you nothing but my troubles. That and it seems all I ever do is tell you all the shit I get myself into. It’s like I said, I think I to try to rage more. Or try harder. Fight off whatever this is..”
He took one last deep breath and stretched his arm fighting the pain in his ribs. From his pocket, he pulled a small candle, like those short round ones you get for a donation at the catholic church; or like he short round ones you scoop up and throw into your pocket on the way out of a catholic church. He placed it on top of a gravestone covered in old melted wax, and lit it. The thing tried to stay lit but didn’t. He snapped the lighter a couple more times but it just wouldn’t go. “Alright, I get the point, sweety. I’ll try harder tomorrow. Talk to you then.”
Red lifted his padded hand to his mouth, giving it a kiss, then placing it on to a stone. The stone was relatively new, small, and fairly unkept. In this darkness, most the stones would be unrecognizable, but the nearby streetlamp gave it light. The only things written on the stone was the girl’s name. “Mariah Hill”.
Midtown
11:36 PM -- The End of the Night
Hillcrest Cemetery
“Dylan Thomas is an ass, and if he was alive I’d kick him in the nuts.” Red sat on the muddy ground, leaning back against the stone wall. The air was thick with the night’s indecision to become a rainy mess or just to hang over them all like a threat of miserable. To anyone else, Red was just talking to himself, but that didn’t stop him. “You know Dylan Thomas, don’tcha? I used to quote his ass all the time. ‘Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage … Rage against the dying of the light.’” Red’s words slowed later in the phrase, words hanging like the gloom in the air. “Rage. I used to say. Rage was the way you can survive the darkness. I used to think it didn’t matter what would happen, you never quit fighting. You never stop raging. I could lose a fight, but I can never stop the fight.
“‘Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage against the dying of the light.’ I have that tattoo. Right here.” Red patted his shoulder. “You can’t see it. You wouldn’t have seen it. Got it before we met. Got it way back when I was a grunt. Now it’s covered with hair, so … just trust me alright? Seems as soon as it got covered up I learned that rage meant jack shit. Should have gotten T.S. Elliot on there instead, ‘This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.’”
He let the silence linger for a while. It would be hours before the sun rose, even if it found a way through the clouds and whatever filth was in the skies these days, but that being said it would be hours before this city sleeps. Even if he was here to see it, it would be better than the crappy air south of here in G-Town. They say, thought, enough G’s would move south until they start taking over Midtown too; which would make those up there in Downtown uneasy and start thinking about finding a new city all together.
Red pulled his hood off his head, freeing the thick rush of red hair hanging over his eyes. His ears tended to point backwards, but they sank fairly low towards his neck. When they did that, they looked more like orangish highlights running down the length of his head. He hadn’t learned to control them them to keep them down and to hide his mood, so every since he left the service he tended towards hoodies. He dragged the padded palms of his hand across the rounded cheeks coming away with a mixture of blood and water that he tried to convince himself was just rain. His finger tested his lip and the swelling around a canine; Red winced from the sharp pain and the taste of blood. He let his lips curl over the bleeding gums, soaking it with his own saliva, then lifting up to spit it over the wall behind him.
“Sorry,” he began again speaking once more to no one in particular, “I’ve had a bad night. Run in with your protector.” His voice took a sarcastic tone, and he shook his head. “That was only the worse part. Not the only part.” He reached for the hood and pulled it up over his head again, and pulled the jacket around his shoulders. “Maybe if I did rage, these nights wouldn’t be so bad. I may run out of those nights quick, but at least …” He took a heavy sigh and pulled his long arms around his chest. “I don’t know, its better to be in control when the whimper comes.” He laid his head back against the wall behind him, closed his green eyes, and let the darkness surround him; and he let the memory of the night come back to play in his bitterness.
Midtown
7:26 PM -- The Beginning of the Night
Happy Stop Corner Market
Seven people. Seven fucking people in this store. Three kids grabbing power drinks. One guy counting change for a single cigarette. One drug addict stumbling to the bathroom. One dude starting down the guy behind the register to time when he can slip something under his heavy coat. And Red was the seventh, minding his own business flipping through ‘Guns & Ammo’.
Who does the cashier give a shit about?
“Not a library,” he yelled in an accent that was as thickly Arabian as his beard. “You no stand there all night, you buy or you leave.”
“I’ll buy it if I need it,” Red responded. Red thought he could make this quick and not draw too much attention. His hoodie was pulled up high enough to hide the ears. He got a nice tailor job on the back of his pants that let his tail slide up his back around around his side. He could have done a hell of a better job hiding in plain sight here, but there is only so much you can do when you are a 5’ 9” anthro canine covered in red fur with a snout full of teeth to round it out. At some point of time you are trying to hide so much that you show everything. Sometimes he doesn’t care, but today he didn’t trust his contacts to do their fucking job right, so do what you can to protect yourself.
“No, you trouble” the Arabian yelled back at Red, calling out way too loud, “You trouble, you don’t stand here all night. All you G are trouble.”
“I’m trouble?” Red blurted. “Look around man, I ain’t the trouble.”
“You trouble, you buy or you leave.”
“Hey, you know me, Man,” Red said, trying his hardest to focus on the mag. “I’ve been coming here for years; even before I was G. I ain’t trouble to you. I just fucking got here and I’ll buy it if I need it. I Ain’t Gonna be Anything!” Red started flipping the pages faster, more furiously.
There was a bang from behind the counter, he had pulled out a bat and slapped it against the corner. “Get out my store if you be trouble, G.”
Red ignored him, digging through the mag. If this wasn’t the right one, things around here could get hot soon. Just as he spotted the handwriting on the right page, the mag was slapped from his hands.
Looming over Red was a tall black man, the one digging for change for a smoke. He was wide, maybe not athletic, but definitely no slouch. What he lost in fitness he gained in height - well over a half foot taller than Red. Throw in that the giant’s jet black skin and he would have made a grown man stuck cornered in an alley piss his pants.
Red though, didn’t even flinch. Having the magazine knocked out of his hands by this man, Red simply turned his head to look up at his height. His green eyes peering out from under the hoodie, Red spoke calmly. “Can I help you with something?”
The dark giant spoke in a deep voice, “The man said he wanted no trouble.”
Between his training and his enhancements, Red had about a 50-50 chance of holding his own against this guy. Throw in what is concealed in his belt, Red would have the guy dead in seconds. Red wasn’t the most honest or honorable GEH, but he wasn’t lying before, he really didn’t want to be trouble. “Alright, just let me buy the magazine then leave, that okay with you?”
Red reached for the mag, as he did, the black man pulled the hoodie from his head. His ears were pinned back already, and freeing them didn’t turn down what they portrayed.
The giant man sneared, “What the fuck you supposed to be, fuzzy?”
Rising to his full height, Red raised his head and peered into the black man’s eyes. There was a pounding in his head, and underneath all the hair he could his skin warm like when he first got his name as a child. “What do you think I am supposed to be, boy?”
Standing taller the man voice got deeper, and wandered into a growl sing-song. “You look like a faggoty fox. Can’t even be a wolf, you have to be a faggoty little fox boy with your fox boyfriends. Is that what you are, fuzzy?”
Turning his head, he looked around at the other witnesses here. Even the guy who was pocketing thing in his coat stopped to watch this. Red didn’t turn back to the man at first, he wanted them all to hear this. He smiled slyly and said, “The G-parlor don’t do foxes. Foxes are prohibited for civilians. You’d have to be a part of some military project, don’t you think? Maybe like a black ops. You probably would only see a fox if he was some kind of highly advanced death squad. Probably if they are doing that to some grunt, they trained him to end a life with just a quick snap before the mark knew what hit him.” Red turned back to the giant. Giving his head a tilt and feeling it pop, Red sneered. “You can find out.” He gave a casual shrug. “Or you can let me buy my magazine and leave.”
They stared each other down for a long pause. The silence was deafening. The air was thick with tension. The pause lasted forever.
Then the black man stepped aside.
Red moved to the counter, pulled some loose bills from his pocket, and gave it to the shaking cashier. He thanked the cashier as if nothing happened, wrapped up the mag, and slipped it into his hoodie pocket.
The black man called to Red as he went to leave, “you all ain’t welcome in this part of town.”
Red shook his head and said quietly, “Ahhhh, segregation lives on. Et tu brute?”
Midtown
8:06 PM
Corner of Hillcrest & Reformation
Down the street and out of sight of the store, Red flipped open the magazine to the page. ‘290 Junction Street, First Floor, only window’. He spit on the ground when he saw the location. For one thing, it was a good couple miles or so away, and he would have to walk the whole thing with the rain coming soon. Good news is that he could skirt the Pride Lands. Hillcrest was the unofficial border between Midtown and G-Town, and he could cut along that towards the waterfront dealing with any of the usual shit he catches with the King.
Picking up his step, he just got the mag closed when his night turned from bad to a dung beetle's dream. A cop car pulled up, whooped a siren as it stopped, and a fat asshole stepped out from behind the wheel. “Hey there Ratso,” it yelled at him like an old Irish fuckstick that is happy to see a fresh bottle of whisky.
Red groaned. “Come on, Donahey, not tonight.” He curled up the mag and slipped it into his pocket.
“What’s wrong Ratso,” the asscop quirked as it rounded the patrol car to the sidewalk. This thing was tall and overweight for a normal cop, but what he loses in physical ability he makes up by being a total dick. “Got big date planned? I hope not because I need to introduce you to my new partner.”
A younger latino woman, strapped up with bullet proof vest and a loaded gun belt, stepped out of the passenger door giving Red a hard look over. She tried to look tough, her jaw tight, her head lifted, her eyes slitted. You could tell she wasn’t all that tough, just trying to be, maybe even learning to be. Instead, she wanted to be something she wasn’t, and thought the badge made up for it. If Barney Fife was mexican and had tits, this would be him.
Red just shook his head, knowing the routine, by now. He stepped over to the trunk of the cruiser and began unloading his pockets. “I have plans, and they don’t include spending all night with you, Donahey. So can we just leave it with a rain check this time?”
Donahey maybe all smiles and laughter, but the rookie was all business. Except that when she talked she used slang they teach you in school books.. “What’s the perp’s rap? What do we roll him up for? This the scum that we bagged for B&E in District 6?”
Red shook his head, yanking his wallet out and throwing his license to her. “ The crime is W.A.B.G. The perp’s name is Red Samuels, aka Joshua Samuels. Red is just my nickname, but that’s only if you talk to me like I’m here. Like I am a real person.”
“Ohhh, Ratso,” it said to Red. “Haven’t I taught you that you ain’t no person anymore?” Donahey said it with a laugh, but in a way that it didn’t seem very funny.
“If you prick me do I not bleed?” Red asked placing the magazine on the trunk as non-discretely as he could.
“Shakespeare?” Sanchez asked, looking up from the license.
Red looked with a surprised smile to Sanchez.
Donahey, not as much. “Ratso think’s he’s a poet, spouting off quotes and shit. He thinks because he read some book once he is better than us. Before you think it’s cute remember that little ‘prick me bleed’ quote ends in something about killing you.” Donahey looked at Red, raised an eyebrow. “Where is it?”
“Red raised both hands above his head, and lifted the back of his hoodie, turning his backside to the asshole. Red’s tail unfurled from under the hoodie and dropped towards the ground. “It goes, ‘And if you wrong us shall we not revenge?’” Donahey pulled the gun from Red’s belt and opened it to look at what was loaded. “Leave the bullets this time, will ya Donahey?”
“What’s W.A.B.G.?” asked the rookie to the asscop.
“Walking Around Being G,” Donahey responded, shutting up the gun and placing it on the trunk. “Fucking joke you get from all of them.”
“G?” the rookie asked.
Red looked up at her shocked. Didn’t everyone know that by now? He even gave a look to Donahey as if saying ‘where’d you find this one from?’ With a bit of self-righteousness, he said “Rose by any other name, officer; that’s what that is.” He tried to flash her a smile but she didn’t buy it. “G, as in GEH, As In Genetically Engineered Humans, AS IN my genes are stewed up with another’s? Did you get me? Or do you need me to wag my tail at you.” He gave his tail a little wag just to rub it in.
She didn’t take it well, since she knitted her eyebrows and threw his license back to him. It fell short forcing him to reach to get it off the ground. “Seriously,” she said, “what are we picking him up for.”
Donahey laughed, shaking his head. “Not here. Just put him in the back, Sanchez,” the asshole said. “Ratso can have his stuff back, but I am holding onto the gun.”
Red grabbed everything he threw onto the trunk, stuffing it all back into his pockets randomly. “I want the gun back”, he said getting into the cruiser.
“You will, Ratso, You will.”
Midtown
8:46 PM
Hillcrest Avenue
As they drove, Red sat in the back seat and pulled his knees up to his stomach. The cruiser was like any normal cruiser, cop gear in the front, wide seat in the back, big ass cage fence separating the two. It was standard issue, but in the context of this cruiser it was embarrassing - two cops with the caged animal behind them. He could feel the heat of anger growing on his face. Everytime Donahey does this, he thinks this is the time Red will make it different, but he knows the odds and knows what will happen when he fights back. It’s one thing to have the satisfaction of beating up an asshat, and its another to spend your life running because you killed a cop.
“So, Sanchez, Ratso here is a bit of a celebrity, did you know that?”
Sanchez turns around to look at Red. Her dark eyes were barely visible in between street lights coming into the car.
“Yeah, he made the big newspapers, and all the talking heads. Created a whole buzz about our furry friends in general and how far they will go to cause good normal folks harm. You see, a couple years ago Ratso and a few of his fuzzy buddies were kind enough to give a little girl a ride home. A sweet, young girl who had her whole life ahead of her.”
“She was 19, asshole; and she was a hooker. She offered us handies for ten bucks a pop.” Red shut his eyes, holding back his anger.
“Naa, Naa, that’s not what they said in court,” it continued. “She had just left class at college and had to go all the way across town to get home, so these boys decided to give her a ride. She of course, graciously accepted, and off they went. All four of him. Ratso, his two wolf buddies, and the girl. What’s that girl’s name again, Ratso?”
“Mariah,” he replied. With his eyes closed he could picture her flushed face, blonde hair, pale blue eyes. She seemed small & young for her age, but that is probably why she drew so much attention in the press. He remembered everything about her, more than Donahey could ever describe. She wore this silver jacket, and the blue skirt was way too short for winter. Silver flats, with cotton socks that didn’t pass her ankle. It was always strange to see a full human in G-Town, even stranger that she was walking on any street. Above all else, she had a brightness about her that was without equal. She was beamed with energy & dazzled with her sweet laughing voice. But that smile --that slight overbitten, slightly wider than normal, smile -- that shined like the brightest of lights dug into his memory harder than anything else in his life.
“Yeah, Mariah, that’s her name,” the asshole continued. He turned down along the wharf, where he usually takes Red. Sanchez seemed to be focused on her partner’s story. “See, these boys decided that she should get a bit more friendly. So while our friend Ratso here did the driving, his fuzzy buddies stuck their paws all over her. When she didn’t want to play along, they started forcing her like some chew doll. Must have lasted a good long time because Ratso picked her up on Water Street, but they threw her clothes out the window on 30th Avenue. Traffic cam downtown caught the van, and you could see one of the boys forcing himself on the poor girl, his tail just a wagging. When they weren’t sticking their dicks in her, they were pounding her with their doggie paws. Seems both those boys took turns on every way they could, and felt like beating her up was the best way to do it.
“Of course, not our little angel. Not our boy Ratso. He just kept right on driving while they kept beating the shit out of poor Maranda.”
“Meriah,” Red corrected. In his mind, her voice passed through his head. The laughter. The moans. The screams. The pleading. As much as he tried to ignored the story, he runs it through his own mind nearly every hour of every day.
“I came across them as they were dumping her out just up here. Going to leave her for dead after they got done tossing her around.” The asshole pulls the car up to stop at the end of a pier, secluded and empty this time of night, where no one will find them. “If I didn’t come along they would have gotten away with it. Sadly, though, the girl was hurt real bad. Blood everywhere. She didn’t make it to the hospital.”
“They killed her?” Sanchez asked. “What the fuck is he doing out of jail then?”
“Ratso sang like a canary,” it replied. “Yep, Ratso ratted them out, just like his little fuzzy genes meant him to do. It took him a couple months to come around but he gave up his buddies.” The car just idled here. Every sentence he made left a longer, deeper pause, creating a greater gap in between them. “Now while they sit waiting on death row, he got off with time served. Turns out they couldn’t hang anything on him. He never got any of his seed in her like her buddies did.” Donahey turned off the cruiser and reached under the dash. All the power stopped, specifically those going to the dash cams. “Ratso is free, and our little Mary is dead.”
“Mariah,” Red spat.
“Just get out of the car,” it told him.
Dockyards
9:19 PM
Cargo Wharf 2, Pier Alpha
Red kneeled on the cement, his hands behind his head. His hoodie was off, his belt to the side, his pants drooping to the point half his ass was hanging out. Holding himself like this, his long lean form was almost bursting through his skin. In the dark light, Red could see Sanchez looking over his body, likely the first G she has seen, and likely wondering how much better looking he was than her boyfriend … if it wasn’t for being a fucking fuzzy. Of course Red wasn’t your typical G. Red was full-on. Enough mixed in him to still say he is part human, but one of the few that have so much of the other genes it can be tough, even for him, to know where one animal ended and another one began. Some just go half-assed: Ears, Teeth, Tail, maybe something that makes their pubes look like a bush. Not Red though, or more precisely, not those fuckers that made the call. While his snouted face was more brown furred matching his heavy tuft on his head, the hair growing from his neck down his back was a orange-ish red. Along his chest, the hair was much shorter but it streaked a bright white over his still visible pecs and washboard stomach. While he wasn’t one to show it off, he even gave the girl a taste of his tail, long like the other full animal Gs but bushy. Shirtless, it was clear that the cocktail that he was given had more on the fox side of the scale than the dog. Yet the process definitely didn’t leave him fat and lazy.
While Sanchez looked, Donahey paced, waiting for the right moment he used to say. Red guessed it was to make sure he didn’t fall on his ass. Red tightened his stomach as much as he could, but the first kick from the asscop slammed into his gut and felt like a getting a rock dropped on you. Donahey followed it up with a boot to his face, right across his cheek. Trying to right himself, lift his torso with his hands above his head again, Red looked up at Sanchez. He hoped that she would think this is crazy, or her cop instincts tell her that this is wrong. As Donahey set him up to take an elbow across the back of his head, Red hoped for compassion.
Donahey stepped off, and turned to Sanchez. Breathing hard from the best workout it probably had since it worked it’s pud that morning, it said, “remember what I told ya, but don’t be afraid to leave some bruises. Can’t see it under all that fucking hair.”
While on all fours, like the fox he was supposed to be kin with, he caught his own breath and spit blood from the snout. Her boots stepped across the cement until they were next to the pool of spit and blood building there. “What do you have to say for yourself?” she asked, still trying to sound tough.
“Be careful, Sanchez. The guy is ex-military remember,” the asscop said.
“I just want to hear it from him,” she yelled back still looming over Red.
“Officer,” he started, “you always see what’s wrong when you’re right. But you are never see what’s right when you’re happy doing wrong.” He turned his head to look up at her, his breath heavy from the asscop’s beating. “Just something I read.”
Contrary to the book, she wasn’t something he could read. She seemed to listen to him, gauge him, try to look into his canine infected soul for answers. Instead a question came. “Did you really rape that girl?”
Red sighed heavily, shaking his head. “Catch one infection in your eye, and a poison of another shall die,” he responded.
“What’s that G?” she replied. The last letter spitting out, venom of a new found curse.
He lifted his head to look at her directly. “Honestly, officer. I never laid a hand on her.”
Her lips pursed, eyes slitted, and she wound up a leg. The kick landed just under his chin, throwing him up and back. She stepped over quickly and slammed her foot into his ribs, two, three times. She lifted her foot and slammed it down onto his hip, noticeably trying to get his genitals but missed. She kicked him in the thigh as he rolled away from her. Donahey kicked his ass for fun, she was on a mission.
Red took two more kicks into the sides, before one made him scream opened mouth. “Watch it Sanchez,” Donahey yelled. “Don’t send him to the hospital, that will draw attention.”
Something in his words made her stop. Red couldn’t see any of it, he was lost in the intense pain in his ribs. Bruised for sure, broken maybe. She gave one last kick, probably aiming for the ribs but landing on his shoulder. “Fucking Pervert,” she said through spit covered lips. She was breathing in gasps, not from the energy needed for the attack, but like hyperventilation of a kid deep in tantrum.
Mid Town / G-Town
9:29 PM
Hillcrest Avenue to Mane (Main) Street to Junction Street
Sanchez hadn’t said a word since they got back in the cruiser, and she had a foot propped up against the dash laying her arm against it. The way it was positioned, it almost seemed that she was trying to block Red’s glare from the back.. A stale heat settled inside of this place, and for the most part it was quiet..
Red tried to keep moving in the back. Taking a beating was taking the a beating, but it leaves him with adrenalin rush still aching for fight or flight. The more he moved the less pain he felt, and less pain he would be in tomorrow.
“Don’t take me back, turn up here and head into G-Town.”
“What’s wrong, Ratso,” Donahey replied from the drivers seat. “Feel like chasing down another little furball for a fling?”
If Donahey was going to kick the shit out him, Red might as well have the asscop save him a long walk. “Nah,” Red replied, “got things to do. Take me down to Kingston Street.”
“Fuck You,” Donahey blunted back.
“What’s wrong,” Red laughed. “Afraid to go into the Pride Lands? You can pick on a dog, but a bunch of kitty cats make you shit yourself?”
“Fuck you, I’ll drop you off here.”
“Nah, you can let me off on Junction.”
Donahey shut up as he drove. Sanchez still remained quiet, and lost. Red leaned forward to watch the two of them through the cage between them.
“You tell your partner about the Pride Lands?”
“We don’t go to the Pride Lands without the Captain’s say so, and backup at the ready, that’s all she needs to know.”
She didn’t even react, she didn’t even move.
Red leaned closer and teased, “You see Sanchez, rumor you cops don’t go in there, because your bosses are on the Pride’s take. You mess with them, and your Captain will lose out on his tropical vacation fund; and maybe have to answer for two dead cops as well.”
“What the fuck you doing going into the Pride Lands anyway, Ratso. You working with the pussys now are you?”
“Notice how your partner didn’t even dispute what I said, Sanchez?”
Still, she didn’t even move.
Red paused before pushing it any more. He wiped a bit of blood from his lip, letting it soak into his hoodie. Asking with concern, with genuine concern, he said “You okay, Sanchez?”
Her head turned sharply, her eyes puffy and red, filled with the deepest of hate. She swung a fist and slammed it into the cage. “SHUT THE FUCK UP, G.”
The cruiser came to a stop in the middle of the street, and Donahey unlocked the door.
Red paused a brief moment and moved out of the car.
Before he got two steps, the driver side window rolled down. “Hey,” it yelled then pulled the gun out to hand it back to Red.
As he took the gun, Donahey got in a cheap shot, smacking Red in the snout.
“Fucking Pig,” Red yelled as he reeled.
“Pussy Lover,” it yelled back.
Red was ready to pound something, but he hurt way too much to do anything. Moving now brought much of the deeper pain back. His chest, his sides, his hips, his face, all of it pulsed and swelled under the pain. He managed to walk with a limp, but each step took everything he had. Still, he had a job to do, and the two assholes cut the time he had down to nothing at all. Rounding the corner, he pulled the magazine out again. ‘290 Junction Street, First Floor, only window.’ Trying the window he found it open. The irony of his life isn’t lost on the easy things to do.
Midtown
12:09 AM -- The End of the Night
Hillcrest Cemetery
“Hey … Hey Red. You in there?” The voice was a little above a whisper, but he recognized it enough to wake. He pushed himself to his feet, but practically every muscle in his body ached. A man stood there, shorter than he and his face covered by a black hoodie. Is this the new uniform for the furred masses?
“What took you so long, Randle.”
“I told you, Red, it’s Claw,” he responded pulling the hood down. His face was clearly feline, but not as developed genetically as Red’s. Street job enhancement. “You got the stuff?”
Red reached into his pocket and pulled out a box that clanked with the sound of vials. “We got a problem. You can’t drop the address at that store anymore. Almost had to pull my gun just to make the pick-up.”
The little kitty was too focused on the vials, checking and counting. “I’ll see if the boss is good with that. But we can’t meet here anymore.”
Red looked around, “why the hell not? you didn’t get followed did you?”
“No, it’s just, creepy.” Claw reached into his pocket and offered a stack of bills. “Hate graveyards, why’d you even think of this place.”
“Come here every day,” Red said checking the stack. “For that matter no one else does. So, we don’t get bothered, do we?”
Shaking his head, “Creepy. Alright, I’ll call ya when we have another lead.”
“Alright, see ya Randle.”
“Fuck You, It’s Claw!”
Red considered just sitting back down and spending the night here, but it was wet, cold, and he needed his bed to sleep in. Instead he turned, took a deep breath and said to no one in particular, “Sorry if I am a downer. Sorry for bringing you nothing but my troubles. That and it seems all I ever do is tell you all the shit I get myself into. It’s like I said, I think I to try to rage more. Or try harder. Fight off whatever this is..”
He took one last deep breath and stretched his arm fighting the pain in his ribs. From his pocket, he pulled a small candle, like those short round ones you get for a donation at the catholic church; or like he short round ones you scoop up and throw into your pocket on the way out of a catholic church. He placed it on top of a gravestone covered in old melted wax, and lit it. The thing tried to stay lit but didn’t. He snapped the lighter a couple more times but it just wouldn’t go. “Alright, I get the point, sweety. I’ll try harder tomorrow. Talk to you then.”
Red lifted his padded hand to his mouth, giving it a kiss, then placing it on to a stone. The stone was relatively new, small, and fairly unkept. In this darkness, most the stones would be unrecognizable, but the nearby streetlamp gave it light. The only things written on the stone was the girl’s name. “Mariah Hill”.
K
KattDclaw
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ArcticAvenue
Randomly Pawing At Keys
- Joined
- Jul 16, 2013
- Posts
- 1,650
Chapter 4 = Steal From the Rich
11:56AM
G-Town
Blue Sky Lofts
The phone rang loud. Since he went G, his body doesn’t know whether to be nocturnal or a day walker, so it just shuts down and sleeps whenever it wants -- sometimes wanting to keep him asleep for as long as it takes. So the ringer was always set to overloud when he went to bed. All he knew now was that the sun was up, his shithole apartment was still a shithole, and the god damn phone was ringing.
“Yeah?” he answered it.
The voice was familiar, all be it hushed. “Hey, it’s Trev, got a job for you but it has to happen this afternoon.”
“What time is it,” Red yawned stretching across the bed. He lay in just a pair of boxers, and twisting on the thing mattress the short fur along his torso accented his toned muscles from his abs to his chest.
“Dude, you just fucking getting up?” Trev barked, and then paused bringing his voice down again. “It’s lunchtime, asshole. Get out of fucking bedngs released his air and he yawned again. “Long night, you know how it is. Whatcha got?”
“You can climb, right?”
“Yeah.” Red remained tired, fought to wake up. He ran his hand down to his boxers and gave himself a long scratch. Lunchtime or not, this was like morning to him, and with it comes morning wood. Nothing beats a good rubdown on your morning wood.
“In & out grab.” Trev started in. “Park Avenue, building I do some work at and been casing. Windows on the Penthouse are wide open, that usually doesn’t happen. The security guy had a few too many, so he was about to pass out. So I put something in his coffee to put him over the top. Won’t be able to get in there and move heavy merchandise, but I am thinking that a place like that will have something you can grab and dash.”
“Anyone home?”
“Don’t know. But a place like that you got to think they are at work, and kids at school."
Red hocked up something in his throat and spit it out the window. "Kids," he grumbled, "I hate fucking kids."
"Just look at it. It’s one place taking up the whole floor. Private elevator on lockdown from the guard, so you can’t get up that way. But the building next door is taller, so you could come down from up top.”
"Place is empty?"
"Yup, at least what I know of."
In theory this was easy money, but there was no such thing as easy money, only easy ways to get thrown in jail. He sat up in bed moving the aching muscles from the beating the night before. “Your take?” Red asked.
“Fifteen percent.”
Red takes the work he can get. A real job is out of the question, so he puts what he has to use. Trev isn’t a frequent customer, but he is trustworthy. Discrete. Red met trev in a bar off of Hillcrest, one of those few places where they don’t turn away G’s or Normals. Trev didn’t have a drop of fur blood in him, but seemed to want to run in G-Town. Being a Normal meant Trev can get into places Red can’t. But he wasn’t smart enough to cover his own ass; so when giving Red a tip he has as much to lose as Red does. “How High up?”
“Ten floors.”
“Fifteen percent for that high? Jezzus shit Trev.”
“Fuck you, man. I handed this to you on a silver platter.” Trev got a little more forceful but quieted his tone, as if he was right next to someone who could turn him in. “No alarms, no guards, just get in and get out with a bag full of goods. They know me there, they saw me there this morning, they figure out anything they point it at me. I should be asking twenty-five.”
“Alright,” Red replied. “But you move the shit I get. Bad enough some red haired G ‘Moves on up to that Deluxe apartment in the sky’. I don’t want no pawn shop cameras picking up my furry ass selling the things.”
After a pause, Trev took over. “You okay there Red? I’m used to hearing you quote some book I never heard of, not the Jeffersons.”
“Dude, I just woke up,” Red laughed. “Text me the address and I’ll let you know tonight how it went.”
Red hung up the phone and spun his legs around to the floor. His bare feet pads scraped against the dry wood floor roughly. He winced when he leaned over and pulled a foot locker from under the bed, his ribs still aching from the fight with the asscop. Flipping the lid on the locker, her pulled what he thought he may need. Backpack, binoculars, rope & zip-ties, custom G-friendly gloves, hunting knife (just in case). Leave the gun, a 9mm Berretta (also just in case), nothing says “Search Me Officer” like big fuzzy ears and a hoodie. Carry & conceal may be the law, but not for Gs.
Finally getting out of bed, he grabbed a pair of cargo shorts. He dropped his boxers, and his cock slapped him in his belly. The morning wood hadn’t taken care of itself. Rubbing it some, he considered jumping back in bed and taking care of it. Contrary to the rumor, going doggie doesn’t make a guy any more viral, or more bluntly horney; Red was naturally that way to begin with. Red didn’t get many choices on what they gave him when they shot him up, but the one thing he didn’t complain about was this little enhancement. He used to laugh at how much more attention he would have gotten from the girls in school if he had this back then. Of course, in G-Town, furs enhance themselves in all shapes and sizes. In G-Town, a guy can buy attention with few shots of DNA. If you don’t have the balls, you can find a girl already pre-Gd rent attention for a couple hours.
He kept a hold of his member as he dug around for a new pair of boxers. For the obvious reasons, of course, but also because it was damn near the last bit of hairless skin on his body. From his face to his fingers, from his feet to his ass; even his hanging boys had a light covering of fur on them. It took some getting used to, still does for that matter, but sometimes he misses that feel of skin.
Just as he was zipping up the hoodie with everything packed up ready to go, the text came across and he was ready. With one last look in the mirror, he smiled and said “Release the hounds of war.”
-------
2:19PM
Downtown
254 Park Avenue, 16th Floor, Exterior
Standing on the rooftop, Red had his binoculars up to his eyes looking down at the smaller building below. It was shorter but a nice one, covered in white granite and contemporary shaping. Better than this gothic monstrosity he was hanging from at the moment. Just so he can be cliche, Red sat perched on a gargoyle like appendage sticking out. Truth is, if he made a go for a jump, this is the best chance he had.
‘If’ was still the question that needed to be answered.
Ear phones in, he heard the phone pick-up, “Hey Trev, can you talk?”
“Yeah, just got home, you get it done?” He was clearly somewhere he felt more at ease, now talking in his full voice.
“Ain’t gonna happen,” Red answered.
Trev jumped before Red could explain. “What!! Is this about the fifteen percent?”
“Nah, nothing like that, too risky. I’m up here across the alley right now, and it’s no good.”
“What’s wrong?”
“There’s a guard there. Big guy, looks Samoan, long hair, even a tattoo on his face. Woman there too, early 20s, comfortably dressed, looks like a nanny. She I can take tie up, maybe hold my own against the Samoan until he is under control, but the two of them? Not a chance. One will have the troops called before the other is out of the picture.”
“Geez, Red, you’re military. Can’t you take one out and then you only have to tie one of them up?” Trev bitched.
“No man, I don’t do that, you know that,” Red bitched back.
“Shit! There is a good score up there too, I know it. You got to do this, you’re the only one I know that can do it.” Trev’s voice was starting to sound desperate.
Red kept scanning the windows as he talked, watching as the Samoan flirted with the nanny, watching her flirt back. At times the talk seemed to be pretty heady, but the smiles on their faces still suggested they were pretty focused on each other. “This job could happen, but would take some planning, two, maybe three man crew. You’d be hard pressed to get fifteen percent though with that crew. We could take our time to make the most of the haul, better than whatever I can stuff in a sack. They got high end furniture down there, stuff you can sell for ten grand so easy that noone would even check it for prints.”
“Won’t do me much help doing that,” Trev responded sounding more despondent than one should working a case.
“Two, three doing a grab? Ten percent will go a long way too then.”
“No … No,” Trev replied simply. He stopped. Didn’t speak for a moment, but kept making sounds like he was trying to. “It … it has to be this afternoon.”
Red picked up on something there. A crew will always pull a harder take than one guy. Good plans are always worth it in the end. Trev knew that, and it ain’t like Trev to be impatient either. Besides, there was something in his voice that said something more desperate. It’s not like you share feelings with a guy like Trev, maybe a beer or two, but some things are unmistakable in this place. What Trev had going on was something harder and deeper than just looking for a good score, this meant something more desperate.
“How much you owe Trev?” Red said it like he was stating a fact. This wasn’t to line Trev’s pocket at all.
Trev sighed over the phone, and Red could almost hear his hand run along his forehead. “Five grand.”
“Who to?”
“Pride. Well, The King specifically.”
“Jezzus Trev,” Red groaned. “What kind of … we talked about this … you know better than to mess around with them. What’d the fuck did you do?” Red, for the first time since climbing up here, let the binoculars drop to hang. His fist balled up, and he fought to grit his teeth.
Trev paused. He breathed impatiently, uncomfortably. It wasn’t going to come over the phone, and if it did it would likely be a lie anyway.
“Alright, let me see what I can do here, stay on the line.” Red lifted the binoculars again and scanned over the penthouse. Put simply this wasn’t about at take anymore. This was about risking his ass. Two fold even. Pride finds out he was bailing out Trev, then a lot more shit will fly back onto him than anything Trev could have gotten himself into. That being said, doing a job like this is his own private ‘Fuck You’ to King.
Red took a deep breath, and refocused. The nanny was doing some cleaning on a counter now, but clearly her heart wasn’t into it. The Samoan was checking doors. They continued to talk to each other, she pointed this way and that, and the smile was growing on the Samoan’s face. All were secure as best Red could tell, but the window next to the patio door was still clear an open. “Wow, maybe if I can time it right, maybe can take the guard but …”
The Samoan was leaning close behind her, and put his arms around her waist. He could see him saying something to her, and whatever it was she wasn’t exactly against it. Finally she gave a nod, and sped up and the cleaning. The Samoan stepped back, but as he left her he let his hand slide slowly across her bottom. She kept a cheeky smirk and planted her flushed face down until her chin was in her chest. She raised a finger then turned with a flick towards hallway. The Samoan began removing his sportcoat, the kind that makes rich people think they hired a qualified guard, hanging it on a chair in the main room, then seemed to head towards a more interior hallway..
“Alright, Trev, we got a chance here.”
“What … What you got?”
“The big guy just talked to nanny into a something. My bet is these two are about to fuck each other, if we’re lucky they will be out of touch for a good half hour.”
“What? They getting naked right there?”
“No no, nothing like that. She … “ Red stopped to and chuckled. “I can just tell, okay? That chance is going to close up quick so I got to go now. I’ll give you a call when this is all done, alright?”
“Cunning like a fox? Or Crazy like a Fox,” Trev laughed and hung up before Red can give him one last ‘fuck you’.
Red couldn’t help but to laugh, as he shut the phone down and slid it & the binocs into his backpack. He zipped the hoodie up tight. When doing a job like this, losing the jacket is the preference, but just in case the love couple finish early a little stealth look would do. He slipped the backpack over his shoulders, tightened the straps close, and moved to the edge of the gargoyle’s snout. It will take twenty feet to close the gap, which will take some creative jumping.
He looked across the way into the penthouse windows for one last check. The nanny had her shoes off and was tiptoeing across the wood floor quickly to the same hallway the Samoan went down just a few minutes before. As soon as she disappeared from view, Red smiled satisfied as the words of Tolstoy came over his lips “One must be cunning and wicked in this world.” He took a few steps back and leaped.
His leap angled sideways down the grap building, making the distance that much greater but would stop him from slamming into it’s side. Closing the gap meant dropping more than a few floors below the penthouse, and his best bet hung from the frames of the windows where old steel racks blocked the jumpers from thinking about it. Three clawed fingers snagged on one to straighten him to fall parellel to the wall. The next floor down he got a better hold to slow his fall and change the momentum to head him around & up the wall. There wasn’t much to grab, but speed worked in his favor, A ledge here, a hanging gap there, and all that push he left the Gargoyle now headed him with where he needed to go. One final grab, and he hung the railing on the edge of the penthouse patio. The grip was tight, but he wouldn’t hold it long. The slow pain of pent up energy will grow to where his whole body could start seizing, but he needed to rest as much as possible. This job needed to happen quick, but he needed to be ready for anything inside that place -- and anything is what he might find.
-------
2:58PM
Downtown
252 Park Avenue, Apartment 15A (Penthouse)
Wow, who leaves a safe open anymore? For that matter, who leaves an open safe with a few stacks of cash and three credit cards prime for selling to ID thieves. If that wasn’t enough, the master bedroom had a jewelry box left out complete with a few chains of gold and rocks of different colors and sizes. Who does that? Who leaves this shit out like this? Probably the same people who live in an apartment with a passed out guard downstairs and another in the loft fucking the nanny. It’s like someone dropped their pants in the middle of Central Downtown with a sign posed on their back that said ‘please fuck me up the ass!’. Trev was right, though, this was good haul -- good enough that it was worth looking at hitting again. If he can get out of here scot free, then tomorrow would be another nice visit.
Looking at a clock, Red guessed he had a good fifteen minutes still to be safe, and since he had more than enough room in his backpack he considered going on to one more room. Problem was, something was nagging him. He didn’t need to do more than what he’s already done; and when you get greedy shit hits the fan. One extra chance you take and things go to hell.
So, now was the time that Red needed to do a little more recon. There was one more bedroom on the rich side of the apartment. Door was closed, and an ear to it gave no sound or hint to someone being on the other side. He crept then to the interior hallway, the one the help decided to retire to. He was asking for something, she was asking him to go slow. The place started to reak in his G enhanced nose of perfumed oils. Something nagged at Red anyway, but what was stopping him. Nothing, that’s what. One more room than make a run for it.
What should have been nagging him is why the Nanny went to the bedrooms before running off with the Samoan. It was like she was checking on something. He should have know what a Nanny would check on. What she was checking on laid out on top of a large skirted bed with pink chaffon ruffles & four posts like right out of a storybook. What the nanny checked up on sat next to six or seven stuffed animals about her own size, and a DVD player complete with high end headphones on her head. Moreso, what she was checking on saw Red enter her room before Red could recover from the overflow of pink.
“Robin?” the little called in a voice well below a shout, but definitely not an inside voice.
Red reacted, but surprisingly not aggressively. He stuck a finger to his snout in the international sign on “shhh”, and closed the door soundlessly behind him. He motioned for her to take the headphones off, likely the reason for being so loud. He crouched down by the door to listen to it to see if someone is coming.
“Robin?” she asked again, just above a whisper. She was young, probably no more than six or seven (or ten or three, Red was never good with kids). She had long black curls that cascaded down her back, but looked like it saw more of the bed than a brush the last day or two. Her rounded face and wide eyes seemed more happy with the surprised visitor than scared.
“Robin,” Red whispered back, still crouching by the door, “is she your nanny?”
“No, silly, Robin’s you silly,” she spoke matter of factly, and added a giggle at the end. She spun the DVD player towards him.
On the screen was a cartoon. Sure enough, right there on the screen was a fox prettied up more than Red but still remarkably similar. Except for the black hoodie, of course, because the one in the movie wore a green cap, tunic, and sling of arrows. Robin Hood, that’s what it was. Fucking shit, it’s bad enough those military guys turned him into some crossbreed of a beast, but they made him into a fucking Disney toon?
“I wished you were coming Robin, and you are here, and I get to be Maid Marian, just like I wished.” She slid her feet out from under the cover and started getting up to her knees awkwardly.
Red held his hands up in front of him. “Whoa whoa …you … girl ...” the words fumbling to ask her name.
“Kayla,” she said.
“Yeah, Kayla. I’m not … I mean …” he stumbled.
“Yes, you are Robin just like the story. And you have the hood so you are Robin Hood, yes you are you are.”
Okay, she was just a little bit cute in all of this. But he had a job to do and she was making noise. “Okay okay, that’s me. But shhhhhh, it’s our secret okay? You let anyone know I am here and I have to disappear, got it?” Holy hell, he thought to himself. Bad enough he has to deal with a kid, but now he sounds like some pedophile. Shaking his head, he continued, “Should you be in school anyway?”
She grinned wide. “Nah. My daddy says I don’t gots to go to school. I don’t gots to go to school until next week.”
Crouching by the door, Red listened as best he could to hear if there was movement out there, if someone had heard Kayla and her excitement. “Listen kid, if you want me to hang out, you have to be more quiet. A lot more quiet. If you nanny comes back she will run me off.”
Kayla gave a squeak, and collapsed on the bed, pulling the sheets up tight to her chin and containing herself to a ball. On the huge bed, she looked like a pea on a dinner plate. “I’ll be good Robin,” she whispered loudly.
Red calmed a little realizing that there were no signs of anyone coming. He started to look around the girls room for something to grab. “You can call me Robin,” he whispered to her, “but I am not the guy in your cartoon.”
She considered this for a bit then asked, “Do you rob from the rich and give to the poor?”
Red rolled his eyes. Cliche. Cheesy. But damnit, it was correct. “You can say that, kid, if you count me as the poor.”
“Then did you come to give me something?” she said excited.
“Not today.” Red started to pull some drawers open on a vanity, flipping through sticker books and crayons. There was no rhyme or reason to his search, but there wasn’t rhyme or reason to what was shoved in all of the drawers. After a short search he was noticing that the questions stopped.
“That’s okay, I get to be a robot tomorrow,” she said without a break.
“A robot?” he asked, just trying to keep her busy.
“Yup, that’s why I don’t gots to be in school all week. I gets to be a Robot. I gets my own robot leg cause of the Kans-Ker, see?” She pulled her sheets down from the bed. Where you would expect to see two legs going all the way down to their feet, there was just one, and a heavily bandaged nub just below the knee. She leaned back and circled her legs as if she was on a bike, but the one grossly cut short one just kind of wobbled there. “I got to stay home from school all the time cause of the Kans-Ker.”
Red took one look at the nub, and stopped what he was doing. The damn guilt showed up. The Goddamned Guilt. “Son of a bitch,” he said under his breath and shook his head.
“Tomorrow, my daddy will take me to put a robot leg on, and next week I’ll get to run on it and finally put Missy Price in my dust. She runs faster than me all the time, but my robot’s leg is going to be faster. Zooooooommmm!!!” She was almost screaming with excitement by the end of the description.
“Shhhhhhhhh,” Red had to remind her again, and he crawled back over to the door to listen. He circled the room along the wall, subconsciously staying as far away from the bed as he physically could. Why of all places that he could have ended up with could he had to have robbed the cancer kid? Not just that, it’s fucked up that she’s excited about it. It was scary, down right fucking scary, that a girl with her whole life ahead of her and she’s really excited about having a prosthetic. What kind of messed up world let’s a girl be so delusional,
She stopped her kicking and laid back again, crossing her arms with a hrumph. She whispered “I know, sssssshhhhh.”
Red thought as he weighed his options. At the moment, he just wanted to get the hell out of there.. “Listen, I have to get going. I can’t stay long.”
“Awwwwwww,” she complained. “You promise you come back? Be my Robin Hood?”
“I don’t know kid,” he frowned as he cracked the door slightly, thinking he could hear movement out there.
“But ya ‘posed to give me something, ain’t that right? You steal from the rich and give to the poor.”
“Believe me kid,” he said with a chuckle. “You’re not poor. You’re more rich than anyone I ever met.” He opened the door a little more, perking his ears. From the main sitting room and through the other hallways he heard noises. Closing his eyes and concentrating he keyed in on the what he heard. Those large ears lifted from his head and cupped in the direction where it came from. Then it came through, the steady rhythm of breaths, vocalized female breaths. With each plunge of the Samoan’s tool she gave a little grunt, and that pulsing rhythm meant that he still had time, but if he were to bet not much.
Strangely though, unlike any other moment since he snuck into this room, the woman was the only voice he heard. Kayla hadn’t said a word for a whole 15 seconds. Red turned with a start.
Kayla, had pulled her single legged knee to her chest and was crying quiet tears.
Panicked that she might start whaling, Red spun across the floor and got as much onto the bed as he felt comfortable. “Shhh shhh,” he nearly blurted, “what’s wrong Kayla. What’s wrong?” Surely this girl was seconds away from a full fledged balling out, and that wouldn’t work.
She fought with each word. “You’re stealing. From me.”
“Y-yeah,” he admitted. At first unafraid to tell her but then started feeling guilty for being caught. “I … I don’t … that is I need only so much … I have enough … I can leave your stuff. I don’t need it all, promise I can ...”
“But … but … You’re … steal … from … the … rich.” She was gasping between hyperventilations. He hand fell onto the back of Red’s hand, and started to stroke the fine fur that covered it. “The … rich in ...the story … is … *ffff* … we’re … the … bad … guy..”
They teach you a lot of things in the Army. They teach you to stand tall when looking down the barrel of an assult rifle. They teach you to keep moving after throwing up your lung in a gas attack. They teach you to slice a man’s neck without asking yourself if he has a mom. What they don’t teach you is that when a toddler hands you a toy phone, you answer it. When a puppy crawls onto your lap you let it sleep.
And when a little girl who saw you as her hero learns she’s the villain, you let her down easy..
Red crawled up onto the bed and curled his arm around her. She tucked her head up under his neck and began to cry a little heavier. “You are totally not the bad guy. Not all rich people are the bad guy.”
“But you steal from us.”
“Yeah, but only because you are rich. Besides, not all who steal are the good guy, I’m NOT a good guy, Kayla.” He tried to sound soothing, but what the hell do you say to a cancer kid.
“But you are Robin Hood.”
He sighed, and shook his head. “No Kayla, I’m not.”
She sniffled, and looked up to him with those big brown eyes. “You’re not?” Her hand encircled his paw, trying to hold it softly.
Red frowned. Frowned so hard he could feel his ear tips touch his fur. “No, sweety. I just don’t steal, I’ve hurt people. I’ve hurt a lot of people. Robin Hood would never do that.”
She looked down a little before turning back to him. “You’re the bad guy? Like the Sheriff of Not and Ham? ”
He smiled to her, his brown eyes slitting to hold back a laugh. “It’s Nottingham, and no. It’s just … not good and bad, more like somewhere in the middle.” He thought a moment, scratching under his whiskered snout. “You know how real foxes look, not like you see in the cartoon, right?”
“Ah-huh?” she agreed reluctantly.
“Well, do I look like a REAL fox?”
“Not-ah.”
“But I don’t look like a man do I? Not like your daddy?”
She smiled wider then turned in his lap. She reached for his jowells and scratched. “My daddy has whiskers, but not like you. You’re fuzzy, not like my daddy.”
He squirmed, fighting to keep from her ticking to get to him. “Well,” he grimaced, “I’m not a fox, and I am not a man, so I am somewhere in the middle, right? Same goes with good and bad.”
“Like good and bad are … like … mixed up? Like when I mix up my finger paints?”
Red laughed a little. Mixing paints, that’s some deep symbolic shit there. “Geeze kid, you’re pretty smart. Just like that. Just like when you mix one color and another color you get something else.”
“That’s when I smear it,” she giggled. “I like smearing it all over the place. I smear it and I smear it until it goes all statutated.”
“Statutated?” Red laughed.
“Yeah, that’s what Reba says. The paints all get get to be one color from the smearing, she calls it statutated.”
“You mean … saturation?” Red raised an eyebrow.
“YEAH!!!”
He lifted a paw and placed a finger onto her lips to quiet her. She kept quiet and giggled. “You’re a smart kid, you know that?”
“Annnnndddd… You’re my smeared finger paint friend, Robin.”
Red laughed, slipping his hands around her back to hold her hobbled leg steady. “If you say so Maid Marian.”
She kept scratching his cheeks, but her eyes lit up with a smile. She seemed satisfied with the idea of it all, and seemed more satisfied to play with her new toy. “It’s okay, Robin. I like you, even though you’re bad.” She curled up tighter on top of him, laying her head onto his chest, but reaching to hold his long floppy ear in her hand.
Red looked down at the girl, and suddenly asked himself, ‘how the fuck did this happen?’ Somehow, he went from just trying to keep a kid quiet to having her go fetal and use him as a stuffed toy. He needed to get out of there, he was out of time and this was no way he wanted to get caught.
“It’s okay, Robin,” she yawned as she made herself comfortable and nearly repeating herself, “you can steal from me. Take all my toys. I want the poor to have them.”
“I - I won’t be giving them to the poor,” he stumbled, as he started to shift towards the edge of the bed.
“You give to the poor,” she pleaded. “This time you will?”
He thought of Trev, thought of the money he needed, thought of the the kind of reasons that the Pride is owed money by a normal. He could lie to Kayla, but what’s the point. “Nah kid. This is one of those times when I have to be bad.”
“You’ll come back? When you can be good?” Her voice was quivering slightly.
Red didn’t know how to answer. The girl was basically begging him to rob her, but that wasn’t really what she was asking was it. She was a sweet kid, she saw something in him that reminded her of a cuddle doll, and as much as he didn’t like kids this wasn’t all that bad. To what end though. To what stupid end would you befriend someone like this.
The door banged open before he had a chance to response. The nanny, clothed as if she had not been up to anything, stood there at the door and at first was just stunned. Confused in the moment, she tried to make it all make sense. Some stranger sitting in bed with the girl would be enough reason to run her off screaming; but a full sized moving plush doll? Slowly she opened her eyes wide and realized what she was seeing. “Mano!!!” she screamed.
That’s when the Samoan showed up. “Dafuck,” was all he go out and he shot passed the nanny. He had on his black slacks and shirt buttoned up below his chest, which made him look much bigger and stronger than he did from one building over. He made short work of closing the distance between the door and the bed, and grabbed Red by the hoodie yanking him to the floor.
As quick as he was, Red had not time at all to dislodge himself from Kayla. Somehow, Kayla rolled away and remained on the bed, while Red ended up slammed on the floor. The Nanny hurrying to scoop her up; but the girl’s cries started to build.out of shock or … something … Red didn’t have time to think about it anymore, he was too busy getting his ass kicked.
The Samoan grabbed Red by the hoodie again, and slammed him harder onto the floor. Another lift, another slam. One of these should be enough to stun a man, but Red was smeared finger paint. The fourth or fifth one should have done him in, but only made him fight to his feet faster. The sixth and the hoodie slid up his back. Red scrambled, backwards until the hoodie ended up in the Samoan’s hands.
In the time it took the big man to throw the jacket behind him, Red slipped between the man’s legs scrambled across the carpet, and made a break for the hallway. Immediately, he was stopped by a ring of a bell, and a man emerged from an elevator door. He wore a suit & tie, flipping through mail, and stood stunned as a furred shirtless robber stood nearly eye to eye to him.
“Stayback, Sir!!” the Samoan yelled as he came out to the hall.
Red looked over his shoulder, made a quick judgement, and turned back towards the guard.
“What the hell,” the suit yelled.
“Intruder, stay back!!”
Taking the time to yell gave Red the moment of distraction to act. Running right at him, the Samoan could do nothing but put his arms out in front, Red jumped, turning to the side, forcing the Samoan to catch him lengthwise across the big man’s chest. Red’s feet planted into the hallway wall, and kept kicking with his momentum. The effect made the Samoan turn in his spot spinning a couple or times until he was dizzy and Red were facing back towards the suit. Red disengaged himself quickly, springing down the hall, jumping onto a bent over suit, before rolling past him down the hallway. He slid to a stop at the back of the elevator just as doors were closing, and closing faster than the Samoan can reach him.
“Going down,” Red yelled and slammed his hand onto a button.
-------
6:11PM
Downtown & Midtown
Grand Woods Park
Twenty five blocks from the center of Downtown where Park Avenue action gets to a Park. It’s a big park, but that was way too long. And these fuckers just don’t give up.
For over two hours, Red’s stayed a step ahead of the Samoan and all the boys he called in to the pursuit. Cutting out of the basement into the sewers was a brilliant, but pretty shitty call to make, and some dude followed him for ten blocks down there. Once the two of them were back on the streets, at least two cars chased him through down every back alley and across every fenced lot that Red could bet to lose these bastards. It didn’t help that a shirtless fox shows up in the grim late afternoon like a Easter Basket in garbage dump; but Red is no rookie. He’s been good enough to outwit the Samoan, but they just don’t quit.
So that’s why he ended up here. Grand Park. The last massively wooded area in all of the city. All this time, he’s been playing in their ballpark, now he is on his own turf.
Running across the street to the park gate, he could head the cars skidding across the dry road to a stop and doors opening behind him. Running nearly upright, Red shook his hands until the gloves he used to mask his prints fell to ground. He reached for the straps on the backpack, winching them in place until the pack felt like nothing more but an appendage. He whipped through a couple of trees at the edge of the park, skipped across a path, and hit a long grassy stretch. Behind him he could hear yelling, the sound of heavy feet running hard and busting through brush. When the feet behind him met the grass he heard them yelling at him, readying whatever weapons they had. That’s when he shifted it up a few gears.
The adrenaline was coursing through his veins, as he looked for the right spot to make it work. He took a skip step, then another bringing his feet closer to landing together. His body bent, as the skipping became quicker. Then his hands hit the dirt, clawing into it, then throwing the earth behind him. His feet reached forward and planted the grass just below his chin before pulling and thrusting his body forward. It repeated itself in lightning quick succession, until he was at full speed rocketing across the field in all fours. This running was so utterly dynamic that it was no longer running like a human, it was full on animal. Each reach with an arm, he push with a leg, each quickfire motion of his body bringing him to speeds like he could never do on two feet taking further and further away from the threat until they were nowhere near, not even a glimpse over his shoulder to be seen.
He skittered down a trail maintaining this maximum speed, bounding and rushing by random joggers and pedestrians out on the evening. At this rate, turning was slow and long; stopping was more of a mess of tumbling fur and pain, and at the end he will be too exhausted to do much of anything for a few minutes. But never does Red feel more alive, more real than when running on all fours like this. He can take the stares of the normals. He can take the beatings of the cops. He can take the hatred. He can take the pains of his body rejecting these genes. Just to run like this, to go full out one more time, and feel like just by himself he can fly,
-------
8:51PM
G-Town
Panther Bar (Right of Hillcrest)
Trev sat at a booth, smoking down what looked to be the last in his pack, his leg bouncing nervously. Besides the bartender, a halfway panther with a one fang broken off and a scar across an eye, the place was empty and silent except for a low groan of the radio. “Shit, what took you so long?”
Red was limping, fighting to get past the soreness of the day. The run caused as much of it as the fight with the Samoan, or was it slipping on his ass in that sewer. “How much time do you have left?”
“An hour, if that.”
Red groaned as he slipped into the booth. He stopped at his apartment to wash all the sewer shit from him and dawn a new hoodie. “A little sore, thanks, but I’ll be fine.”
“What?” Trev asked anxiously.
“Ahh, I thought you weren’t being an ask by not asking how I was doing,” Red waved his hand and unzipped the bag. He placed the cash on the table, where Trev grabbed them quickly to take them out of sight to count. Red pulled the credit cards out as well. “See if they will take these, they may go dead on you quick like, but after it’s stop pouring cash out it’s still probably worth what you owe.”
“How’d it go,” Trev asked flipping through the bills under the table.
“A little kid with cancer fluffed me like a pillow,” Red said, still stacking jewels and other items out of the bag onto the table. The bartender looked up briefly then turned away. Better to not know nothing when asked, then know something and try to lie.
“What book is that from?” Trev asked.
“Whaaa?” Red said dropping back against the seatback, finally able to relax.
“That’s not some fancy book quote? The kid with cancer?”
Red raised his palms up to Trev, “no man. There was a kid. I hate kids. This was the worst kind of kid. She was cute, smart, and had half her leg cut off cause of the cancer. She thought I was fucking Robin Hood. Then she fucking fluffed me. She crawled up on me like some teddy bear and scratched me like a puppy. If I stayed there any longer, she would have fucking served me at her tea party.”
Trev couldn’t help it but he laughed. The more Red threw his arms around in frustration the more Trev laughed.. Hell the bartender laughed.
“Alright, I need to get going to pawn this shit.” Trev said trying to pocket what he can.
“Nah, King will take it. Get what you can from the Pride. They like it better that way. They like shiney things like the rest of us, and they don’t care how they get paid if they get paid.”
“Yeah, but your cut …”
Red’s phone beeped in his pocket, and he pulled it out to look at it. “My cut is whatever is left over when you get done. If I think you screwed me, then it just comes out of the job, alright?” The cellphone in Red’s paw blinked new instructions. Just when you think the day is over, you get called in for a second shift. He let out a long drawn out breath, and shook his head.
“Alright then,” Trev agreed and started to get up. “I owe ya just doesn’t cut it this time, I think.”
“Nah, not this time” Red winked as he slid out from the booth. “I’ll come with ya too. Just got a text for a meeting down that way. Alright?”
“Sure sure,” Trev smiled. The normal man stopped, raised his hands up like making a grand speech and exclaimed “You are as bad as the worst, Red, but you are as good as the best.”
Red slapped Trev on the back, “Jezzus Shit, Trev. What is that, Whitman?”
“Nah, saw it on a bag of nuts.”
11:56AM
G-Town
Blue Sky Lofts
The phone rang loud. Since he went G, his body doesn’t know whether to be nocturnal or a day walker, so it just shuts down and sleeps whenever it wants -- sometimes wanting to keep him asleep for as long as it takes. So the ringer was always set to overloud when he went to bed. All he knew now was that the sun was up, his shithole apartment was still a shithole, and the god damn phone was ringing.
“Yeah?” he answered it.
The voice was familiar, all be it hushed. “Hey, it’s Trev, got a job for you but it has to happen this afternoon.”
“What time is it,” Red yawned stretching across the bed. He lay in just a pair of boxers, and twisting on the thing mattress the short fur along his torso accented his toned muscles from his abs to his chest.
“Dude, you just fucking getting up?” Trev barked, and then paused bringing his voice down again. “It’s lunchtime, asshole. Get out of fucking bedngs released his air and he yawned again. “Long night, you know how it is. Whatcha got?”
“You can climb, right?”
“Yeah.” Red remained tired, fought to wake up. He ran his hand down to his boxers and gave himself a long scratch. Lunchtime or not, this was like morning to him, and with it comes morning wood. Nothing beats a good rubdown on your morning wood.
“In & out grab.” Trev started in. “Park Avenue, building I do some work at and been casing. Windows on the Penthouse are wide open, that usually doesn’t happen. The security guy had a few too many, so he was about to pass out. So I put something in his coffee to put him over the top. Won’t be able to get in there and move heavy merchandise, but I am thinking that a place like that will have something you can grab and dash.”
“Anyone home?”
“Don’t know. But a place like that you got to think they are at work, and kids at school."
Red hocked up something in his throat and spit it out the window. "Kids," he grumbled, "I hate fucking kids."
"Just look at it. It’s one place taking up the whole floor. Private elevator on lockdown from the guard, so you can’t get up that way. But the building next door is taller, so you could come down from up top.”
"Place is empty?"
"Yup, at least what I know of."
In theory this was easy money, but there was no such thing as easy money, only easy ways to get thrown in jail. He sat up in bed moving the aching muscles from the beating the night before. “Your take?” Red asked.
“Fifteen percent.”
Red takes the work he can get. A real job is out of the question, so he puts what he has to use. Trev isn’t a frequent customer, but he is trustworthy. Discrete. Red met trev in a bar off of Hillcrest, one of those few places where they don’t turn away G’s or Normals. Trev didn’t have a drop of fur blood in him, but seemed to want to run in G-Town. Being a Normal meant Trev can get into places Red can’t. But he wasn’t smart enough to cover his own ass; so when giving Red a tip he has as much to lose as Red does. “How High up?”
“Ten floors.”
“Fifteen percent for that high? Jezzus shit Trev.”
“Fuck you, man. I handed this to you on a silver platter.” Trev got a little more forceful but quieted his tone, as if he was right next to someone who could turn him in. “No alarms, no guards, just get in and get out with a bag full of goods. They know me there, they saw me there this morning, they figure out anything they point it at me. I should be asking twenty-five.”
“Alright,” Red replied. “But you move the shit I get. Bad enough some red haired G ‘Moves on up to that Deluxe apartment in the sky’. I don’t want no pawn shop cameras picking up my furry ass selling the things.”
After a pause, Trev took over. “You okay there Red? I’m used to hearing you quote some book I never heard of, not the Jeffersons.”
“Dude, I just woke up,” Red laughed. “Text me the address and I’ll let you know tonight how it went.”
Red hung up the phone and spun his legs around to the floor. His bare feet pads scraped against the dry wood floor roughly. He winced when he leaned over and pulled a foot locker from under the bed, his ribs still aching from the fight with the asscop. Flipping the lid on the locker, her pulled what he thought he may need. Backpack, binoculars, rope & zip-ties, custom G-friendly gloves, hunting knife (just in case). Leave the gun, a 9mm Berretta (also just in case), nothing says “Search Me Officer” like big fuzzy ears and a hoodie. Carry & conceal may be the law, but not for Gs.
Finally getting out of bed, he grabbed a pair of cargo shorts. He dropped his boxers, and his cock slapped him in his belly. The morning wood hadn’t taken care of itself. Rubbing it some, he considered jumping back in bed and taking care of it. Contrary to the rumor, going doggie doesn’t make a guy any more viral, or more bluntly horney; Red was naturally that way to begin with. Red didn’t get many choices on what they gave him when they shot him up, but the one thing he didn’t complain about was this little enhancement. He used to laugh at how much more attention he would have gotten from the girls in school if he had this back then. Of course, in G-Town, furs enhance themselves in all shapes and sizes. In G-Town, a guy can buy attention with few shots of DNA. If you don’t have the balls, you can find a girl already pre-Gd rent attention for a couple hours.
He kept a hold of his member as he dug around for a new pair of boxers. For the obvious reasons, of course, but also because it was damn near the last bit of hairless skin on his body. From his face to his fingers, from his feet to his ass; even his hanging boys had a light covering of fur on them. It took some getting used to, still does for that matter, but sometimes he misses that feel of skin.
Just as he was zipping up the hoodie with everything packed up ready to go, the text came across and he was ready. With one last look in the mirror, he smiled and said “Release the hounds of war.”
-------
2:19PM
Downtown
254 Park Avenue, 16th Floor, Exterior
Standing on the rooftop, Red had his binoculars up to his eyes looking down at the smaller building below. It was shorter but a nice one, covered in white granite and contemporary shaping. Better than this gothic monstrosity he was hanging from at the moment. Just so he can be cliche, Red sat perched on a gargoyle like appendage sticking out. Truth is, if he made a go for a jump, this is the best chance he had.
‘If’ was still the question that needed to be answered.
Ear phones in, he heard the phone pick-up, “Hey Trev, can you talk?”
“Yeah, just got home, you get it done?” He was clearly somewhere he felt more at ease, now talking in his full voice.
“Ain’t gonna happen,” Red answered.
Trev jumped before Red could explain. “What!! Is this about the fifteen percent?”
“Nah, nothing like that, too risky. I’m up here across the alley right now, and it’s no good.”
“What’s wrong?”
“There’s a guard there. Big guy, looks Samoan, long hair, even a tattoo on his face. Woman there too, early 20s, comfortably dressed, looks like a nanny. She I can take tie up, maybe hold my own against the Samoan until he is under control, but the two of them? Not a chance. One will have the troops called before the other is out of the picture.”
“Geez, Red, you’re military. Can’t you take one out and then you only have to tie one of them up?” Trev bitched.
“No man, I don’t do that, you know that,” Red bitched back.
“Shit! There is a good score up there too, I know it. You got to do this, you’re the only one I know that can do it.” Trev’s voice was starting to sound desperate.
Red kept scanning the windows as he talked, watching as the Samoan flirted with the nanny, watching her flirt back. At times the talk seemed to be pretty heady, but the smiles on their faces still suggested they were pretty focused on each other. “This job could happen, but would take some planning, two, maybe three man crew. You’d be hard pressed to get fifteen percent though with that crew. We could take our time to make the most of the haul, better than whatever I can stuff in a sack. They got high end furniture down there, stuff you can sell for ten grand so easy that noone would even check it for prints.”
“Won’t do me much help doing that,” Trev responded sounding more despondent than one should working a case.
“Two, three doing a grab? Ten percent will go a long way too then.”
“No … No,” Trev replied simply. He stopped. Didn’t speak for a moment, but kept making sounds like he was trying to. “It … it has to be this afternoon.”
Red picked up on something there. A crew will always pull a harder take than one guy. Good plans are always worth it in the end. Trev knew that, and it ain’t like Trev to be impatient either. Besides, there was something in his voice that said something more desperate. It’s not like you share feelings with a guy like Trev, maybe a beer or two, but some things are unmistakable in this place. What Trev had going on was something harder and deeper than just looking for a good score, this meant something more desperate.
“How much you owe Trev?” Red said it like he was stating a fact. This wasn’t to line Trev’s pocket at all.
Trev sighed over the phone, and Red could almost hear his hand run along his forehead. “Five grand.”
“Who to?”
“Pride. Well, The King specifically.”
“Jezzus Trev,” Red groaned. “What kind of … we talked about this … you know better than to mess around with them. What’d the fuck did you do?” Red, for the first time since climbing up here, let the binoculars drop to hang. His fist balled up, and he fought to grit his teeth.
Trev paused. He breathed impatiently, uncomfortably. It wasn’t going to come over the phone, and if it did it would likely be a lie anyway.
“Alright, let me see what I can do here, stay on the line.” Red lifted the binoculars again and scanned over the penthouse. Put simply this wasn’t about at take anymore. This was about risking his ass. Two fold even. Pride finds out he was bailing out Trev, then a lot more shit will fly back onto him than anything Trev could have gotten himself into. That being said, doing a job like this is his own private ‘Fuck You’ to King.
Red took a deep breath, and refocused. The nanny was doing some cleaning on a counter now, but clearly her heart wasn’t into it. The Samoan was checking doors. They continued to talk to each other, she pointed this way and that, and the smile was growing on the Samoan’s face. All were secure as best Red could tell, but the window next to the patio door was still clear an open. “Wow, maybe if I can time it right, maybe can take the guard but …”
The Samoan was leaning close behind her, and put his arms around her waist. He could see him saying something to her, and whatever it was she wasn’t exactly against it. Finally she gave a nod, and sped up and the cleaning. The Samoan stepped back, but as he left her he let his hand slide slowly across her bottom. She kept a cheeky smirk and planted her flushed face down until her chin was in her chest. She raised a finger then turned with a flick towards hallway. The Samoan began removing his sportcoat, the kind that makes rich people think they hired a qualified guard, hanging it on a chair in the main room, then seemed to head towards a more interior hallway..
“Alright, Trev, we got a chance here.”
“What … What you got?”
“The big guy just talked to nanny into a something. My bet is these two are about to fuck each other, if we’re lucky they will be out of touch for a good half hour.”
“What? They getting naked right there?”
“No no, nothing like that. She … “ Red stopped to and chuckled. “I can just tell, okay? That chance is going to close up quick so I got to go now. I’ll give you a call when this is all done, alright?”
“Cunning like a fox? Or Crazy like a Fox,” Trev laughed and hung up before Red can give him one last ‘fuck you’.
Red couldn’t help but to laugh, as he shut the phone down and slid it & the binocs into his backpack. He zipped the hoodie up tight. When doing a job like this, losing the jacket is the preference, but just in case the love couple finish early a little stealth look would do. He slipped the backpack over his shoulders, tightened the straps close, and moved to the edge of the gargoyle’s snout. It will take twenty feet to close the gap, which will take some creative jumping.
He looked across the way into the penthouse windows for one last check. The nanny had her shoes off and was tiptoeing across the wood floor quickly to the same hallway the Samoan went down just a few minutes before. As soon as she disappeared from view, Red smiled satisfied as the words of Tolstoy came over his lips “One must be cunning and wicked in this world.” He took a few steps back and leaped.
His leap angled sideways down the grap building, making the distance that much greater but would stop him from slamming into it’s side. Closing the gap meant dropping more than a few floors below the penthouse, and his best bet hung from the frames of the windows where old steel racks blocked the jumpers from thinking about it. Three clawed fingers snagged on one to straighten him to fall parellel to the wall. The next floor down he got a better hold to slow his fall and change the momentum to head him around & up the wall. There wasn’t much to grab, but speed worked in his favor, A ledge here, a hanging gap there, and all that push he left the Gargoyle now headed him with where he needed to go. One final grab, and he hung the railing on the edge of the penthouse patio. The grip was tight, but he wouldn’t hold it long. The slow pain of pent up energy will grow to where his whole body could start seizing, but he needed to rest as much as possible. This job needed to happen quick, but he needed to be ready for anything inside that place -- and anything is what he might find.
-------
2:58PM
Downtown
252 Park Avenue, Apartment 15A (Penthouse)
Wow, who leaves a safe open anymore? For that matter, who leaves an open safe with a few stacks of cash and three credit cards prime for selling to ID thieves. If that wasn’t enough, the master bedroom had a jewelry box left out complete with a few chains of gold and rocks of different colors and sizes. Who does that? Who leaves this shit out like this? Probably the same people who live in an apartment with a passed out guard downstairs and another in the loft fucking the nanny. It’s like someone dropped their pants in the middle of Central Downtown with a sign posed on their back that said ‘please fuck me up the ass!’. Trev was right, though, this was good haul -- good enough that it was worth looking at hitting again. If he can get out of here scot free, then tomorrow would be another nice visit.
Looking at a clock, Red guessed he had a good fifteen minutes still to be safe, and since he had more than enough room in his backpack he considered going on to one more room. Problem was, something was nagging him. He didn’t need to do more than what he’s already done; and when you get greedy shit hits the fan. One extra chance you take and things go to hell.
So, now was the time that Red needed to do a little more recon. There was one more bedroom on the rich side of the apartment. Door was closed, and an ear to it gave no sound or hint to someone being on the other side. He crept then to the interior hallway, the one the help decided to retire to. He was asking for something, she was asking him to go slow. The place started to reak in his G enhanced nose of perfumed oils. Something nagged at Red anyway, but what was stopping him. Nothing, that’s what. One more room than make a run for it.
What should have been nagging him is why the Nanny went to the bedrooms before running off with the Samoan. It was like she was checking on something. He should have know what a Nanny would check on. What she was checking on laid out on top of a large skirted bed with pink chaffon ruffles & four posts like right out of a storybook. What the nanny checked up on sat next to six or seven stuffed animals about her own size, and a DVD player complete with high end headphones on her head. Moreso, what she was checking on saw Red enter her room before Red could recover from the overflow of pink.
“Robin?” the little called in a voice well below a shout, but definitely not an inside voice.
Red reacted, but surprisingly not aggressively. He stuck a finger to his snout in the international sign on “shhh”, and closed the door soundlessly behind him. He motioned for her to take the headphones off, likely the reason for being so loud. He crouched down by the door to listen to it to see if someone is coming.
“Robin?” she asked again, just above a whisper. She was young, probably no more than six or seven (or ten or three, Red was never good with kids). She had long black curls that cascaded down her back, but looked like it saw more of the bed than a brush the last day or two. Her rounded face and wide eyes seemed more happy with the surprised visitor than scared.
“Robin,” Red whispered back, still crouching by the door, “is she your nanny?”
“No, silly, Robin’s you silly,” she spoke matter of factly, and added a giggle at the end. She spun the DVD player towards him.
On the screen was a cartoon. Sure enough, right there on the screen was a fox prettied up more than Red but still remarkably similar. Except for the black hoodie, of course, because the one in the movie wore a green cap, tunic, and sling of arrows. Robin Hood, that’s what it was. Fucking shit, it’s bad enough those military guys turned him into some crossbreed of a beast, but they made him into a fucking Disney toon?
“I wished you were coming Robin, and you are here, and I get to be Maid Marian, just like I wished.” She slid her feet out from under the cover and started getting up to her knees awkwardly.
Red held his hands up in front of him. “Whoa whoa …you … girl ...” the words fumbling to ask her name.
“Kayla,” she said.
“Yeah, Kayla. I’m not … I mean …” he stumbled.
“Yes, you are Robin just like the story. And you have the hood so you are Robin Hood, yes you are you are.”
Okay, she was just a little bit cute in all of this. But he had a job to do and she was making noise. “Okay okay, that’s me. But shhhhhh, it’s our secret okay? You let anyone know I am here and I have to disappear, got it?” Holy hell, he thought to himself. Bad enough he has to deal with a kid, but now he sounds like some pedophile. Shaking his head, he continued, “Should you be in school anyway?”
She grinned wide. “Nah. My daddy says I don’t gots to go to school. I don’t gots to go to school until next week.”
Crouching by the door, Red listened as best he could to hear if there was movement out there, if someone had heard Kayla and her excitement. “Listen kid, if you want me to hang out, you have to be more quiet. A lot more quiet. If you nanny comes back she will run me off.”
Kayla gave a squeak, and collapsed on the bed, pulling the sheets up tight to her chin and containing herself to a ball. On the huge bed, she looked like a pea on a dinner plate. “I’ll be good Robin,” she whispered loudly.
Red calmed a little realizing that there were no signs of anyone coming. He started to look around the girls room for something to grab. “You can call me Robin,” he whispered to her, “but I am not the guy in your cartoon.”
She considered this for a bit then asked, “Do you rob from the rich and give to the poor?”
Red rolled his eyes. Cliche. Cheesy. But damnit, it was correct. “You can say that, kid, if you count me as the poor.”
“Then did you come to give me something?” she said excited.
“Not today.” Red started to pull some drawers open on a vanity, flipping through sticker books and crayons. There was no rhyme or reason to his search, but there wasn’t rhyme or reason to what was shoved in all of the drawers. After a short search he was noticing that the questions stopped.
“That’s okay, I get to be a robot tomorrow,” she said without a break.
“A robot?” he asked, just trying to keep her busy.
“Yup, that’s why I don’t gots to be in school all week. I gets to be a Robot. I gets my own robot leg cause of the Kans-Ker, see?” She pulled her sheets down from the bed. Where you would expect to see two legs going all the way down to their feet, there was just one, and a heavily bandaged nub just below the knee. She leaned back and circled her legs as if she was on a bike, but the one grossly cut short one just kind of wobbled there. “I got to stay home from school all the time cause of the Kans-Ker.”
Red took one look at the nub, and stopped what he was doing. The damn guilt showed up. The Goddamned Guilt. “Son of a bitch,” he said under his breath and shook his head.
“Tomorrow, my daddy will take me to put a robot leg on, and next week I’ll get to run on it and finally put Missy Price in my dust. She runs faster than me all the time, but my robot’s leg is going to be faster. Zooooooommmm!!!” She was almost screaming with excitement by the end of the description.
“Shhhhhhhhh,” Red had to remind her again, and he crawled back over to the door to listen. He circled the room along the wall, subconsciously staying as far away from the bed as he physically could. Why of all places that he could have ended up with could he had to have robbed the cancer kid? Not just that, it’s fucked up that she’s excited about it. It was scary, down right fucking scary, that a girl with her whole life ahead of her and she’s really excited about having a prosthetic. What kind of messed up world let’s a girl be so delusional,
She stopped her kicking and laid back again, crossing her arms with a hrumph. She whispered “I know, sssssshhhhh.”
Red thought as he weighed his options. At the moment, he just wanted to get the hell out of there.. “Listen, I have to get going. I can’t stay long.”
“Awwwwwww,” she complained. “You promise you come back? Be my Robin Hood?”
“I don’t know kid,” he frowned as he cracked the door slightly, thinking he could hear movement out there.
“But ya ‘posed to give me something, ain’t that right? You steal from the rich and give to the poor.”
“Believe me kid,” he said with a chuckle. “You’re not poor. You’re more rich than anyone I ever met.” He opened the door a little more, perking his ears. From the main sitting room and through the other hallways he heard noises. Closing his eyes and concentrating he keyed in on the what he heard. Those large ears lifted from his head and cupped in the direction where it came from. Then it came through, the steady rhythm of breaths, vocalized female breaths. With each plunge of the Samoan’s tool she gave a little grunt, and that pulsing rhythm meant that he still had time, but if he were to bet not much.
Strangely though, unlike any other moment since he snuck into this room, the woman was the only voice he heard. Kayla hadn’t said a word for a whole 15 seconds. Red turned with a start.
Kayla, had pulled her single legged knee to her chest and was crying quiet tears.
Panicked that she might start whaling, Red spun across the floor and got as much onto the bed as he felt comfortable. “Shhh shhh,” he nearly blurted, “what’s wrong Kayla. What’s wrong?” Surely this girl was seconds away from a full fledged balling out, and that wouldn’t work.
She fought with each word. “You’re stealing. From me.”
“Y-yeah,” he admitted. At first unafraid to tell her but then started feeling guilty for being caught. “I … I don’t … that is I need only so much … I have enough … I can leave your stuff. I don’t need it all, promise I can ...”
“But … but … You’re … steal … from … the … rich.” She was gasping between hyperventilations. He hand fell onto the back of Red’s hand, and started to stroke the fine fur that covered it. “The … rich in ...the story … is … *ffff* … we’re … the … bad … guy..”
They teach you a lot of things in the Army. They teach you to stand tall when looking down the barrel of an assult rifle. They teach you to keep moving after throwing up your lung in a gas attack. They teach you to slice a man’s neck without asking yourself if he has a mom. What they don’t teach you is that when a toddler hands you a toy phone, you answer it. When a puppy crawls onto your lap you let it sleep.
And when a little girl who saw you as her hero learns she’s the villain, you let her down easy..
Red crawled up onto the bed and curled his arm around her. She tucked her head up under his neck and began to cry a little heavier. “You are totally not the bad guy. Not all rich people are the bad guy.”
“But you steal from us.”
“Yeah, but only because you are rich. Besides, not all who steal are the good guy, I’m NOT a good guy, Kayla.” He tried to sound soothing, but what the hell do you say to a cancer kid.
“But you are Robin Hood.”
He sighed, and shook his head. “No Kayla, I’m not.”
She sniffled, and looked up to him with those big brown eyes. “You’re not?” Her hand encircled his paw, trying to hold it softly.
Red frowned. Frowned so hard he could feel his ear tips touch his fur. “No, sweety. I just don’t steal, I’ve hurt people. I’ve hurt a lot of people. Robin Hood would never do that.”
She looked down a little before turning back to him. “You’re the bad guy? Like the Sheriff of Not and Ham? ”
He smiled to her, his brown eyes slitting to hold back a laugh. “It’s Nottingham, and no. It’s just … not good and bad, more like somewhere in the middle.” He thought a moment, scratching under his whiskered snout. “You know how real foxes look, not like you see in the cartoon, right?”
“Ah-huh?” she agreed reluctantly.
“Well, do I look like a REAL fox?”
“Not-ah.”
“But I don’t look like a man do I? Not like your daddy?”
She smiled wider then turned in his lap. She reached for his jowells and scratched. “My daddy has whiskers, but not like you. You’re fuzzy, not like my daddy.”
He squirmed, fighting to keep from her ticking to get to him. “Well,” he grimaced, “I’m not a fox, and I am not a man, so I am somewhere in the middle, right? Same goes with good and bad.”
“Like good and bad are … like … mixed up? Like when I mix up my finger paints?”
Red laughed a little. Mixing paints, that’s some deep symbolic shit there. “Geeze kid, you’re pretty smart. Just like that. Just like when you mix one color and another color you get something else.”
“That’s when I smear it,” she giggled. “I like smearing it all over the place. I smear it and I smear it until it goes all statutated.”
“Statutated?” Red laughed.
“Yeah, that’s what Reba says. The paints all get get to be one color from the smearing, she calls it statutated.”
“You mean … saturation?” Red raised an eyebrow.
“YEAH!!!”
He lifted a paw and placed a finger onto her lips to quiet her. She kept quiet and giggled. “You’re a smart kid, you know that?”
“Annnnndddd… You’re my smeared finger paint friend, Robin.”
Red laughed, slipping his hands around her back to hold her hobbled leg steady. “If you say so Maid Marian.”
She kept scratching his cheeks, but her eyes lit up with a smile. She seemed satisfied with the idea of it all, and seemed more satisfied to play with her new toy. “It’s okay, Robin. I like you, even though you’re bad.” She curled up tighter on top of him, laying her head onto his chest, but reaching to hold his long floppy ear in her hand.
Red looked down at the girl, and suddenly asked himself, ‘how the fuck did this happen?’ Somehow, he went from just trying to keep a kid quiet to having her go fetal and use him as a stuffed toy. He needed to get out of there, he was out of time and this was no way he wanted to get caught.
“It’s okay, Robin,” she yawned as she made herself comfortable and nearly repeating herself, “you can steal from me. Take all my toys. I want the poor to have them.”
“I - I won’t be giving them to the poor,” he stumbled, as he started to shift towards the edge of the bed.
“You give to the poor,” she pleaded. “This time you will?”
He thought of Trev, thought of the money he needed, thought of the the kind of reasons that the Pride is owed money by a normal. He could lie to Kayla, but what’s the point. “Nah kid. This is one of those times when I have to be bad.”
“You’ll come back? When you can be good?” Her voice was quivering slightly.
Red didn’t know how to answer. The girl was basically begging him to rob her, but that wasn’t really what she was asking was it. She was a sweet kid, she saw something in him that reminded her of a cuddle doll, and as much as he didn’t like kids this wasn’t all that bad. To what end though. To what stupid end would you befriend someone like this.
The door banged open before he had a chance to response. The nanny, clothed as if she had not been up to anything, stood there at the door and at first was just stunned. Confused in the moment, she tried to make it all make sense. Some stranger sitting in bed with the girl would be enough reason to run her off screaming; but a full sized moving plush doll? Slowly she opened her eyes wide and realized what she was seeing. “Mano!!!” she screamed.
That’s when the Samoan showed up. “Dafuck,” was all he go out and he shot passed the nanny. He had on his black slacks and shirt buttoned up below his chest, which made him look much bigger and stronger than he did from one building over. He made short work of closing the distance between the door and the bed, and grabbed Red by the hoodie yanking him to the floor.
As quick as he was, Red had not time at all to dislodge himself from Kayla. Somehow, Kayla rolled away and remained on the bed, while Red ended up slammed on the floor. The Nanny hurrying to scoop her up; but the girl’s cries started to build.out of shock or … something … Red didn’t have time to think about it anymore, he was too busy getting his ass kicked.
The Samoan grabbed Red by the hoodie again, and slammed him harder onto the floor. Another lift, another slam. One of these should be enough to stun a man, but Red was smeared finger paint. The fourth or fifth one should have done him in, but only made him fight to his feet faster. The sixth and the hoodie slid up his back. Red scrambled, backwards until the hoodie ended up in the Samoan’s hands.
In the time it took the big man to throw the jacket behind him, Red slipped between the man’s legs scrambled across the carpet, and made a break for the hallway. Immediately, he was stopped by a ring of a bell, and a man emerged from an elevator door. He wore a suit & tie, flipping through mail, and stood stunned as a furred shirtless robber stood nearly eye to eye to him.
“Stayback, Sir!!” the Samoan yelled as he came out to the hall.
Red looked over his shoulder, made a quick judgement, and turned back towards the guard.
“What the hell,” the suit yelled.
“Intruder, stay back!!”
Taking the time to yell gave Red the moment of distraction to act. Running right at him, the Samoan could do nothing but put his arms out in front, Red jumped, turning to the side, forcing the Samoan to catch him lengthwise across the big man’s chest. Red’s feet planted into the hallway wall, and kept kicking with his momentum. The effect made the Samoan turn in his spot spinning a couple or times until he was dizzy and Red were facing back towards the suit. Red disengaged himself quickly, springing down the hall, jumping onto a bent over suit, before rolling past him down the hallway. He slid to a stop at the back of the elevator just as doors were closing, and closing faster than the Samoan can reach him.
“Going down,” Red yelled and slammed his hand onto a button.
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6:11PM
Downtown & Midtown
Grand Woods Park
Twenty five blocks from the center of Downtown where Park Avenue action gets to a Park. It’s a big park, but that was way too long. And these fuckers just don’t give up.
For over two hours, Red’s stayed a step ahead of the Samoan and all the boys he called in to the pursuit. Cutting out of the basement into the sewers was a brilliant, but pretty shitty call to make, and some dude followed him for ten blocks down there. Once the two of them were back on the streets, at least two cars chased him through down every back alley and across every fenced lot that Red could bet to lose these bastards. It didn’t help that a shirtless fox shows up in the grim late afternoon like a Easter Basket in garbage dump; but Red is no rookie. He’s been good enough to outwit the Samoan, but they just don’t quit.
So that’s why he ended up here. Grand Park. The last massively wooded area in all of the city. All this time, he’s been playing in their ballpark, now he is on his own turf.
Running across the street to the park gate, he could head the cars skidding across the dry road to a stop and doors opening behind him. Running nearly upright, Red shook his hands until the gloves he used to mask his prints fell to ground. He reached for the straps on the backpack, winching them in place until the pack felt like nothing more but an appendage. He whipped through a couple of trees at the edge of the park, skipped across a path, and hit a long grassy stretch. Behind him he could hear yelling, the sound of heavy feet running hard and busting through brush. When the feet behind him met the grass he heard them yelling at him, readying whatever weapons they had. That’s when he shifted it up a few gears.
The adrenaline was coursing through his veins, as he looked for the right spot to make it work. He took a skip step, then another bringing his feet closer to landing together. His body bent, as the skipping became quicker. Then his hands hit the dirt, clawing into it, then throwing the earth behind him. His feet reached forward and planted the grass just below his chin before pulling and thrusting his body forward. It repeated itself in lightning quick succession, until he was at full speed rocketing across the field in all fours. This running was so utterly dynamic that it was no longer running like a human, it was full on animal. Each reach with an arm, he push with a leg, each quickfire motion of his body bringing him to speeds like he could never do on two feet taking further and further away from the threat until they were nowhere near, not even a glimpse over his shoulder to be seen.
He skittered down a trail maintaining this maximum speed, bounding and rushing by random joggers and pedestrians out on the evening. At this rate, turning was slow and long; stopping was more of a mess of tumbling fur and pain, and at the end he will be too exhausted to do much of anything for a few minutes. But never does Red feel more alive, more real than when running on all fours like this. He can take the stares of the normals. He can take the beatings of the cops. He can take the hatred. He can take the pains of his body rejecting these genes. Just to run like this, to go full out one more time, and feel like just by himself he can fly,
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8:51PM
G-Town
Panther Bar (Right of Hillcrest)
Trev sat at a booth, smoking down what looked to be the last in his pack, his leg bouncing nervously. Besides the bartender, a halfway panther with a one fang broken off and a scar across an eye, the place was empty and silent except for a low groan of the radio. “Shit, what took you so long?”
Red was limping, fighting to get past the soreness of the day. The run caused as much of it as the fight with the Samoan, or was it slipping on his ass in that sewer. “How much time do you have left?”
“An hour, if that.”
Red groaned as he slipped into the booth. He stopped at his apartment to wash all the sewer shit from him and dawn a new hoodie. “A little sore, thanks, but I’ll be fine.”
“What?” Trev asked anxiously.
“Ahh, I thought you weren’t being an ask by not asking how I was doing,” Red waved his hand and unzipped the bag. He placed the cash on the table, where Trev grabbed them quickly to take them out of sight to count. Red pulled the credit cards out as well. “See if they will take these, they may go dead on you quick like, but after it’s stop pouring cash out it’s still probably worth what you owe.”
“How’d it go,” Trev asked flipping through the bills under the table.
“A little kid with cancer fluffed me like a pillow,” Red said, still stacking jewels and other items out of the bag onto the table. The bartender looked up briefly then turned away. Better to not know nothing when asked, then know something and try to lie.
“What book is that from?” Trev asked.
“Whaaa?” Red said dropping back against the seatback, finally able to relax.
“That’s not some fancy book quote? The kid with cancer?”
Red raised his palms up to Trev, “no man. There was a kid. I hate kids. This was the worst kind of kid. She was cute, smart, and had half her leg cut off cause of the cancer. She thought I was fucking Robin Hood. Then she fucking fluffed me. She crawled up on me like some teddy bear and scratched me like a puppy. If I stayed there any longer, she would have fucking served me at her tea party.”
Trev couldn’t help it but he laughed. The more Red threw his arms around in frustration the more Trev laughed.. Hell the bartender laughed.
“Alright, I need to get going to pawn this shit.” Trev said trying to pocket what he can.
“Nah, King will take it. Get what you can from the Pride. They like it better that way. They like shiney things like the rest of us, and they don’t care how they get paid if they get paid.”
“Yeah, but your cut …”
Red’s phone beeped in his pocket, and he pulled it out to look at it. “My cut is whatever is left over when you get done. If I think you screwed me, then it just comes out of the job, alright?” The cellphone in Red’s paw blinked new instructions. Just when you think the day is over, you get called in for a second shift. He let out a long drawn out breath, and shook his head.
“Alright then,” Trev agreed and started to get up. “I owe ya just doesn’t cut it this time, I think.”
“Nah, not this time” Red winked as he slid out from the booth. “I’ll come with ya too. Just got a text for a meeting down that way. Alright?”
“Sure sure,” Trev smiled. The normal man stopped, raised his hands up like making a grand speech and exclaimed “You are as bad as the worst, Red, but you are as good as the best.”
Red slapped Trev on the back, “Jezzus Shit, Trev. What is that, Whitman?”
“Nah, saw it on a bag of nuts.”
K
KattDclaw
Guest
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ArcticAvenue
Randomly Pawing At Keys
- Joined
- Jul 16, 2013
- Posts
- 1,650
Chapter 6 - Ye Who Enter
G-Town
10:12 PM
The Pride Lands - Claw’s Warren
There are a lot of ugly things one can find in the Pridelands, most of which rolls off of Red like water off of a duck’s back. Somethings you can’t unsee.
“Jesus, Randle, put your cock away,” he yelled as he entered the warren.
“Fuck You, it’s Claw,” it responded.
Standing before Trev and Red was a five foot tall, hunched over, mostly cat man. His crooked little penis was curled, bloated, and covered with either whatever goo the freakshow could make in his hairless balls or he was molesting a week old can of cottage cheese.
“Just put that shit away, so you can tell me whatever you need to tell me and let me get home.” Red was growing more tired as minutes rolled by. There was still his nightly trip to Mariah’s grave, still had to get Trev safely out of the Pridelands now he paid his debt, and if Randle had something for him he still had to do that too.
“Who the fuck is the Normal anyway, where’s the guards at. JERRY!!” Randle dragged on a robe and wrapped it around himself.
Red was used to seeing Randle/Claw in a hoody or sweater of some type for reasons Red suspected was just to fit in. Now naked, one could see why. Whomever did his GEH job must have been drunk, blind, or both. Randle’s head and face was only half bad transition to a black cat, but the rest of his body was bent like a hunchback and he had patches of black hair sticking out like an animal with mange. Randle wasn’t the most attractive guy to begin with, so the whole thing looked like the poster child for the Anti-G Movement..
“Jerry’s out cold, Randle,” Red said as he walked across the room and sat on a dilapidated wood chair, “you need to start hiring sober guards. Or ones who give a shit if you live or not.” There were in a dark store front just across the street from the Den where somehow this little minion was able to convince The King that he needed. There wasn’t much but blackened windows, dirty floors, a few desks and a curtained alcove probably hiding whatever Randle was sticking his pecker into. “This is Trev, he’s with me. He had business down here and I am making sure he gets out.”
Randle’s cat like smile grew a little, “oh, business down here, eh?” Coming from his mouth it sounded like an attempt to be cunning, but it just came out like horseshit. “What kind of business? I can get you as good of a price on anything you want. We can cook a good head of meth down here, Normal, if that’s what you like. If not, you should see the little kittens I have crawling around in the back of the house.”
Trev just stood against the opposing wall from me. Someplace where no one will get a drop on him, and more importantly to get a drop on someone if that need arose.
Red just dug around in his bag. He pointed to Randle and laughed, “There are darknesses in life and there are lights, and you are one of the lights, the light of all lights.”
“What the hell is that,” Randle jumped. “You calling me gay?”
“It’s Bram Stoker.”
“So you are calling me Dracula! Fuck You!”
Trev for the most part knew to keep his mouth shut and just watched. Still, having him there meant that Randle keep couldn’t keep his mouth shut. Red tried to rush it along. “Just get to the guts of it, I got things to do and it’s already been a shit long of a day.”
Randle grunted, and stepped back behind the curtain. From the back alcove, it was pretty clear the cat-thing was digging around back there until eventually tearing something that sounded like cardboard. Someone else was back there, female, with a high voice squeaking out something asian. At one point there was a grunt from Randle, and what sounded like a slap. Red immediately looked to Trev who seemed to be bugged by whatever was happening. Trev is a good man, too good, and a bit stupid. Trev started to move closer to the curtain as if he could stop what was happening, but just as he did Randle jumped out from the alcove past Trev and dropped something looked like a torn cover of the book.
“What the hell is this?” Red asked. “It just had numbers and letters on it.”
“Drop is a big one, shipment came in to the docks last week,” Randle started. He looked over the board and pointed at what was written. “875543 is the container number. OWU LM2500 is what’s on the crate.”
“I need to dig through a whole crate for the stuff?”
“No, the drop IS the crate.”
Red couldn’t help but to let his eyes widen. Five, ten, sometimes fifty vials. This was way more than that. “I want triple,” he responded.
“Triple would be fine, but you ain’t heard the half of the job yet,” Randle said. He was being smug, like some part of him thought he was running this game.
“Listen … King and I had a deal, nothing more than I had to. So tell your little kitty boss that I am not some two bit patsy like you are, Randle.”
“Fuck you, Red,” it blew up. “Can you just respect me long enough to keep your fur mouth shut?” When he spoke, he spat white foaming spittle. As he got angry his whole arm shuddered. It was like an instant of an earthquake running through his arm. He started making sounds somewhere between whimpers and grunts, somewhere short of rage bellows too. He grabbed at it to calm the shudder, but gritted his teeth in part because he did it in plain sight.
Red couldn’t help but hold back a laugh at the display. For being one that seemed to have the ear and marching orders of the toughest G ever made, Randle sure was a little bitch.
Trev caught it, looked confused and eyed Red. Normals don’t see it happen often, so it’s not surprising that it was new to him to see the Shakes.
“The King wants this to be discreet,” Randle started, “more than usual. He hasn’t even told the Pride about it. Rumor is that there is someone else going for the drop; like they want to steal the whole load. They got a new lacky, like you, working for the guy and hopes to get their hands on it first. I don’t know when and I don’t know who. All I know is this lacky’s a G, and the one paying for it all could be anyone.
Randle reached for a side table and grabbed at a needle. He quickly pulled out a shelf and banged around some small vials until he pulled one out, stuck the needle in the top, and filled up the syringe. “King wants a message sent, but doesn’t want his hands dirty if it fucks up. You off that theif, you bring back their ear as a trophy, and you bring in that crate. It all goes down like it’s supposed to, it ain’t just triple. It’s as much as we paid you all last year.” He jabbed the needle into his butt and squeezed. The shaking, that had lessened at first all but stopped as the plunger bottomed out.
“Jesus shit, I am not a hitman.”
“It’s you or them,” Randle said.
Red’s ears nearly shot out of his head in shock. “What .. he’s going to have me killed? I don’t think so. We have an agreement.”
“King won’t kill you, THEY will kill you. They know your little agreement with King.”
“And what? They accept that at face value? Or the bullshit behind it?”
Randle looked over his shoulder at Trev, then turned back to Red. Trev was barely listening now, he was pulling back the curtain slightly looking into the alcove. Randle gets away with this conversation in front of Trev because no Normal is trusted down here. Trev could have been a rock to this guy, because rocks talk with more reliability than Normals do. “This ain’t a take it or leave it,” the cat man said leaning in closer to Red. “Like the guy once said … This is an offer you can’t refuse.”
“Nice, you watch one movie and now you are a gangster.”
Randle sneared, “Scarface was a great movie.”
Scarface? Some dumbasses just aren’t worth correcting sometimes. “All our knowledge brings us closer to ignorance, my friend.” There was nothing about this that smelled right. Something seemed to suggest that not only was his life on the line but it wasn’t just some mystery G that will go after it. Still, the money can’t be ignored. Maybe with that kind of scratch he could get out of here. With a long sigh he grabbed the board and shoved it in the bag. “Come on Trev, let’s get you home.”
Trev’s hand was pulling back the curtain, without any mind of the last minutes of the conversation. “What’s with the girl?” Trev asked.
“Ahhh, yes, you have good taste, Normal. Meet KimKim … or whatever the hell her name is.” Randle stepped back to the alcove and yanked a blanket off a girl who was hiding the last of her dignity with it.
She looked young, real young, but to Red all Japanese girls looked real young. She was a G, but not much of one. Kitty Paws, Kitty Feet, Kitty Ears, long whiskers from her lips, and the tip of her nose tattooed black. The fur ended right at each of those enhancements, but it was colored purple. Unnaturally purple. The rest of her was completely human, skin & all, and naked. She colored the hair on her head to match the kitty parts, but that’s it. Of course, because Randle is an asshole, Red had no problem telling her natural hair color, because yanking the blanket free revealed her scruffy bush down below. She sat naked on the bed, curled up trying to hide herself and saying things in a foreign language that surely had to do with fear of getting that greasy prick stuck into her again, or worse yet these two new strangers now staring at him.. She had a mark on her face when Randle struck her earlier, and you could see stains here and there on the bed like it wasn’t the first time he raped her, or someone, on this bed.
The girl probably came to the city like so many other misguided Gs did, thinking that if they come to a place where a whole G-Town existed they would be with their own kind. Problem was, so many girls don’t get what it means, what they will find when they get here. They think if they just change the way they look, they don’t change the way they are.
“Fresh off the boat, and more than happy to please you gentlemen if you want.”
“Jesus Randle, she’s fucking 12,” Red spat.
“No way,” it replied. “That aint no street job she got, and Jay-Pans card their Gs to make sure they are 18. But I’m not complaining, because I am going to sell her at a teenybopper price.”
“Is she … really …” Trev stammered, his expression clearing the shock and heading into wonder. “... is she a G? Or is that fake.”
Randle turned salesman all of a sudden. He tugged at the girl’s ear and she squealed and began firing off asian words like from out of a cute tiny gatling gun. “100% my good man, do you want to have a taste? Red?”
Red groaned. “Dude, cats are a turnoff. Ears and a tail don’t make you anything but a wannabe. Come on Trev.”
“Wait,” Trev said, looking sadly down to the girl. Trev never said what got him in trouble down here, but you didn’t have to spend much time looking at the way he stared at the girl and you can come up with a good guess.
“Dude,” Red started, “you want sloppy seconds? To that?” Red grabbed at Randle’s robe and yanked it open to show off the floppy noodle beneath.
While Trev was resistant, starting at Randle’s freak show of a cock helped him to walk away. Hopefully he would walk away for good, because somethings are just too horrible to unsee.
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G-Town
11:20 PM
Coral Alley
“Why do you do anything for that guy, he shot up right in front of you?” Trev started right when they got a good distance away.
“What, the needle? That was for the Shakes.”
“I saw that, it was like he was jonesing pretty hard.”
“Not what you think,” Red came back. “At least not completely. You saw what he looked like? Like he got his G from a street vendor who sells hot dogs on the side? They don’t do the process right, and your body starts rejecting the cocktail. They call it the Shakes.”
“So what was the stuff he shot up with?”
“Another cocktail.” Cutting down an alleyway, Red pointed to a faded set of letters under a bloody paw print tag that said “The path to paradise starts in hell.” “See that? I wrote that,” Red exclaimed.
Trev looked like a statue as he walked the streets of G-Town. A statue watching a flock of pigeons circling that is. “What … that thing? You write a book or something?”
“What? Oh, hell no. That’s Dante, from Inferno. I just wrote that there, dumbass. I thought about using the line at the gates to hell … you know … ‘Ye Who Enter, Abandon All Hope’ … but it was going to be either too cliche or two smart for these bastards.”
“Ain’t that …” Trev raised his palm out to mimic the paw print, swishing it around. He was wondering about why the paw print went with the quote.
“Different time, different place, Trev. Warhol used to say he loved being in the wrong place at the right time just because it made things interesting.” Red shook his head and laughed nearly reminiscent. “Not me. Seems I am always good to find the wrong time, and interesting around this place is like saying it’s interesting looking up a cow’s ass.” Red was trying to keep things light. He tried to keep Trev calm.
It wasn’t really working. Trev didn’t even react. He just stared at the tag.
So Red got him going. “Trev!”
“S-sorry, man,” Trev jumped.
They continued on, Red sliding his hands into his pockets and slumping along. What Randle told him itched at his mind. He was always a step or two away from the rogue asshole looking for a kill, but if the King thought he was a target why would he care that Red knew. For that matter, why would he leave catching the other thief to Red. Not when the whole Pride was full of killers.
“Where do you get them all the time?”
“Huh?” Red responded confused.
“Those quotes,” Trev asked, his eyes looking to the walls around them. “You always seem to shit them out when you want too.”
“Oh, well …” Red reached up and scratched behind his ear, catching the movement on the rooftop as he did. Not worth reacting to it yet.. It was just lucky for Red that he caught it. “I liked to read a lot when in the military, something to keep my mind off of the testing & the training and stuff; and my sister would send me things to read, tidbits of this and that. After a while, it just became this … I don’t know … file-a-deck.”
“Oh,” Trev smiled relaxing somewhat, or as best as he could down a dark alley. “I just thought you were some kind of writer or something.”
A female voice called from behind them, “Don’t let him lie to you, human,”
Both Trev and Red snapped around looking back in the darkness.
The voice continued as the soft pad of feet moved their way and towards the light. “He just says those things to make you think he is smarter than you.”
Out of the blackness slowly stepped one of the Pride. Not just one of the many, but one of the few. Most G you see are nothing more than variations of domestic creatures. Red believed only the military had access to anything else, until he met the Pride. Sulturly walking towards them was evidence it wasn’t just the military, and it was the sexiest damn evidence a man would ever see. The lioness walked towards them with her arms swaying and her hips shifting like right out of a slow brazilian samba. In the occasional shower of a streetlamp yellow, her tawny fur brightened the alley around her. From the curve of her perfectly formed snout down the length of her swaying tail, there was no doubt this creature came from the plains of Africa, even if the woman inside of her came from someplace far closer. Yet there was without a doubt reason for a man to be seduced by more than her felinity. Her hips curled back to a firm bottom, her stomach was sleek and direct running up to where ample breasts ached to be touched. She had no problem presenting it all, choosing a red belly shirt to holster her bosom and expose her navel, and jean shorts that were always more shorts than jeans. She kept her hair back in a ponytail like she had back when Red knew her better, but sometimes he believed she only did that so that she could release her golden mane and shake it out until every male furred creature was sporting a hardon at her feet.
This wasn’t your run of the mill killer body though; this was a natural born killer. She stood taller than Red, but not by much. Somehow, she was trained on the right way to be bloodthirsty yet still control her rage; all with the skills to know the right place to find a jugular, or a spleen, or to tear a dick off while leaving the poor bastard alive. Trimmed under the finely brushed fur laid a body that could take down anyone of a hundred men without even pulling a knife. Red maybe strong enough to pull an arm from a socket, but she was strong enough to tear limbs, shatter bones, and break hearts.
“Why, Satin,” Red teased back to her. “I thought I smelt pussy.” Red knew her well, and as in those days he knew that nothing good would come from running into her; because nothing good creeps into the minds of anyone crossing her path.
“Who’s your friend,” she chimed back as she stepped so close Red could feel the heat of her breath against his nose. “A new hole for you to hide your bone?”
“Aww, sweetheart,” he prodded, “you really still believe that because I’m not into you I must be gay. Where’s the rest of the girls, someone leave a box open and they all crawled inside?”
She smirked, and with that snout that was every bit a lion’s it looked one step short of a growl. “Do you want the truth?” she grinned.
“The truth is rarely pure, and never simple.” He smiled a witty smile back to her. Oscar Wilde brings that out of him sometimes.
She grinned like a cat hungry for a fish. Leaning against his body, her bosom brushing up against his chest, she moved her mouth near his ear. “Tell me another one, Red,” she whispered.
Red thought for a moment, unsure of the way she came so close, but feeling himself falter in his own will as he breathed in her scent. “Buddha once said - There are three things that cannot be long hidden: The Sun, The Moon, and The Truth.”
With the words she breathed warmly into his neck and he caught a hint, just a hint, of a purr slipping away from the control she tried to keep. Her paw moved up to his arm, and stroked it through the hoodie he wore. “Lose the Normal,” she demanded.
“I am making sure he gets out of G-Town safe.”
“He’s safe.” She wasn’t just trying to get of Trev, or just trying to empty the alley. Satin’s words weren’t a guess she was making. Nor a suggestion. It was fact. In two short words she let Red know that at any time the Pride could have stolen Trev’s life right out from under his nose. In those same two words she made it known that no one would touch his friend, for reasons that may never be known to him.
Red looked over his shoulder to Trev. He was eyeing the lioness's body like a hungry man eyeing bacon. “Hey,” Red called to his friend. “Call me tomorrow.”
What Trev was good at, though, was being a wingman. Trev just gave a nod and left them, not even looking back.
Still, Red kept his head turned to watch him go, just to make sure that there wasn’t anything following his friend. Just as he turned the corner, Satin slammed her fist across Red’s snout.
Red spun a half turn and smashed into the ground like a fallen ballerina. He gripped his chin and looked back at his assailant. “What the fuck is that for?”
She moved to stand over him, and placed a taloned foot onto his stomach pressing hard enough to keep him on the ground. She hissed, “you are the like the shit that sticks to my fur.” She waggled the foot down his navel until it pushed on his pants and got close to his junk.
“Here I was to believe that there is a line of boys more than happy to eat the shit right out of your sweet ass.” He struggled to lift himself from underneath her foot.
She smirked, and the amber glow in her eyes slitted. She lifted her leg, aiming to smash it down on his crotch. Red jumped faster, grabbed the foot, and pushed back in opposite. The move made her lift up off the ground by a good foot or two. Her reflexes took hold, and she spun in the air landing crouched low on two feet. Red scrambled until he could get his own paws under him, and by then she sprang back. She had a flying kick coming right at his shoulder. He dodged, grabbing the leg as it went under his arm, and turning her until she slammed onto the pavement. Still holding that leg, he turned until he laid on top of her her leg sticking out straight above him.
She gripped his hoody collar and yanked him close. A long lioness tongue extended from her mouth and ran up the side of Red’s face. He could see his blood on it’s flesh as she stopped and sucked the flavor in her mouth. “Mmmmm,” she groaned. “I thought you didn’t like us pussies.”
Red smirked, “I don’t hit girls either.”
Her eyebrows knitted playfully. An instant later, Red was head over ass heading for the ground past Satin’s golden mane. Before his head hit the ground, his back smashed into a dumpster where he could feel every bit of the old steel against every bone in his back. Before his head hit the ground, a rusty edge of metal cut into his side deep enough that he would have to worry about more than a scratch. And then his head hit the ground. He crumpled and turned over to see Satin standing already, prepared for a counter-attack, yet she waited until he was up.
Red dragged himself to his feet and grumbled, “Alright, we’ll call it a draw.”
She closed the gap quickly, and made three quick punches crossing over with each arm. Red blocked all three, countered with a jab to her face hitting her squarely on the snout. She turned but swept her leg hitting Red’s ankle. He fell off balance, but had captured her hand pulling her with him. She dug her feet into the ground and yanked him up sending him face first into her fist. He stumbled back, but she was relentless. Three more crosses came, two of them landing home. But he grabbed her wrist with the third. He began to twist it, to turn her for a throw, but she beat him to the move and yanked his arm around until she was behind him.
Red’s arm wrenched behind his back, Satin’s claw encircled his neck. He couldn’t pull free, not with her strength. She could have killed him right there, one jab of her nail and he would be bled out in thirty seconds.
Tonight, she was pulling her punches.
He nearly coughed by the tightness of her grip and the closeness of her deadly talons. Still, he huffed out, “Rumor is someone else is going for a drop.”
She slowly moved her claw along the flesh under the fur lined neck. He could feel the skin start to split under the strain, but not enough to be more than a scratch. “None of your business, doggie.”
He grabbed for the claw along his neck and pulled it away slightly. “It is when the deal changes,” he grunted. He turned his hips, and threw her.
She was in the air for an instant, and somehow twisted in the air to land in better shape than when she left the earth. Satin jumped and grabbed at at the shoulder seams of his hoodie pulling him close enough that her hot breath from the workout washed over his face. “King has no reason to be loyal to you, pup,” she chided. “The deal can change whenever he feels like it.”
“That isn’t true, my sweet,” he laughed in the near dead closeness. “If things changed, I’d be dead. You’d see to that yourself.”
Her amber eyes, always walking that edge between sweet, sexy, and the devil. “Not before letting my girlfriends paw at you for a few hours,” she cooed. Her head neared his and pressed her nuzzle to him.
She felt soft, gentle, even if she was gripping harder onto his hoodie than a junkie to a twenty dollar bill. Still it left his hands free, which always works in his favor. “So what aren’t you telling me?” he whispered back. “Don’t make me believe things are happening under your nose?”
The challenge was enough to bring the old Satin back, and she thrust him back to the ground. “Silly boy,” she sneared, “nothing happens here without me knowing about it.”
Red still sat on the ground, leaning back on one hand, and a wicked grin came across his lips. “Nothing?” His finger lifted up and pointed to her waist.
When she looked down, she realized Red’s handy work. While she was nuzzling him, he had unsnapped her jean shorts and lowered the zipper. They were so tight before that they split open now. The lighter color of her belly fur now appeared between the zipper seams like an arrow pointing down to her mons, and they went so low that fur-lined crevice of her sex peaked out from the opening. When she looked up at him, that playful smile returned with a little more fire underneath. “Fucking pervert,” was all she had to say and then the attack was on again.
She pounced at him, and he tried to spin off away but her fist found his side again aggravating the cut from the rusty metal before. She yanked on his arm, and pumped a knee into his gut. He curled up in pain, and she started to repeat the knee in whatever torso part she could get to. All she found was his arm, dumb move, because by the time he could recover he could wrap up her knees. In his arms, he rolled slamming her body face first into the pavement. He rolled the other way, taking her with him and she bounced off the pavement on her back. He kept his roll and came on top of her. She kicked and pushed him up to his feet. She struggled but started to find her own feet. With the advantage now he ran full speed at her, and flattened her against the alley wall. The air whooshed out of her lungs and she coughed to get it back.
While she was stunned, he grabbed her wrists and forced them above her head against the wall. The closeness brought her full breasts to press against his chest. He put his forehead against hers as their breathing slowed together. Slowly her eyes opened and peered into his. They were calm, defeated, and soft. From deep inside her chest, the quiet rumble of a purr began. She went easy on him, but this fight was now won and while any good warrior would concede defeat, her body was conceding for her.
She began to shift her hips back and forth, but it didn’t feel like she was trying to escape. “Think what you want,” she breathed between words, “but, my Dear Red, when death comes to you, it will be my hands that kill you.” She pressed her nuzzle once more into the side of his. Her tongue extended and tasted at his mouth. Then he felt the jean shorts fall to her ankles, the work of her hips giving them their freedom.
In the heat of battle he was lost in his own way, and he returned the soft movement of her nuzzle. He reached with his lips to touch hers. He shifted his pelvis forward to feel his member growing up against her naked privates. “There are causes worth dying for, but there is no cause worth killing for.”
If it continued like this, there was no telling what level of his own limits he may break. In that moment, though, his instincts took over driven by the feel of her body against his. Until the interruption came that changed everything.
She took two quick deep breaths. The third came as a huff. Her purring amplified then went silent as quick. He felt a rumble in her from her stomach as it shook through her breasts into his chest. Her arms began to shudder from the bicepts up to her hands. He pulled his head back quickly to look at her, just as her head shook violently enough that she pumped her pony tail against the wall a couple of times hard enough to feel it. Her legs danced underneath her. He pressed his body into her again, knowing the pressure of him against the wall is the only thing keeping her on her feet. She pulled a leg around the back of his, erotic in most cases, but now just to keep herself in control and stable until it passes. When it passed her hips and legs still shook lighter underneath her, and her eyes opened slowly.
What was there in her eyes was something he had never seen, maybe something that no one ever had. Fear. The amber color flushed by wide irises staring back at Red like a child first realizing the horrifying reality of mortality. A G doesn’t get this bad overnight, so this probably wasn’t her first, but something about her eyes suggested this was the worst. She was scared, a moment of control lost and never to come back. Worse yet, she’s smart enough to know that no one can just blow one like this off. A lioness, facing death every day, carryingout death every day like some door-to-door salesman for the grim reaper was now faced with the Shakes, and she was terrified.
Red swallowed. She could probably see that he knew exactly what happened, but he couldn’t ignore it either. “Satin. How .. how long has it been happening?”
In an instant, her eyes changed. They slitted, angry and filling with hate. Before he even noticed, her hand was free and landing a right cross on his cheek. It came with such force that he was a good five feet away on the ground before he even noticed that she was half way up a fire escape. She left the shorts behind, and the naked bottom and free swinging tail was all he could make out.
He just sat there for a while. Looking up to the black sky over the dark alley. He will need to let it go, will have to let it go. Satin is too strong to be pitied, and if there is something to help her she’ll find it. Besides, showing pity to an enemy is a waste of energy. He needed to get his side stitched up, and he had the crap beat out of him too many times today already. He still had his nightly visit to Mariah, and will need some sleep before whatever shit hits the fan hits it square in the mouth. And he has to figure out why he feels the need to take this big drop anyway, is his life worth risking for a little more cash, or is he just curious to know who wants to kill him - besides the obvious.
He lay back on the cold pavement for just a minute longer and breathed deep in recover. “Ye who enter. Abandon all hope on the road that was always paved with good intentions.”
G-Town
10:12 PM
The Pride Lands - Claw’s Warren
There are a lot of ugly things one can find in the Pridelands, most of which rolls off of Red like water off of a duck’s back. Somethings you can’t unsee.
“Jesus, Randle, put your cock away,” he yelled as he entered the warren.
“Fuck You, it’s Claw,” it responded.
Standing before Trev and Red was a five foot tall, hunched over, mostly cat man. His crooked little penis was curled, bloated, and covered with either whatever goo the freakshow could make in his hairless balls or he was molesting a week old can of cottage cheese.
“Just put that shit away, so you can tell me whatever you need to tell me and let me get home.” Red was growing more tired as minutes rolled by. There was still his nightly trip to Mariah’s grave, still had to get Trev safely out of the Pridelands now he paid his debt, and if Randle had something for him he still had to do that too.
“Who the fuck is the Normal anyway, where’s the guards at. JERRY!!” Randle dragged on a robe and wrapped it around himself.
Red was used to seeing Randle/Claw in a hoody or sweater of some type for reasons Red suspected was just to fit in. Now naked, one could see why. Whomever did his GEH job must have been drunk, blind, or both. Randle’s head and face was only half bad transition to a black cat, but the rest of his body was bent like a hunchback and he had patches of black hair sticking out like an animal with mange. Randle wasn’t the most attractive guy to begin with, so the whole thing looked like the poster child for the Anti-G Movement..
“Jerry’s out cold, Randle,” Red said as he walked across the room and sat on a dilapidated wood chair, “you need to start hiring sober guards. Or ones who give a shit if you live or not.” There were in a dark store front just across the street from the Den where somehow this little minion was able to convince The King that he needed. There wasn’t much but blackened windows, dirty floors, a few desks and a curtained alcove probably hiding whatever Randle was sticking his pecker into. “This is Trev, he’s with me. He had business down here and I am making sure he gets out.”
Randle’s cat like smile grew a little, “oh, business down here, eh?” Coming from his mouth it sounded like an attempt to be cunning, but it just came out like horseshit. “What kind of business? I can get you as good of a price on anything you want. We can cook a good head of meth down here, Normal, if that’s what you like. If not, you should see the little kittens I have crawling around in the back of the house.”
Trev just stood against the opposing wall from me. Someplace where no one will get a drop on him, and more importantly to get a drop on someone if that need arose.
Red just dug around in his bag. He pointed to Randle and laughed, “There are darknesses in life and there are lights, and you are one of the lights, the light of all lights.”
“What the hell is that,” Randle jumped. “You calling me gay?”
“It’s Bram Stoker.”
“So you are calling me Dracula! Fuck You!”
Trev for the most part knew to keep his mouth shut and just watched. Still, having him there meant that Randle keep couldn’t keep his mouth shut. Red tried to rush it along. “Just get to the guts of it, I got things to do and it’s already been a shit long of a day.”
Randle grunted, and stepped back behind the curtain. From the back alcove, it was pretty clear the cat-thing was digging around back there until eventually tearing something that sounded like cardboard. Someone else was back there, female, with a high voice squeaking out something asian. At one point there was a grunt from Randle, and what sounded like a slap. Red immediately looked to Trev who seemed to be bugged by whatever was happening. Trev is a good man, too good, and a bit stupid. Trev started to move closer to the curtain as if he could stop what was happening, but just as he did Randle jumped out from the alcove past Trev and dropped something looked like a torn cover of the book.
“What the hell is this?” Red asked. “It just had numbers and letters on it.”
“Drop is a big one, shipment came in to the docks last week,” Randle started. He looked over the board and pointed at what was written. “875543 is the container number. OWU LM2500 is what’s on the crate.”
“I need to dig through a whole crate for the stuff?”
“No, the drop IS the crate.”
Red couldn’t help but to let his eyes widen. Five, ten, sometimes fifty vials. This was way more than that. “I want triple,” he responded.
“Triple would be fine, but you ain’t heard the half of the job yet,” Randle said. He was being smug, like some part of him thought he was running this game.
“Listen … King and I had a deal, nothing more than I had to. So tell your little kitty boss that I am not some two bit patsy like you are, Randle.”
“Fuck you, Red,” it blew up. “Can you just respect me long enough to keep your fur mouth shut?” When he spoke, he spat white foaming spittle. As he got angry his whole arm shuddered. It was like an instant of an earthquake running through his arm. He started making sounds somewhere between whimpers and grunts, somewhere short of rage bellows too. He grabbed at it to calm the shudder, but gritted his teeth in part because he did it in plain sight.
Red couldn’t help but hold back a laugh at the display. For being one that seemed to have the ear and marching orders of the toughest G ever made, Randle sure was a little bitch.
Trev caught it, looked confused and eyed Red. Normals don’t see it happen often, so it’s not surprising that it was new to him to see the Shakes.
“The King wants this to be discreet,” Randle started, “more than usual. He hasn’t even told the Pride about it. Rumor is that there is someone else going for the drop; like they want to steal the whole load. They got a new lacky, like you, working for the guy and hopes to get their hands on it first. I don’t know when and I don’t know who. All I know is this lacky’s a G, and the one paying for it all could be anyone.
Randle reached for a side table and grabbed at a needle. He quickly pulled out a shelf and banged around some small vials until he pulled one out, stuck the needle in the top, and filled up the syringe. “King wants a message sent, but doesn’t want his hands dirty if it fucks up. You off that theif, you bring back their ear as a trophy, and you bring in that crate. It all goes down like it’s supposed to, it ain’t just triple. It’s as much as we paid you all last year.” He jabbed the needle into his butt and squeezed. The shaking, that had lessened at first all but stopped as the plunger bottomed out.
“Jesus shit, I am not a hitman.”
“It’s you or them,” Randle said.
Red’s ears nearly shot out of his head in shock. “What .. he’s going to have me killed? I don’t think so. We have an agreement.”
“King won’t kill you, THEY will kill you. They know your little agreement with King.”
“And what? They accept that at face value? Or the bullshit behind it?”
Randle looked over his shoulder at Trev, then turned back to Red. Trev was barely listening now, he was pulling back the curtain slightly looking into the alcove. Randle gets away with this conversation in front of Trev because no Normal is trusted down here. Trev could have been a rock to this guy, because rocks talk with more reliability than Normals do. “This ain’t a take it or leave it,” the cat man said leaning in closer to Red. “Like the guy once said … This is an offer you can’t refuse.”
“Nice, you watch one movie and now you are a gangster.”
Randle sneared, “Scarface was a great movie.”
Scarface? Some dumbasses just aren’t worth correcting sometimes. “All our knowledge brings us closer to ignorance, my friend.” There was nothing about this that smelled right. Something seemed to suggest that not only was his life on the line but it wasn’t just some mystery G that will go after it. Still, the money can’t be ignored. Maybe with that kind of scratch he could get out of here. With a long sigh he grabbed the board and shoved it in the bag. “Come on Trev, let’s get you home.”
Trev’s hand was pulling back the curtain, without any mind of the last minutes of the conversation. “What’s with the girl?” Trev asked.
“Ahhh, yes, you have good taste, Normal. Meet KimKim … or whatever the hell her name is.” Randle stepped back to the alcove and yanked a blanket off a girl who was hiding the last of her dignity with it.
She looked young, real young, but to Red all Japanese girls looked real young. She was a G, but not much of one. Kitty Paws, Kitty Feet, Kitty Ears, long whiskers from her lips, and the tip of her nose tattooed black. The fur ended right at each of those enhancements, but it was colored purple. Unnaturally purple. The rest of her was completely human, skin & all, and naked. She colored the hair on her head to match the kitty parts, but that’s it. Of course, because Randle is an asshole, Red had no problem telling her natural hair color, because yanking the blanket free revealed her scruffy bush down below. She sat naked on the bed, curled up trying to hide herself and saying things in a foreign language that surely had to do with fear of getting that greasy prick stuck into her again, or worse yet these two new strangers now staring at him.. She had a mark on her face when Randle struck her earlier, and you could see stains here and there on the bed like it wasn’t the first time he raped her, or someone, on this bed.
The girl probably came to the city like so many other misguided Gs did, thinking that if they come to a place where a whole G-Town existed they would be with their own kind. Problem was, so many girls don’t get what it means, what they will find when they get here. They think if they just change the way they look, they don’t change the way they are.
“Fresh off the boat, and more than happy to please you gentlemen if you want.”
“Jesus Randle, she’s fucking 12,” Red spat.
“No way,” it replied. “That aint no street job she got, and Jay-Pans card their Gs to make sure they are 18. But I’m not complaining, because I am going to sell her at a teenybopper price.”
“Is she … really …” Trev stammered, his expression clearing the shock and heading into wonder. “... is she a G? Or is that fake.”
Randle turned salesman all of a sudden. He tugged at the girl’s ear and she squealed and began firing off asian words like from out of a cute tiny gatling gun. “100% my good man, do you want to have a taste? Red?”
Red groaned. “Dude, cats are a turnoff. Ears and a tail don’t make you anything but a wannabe. Come on Trev.”
“Wait,” Trev said, looking sadly down to the girl. Trev never said what got him in trouble down here, but you didn’t have to spend much time looking at the way he stared at the girl and you can come up with a good guess.
“Dude,” Red started, “you want sloppy seconds? To that?” Red grabbed at Randle’s robe and yanked it open to show off the floppy noodle beneath.
While Trev was resistant, starting at Randle’s freak show of a cock helped him to walk away. Hopefully he would walk away for good, because somethings are just too horrible to unsee.
-----------
G-Town
11:20 PM
Coral Alley
“Why do you do anything for that guy, he shot up right in front of you?” Trev started right when they got a good distance away.
“What, the needle? That was for the Shakes.”
“I saw that, it was like he was jonesing pretty hard.”
“Not what you think,” Red came back. “At least not completely. You saw what he looked like? Like he got his G from a street vendor who sells hot dogs on the side? They don’t do the process right, and your body starts rejecting the cocktail. They call it the Shakes.”
“So what was the stuff he shot up with?”
“Another cocktail.” Cutting down an alleyway, Red pointed to a faded set of letters under a bloody paw print tag that said “The path to paradise starts in hell.” “See that? I wrote that,” Red exclaimed.
Trev looked like a statue as he walked the streets of G-Town. A statue watching a flock of pigeons circling that is. “What … that thing? You write a book or something?”
“What? Oh, hell no. That’s Dante, from Inferno. I just wrote that there, dumbass. I thought about using the line at the gates to hell … you know … ‘Ye Who Enter, Abandon All Hope’ … but it was going to be either too cliche or two smart for these bastards.”
“Ain’t that …” Trev raised his palm out to mimic the paw print, swishing it around. He was wondering about why the paw print went with the quote.
“Different time, different place, Trev. Warhol used to say he loved being in the wrong place at the right time just because it made things interesting.” Red shook his head and laughed nearly reminiscent. “Not me. Seems I am always good to find the wrong time, and interesting around this place is like saying it’s interesting looking up a cow’s ass.” Red was trying to keep things light. He tried to keep Trev calm.
It wasn’t really working. Trev didn’t even react. He just stared at the tag.
So Red got him going. “Trev!”
“S-sorry, man,” Trev jumped.
They continued on, Red sliding his hands into his pockets and slumping along. What Randle told him itched at his mind. He was always a step or two away from the rogue asshole looking for a kill, but if the King thought he was a target why would he care that Red knew. For that matter, why would he leave catching the other thief to Red. Not when the whole Pride was full of killers.
“Where do you get them all the time?”
“Huh?” Red responded confused.
“Those quotes,” Trev asked, his eyes looking to the walls around them. “You always seem to shit them out when you want too.”
“Oh, well …” Red reached up and scratched behind his ear, catching the movement on the rooftop as he did. Not worth reacting to it yet.. It was just lucky for Red that he caught it. “I liked to read a lot when in the military, something to keep my mind off of the testing & the training and stuff; and my sister would send me things to read, tidbits of this and that. After a while, it just became this … I don’t know … file-a-deck.”
“Oh,” Trev smiled relaxing somewhat, or as best as he could down a dark alley. “I just thought you were some kind of writer or something.”
A female voice called from behind them, “Don’t let him lie to you, human,”
Both Trev and Red snapped around looking back in the darkness.
The voice continued as the soft pad of feet moved their way and towards the light. “He just says those things to make you think he is smarter than you.”
Out of the blackness slowly stepped one of the Pride. Not just one of the many, but one of the few. Most G you see are nothing more than variations of domestic creatures. Red believed only the military had access to anything else, until he met the Pride. Sulturly walking towards them was evidence it wasn’t just the military, and it was the sexiest damn evidence a man would ever see. The lioness walked towards them with her arms swaying and her hips shifting like right out of a slow brazilian samba. In the occasional shower of a streetlamp yellow, her tawny fur brightened the alley around her. From the curve of her perfectly formed snout down the length of her swaying tail, there was no doubt this creature came from the plains of Africa, even if the woman inside of her came from someplace far closer. Yet there was without a doubt reason for a man to be seduced by more than her felinity. Her hips curled back to a firm bottom, her stomach was sleek and direct running up to where ample breasts ached to be touched. She had no problem presenting it all, choosing a red belly shirt to holster her bosom and expose her navel, and jean shorts that were always more shorts than jeans. She kept her hair back in a ponytail like she had back when Red knew her better, but sometimes he believed she only did that so that she could release her golden mane and shake it out until every male furred creature was sporting a hardon at her feet.
This wasn’t your run of the mill killer body though; this was a natural born killer. She stood taller than Red, but not by much. Somehow, she was trained on the right way to be bloodthirsty yet still control her rage; all with the skills to know the right place to find a jugular, or a spleen, or to tear a dick off while leaving the poor bastard alive. Trimmed under the finely brushed fur laid a body that could take down anyone of a hundred men without even pulling a knife. Red maybe strong enough to pull an arm from a socket, but she was strong enough to tear limbs, shatter bones, and break hearts.
“Why, Satin,” Red teased back to her. “I thought I smelt pussy.” Red knew her well, and as in those days he knew that nothing good would come from running into her; because nothing good creeps into the minds of anyone crossing her path.
“Who’s your friend,” she chimed back as she stepped so close Red could feel the heat of her breath against his nose. “A new hole for you to hide your bone?”
“Aww, sweetheart,” he prodded, “you really still believe that because I’m not into you I must be gay. Where’s the rest of the girls, someone leave a box open and they all crawled inside?”
She smirked, and with that snout that was every bit a lion’s it looked one step short of a growl. “Do you want the truth?” she grinned.
“The truth is rarely pure, and never simple.” He smiled a witty smile back to her. Oscar Wilde brings that out of him sometimes.
She grinned like a cat hungry for a fish. Leaning against his body, her bosom brushing up against his chest, she moved her mouth near his ear. “Tell me another one, Red,” she whispered.
Red thought for a moment, unsure of the way she came so close, but feeling himself falter in his own will as he breathed in her scent. “Buddha once said - There are three things that cannot be long hidden: The Sun, The Moon, and The Truth.”
With the words she breathed warmly into his neck and he caught a hint, just a hint, of a purr slipping away from the control she tried to keep. Her paw moved up to his arm, and stroked it through the hoodie he wore. “Lose the Normal,” she demanded.
“I am making sure he gets out of G-Town safe.”
“He’s safe.” She wasn’t just trying to get of Trev, or just trying to empty the alley. Satin’s words weren’t a guess she was making. Nor a suggestion. It was fact. In two short words she let Red know that at any time the Pride could have stolen Trev’s life right out from under his nose. In those same two words she made it known that no one would touch his friend, for reasons that may never be known to him.
Red looked over his shoulder to Trev. He was eyeing the lioness's body like a hungry man eyeing bacon. “Hey,” Red called to his friend. “Call me tomorrow.”
What Trev was good at, though, was being a wingman. Trev just gave a nod and left them, not even looking back.
Still, Red kept his head turned to watch him go, just to make sure that there wasn’t anything following his friend. Just as he turned the corner, Satin slammed her fist across Red’s snout.
Red spun a half turn and smashed into the ground like a fallen ballerina. He gripped his chin and looked back at his assailant. “What the fuck is that for?”
She moved to stand over him, and placed a taloned foot onto his stomach pressing hard enough to keep him on the ground. She hissed, “you are the like the shit that sticks to my fur.” She waggled the foot down his navel until it pushed on his pants and got close to his junk.
“Here I was to believe that there is a line of boys more than happy to eat the shit right out of your sweet ass.” He struggled to lift himself from underneath her foot.
She smirked, and the amber glow in her eyes slitted. She lifted her leg, aiming to smash it down on his crotch. Red jumped faster, grabbed the foot, and pushed back in opposite. The move made her lift up off the ground by a good foot or two. Her reflexes took hold, and she spun in the air landing crouched low on two feet. Red scrambled until he could get his own paws under him, and by then she sprang back. She had a flying kick coming right at his shoulder. He dodged, grabbing the leg as it went under his arm, and turning her until she slammed onto the pavement. Still holding that leg, he turned until he laid on top of her her leg sticking out straight above him.
She gripped his hoody collar and yanked him close. A long lioness tongue extended from her mouth and ran up the side of Red’s face. He could see his blood on it’s flesh as she stopped and sucked the flavor in her mouth. “Mmmmm,” she groaned. “I thought you didn’t like us pussies.”
Red smirked, “I don’t hit girls either.”
Her eyebrows knitted playfully. An instant later, Red was head over ass heading for the ground past Satin’s golden mane. Before his head hit the ground, his back smashed into a dumpster where he could feel every bit of the old steel against every bone in his back. Before his head hit the ground, a rusty edge of metal cut into his side deep enough that he would have to worry about more than a scratch. And then his head hit the ground. He crumpled and turned over to see Satin standing already, prepared for a counter-attack, yet she waited until he was up.
Red dragged himself to his feet and grumbled, “Alright, we’ll call it a draw.”
She closed the gap quickly, and made three quick punches crossing over with each arm. Red blocked all three, countered with a jab to her face hitting her squarely on the snout. She turned but swept her leg hitting Red’s ankle. He fell off balance, but had captured her hand pulling her with him. She dug her feet into the ground and yanked him up sending him face first into her fist. He stumbled back, but she was relentless. Three more crosses came, two of them landing home. But he grabbed her wrist with the third. He began to twist it, to turn her for a throw, but she beat him to the move and yanked his arm around until she was behind him.
Red’s arm wrenched behind his back, Satin’s claw encircled his neck. He couldn’t pull free, not with her strength. She could have killed him right there, one jab of her nail and he would be bled out in thirty seconds.
Tonight, she was pulling her punches.
He nearly coughed by the tightness of her grip and the closeness of her deadly talons. Still, he huffed out, “Rumor is someone else is going for a drop.”
She slowly moved her claw along the flesh under the fur lined neck. He could feel the skin start to split under the strain, but not enough to be more than a scratch. “None of your business, doggie.”
He grabbed for the claw along his neck and pulled it away slightly. “It is when the deal changes,” he grunted. He turned his hips, and threw her.
She was in the air for an instant, and somehow twisted in the air to land in better shape than when she left the earth. Satin jumped and grabbed at at the shoulder seams of his hoodie pulling him close enough that her hot breath from the workout washed over his face. “King has no reason to be loyal to you, pup,” she chided. “The deal can change whenever he feels like it.”
“That isn’t true, my sweet,” he laughed in the near dead closeness. “If things changed, I’d be dead. You’d see to that yourself.”
Her amber eyes, always walking that edge between sweet, sexy, and the devil. “Not before letting my girlfriends paw at you for a few hours,” she cooed. Her head neared his and pressed her nuzzle to him.
She felt soft, gentle, even if she was gripping harder onto his hoodie than a junkie to a twenty dollar bill. Still it left his hands free, which always works in his favor. “So what aren’t you telling me?” he whispered back. “Don’t make me believe things are happening under your nose?”
The challenge was enough to bring the old Satin back, and she thrust him back to the ground. “Silly boy,” she sneared, “nothing happens here without me knowing about it.”
Red still sat on the ground, leaning back on one hand, and a wicked grin came across his lips. “Nothing?” His finger lifted up and pointed to her waist.
When she looked down, she realized Red’s handy work. While she was nuzzling him, he had unsnapped her jean shorts and lowered the zipper. They were so tight before that they split open now. The lighter color of her belly fur now appeared between the zipper seams like an arrow pointing down to her mons, and they went so low that fur-lined crevice of her sex peaked out from the opening. When she looked up at him, that playful smile returned with a little more fire underneath. “Fucking pervert,” was all she had to say and then the attack was on again.
She pounced at him, and he tried to spin off away but her fist found his side again aggravating the cut from the rusty metal before. She yanked on his arm, and pumped a knee into his gut. He curled up in pain, and she started to repeat the knee in whatever torso part she could get to. All she found was his arm, dumb move, because by the time he could recover he could wrap up her knees. In his arms, he rolled slamming her body face first into the pavement. He rolled the other way, taking her with him and she bounced off the pavement on her back. He kept his roll and came on top of her. She kicked and pushed him up to his feet. She struggled but started to find her own feet. With the advantage now he ran full speed at her, and flattened her against the alley wall. The air whooshed out of her lungs and she coughed to get it back.
While she was stunned, he grabbed her wrists and forced them above her head against the wall. The closeness brought her full breasts to press against his chest. He put his forehead against hers as their breathing slowed together. Slowly her eyes opened and peered into his. They were calm, defeated, and soft. From deep inside her chest, the quiet rumble of a purr began. She went easy on him, but this fight was now won and while any good warrior would concede defeat, her body was conceding for her.
She began to shift her hips back and forth, but it didn’t feel like she was trying to escape. “Think what you want,” she breathed between words, “but, my Dear Red, when death comes to you, it will be my hands that kill you.” She pressed her nuzzle once more into the side of his. Her tongue extended and tasted at his mouth. Then he felt the jean shorts fall to her ankles, the work of her hips giving them their freedom.
In the heat of battle he was lost in his own way, and he returned the soft movement of her nuzzle. He reached with his lips to touch hers. He shifted his pelvis forward to feel his member growing up against her naked privates. “There are causes worth dying for, but there is no cause worth killing for.”
If it continued like this, there was no telling what level of his own limits he may break. In that moment, though, his instincts took over driven by the feel of her body against his. Until the interruption came that changed everything.
She took two quick deep breaths. The third came as a huff. Her purring amplified then went silent as quick. He felt a rumble in her from her stomach as it shook through her breasts into his chest. Her arms began to shudder from the bicepts up to her hands. He pulled his head back quickly to look at her, just as her head shook violently enough that she pumped her pony tail against the wall a couple of times hard enough to feel it. Her legs danced underneath her. He pressed his body into her again, knowing the pressure of him against the wall is the only thing keeping her on her feet. She pulled a leg around the back of his, erotic in most cases, but now just to keep herself in control and stable until it passes. When it passed her hips and legs still shook lighter underneath her, and her eyes opened slowly.
What was there in her eyes was something he had never seen, maybe something that no one ever had. Fear. The amber color flushed by wide irises staring back at Red like a child first realizing the horrifying reality of mortality. A G doesn’t get this bad overnight, so this probably wasn’t her first, but something about her eyes suggested this was the worst. She was scared, a moment of control lost and never to come back. Worse yet, she’s smart enough to know that no one can just blow one like this off. A lioness, facing death every day, carryingout death every day like some door-to-door salesman for the grim reaper was now faced with the Shakes, and she was terrified.
Red swallowed. She could probably see that he knew exactly what happened, but he couldn’t ignore it either. “Satin. How .. how long has it been happening?”
In an instant, her eyes changed. They slitted, angry and filling with hate. Before he even noticed, her hand was free and landing a right cross on his cheek. It came with such force that he was a good five feet away on the ground before he even noticed that she was half way up a fire escape. She left the shorts behind, and the naked bottom and free swinging tail was all he could make out.
He just sat there for a while. Looking up to the black sky over the dark alley. He will need to let it go, will have to let it go. Satin is too strong to be pitied, and if there is something to help her she’ll find it. Besides, showing pity to an enemy is a waste of energy. He needed to get his side stitched up, and he had the crap beat out of him too many times today already. He still had his nightly visit to Mariah, and will need some sleep before whatever shit hits the fan hits it square in the mouth. And he has to figure out why he feels the need to take this big drop anyway, is his life worth risking for a little more cash, or is he just curious to know who wants to kill him - besides the obvious.
He lay back on the cold pavement for just a minute longer and breathed deep in recover. “Ye who enter. Abandon all hope on the road that was always paved with good intentions.”
K
KattDclaw
Guest
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