He walked into my office like a tornado praying to meet an unsuspecting trailer park.\u00a0 He was all bluster and sucking air hard from the run up the short flight of stairs that lead to my office.\u00a0 I would have said that he was on the verge of a heart attack, but that heart in his chest was probably so confused by the exercise, it wouldn’t be capable of failure any time soon.\u00a0 There is no telling about his next bowel movement though… that actually might kill him.<\/p>\n
His name was Norman Falkes, and ‘Stormin’ Norman’ was a bit of a blow hard in a myriad of other ways.\u00a0 As the local cheap car salesman in the town, his commercials consisted of him dressed up as a superhero advertising his ‘super’ prices.\u00a0 Honestly, he looked like a fat bastard just trying to get the idiots of our town to drop some good money on some bad cars.\u00a0 I didn’t even know the guy, and he left a sour taste in my mouth.\u00a0 Especially when he spun in place and slammed my door so hard the glass almost cracked.\u00a0 He spun wildly back and slumped against the door, shoving all three hundred plus pounds of his fat ass against it.\u00a0 I could hear the wood groan.<\/p>\n
“You all have to help me.” He shouted at everything in my office.\u00a0 I calmly looked over my shoulder pretending to look at the invisible coworkers in my office filled only with a single desk, and then looked back at him with the most condescending look of confusion I could muster.<\/p>\n
“As you can see, its just me and the roaches, sir.\u00a0 But I am afraid the roaches don’t work for me.” I smiled sweetly.<\/p>\n
“Yeah, yeah.\u00a0 You have to help me.”\u00a0 His eyes were wild, a foaming at the mouth kind of wild, the eyes as a horse has after running from a burning barn.<\/p>\n
“Help you with what?” I said.<\/p>\n
“I am being chased by something… something bad.”\u00a0 He swallowed heavily and farted at the same time.\u00a0 I tried not to laugh, but the smirk definitely flashed.\u00a0 He was so busy trying to look over his shoulder, through my frosted glass door no less, that he didn’t even catch my attempt at restraint.<\/p>\n
“Something… something bad?”\u00a0 I repeated.<\/p>\n
“Don’t you make fun of me.”\u00a0 He snapped. “I dropped off a deal, and it went south.”<\/p>\n
“And now the other party is chasing you?” I sighed. “Sir, I am not the police.”<\/p>\n
“I know who you are, babe.” He spit.<\/p>\n
The way he spit the word ‘babe’ sounded like an epithet.\u00a0 I tried my damnedest to not let the abhorring disdain color my voice, but I am pretty sure it came off dripping with condescension anyway.\u00a0 Fuck him.<\/p>\n
“Sir, my name<\/em> is Laura Samson. And if you ever call me babe again, I will bounce you down those stairs you just walked up.”<\/p>\n Don’t get me wrong, I am<\/em> a babe.\u00a0 Totally.\u00a0 But that doesn’t need to be said to me like I am a nameless peon from the secretary pool coming into his office to pour my boss a scotch.\u00a0 I mean, really, babe?\u00a0 Who says that any more?<\/p>\n “Uh, sorry, ba- Ms. Samson.”\u00a0 He coughed wetly through a developing wheeze… his body was catching up already.\u00a0 Amazing.\u00a0 I could expect the puke at any moment. I stood up from my desk, with one hand pulled my subcompact from the holster under my desk and discreetly tucked it into my concealed belt holster, and with the other grabbed my trashcan and walked it over to Norman Falkes.<\/p>\n “What kind of deal, Mr. Falkes?\u00a0 Drugs?\u00a0 Guns? Something worse?”\u00a0 I pushed the waste basket roughly between his quaking arms.\u00a0 I could smell sweat, some cheap cologne, and desperation rolling off of him in waves.<\/p>\n “Nothing like that; nothing illegal.\u00a0 A simple deal, big money.\u00a0 The customer was looking for something specific, I got it for him.\u00a0 A custom car, I have done them before.”<\/p>\n “So what went wrong?” I took a few steps back to clear the potential impending vomit radius.<\/p>\n “The, uh, client was burned?\u00a0 Like toast. Crispy. He had asked for a very specific window tinting on his car.\u00a0 The stuff he asked for was really expensive…” He trailed off.<\/p>\n “…And you wanted to bump your margin, so you skimped.” I finished for him.<\/p>\n “Yeah.\u00a0 I skimped.\u00a0 My tinting guy swore up and down that it was the same quality, just half the price.”\u00a0 He said.<\/p>\n “Uh-huh.\u00a0 And I have fairy wings.”\u00a0 I did, in a jar, but no one needs to know.<\/p>\n “I delivered the car to him and his guys, he jumped in, and they pulled out of the garage down the street.”<\/p>\n “Carino’s Garage?” I said.<\/p>\n “Yeah, that’s the place.”\u00a0 He kept swallowing.\u00a0 Vomit comet in 10… 9… 8…<\/p>\n “Neutral ground.” I filled in a bit more.<\/p>\n “If you want to call it that.\u00a0 Its just the place he wanted to meet.”<\/p>\n “No.\u00a0 That is what I am telling you.\u00a0 Its neutral ground.”\u00a0 I said deadpan.<\/p>\n “Ground for what?” He swallowed again, and then he puked.\u00a0 Righteous, deep, throbbing wracks of heaving slop into the trashcan.\u00a0 I immediately knew I was tossing it in the bin on the building dock.\u00a0 I don’t know what his last meal was, but I had the feeling it was half of the food available for a family of eight. He rolled to a close, and managed a breathless broken question. “… For gangs?”<\/p>\n “If you want to call them that.” I wrinkled my nose, glad my windows were open. “They don’t like the term gangs.\u00a0 Especially since many of them are richer than some countries.\u00a0 Who did you crisp?\u00a0 Since it was Carino’s, I know it was Accords related, and since spontaneous combustion doesn’t happen to most folks, I would guess you aced a leader in the Pugilacci family?\u00a0 That’s bad juju, Mr. Falkes.\u00a0 Those are some old bloodsuckers.”<\/p>\n He swallowed again.<\/p>\n My silent alarm above the door started to flash, meaning someone was using something very powerful nearby.\u00a0 Most of my charms were passive, but that one only went nuts when there was something heavy stepping on it nearby.\u00a0 I would guess they have some of his blood… using a trace.\u00a0 Traces were easy to do, but lost a lot of energy the further they spread out, an inverse bubble to the power they used.\u00a0 Half the power at double the distance meant whatever they were using to drive the trace was old, mean, or demonic, which meant I had to get rid of Mr. Falkes asap.\u00a0 He hadn’t noticed the simple red bulb flashing by the exit sign, and he probably wouldn’t.<\/p>\n “Tell you what, Mr. Falkes.\u00a0 Put down the trash can, drink some water. I can pick up the phone, call a few people, see if I can help you out.\u00a0 But it will cost you.\u00a0 My services aren’t cheap.”<\/p>\n “I will pay anything.\u00a0 Anything!\u00a0 Just promise me they can’t force their way in here.”<\/p>\n “Oh, they won’t have to.”\u00a0 I walked back to my desk and pulled my gun out.\u00a0 I had loaded the mag with snappers.\u00a0 I made them myself and was quite proud of them.\u00a0 They were subsonic, were able to follow targets based on my will, and made very little mess when they snapped a large portion of the target into the nether. “Just watch out the door and let me know if anyone comes up the stairs.”<\/p>\n “Ok. Yeah.\u00a0 I will watch the door. Who ya going to call?”\u00a0 He asked, cracking the door to peek out.\u00a0 I turned on my heel, took very careful aim, and shot him in the back of the head.\u00a0 His head rocked forward as the snapper made contact, there was a soft ‘snap’ noise and the bulk of his head was no longer there.\u00a0 His body slumped to the floor, the wounds perfectly cauterized like a sun-hot ice cream scoop had cleaned out the back of his skull.<\/p>\n “Who am I going to call? Yeah right. You couldn’t afford me anyway.”<\/p>\n There was a soft knock at my door.\u00a0 Three taps.\u00a0 A pause.\u00a0 Then three more soft taps.<\/p>\n “Come in.”\u00a0 I called.\u00a0 I sat back down as the door opened, making sure my gun was back in the holster under the desk.\u00a0 I was inviting him in, so the chances of any problems going on were nil.<\/p>\n “Ah, Ms. Samson. And you have our poor unfortunate business associate.\u00a0 Dead.\u00a0 What a shame.”\u00a0 A very tall, very white man entered my office and stepped over the body.\u00a0 His face was carved from pure marble, and he his smile was a myriad of very sharp teeth, with the eye teeth much longer than the rest.\u00a0 His eyes were black and white, no irises at all.\u00a0 “I had looked forward to my dinner.”<\/p>\n “He was bargaining to run, but I think a chip from your esteemed family is worth the hassle.”\u00a0 I said, honestly.\u00a0 I am not honest all the time, but when it mattered, it mattered.\u00a0 Plus with these types, they could tell.\u00a0 Probably why they were so pissed with the late Mr. Falkes.\u00a0 He had duped the near undupable.<\/p>\n “A poor assumption for some, but considering your services, I would think it would be beneficial to the both of us.”\u00a0 He handed me a white card with a phone number on it. He didn’t have to explain how it worked.<\/p>\n “Thank you.”<\/p>\n “The pleasure was mine.”\u00a0 He smiled.\u00a0 He looked back at the body. “It is still fresh, perhaps I can have dinner after all.”<\/p>\n The lithe vampire bent and picked up the three hundred pound fat man with one arm and slung him over his shoulder. “I noticed your charms.\u00a0 Very good work, Ms. Samson.\u00a0 I am sure my familiar made it go off like a new years fireworks show.”<\/p>\n “It did.\u00a0 Thank you for the compliment. May I ask who got fried by that idiot?” I said calmly, tucking the card into my bra.<\/p>\n “My uncle.\u00a0 Not much of a loss to be honest.\u00a0 He was old, but he was foolish when he was human, and being a vampire doesn’t help that.”<\/p>\n I smiled widely, showing my pearly whites.\u00a0 “Have a good day, Mr. Pugilacci.”<\/p>\n “You too, Ms. Samson.\u00a0 You too.” And he was gone, the door swinging softly shut in his silent, powerful, wake.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" He walked into my office like a tornado praying to meet an unsuspecting trailer park.\u00a0 He was all bluster and sucking air hard from the run up the short flight of stairs that lead to …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"webmentions_disabled_pings":false,"webmentions_disabled":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-short-story","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discardme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/discardme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/discardme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discardme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discardme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/discardme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":162,"href":"https:\/\/discardme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157\/revisions\/162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discardme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discardme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discardme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}