By the time I got home my wounds had all healed. Somehow my healing made my wound itch ten times worse than it did before. Probably because the healing was accelerated hundreds of times faster than normal. I had expected to be ravenous, but while I was really hungry there were no shaking nor nausea. I wondered if my body was more efficient in converting food to energy for that to not happen. Not that it really mattered now.
My apartment was cold and silent. I still hadn’t gotten to clean the top floor. That was actually a good thing, because it made the place look unoccupied. The lowest floor was as clean as anything though.
I showered with my hose-shower, scraping myself clean with some clean rags and a lot of soap. I would have to throw away all my clothes. My DrMartens might survive, but they were now relegated to any activity that was filth related.
I did my whole beauty routine afterwards. I had made the mistake of forgetting my beauty routine recently. And while it didn’t drastically ruin my skin or age me by ten years, it affected me mentally. So, I decided that I deserved to feel fresh and clean. The little time we schedule in our busy days for ourselves can be vital for a healthy outlook. Just taking care of yourself can be as relaxing as yoga. Sometimes it is the one-on-one time you create with yourself that keeps you sane. There had been very little time for any skin care or manicure lately.
My short hair didn’t really need much. Some gentle cleansing with sulfate-free shampoo to cleanse my scalp and hair without stripping natural oils. It helps prevent dryness and brittleness. Short hair may require more frequent washing due to oil buildup, but you should avoid over-washing to maintain moisture balance. I usually follow up with a lightweight conditioner or a deep conditioning mask weekly. I mean, even short hair needs hydration.
I cooled the skin of my face with cold water and let it dry. Then I put my face mask on to let it marinate. I sat down on my bed and just breathed. It felt so good to do something normal, something that was not running through the sewers or fighting supernatural monsters.
I just sat for several minutes on my makeshift bed, trying to breathe slowly and make my tense muscles relax. The fluorescent light was a bit annoying, there had been no time to do any decorating, much less getting any real furniture. The bare concrete walls were clean, the pipes and cables were dust-free - but still old, stained, and cracked in many places - and the floor’s raw concrete was worn smooth by decades of people working here.
I could feel the water of the sewers behind the service entrance, both the still and the flowing water. The iron-reinforced concrete felt safe, but not “right”. It should have been stone or bedrock. Still, the materials and environment spoke to me. I felt like I had created a lair for myself. It spoke to the more primal parts of me.
I shook my musings away. If I was going to go mad, I needed to hold it off until I could go nuclear on my prey!
I returned to pampering myself. It felt good to take care of myself a bit, so I decided that I was going to do the whole nine yards with body care as well. I followed up my facial routine with a calming body serum. Next, I applied a lightweight moisturizer, though I wasn’t really sure if I needed any of these products anymore. I finished off with an eye cream and lip balm, to make the routine feel a bit extra.
And then I just zoned out.
My phone buzzed, startling me from my brain shut-down.
“What?” I snapped as I answered the phone.
“Sheesh, who pissed in your cereal?” Bouden asked.
“I’m trying to get some rest before all hell breaks lose - of which I’m pretty sure will happen too fucking soon,” I said in an irritated voice, and then continued with clenched teeth, “So what the hell do you want, Bouden?”
“Simon is canvasing the nearby blocks. He has some pretty big backup. Both in size and numbers.”
I became laser focused. “Is he messing with Tony’s family?”
“Nope. He’s staying real far away from the shop.”
“Is he going after you?” I asked.
“Not really. He’s not attacking us, but he’s walking through our neighborhood like he owns it. And with the army he’s brought, there’s not much we can do. It pisses us off, but at least he’s not interested in us.” Bouden paused. “He’s after you.”
I blinked. “Then why is he shaking down you?”
“Again, he’s not. But I think he thinks that your hiding somewhere in Shaun’s territory.”
“I just wanted a night to myself,” I muttered. “Okay, this is what I want you to do!”
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I told Bouden to confront Simon and his goons verbally. No fighting, no shooting, otherwise there would be police all over the place. The story would be that they would give up my hideout, or the vicinity of it, to keep them out of the territory. And Simon would owe them a future favor.
They wouldn’t give up my hideout, of course. They had no idea where it was. What Bouden and Shaun would tell Simon was that I usually showed up near Humbolt Park before I went anywhere else, so reasonably I was hiding out near the park.
I put on some old jeans, black t-shirt, and a dark long sleeved jumper. The DrMartens went back on. This was definitely dirty business. I still had some night hours left, and if I got them to follow me into the drainage culverts, daylight didn’t matter.
The fuckers interrupted my me-time - they were going to pay for that! And now that Simon officially had accepted the contract on my head, he had lost his get-out-of-jail-for-free-card. This was exactly what I expected Simon would do. It took longer than I would have guessed though.
I left the sewers near my old apartment. I wanted to see how big of a posse Simon had turned up with, if I could. If there were too many of them, I would have to lead them somewhere more private. But that would be risky in more ways than one. I was pretty sure the cops, the feds, and OCTF were pulling overtime like nobody’s business, and I needed a federal warrant for my arrest like I needed a shot to the head. But with the KM-case they were hopefully spread very thin.
I climbed a building, finding a ventilation unit that was deep in the shadows to sit comfortably on. I leaned back at the wall, settling in for some surveillance. The building of the roof I was currently on was two houses over, on the other side of the street from my old apartment building. I could see the corridor of the landing above where my apartment had been.
Suddenly I saw four guys that didn’t fit in. They were openly holding guns in their hands as they left a neighboring building and entered my old apartment building.
I liked my old apartment and the building. The building on Shakespeare Avenue had the kind of age you could feel where some bricks had brick gone soft at the edges, mortar darkened by decades of soot and winters that never quite let go. I was even somewhat fond of Bert the landlord. He was too naive, but his kindness was something that stuck with me.
I even remembered the smell from the entry vestibule. It smelled faintly of dust, radiator heat, and that smell of age that was hard to define, but that clung to the woodwork. Upstairs, the corridors stretched long and narrow, the proportions just slightly off, like they’d been measured by habit instead of plan. The carpet was a tired, patterned thing—once red, now worn down to a dull rust—threadbare along the center where years of footsteps had carved paths almost down to the floorboards. It swallowed sound unevenly, muting some steps while letting others carry just a little too far. You could walk quietly if you knew where to step.
The walls were painted a pale beige that had yellowed with time, interrupted by scuffs, patched cracks, and the occasional water stain blooming outward like a map. Apartment doors lined both sides of the corridor, heavy and mismatched—some original wood with dulled brass numbers, others replaced with cheaper slabs that didn’t quite fit their frames. A few had extra locks, chains, or improvised reinforcements, small signals of the kind of tenants who stayed. The lighting came from spaced-out ceiling fixtures with frosted covers, casting a dim, uneven glow that left pockets of shadow between them. In those gaps, the hallway seemed longer than it was, as if it might stretch on a little further if you didn’t look directly at it.
I was a sucker for old buildings. They felt more homey, more real somehow.
I could hear the four guys banging on doors demanding to know where I was. No one was opening their doors. At least the idiots weren’t kicking down doors. That would be a good way to get shot, because in that building the tenants had a lot of guns.
I saw the access door to the storage rooms open on the top floor. Apparently, the goons had heard the door open, and they were shouting to get whoever was walking in the hallways.
When the door closed, I saw the back of old mrs Cheng walking towards the stairwell.
That wasn’t good. I had to make sure that she didn’t get hurt. She was a crazy old lady that could skin you with her tongue if you displeased her. She had a mouth on her, that was for sure, and that would not go over well with the goon squad running up the stairs to intercept her.
I jumped and clung to the outside of the fire escape to get down as fast as I could. First there were mumbled voices, then I heard mrs Cheng calling them immacsulated nobodies. Then, I heard the idiots, shouting mrs Cheng to shut the fuck up, and then I heard a slap.
Oh, hell no! This was bad!
As I ran flat out towards the building I heard no voices, nor any other sound. It was dead quiet.
I punched in the security code as fast as I could and threw the door open and ran into the building. I jumped the railings on the outside, nearing the sixth floor in record time. As I jumped over the last railing and landed on the floor the scene that I saw made me drop my jaw.
The four guys were kneeling on the floor with a vacant but horrified expression, almost like a death mask. There were thin threads of something wrapped around their throats connecting them to mrs Cheng who was looking scary as fuck!
Mrs Cheng’s face had sprouted mandibles and her body was on - I would have said all fours, but there were more than four limbs. She had grown four extra limbs that looked suspiciously like spider legs.
“Ah,” I started as facetted eyes looked at me. “It seems you do not need my help, mrs Cheng.”
I raised my hands and gave an awkward smile.
Her mandibles clapped and very poor imitation of a human voice came from her, “Is this your doing, Maria?”
“No, mrs Cheng!” I said quickly. “Simon Burns seem to think this is the way to get to me, but I had nothing to do with it! Well, he’s after me, but I had no idea he would be this stupid!”
The mandibles clicked and clacked again. “This is not finesse, Maria. You will deliver mr Burns head to me or you will suffer the same fate as these gentlemen!”
“What fate would that be, mrs Cheng?” I asked although I had a pretty good idea of what she meant.
“Food, Maria, they are food. These four will keep for months, as I suck them dry.”
“Well, I’ll get you that head, mrs Cheng. Never you worry, it’ll be right up!”
I jumped back, letting myself fall down the stairwell, slowing my fall by gripping the rails of each landing. As soon as I hit the bottom, I ran out the door, not wanting to stay a minute more in the company of mrs Cheng.
What a fucked up life I was living.