Bzzzzz. The soft buzz as the window rolls down on the Mercedes. The guy in the hoodie is fast. He pulls out a gun and shoots the driver of the Mercedes within a second of that window going down. From here, it sounded like a Desert Eagle .44 fitted with a supersonic suppressor. Not a very good silencer, but there aren’t many options in silencers when you’re packing that kind of firepower.
The guy in the hoodie opens the driver’s side door and I can hear him grunt as he pushes the driver’s dead body into the passenger seat. Then he drives off and pulls into the gas station. Shit!
I spin around and take off running back to my apartment. I race down Hope Street with a speed that would make some Olympic athletes envious. I’m a well-trained weapon. But one of the most important lessons my father taught me is that sometimes your best weapon is your ability to run.
Nothing on my body moves. My hood doesn’t fly off exposing my hair. My sunglasses don’t bounce on my face. Every bit of my disguise remains in place as I fly down the streets of L.A. like a black phantom. Black hoodie. Black jeans. Black sunglasses. All hiding a ghostly face that would send children screaming.
My eyes close in on a group of three guys coming out of a liquor store a block ahead. Their eyes immediately lock on me, as if they’re waiting for me. They really don’t want to get in my way right now.
Get out of the way, assholes.
I want to shout this at them, but I’m not a vocal person. I’ll talk to someone at the gas station if they have a problem with their credit card or if they need directions, but mostly I keep quiet. I don’t talk to my neighbors. I don’t talk to store clerks when I go to the grocery store.
I don’t talk to people because I don’t like answering questions. I don’t care if my appearance makes people nervous and they need to ask questions just to feel more at ease around me. If you don’t feel at ease around me, fuck you. That’s not my problem.
Oh, now they’re standing shoulder to shoulder to block my path on the sidewalk. Stupid move.
The one on the left is wearing a white T-shirt that comes down to his knees to cover up the fact that his jeans are slung low enough to show his ass. The other two are just clones of him in different sizes. Shorty. Fatty. Stocky.
I rush Shorty at full speed, ramming my shoulder into his gut and sending him skidding across the concrete on his ass. Fatty and Stocky come at me from behind. I reach my hands back, crossing my wrists as I grab their noses. Then I twist around and ram their heads into each other.
Shorty gets off his ass and comes at me with a knife. I try to kick it out of his hand, but he steps back and I miss.
Always attacking, my father’s reminder rings in my head.
Fatty grabs the back of my hoodie and a good chunk of the ponytail underneath. I reach to gouge his eyes as he yanks me backward. I stomp on his foot, then I grab his hand and pull him between me and Shorty. I bend his hand back and bring my elbow down on his forearm, breaking his arm bone. He drops to his knees as Shorty comes at me with the knife again.
“Hey, bitch!” Shorty says, holding the knife up as he approaches me. “You look like a freak, but do you fuck like a freak?”
He pulls the knife back, ready to strike. I wait until the last moment, just as he drives it forward toward my abdomen, before I pull my leg up and deliver a blow to Shorty’s jaw that will no doubt have broken at least half his teeth and possibly rattled his brain enough to kill him. He hits the concrete with a sick thud, his knife clanging over the sidewalk and into the gutter.
Fatty tries to get up again, but I land a devastating blow to his ear. Stocky is still dazed, clutching the light pole, from a single headbutt. Fatty spits curses at me as I run away toward my apartment.
I cut across the empty parking lot on Hope and 9th, then I dash across the street to my building on 9th Street. Blasting through the swinging glass doors, I head straight for the elevators on the right. Then I pass right by them. Once I enter the door leading to the fire escape stairwell, I can breathe. But I still have four flights of stairs before I make it to my third floor apartment.
I burst through the door onto the third floor, my hand on my knife holster, fully expecting someone to already be here waiting for me. But there’s no one here. I race down the drab gray corridor and stop in front of apartment 312. I get my key in the lock and my body inside the apartment in less than five seconds.
Darkness.
Sigh.
I’m home.
Then my mother’s voice echoes in my mind again, warning me. The monsters we can't see are the scariest ones of all.
I’ve always hated my mother’s voice. Even when I’m only hearing it in my mind. Even when it’s giving me sound advice. I hate it. So high-pitched, so clear and crisp it sounds computer-generated. It’s no wonder my father is completely insane.
I’ll let you decide whether the same description can be applied to me.
I don’t need to turn the light on to find my way into the kitchen. I live in the darkness. My eyes can adjust to darkness in less than two seconds.
My father put my body through every physical test he went through when training with the army. And a few he made up himself, like the night vision test, which involved shining a bright light in my eyes then turning off the lights right before he would attack me. But the night vision test was unnecessary. Because my left eye has an extraordinary ability to adjust to darkness.
And I live in the darkness.
Unfortunately, judging by the painful throbbing in my side and the tickling sensation of something damp running down my skin, I’m pretty sure Shorty stabbed me. I’ll have to turn on the lights to get a good look at it.
I press the button on the range hood to turn on the light above the stove. There are four bulbs in the hood, but I took out three. I only need one. Lifting my damp black hoodie, I see my white camisole is soaked in blood from just beneath my breast and down all the way to my waist.
The hole in my camisole is right over the fleshy part of my side, though I’m pretty lean so there’s not much flesh to spare there. I lift the camisole and find that the stab wound is about one and a half inches long. It’s not spurting blood, but it’s gushing pretty steadily.
Fuck.
I turn around to the kitchen counter behind me and pick up the old-fashioned telephone with the curly cord. Other than my laptop, which I rarely use, I don’t do technology. I don’t like anything that transmits a signal. Maybe that makes me a paranoid kook, but the bottom line is that I want to be able to disappear without a trace at a moment’s notice. And cell phones, tablets, credit cards, all that crap is what gets you caught.
Case in point: Shorty. I may very well have killed him tonight. It doesn’t matter that it was self-defense. I don’t want even the possibility of a manslaughter trial in my future. If he’s dead, his friends saw me kill him. There’s a good possibility they’ll find me. I could be arrested at any moment.
I dial the phone number for the gas station and Aasif picks up on the first ring. “Hello?”
He sounds stressed. I hope the guy in the hoodie didn’t drop the Mercedes guy’s dead body in the gas station parking lot. Aasif would not like that. He hates dealing with the police.
“Aasif, it’s Alex. I can’t make it into work today. I’m not feeling well.”
“What’s wrong? Are you dying or something?”
I force a small chuckle. “No, just a really bad stomach ache. I’m going to try to rest and see if it will go away. If not, I’ll definitely have to see a doctor in the morning.”
“For a stomach ache?”
“A really bad stomach ache.”