The kitchen was filled with the sound of the wooden spoon and the skillet, the stir of sweet onions caramelizing over low heat, the kiss of lips cleaning a drop of balsamic vinegar off a fingertip and the “mmmmmmm” that followed.
Eden dipped the spoon and sampled her homemade tomato sauce, which was just a cup of some name brand mixed with a teaspoon of sugar.
“Good?” Razia asked.
Eden offered Razia a taste. “You tell me.”
Razia tried it, closed her eyes and focused on the flavor. “Rich. Ever so slightly sweet. Very nice.”
Four months had passed since the bloody gauntlet that threatened to snuff them out. And the two ladies, now a couple, and Corinn were starting over in Columbus, Ohio. Eden opened an office downtown on South 4th Street and hired Corinn as her assistant. And Razia continued working for the wire, same beat, different territory.
Eden and Razia just moved into this 19th Century three-story brown stone home on the corner of Buttles and Dennison avenues in the Short North section. It was built strong and looked old-fashioned. The two had installed a new kitchen and were working on renovations in the bedrooms and the attic.
Eden’s daddy was there that night for a visit. He was tall and sharp, with a square jaw, a close shave and neatly-trimmed sideburns which came to points. A businessman by day, ladies man by night, he was dressed down in jeans and a black wool sweater. He told Corinn and Razia to call him “Curt” as he made a pot of coffee.
Razia poured herself a cup, took a sip and was taken by the unique rich taste. She'd never had anything like it. “Wow! What is this?”
“Jamaican Blue Mountain,” Curt said.
It was one of the most expensive coffee in the world. He said he bought a 16 ounce bag for $30. Then he explained why it was so unique, starting with the fact the beans were grown in volcanic soil.
Razia thought he was pretty cool.
Corinn was working the radio dial, trying to find something to set the mood. She settled on a station pumping out some bluesy rock which was catchy, yet haunting.
All gathered round as Eden and Razia emerged from the kitchen with a pizza covered with cooked onions and mushrooms. The dining room table was adorned in dark blues and purples. There were balloons and carnations, same colors with a few reds mixed in, easy on the eyes.
That night, they all had a reason to celebrate.
While the investigation into the events which bloodied and scorched the streets of Georgetown was ongoing, they were so far pleased with how things were turning out.
Eden and Razia told the authorities about Marci and her fascination with The .40 Caliber Mouse and Colin Reeves. Since the media reported he'd died in May, authorities were shocked to hear about his resurrection. The investigation into the cover-up was continuing.
Eden said she came to the District of Columbia looking for Razia. She said Jie Shu, one of Marci's hired guns, attacked her in Georgetown. She defended herself. He fled, and she wasn't sure what happened to him after that. That's how the contractor told her to put it.
So, police concluded the body count that piled up in the D.C. area during those two days of Hell was attributed to two maniacs on the loose. According to the official record, Jill, a.k.a. Joni the Terrible, had racked up four, including Buffalo Dan; and the contractor, seven, including the mangled black man on the O Street school playground and the bruised and bullet-ridden hit man on Prospect.
Meanwhile, Marci had disappeared.
The last person to officially hear from her was Philadelphia.
Authorities began a manhunt. Stripped of her badge, she was now a fugitive facing a slew of charges. They were confident she would be apprehended soon.
The feds were also continuing their search for Reeves and Mazz.
Through it all, no one had asked any questions about Corinn.
Obviously, she was relieved.
After Curt finished his third slice of pizza, he said, “I brought cake.”
“Really?” Eden said.
He rushed out to his car and came back with a white cardboard box. He put it on the table and opened it, revealing a coffee-liqueur flavored cheesecake sprinkled with the real thing, lip-smacking 40 proof.
“Very nice,” Corinn said, as she poured herself a cup of the brew he'd made.
“Yeah,” Eden added, feeling a strange sense of achievement after everything that had happened since May, from surviving the darkest nights to finding her dream job.
“Happy anniversary,” Curt said, as he embraced his daughter and gave her a peck on the cheek.
“Wow!” Corinn said, impressed after the first sip. “What is this?”
As the night wore on, the group broke into two, engaged in light conversations, their unresolved tensions under the surface.
“You talk to your folks?” Eden’s daddy asked Razia, who was sitting with him on a blue velvet couch.
“Just the other day.”
“You tell ‘em?”
She ran her fingers through her bleached hair, crossed her eyes, exhaled pure frustration, shook her head no. She was still afraid to talk to her parents about what she had going on with Eden, fearing rejection or worse.
“I don’t wanna put pressure…”
“It’s all right,” she said. “I just…” She trailed off, unsure how to describe what she was experiencing, how she felt like she was playing with a fire and a powder-keg warehouse.
“I know.”
“Don’t know what to say,” she said.
“Yeah.” Neither did he. “But…”
“What?”
“What if they catch on…?”
Razia let her head drop back onto the cushion, hadn’t a clue what she'd do if they did.
He ran his hand along her shoulders, tried to tell her everything was going to be all right, even though he wasn’t quite sure if it would be.
Meanwhile, Corinn and Eden were sitting across the room near a statue of The King from the ’68 Comeback. They were resting on a purple velvet love seat. The lady of the house was reclining across it. The outlaw in flowing black was on the floor, her back against it. Both sipped raspberry wine coolers.
“They called today,” Eden said. She explained that Philadelphia’s experts had given up trying to wipe out the pop-up ad Marci had accidentally unleashed. “Made me an offer.”
“How much?”
“A lot,” Eden said.
“What are you gonna do?”
Eden had no intention of going through hell again to vanquish one of these monsters. “What are you gonna do?”
Corinn didn’t say. Her silence suggested they change the subject.
“So?”
“What?”
“Wanna make some real money?”
Corinn put the bottle to her lips as she considered. She tapped its glass neck to the tink-tink beat of the gears turning in her brain. Then she got up, walked to the window, sat by it and looked out at the neatly trimmed lawn, the sidewalk, the neighbors walking their Dalmatian, the setting sun and how it blessed everything with a little hint of orange.
“You’d be set.”
Corinn shrugged it off. “I’ll get back to you on that.”
Eden shook her head, ran the cool bottle over her brow. “What do I need? Password?”
Corinn didn’t say.
“So, you just want to keep it up there.”
Corinn took another sip from the bottle, again didn’t offer any insight into what she was thinking.
“I know you think that someday it’s gonna mean something to somebody.”
Corinn continued staring at the burning orange globe dropping behind the horizon.
Eden sighed, bit her lip, addressed her charge with honest concern. “But...dammit...”
The girl tinted in orange at the window turned.
“What are you gonna do if they catch on?”
Corinn didn’t have a ready answer. The question haunted her for months. Constantly teasing the back of her brain, it sparked a series of nasty dreams last year. She meditated on the possibilities as the last hint of the orange evening faded to black.
Corinn had always seen her dreamscape as a kind of movie screen of the subconscious, a stage where the drama can tie your stomach into a figure-eight knot and the special effects can make you believe the night itself can reach out and tap you on the shoulder.
Later that night, at her townhouse around the corner on the 200 block of West Hubbard Avenue, she examined one of her guns, clicked on the safety and crawled deep under her wine-colored comforter. She found a comfortable position, her head resting on a feather pillow and her blaster. As she drifted off, her subconscious once again invited her to tour the darkest part of her soul, filled with cold crimson-splashed alleys and dead ends.
She could smell it, so much spilled blood, the kind that never washes away no matter how hard the rain, like the bathroom floors in Hell.
Then something else tickled her senses, black smoke from an unattended fire in a banged up trash can. The sneeze-inducing pepper on the air reminded her of one of the horrors she witnessed that traumatizing night four months ago, one that tightened the barbed wire grip of hate around her heart.
She stepped up, put her hands over the orange heat, crackling twigs and urine-tainted beer boxes. Then she caught sight of something burning, two black-and-white photos she’d taken. One was a candid of Buffalo Dan at work, a smile in his eyes. The other was a studio shot of Shakra, dark, moody, it captured her mysterious nature and the subtle anger in her eyes. The orange tongues started them bubbling, popping, charring.
Oh God…
She quickly reached in. “Shit!” She cringed as the heat tickled her fingers red. She managed to retrieve them. She slapped out the hot spots, then held her precious photos tight to her chest. She closed her eyes and said a prayer for her loved ones. Then she felt a breeze.
Cold, unnatural, it picked up, turned into a gust which blew her hair to the side and reduced the fire to embers.
Interrupted, she opened her eyes and noticed she could see her breath. All of a sudden, the mis-en-scene darkened, as if a black backdrop had fallen. Without turning around, she knew the score.
They were right behind her, the angry, the mad, the obsessed, the perverts who wanted to jump her bones, the ravenous who wanted to pick them clean, all victims of man’s worst desire.
She just didn’t know how many there were. That’s always the question. How many are there? She opened her shirt pocket and tucked her photos in for safe keeping. She inhaled as she tried to work up her confidence. She let out all the bad air, all the negativity and doubt which burdened her soul. Then she turned to face her fate.
It was a jaw dropping sight, 100 greedy tongues, 200 hungry black eyes, 1,000 eager claws.
Is that all, she thought sarcastically.
They grinned, hissed, made faces, drooled as they inched closer, taking their time, milking the moment, maximizing the terror.
You wanna know what I’m gonna do if they find me?
She took a step back, threw her foot around the garbage can, spilling its fiery contents, exciting the pack, making the ones in front flap their arms like chickens in the midst of the apocalypse, screaming as their blackened skin cooked. Then she threw back her long-sleeved shirt, revealing holsters attached not only to her shoulders but her hips. She was packing at least four pistols. She pulled two and started shooting.
White flashes illuminated the alley like fireworks as bodies began to fall. The angry horde howled like wolves being burned alive. But instead of backing away, the mad army of night crawlers threw in all their chips, charged, reached out.
Corinn grunted as she choked the triggers faster and faster, putting bullets in foreheads, nasal bones, chest plates and groins. She was determined to take down the cold-hearted wall of demonic flesh surrounding her, more determined than the fires of Hell. She spent the 20 rounds in those magazines in mere seconds.
With claws ripping at her hair and clothes, she couldn’t reload and couldn’t reach down to her side for salvation. She dropped her empty pistols, let out a battle cry and went at them with her fists. With furious blows, she tore off one creature’s mandible, then another’s top teeth.
One ghoul grabbed hold of her jeans. With help from the mob, it swept her up and slammed her into a wall.
“Fuuuckerssss!” Unwilling to go down, she reached deep within herself, back to that cookie jar of the soul, a box not unlike Pandora’s. And this time she found something, chocolate chocolate chip. She could taste it. Dark chocolate chips. Yeeeeeeessss!
Reenergized, she grabbed one of the villains by the ears, found purchase in the thing’s temples, dug her black fingernails in deep, then peeled it like an orange, turning its scalp into something akin to demented rabbit ears. She didn’t stop there. She savagely ripped one’s head from its neck, another’s face from its skull, and sent oily eyeballs a-bouncing.
The pack dropped her, frightened yet in awe of her savagery.
She reached for the loaded .40s attached to her hips, then charged, pulling the triggers double-time, screaming out her anger at the top of her lungs.
The blinding explosions made the fierce pack wince. Their haunted-white orbs filled with cowardice. The burn of the bullets made them screech. The sight of jets of red shooting from their still beating hearts and bodies falling like dominoes made them turn tail. The wrath of the avenger made tears fall from their white eyes like rivers of spilled milk.
She kept up the fight for well over an hour, until the 10 remaining jogged off down the street like frightened hyenas. She stepped over the bloodied bodies littering the street, reloaded, then started after them.
In the process the childlike woman with the angry-looking mouse on her shirt holstered one of her pistols, wiped her blood-covered hand on her pants, reached into her pocket and produced another one of those dark chocolate wonders. She took a big bite, closed her eyes, threw back her head.
The taste enraptured her.
She spun round, then round again, dancing. “Mmmmmmmmmm.”
Vengeance never tasted so sweet.
###
Stephen Pytak is a novelist who writes thrillers about the dark side of human nature. He also enjoys bringing his characters to life through art, photos and film. When not writing fiction, he works as a reporter for a daily newspaper. He resides in Pennsylvania.
Connect with Stephen online:
Facebook: www.facebook.com/stephen.pytak
Smashwords: www.smashwords.com/profile/view/MazzPress
Other titles by Stephen Pytak:
The .40 Caliber Mouse -- 2011 (Available in ebook format.)
The Wild Damned -- 2010
Katerina Blues -- coming February 2013
You can find out more about Corinn and other characters from “The .40 Caliber Mousehunt” universe by visiting Stephen’s website at www.mazzpress.com.