Continued from: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Dr Corman 1, Part 4 and Part 5. Library for 5th Column is here.
The Poppins bitch is saying something but I can’t hear properly as the ape has his hands pressed against my skull. I feel like a grape in a vice. I resist as much as I can, mainly coz I’m smashed…actually I feel kinda okay. The adrenaline from watching her shot Paco must’ve cleared my head. I can see Paco moving, slightly, shallow breath.
Poppins smiles at me, which is really unnerving, and holds a phone up to her ear. The ape guy adjusts his grip so I’m essentially hanging from his hands like the broken arm of a grandfather clock. This is either going to work spectacularly or I’m gonna get me neck snapped.
“Who are ringing?” I ask through the helmet of fingers.
“I am on the phone dear boy,” she chastises. “I shant be a moment.”
“You betta watch your manners,” grumbles the ape.
I lash out a kick and kick Poppin’s arm up sending the phone up to the ceiling and her gun onto the floor. She shrieks and the ape throws me into the wall to rush to her aid. Asides from me being embedded in the wall, my plan worked like a charm. I clamber out as he helps her to her feet as I grab the gun and point it at them.
“Right you ^$%#!” I yell as they slightly back off “What the &^%$ is going on?”
“Put the gun down Mr Bubeck,” says Poppins in that voice of hers that is quite intimidating.
“You tell me right now what’s going on or…”
“Or wot?” snarls the ape stalking forward. He steps and I flinch and BLAM! He wobbles on the spot for an instant before he collapses on the floor with a bullet hole in his forehead.
“MR LAVENDER!” she shrieks as she dives to his side “You’re a monster!”
“You shot my friend, I shoot yours,” I say and put the gun to her head “Now talk or I’ll…”
She stands straight up “My employer is Xiphos though on paper they are simply called brown…”
“Brown?”
“Yes Mr Bubeck, the word brown. They…no matter,” she nods at the window “The police have arrived.”
I turn and as I realise I’ve fallen for it she’s on me. She’s wiry and fast and pretty soon I’m disarmed and she’s pointing the gun back at me.
“Enough nonsense Mr Bubeck, you’ve already made my day quite traumatic,” she says. “Now kindly pick up my phone and pass it to me.”
“Get your own &^%$g phone!” I say defiantly.
Her lips tighten and her eyes narrow as the gun aims up towards my neck.
WHAM!
Paco smashed a large porcelain vase over her head knocking her put cold. “You heard him, get your own &^%$g phone bitch!”
I catch Paco as he collapses from the effort. He needs a hospital. I drag him to the door when he breaks away and calmly pulls out a cigarette and unzips his pants “Just go man.”
“What are you doing?”
“Teaching this bitch a lesson!” And he proceeds to p!$s on her head like a dog marking his territory.
“You’re bleeding!”
Paco leans against the wall and slides down to the floor “Then call me an ambulance and get the &^%$ outta here!”
The gunshots have attracted the police and in this neighbourhood they’re closing in, unlike in my neighbourhood where they are simply distant background noise. I don’t want to leave Paco but I have just killed a man. In a house I broke into.
“Don’t die on me!” I say as I jam what money I got into his pockets coz he sure as $#!t doesn’t have any insurance and rush out the back to scale the back fence. I get a block away and see a police chopper flying overhead so I pull up a grate and slip into the sewer.
**
I follow the sewer lines and head back in a general direction of Lovecraft. I hope Paco’s okay…I hope I’m okay! Something’s not right and I got people who want to capture like some sort of animal, or the plot of a bad sci-fi. What the hell is a Xiphos? Knowing my luck it’s a giant acid spitting spider thing!
“Got a dollar?” says a voice from the darkness, jumping me back to reality.
“Nah,” I say “Where are you?”
“Got to have a dollar if you come this way.”
“I ain’t got any money!” I shout, which is a lie I’ve got a couple hundred in my sock.
“Well then,” a flash of sulphur from a match lights up the tunnel to reveal a burly, bearded guy wearing rat skin. “You’ve got yourself a problem.”
To be continued…
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