She walked into the parking garage to the accompaniment of thunder. Some of the people there had a primeval warning of danger as she passed. Maybe it was the way the woman moved. There was something feline about how her body passed through the space. Even with her heavy boots, she was quiet. Her long coat wasn't too out of place, though she looked like she had walked out of some kind of bad science fiction. Her hair was cut in an androgynous short cut and hidden beneath a wide brimmed black leather hat. It could have been a cowboy hat, but it was sufficiently battered that it wasn't clear what sort of hat it was.
The long coat was unbuttoned. Beneath it, there was the suggestion of some sort of vest but the dim lighting of the garage didn't help the viewer to distinguish details until they were far too close for comfort. There was a bit of a bulge on the left side and the coat didn't lie quite right, suggesting something long was there. The jeans she wore were black. That was the predominant color about her appearance except for her skin. That was an eerie white that was almost the color of milk. Her lips were painted black. Her eyes were a dark brown that may as well have been black in the dim light of that place.
A late model car sat idling in space J-33. Beside it, a twitch skinny man stood waiting. His hair was ragged and mouse brown. His clothes looked like they were stolen from a poor man's corpse just before the box went into the incinerator. He looked around himself with a combination of timidness and anxiety that annoyed the female figure approaching him. She stepped into the garish pool of light spewed by the faulty florescent light above. The man jumped a little and dropped his e-cigarette. When his foot came down on the narrow tube, breaking it, he flinched at the sound.
"Bradley," she said, "Do you have it?" Bradley winced at the coldness of her tone. He pulled a battered envelope out of his pocket and held it out to her. Her black leather driving gloves were immaculate and somehow managed to gleam slightly in the light despite their matte texture. When she took hold of the yellow stained white #10 envelope, Bradley jerked his hand back as though he had burned his fingers. The woman looked down at the envelope. As he started to move towards his driver side door, the back of her left hand struck him square on the center of his chest. "No," she said, "You're not leaving yet."
"I brought it to you," Bradley whined, "I did what you told me. I'm done." Her hand moved back to the envelope. Bradley didn't go to his car, though he really really wanted to. This woman managed to kill his brutally violent pusher with out breaking a sweat. Bradley watched it all from behind a dumpster. He still had nightmares of how she butchered Howie. Howie tried to fight back, but that just made her angry. And her anger was terrifying.
She opened the envelope and looked within. The forged documents inside looked a bit worn, but that added to their authenticity. The small sum of money was exactly the amount she needed. There was, however, one thing missing. "Bradley," she started in a mild tone when the sound of a vehicle approaching caught her ear. She slipped the envelope into her pocket.
The muscle car purred like some kind of exotic metal monster. She looked over. Sitting behind the wheel was the tall, scarred Italian that she worked with. As she turned to walk towards the black 65 Mustang, Bradley edged closer to his car. She called back to him, "Bring the ring here tomorrow night at this time. If you don't have it, if you don't show up, I'm going to find you." Bradley felt like he was going to vomit out of fear. The woman turned her head and looked over her shoulder. "Don't fuck up," she said before the car rolled to a stop. She opened the door and the sound of deep South blues came out.
The man in the car said, "Watch the leather. I just got it detailed." The woman shifted something under her coat and pulled a sword from beneath it. Bradley shivered as he remembered how she cut Howie to pieces with it. She got into the car and set the sword between her feet. As the door shut and the car rolled away, Howie silently thanked god that she didn't know what he had in his pocket. The diamond ring suddenly felt a lot heavier.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Because I wanted to reminisce about LARPing.
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