Shapeshifter - 6. And how to lose it

~*Kelaste*~

Something woke me up in the middle of the night. The house was pitch black, the music had stopped, the cum had dried to a crusty, brittle mass on my ass and stomach, but other than that, everything was just as before. I felt warm and sheltered, physically tired and hazy, but my heart raced with adrenaline, and each thud pounded almost painfully against my ribs.

Too relaxed to move, I simply listened into the silence around me, trying to find out why my heart behaved like a frightened bird. Maybe Noom had come back? He had an uncanny talent to surprise me with his stealthy assaults.

There was a soft clicking sound coming from downstairs, and this time I sat up fully awake. The sound itself was so muted and quiet no human ears would have been able to hear it, but even pumped with heroin my senses were keener than any thug could imagine.

Someone was picking the lock on Noom’s front door.

I tried to get up and nearly fell from the couch when the tight pants constricted around my knees. I would be faster pulling them up than shucking them off, so I wedged my ass into the snug denim, trying not to fall over and not to miss any other noises from downstairs at the same time.

It was hard to avoid making a sound since my head still swam with sleepiness and a phenomenal high, but my cat instincts weren’t numbed by that as much as my human mind. I was used to having to hide quickly and without traces, since my father had never liked finding his juvenile bastard son sitting at the couch and gawking at him when he brought home a lady. Automatically, I grabbed for my coffee mug to hide it under the couch. It was not the usual routine where I had enough time to hide any trace and disappear into my remote bedroom before visitors stepped into the house, but I still was quick enough.

They still were fiddling around with the admittedly sturdy lock when I prowled over to the dusty window next to the four poster bed and found it glued shut by a coat of black lacquer. I would not have any problems forcing it open, but that would definitely alert whoever was breaking in to my presence. Somehow, I suspected it would end very badly to let them know I was here.

My heart was still beating fast and hard when I turned around to look for another place to hide. Agitation made my fingers twitch and shiver and my spine tingle with anticipation. I knew that my body wanted to change shape so I’d be able to defend myself against any attacker, but as good as my cat-body was in fighting and running, I needed my human shape to hide.

There was an old, brittle latch in the ceiling above the weapon’s chest. I wouldn’t have noticed it under any other circumstances, because it was painted the same strange dark violet color as the rest of the room, but the handle was still attached, and a few holes and gaps between the painted planks let me know that it led to the attic.

I scurried over, climbed onto the metal chest and stretched upward to press my hand against the latch.

It didn’t budge.

When I pushed harder, the paint cracked as the latch swung open. Downstairs, I heard the front door being unlocked.

I quickly pulled myself into the moldy, dusty attic in a split second, and lowered the latch very carefully, then laid down on it just in case they’d see it and try to push it open as well.

The utter silence downstairs didn’t calm my nerves at all, it only made me breathe harder, made my heart beat faster. I could hear the faint sound of the door closing, then nearly soundless steps proceeding through the ground floor. Cupboards and closets were opened and closed, but not a word was exchanged. I thought I heard two pairs of boots, but I couldn’t be sure.

When the invaders walked up the steps, I could see two stray light cones wandering around the room. One of them even grazed the latch I laid on but didn’t stop there.

They were very thorough with their search, and very professional. They didn’t make a peep until they were utterly sure that no one was at home, and they didn’t ransack or destroy anything. Only when they were finished with their search did they start a hushed conversation, flash lights directed to the floor.

“Nothing,” a deep, unhappy voice whispered, and it sounded like a statement and a question at the same time.

“Maybe he let him go?” the other voice answered, and I was surprised to hear that one of them was a woman. A fairly tall, confident woman at that. The only women I had met in my life were trophy wives, party girls and housekeepers, all very feminine and demure. I didn’t know why the presence of that woman surprised me so much, but it did. And I had a deep, horrible feeling they were looking for me.

The guy switched off his flash light and clasped it to his belt, then dug around in his pants pocket, standing right where I could see him through the gap between the boards.

“Nah, never. You saw that guy, the beating he took without a twitch. Maybe he’s telling the truth.” At that, he pulled out a small mobile phone, dialed and held it at chest height. I could hear the hollow dialing tone loud and clear; the call had obviously been put on speaker. I could watch them through the small gap in the floor boards, I could listen to them, and if they didn’t get the idea to look for an attic, I was in a perfect spot to spy on them. My heartbeat calmed down somewhat, but my spine still tingled with the latent urge to shift shape.

A click indicated the call being answered, and then an unknown, echoing voice huffed, “Have you got him?”

“No. Not a trace at his home. You’d never believe he lives here, it’s all so… clean, and shabby at the same time. The only thing we found is a metal chest, but it’s too small to hide a body,” man-thug answered, his gaze fixated on his busty comrade’s face.

There was a soft crackling when their conversational partner kneaded his phone, then a hollow sigh followed. “He has to be there somewhere. Why else would this merch’ give us cat’s blood and claim it to be that boy’s?” The next few words were muffled and blurred, because the recipient had put his hand over the microphone to talk to someone else, then the shuffling stopped and the voice was clear again.

“Put a booby trap in the house. If that boy comes back, he’d better not survive it. We’ll meet you at the candy factory in half an hour.” A sharp click indicated the end of the call, and thug and thugette got going, again silent and professional. Their behavior sent cold shivers down my back, my instincts screaming for me to get out of there. But I couldn’t, not yet. I had to find out where they put the booby trap, and by god, I couldn’t obey Noom’s command to stay put if they’d been talking about him being severely beaten up, even if it felt unnervingly wrong to defy him.

I would find Noom and save him. No running away this time, and no waiting for someone else to fix it.

~*~

The henchmen got to it as soon as the call ended. Again, there was the shuffling of feet, the stray light cones and the sounds of cupboards and closets being opened and inspected. One of them even forcibly opened the window I had probed before, then shut it again.

“He won’t get in through here, it’s too high and the wall is smooth. He’d need a ladder, and he won’t think that far,” guy-thug whispered and was given girl-thug’s humming consent. They gave the bedroom one last once-over and the light cone again grazed the hatch I was lying on, then they walked downstairs to repeat their search.

It maybe took them about ten minutes to find a good spot for their booby trap, but it felt like hours to me. I was sweating fiercely, and for the last few minutes it took to set up their bomb right next to the front door, I actually feared my sweat would soak through the gaps in the hatch and alert them to my hiding spot. But of course that never happened. They didn’t have my fine sense of hearing, and they were at the front door, too far away from the steps to see small drops of dusty sweat fall from the ceiling. And I wasn’t actually sweating that much, it was just my vivid imagination and the terror I felt.

When they finally walked out, there was a small clicking sound mixed in with the thud of the closing door, announcing that the bomb was now armed and ready. I didn’t move until I heard a car drive away, then slowly crawled out of the attic and jumped down into the bedroom. It was dark, but my eyes penetrated the blackness easily as I peeked down the stairs. I knew there was a bomb, but I couldn’t find any trace of it just by looking, and decided against going downstairs to search for it. Who knew how they had set up their little trap? They surely had a plan B to cover other possible entry points, and walking down there knowing there was a bomb seemed utterly stupid to me.

Instead, I decided to look for Noom.

The logic behind that decision was sound, at least to me. They had beaten him up because of me; he hadn’t killed me and I didn’t feel like such a freak when I was around him. I liked him in a crazy way, and it felt right to help him. With him, I wasn’t lonely anymore, and that alone was worth more than anything else. A more reasonable part of my mind still argued with me, telling me what a normal human being would do, but I was being stubborn. I wasn’t human, so maybe it was time to stop trying to act like I was. It was a bad moment to take that step, but any reason was enough for me to hold on to.

When I walked to the window, I realized my hands were shaking badly. It surprised me because I didn’t feel shocky or any more anxious than what I thought was normal for someone in my situation, but my hands told me otherwise. I also remembered that I was nearly naked and would stand out like a sore thumb, so I rummaged around to find something to put on. Every passing minute worsened the shaking, and it slowly engulfed my arms, shoulders and finally legs, until I had to sit down and take a few calming breaths that didn’t really help that much.

Maybe I was freaking out because I was so afraid to end up alone and miserable again, or maybe it was a reaction to the near-death-experience I had just gone through, but it was bad either way. I had had anxiety attacks before, but I had never learned how to deal with them, except for simply ignoring the shortness of breath, the shaking and the innate fear ripping through my mind. Anxiety was weakness after all, and any weakness was punished severely under my father’s rule.

This time, ignoring and hiding my panic just didn’t work, and the thought of losing precious minutes just sitting there and being a wimp didn’t make it any better. Finally, I resorted to slapping myself so hard my teeth rattled, and the pain snapped me out of it. And why wouldn’t it? It always worked when my father slapped me, just another learned reaction that now came in handy.

My face stung where my hand had left its imprint, but I got up nonetheless and continued my search for a shirt and a sweater, sniffling silently and wiping tears from my eyes ever so often. I told myself over and over that I could cry as much as I wanted after I found Noom, but that also didn’t do any good. I found a black short sleeved shirt and a dark purple sweatshirt, pulled them on and opened the window. I had no shoes, and socks would just get wet and sticky, so I went bare foot, jumping out of the first story window and down onto the unforgiving concrete below.

I smashed into the hard ground, rolled a few feet and crashed into a garbage container where I finally came to a halt. A mere human would probably have hurt himself quite badly falling that far, and even I ached everywhere, but except for a dislocated, slashed open left shoulder I was unhurt. It was not my best jump, but not the worst one either.

The pain from my shoulder was fierce and sharp, but I just held my hurt arm against my chest and started limping down the street. It would heal fast enough and without permanent damage, as it had so often in the past, and stopping at a hospital to get it fixed was out of the question. I was forbidden from ever going to a public hospital, under any circumstances. My father had even gone so far as to tell me that I should die rather than let myself get caught by modern medicine, and though that did sound quite cruel, it had toughened me up and taught me a few neat tricks in first aid.

For example, the old ‘ram your dislocated shoulder against a stable edge’ only worked for a very specific kind of dislocation, and just injured you more under any other circumstance. I could have shifted shape, of course, but I hadn’t been able to do so at will for years, ever since my father had changed me back to human with Heroin. I couldn’t risk trying it now, not in the city, not where someone might see me.

I would need someone to help me to snap my shoulder joint back into its rightful place, and I needed to keep the arm stable and immobile until then. I didn’t think about other potential helpers for this, I just assumed Noom would do it and jogged on.

Every step sent shock waves of red-hot pain through my injured arm, making me increasingly dizzy and disoriented. It was dark and cold, the streets were wet from the soft drizzle that had fallen some time that evening, and dirt and litter were scattered everywhere. I didn’t count how often I stepped into shards of glass, dog poop or discarded chewing gum, but judging from the looks on the faces of people I passed, I must have looked like hell. I stopped three times to vomit or fall down and faint for a few minutes before I realized where I was headed: Irish Town.

I had never been in this district before, and I didn’t know why I instinctively had come here, but in hindsight I guess there was a faint scent trail Noom had left, and I was following it.

“Whoa, boyo, you look high as a kite!”

I knew that voice, but I stumbled on for a few feet before my mind could reach my limbs and stop me. When I slowly turned around to face ‘Weasel’, as I had nicknamed the dealer I had given a blowjob to on the day Noom had captured me, he took a step back and made a surprised sound. “I stand corrected. You look like dead shit,” he swore in his thick Irish accent as he took a good look at my face. “What’s happened to you?”

I blinked owlishly, trying to remember why I had come here, but it took a few seconds. This definitely wasn’t one of my brighter days.

“I need to go to a place they call ‘candy factory’. Do you know where it is?” I mumbled and took a step closer to Weasel.

He was still staring at my face, wary and distrustful of my strange behavior, but I didn’t miss the soft twitch in his face when he heard the name. He knew where or what it was, and he didn’t like it.

"What's a nice guy like you looking for that place for?" he asked, snorting a ball of spittle to the side. "That's a really bad place, kiddo. You're gonna get raped, or worse, is what I'm talking about." At the same moment, he leaned to the side and inspected the bloody spots on my sweatshirt hiding the wound on my dislocated shoulder. I could see his eyes get a little wider, then smaller as he squinted at it. "It'd be better if I take you to a hospital, boyo. Free of charge. You're a good customer, and I like you. Don't go to the factory, it's not good."

Another wave of dizzyness swept over me and made me stumble to the side, but he didn't grab me, which I was grateful for, and I didn't fall, which was just dumb luck.

"I don't have a choice, and I can't go to the hospital, ever. I need to find Noom, and he's at the candy factory, so please, I beg you, tell me where it is. I'll be fine, really." Why had I told him that? My head felt funny, the pain in my arm had quieted down to a dull, intense throbbing, and the world had gotten a cottony edge again, so I sat down. If he saw me fall unconscious in front of him, he'd probably just grab me and send me to the hospital and that would be the end of my rescue mission.

Weasel was silent for such a long time, I actually looked up to see if he had left. But no, he was still standing there, watching me silently, and thinking very hard. I could see frown lines on his forehead and watched them rise and fall as he fought with himself and finally came to a decision.

"Fine. But if you ever tell anyone where you got that information from, I'll rise from the dead to haunt you like a banshee, you hear me?" He gave me another good, hard stare, then looked around and took a step closer. It was obvious he didn't want to be overheard or seen talking to me.

"There's an abandoned sugar factory at the Bracket River, down Darcy Road. It's a four mile ride from here, but buses won't go there anymore, and cabs would rather get robbed here than drive you there, because there's more crime there than anywhere else in Babylon City. You'll want to follow Wicker Street for five blocks, then turn left and cross the river on the train bridge. Turn right on the first street you find, then take the second right and go to the end of that road. The wall you'll be standing in front of is the back side of the candy factory. If you survive that long, that is."

My head still spun a little bit, but the instructions were simple enough. I had never been that deep inside the Eastern Ghetto before, so I didn't recognize any of the street names, but I had a very good memory for directions.

"Thanks, I owe you. You're a life saver!"

I was on my feet and walking in a second. Now that I knew where to head I didn't want to lose another moment. Dizzyness and pain didn’t matter. I would go to that godforsaken place, free Noom and take him somewhere safe. I just had to figure out exactly what to do once I was there-- I was but one little guy going up against at least three armed thugs.

~*~

The air smelled of wet concrete, car fumes, stale urine and old, moldy roses, and it carried a hint of heat the sun had left during the day. Now everything except the concrete road was cold and uninviting. Combined with the growing darkness-- street lamps weren't working in most of the lower Eastern Ghetto— the whole area had an atmosphere of impending doom that really creeped me out.

Although the way to the factory had sounded easy enough, I soon found out why Weasel had put so much effort in warning me away. Coming from a rich home, I always had thought the Western Ghetto was as bad as it could get, but this part of the city was even worse in so many ways. The streets weren’t only broken up and full of pot holes, grass and nettles grew out of the gaps between the concrete slabs. Some of the old, decrepit buildings had crumbling veneer and gaping holes where windows had once been. Broken down, rusty cars without tires or seats stood next to pristine classic muscle cars, and while the car skeletons smelled of urine, rats, feces and death, the well-cared-for rides smelled of cologne, gun powder, sex and drugs.

Of course, there weren’t many cars, not compared to the general population in the area.

As soon as I crossed the train bridge, I also could see the dark shadows of people lurking at doors and side streets, and I could feel eyes watching me from the dark corners of the desolate buildings I walked by. They didn't feel friendly at all. They also didn’t feel neutral or disinterested; their gazes were hungry and aggressive.

I usually had several ways of dealing with anxiety, and none of them included ‘walking deeper into danger’. But this time, I didn’t have much of a choice, and I hoped my ragged, bloody, and beaten-looking appearance would surprise thieves and thugs long enough for me to slip away into the darkness before they could recover and come after me.

I held my injured arm against my chest, kept my head down, and walked on quickly. Nobody was following me yet, but that could change any second. I turned right at the next corner, like Weasel had instructed, knowing I’d just have to keep out of trouble to the end of that road.

I started to feel relief flooding my system, when suddenly someone stepped out of the shadows right next to me and shoved me hard against the crumbling wall.

“Well, well, well. What have we got here?” I heard someone sneer through the thick fog of pain radiating from my dislocated shoulder. “You take the wrong turn, or the right one?”

I knew that voice. It was one of the thugs who had come looking for me. My heart tried to crawl through my throat as I gasped for air and tried to sidestep him, but the man didn’t let go of me. For my struggling, I got slammed against the wall again, and this time I saw white spots dance through the darkness before my eyes.

“Are you deaf? I asked what you’re doing here!” the thug hissed and prepared to slam me against the wall a third time.

I squealed, I admit it. “I need to go to the factory!” I hastily blubbered, and it worked. Instead of trying to smash the wall in with my body, he just grabbed my collar and pulled me up until I had to balance on the tip of my very naked toes.

“And why would a street urchin’ like you want to go there, huh?” Oh goody, he didn’t recognize my face from anywhere. This was salvageable, at least I hoped so.

“I need to pay some debts, they told me to come, they told me the way, I swear!” My voice still shook, but the lie came out smoothly and convincingly.

The man, towering over me at least a half foot in added height, sniffed. I couldn’t see his face in the darkness, but my oversensitive ears picked up the little huffs of air, the steady, calm pulse on his neck, and the soft rustling of cloth as he felt around the back of his belt.

When I heard the metal click of the gun he pulled, it was almost too late. “Consider your debts paid,” he said, and brought the gun upward, aiming for my head.

I don’t know what would have happened if he had been standing farther away from me. Maybe he would have actually managed to shoot me, but I was lucky. He was standing so close he couldn’t aim straight ahead. He had to bend his arm and bring the gun to my temple, and that gave me just enough time to rip his throat out with one hand.

I didn’t even do it consciously, it just happened.

I only realized what I had just done, when a spray of sticky hot blood hit my face, and my feet dropped back to solid ground. The big guy stumbled, tried to keep his hold on me, and finally fell to the concrete in an unceremonious heap. Mortified, I threw the piece of flesh I had ripped out of him to the ground and gasped.

The stench of death and meat suddenly filled my lungs. The scent actually made me hungry, but the sheer violence and the shock following it made my stomach churn angrily, and finally made me throw up. I hadn’t known I could do something like that, hadn’t thought I’d be strong enough or quick enough or jaded enough to just kill somebody, but there my evidence lay, twitching a last time before laying still.

When I was finished puking, I stumbled back, grazing the wall behind me and sliding to the floor a few feet away from the dead man, eyes still fixed on his unmoving body. It had all been over so quick, I just couldn’t believe it. I still waited for him to jump up and finish me off, but there was no heart beat, no breathing, and no movement whatsoever. I also waited for his colleagues to come looking for him, even though I knew nobody could have heard.

For a few seconds, there was dead silence, and the only thing proving that I was still there was my own heartbeat.

My stomach churned again. It made me jump up and leap over the dead guy. I had to get distance between me and that horrible, sweet, metallic smell, and my brain hadn’t forgotten where I had headed initially. When I finally got my senses back, I stood at the foot of an eight feet high brick wall. I had reached my destination, and there had only been one fatality. Yay for me.

~*~

From what I could see, the candy factory was quite big. I was standing at the foot of its back wall, for which I was quite grateful. ‘Weasel’ hadn’t sent me to the front door but to the mostly unguarded back, and I sent a quiet prayer of thanks to him for it.

It did put me in a bad spot though, because I was too hurt to climb up and get in, and the wall didn’t have any doors. The presence of the dead guy in this back street gave me reason to hope nonetheless. He wouldn’t have guarded this place if there wasn’t some kind of way into the building.

I inspected the walls to my left and right next, walking back the way I had come as I looked for doors or passages. I did find a wooden door a few feet up the street, but it had a shiny new padlock on it and looked quite sturdy.

Biting my lower lip, I gazed back to the dead body. If this was the right door, that guy had to have a key to that padlock, but the thought of touching his lifeless, warm body gave me the creeps.

I grabbed the padlock with my good arm and gave it a hearty yank, but it didn’t budge besides the rattling of the door and a metallic groan. I was inhumanly strong for a person of my stature, but not this strong. Obviously, there was no way around going through the stiff’s pockets.

Swallowing bile, I slowly tiptoed over, eying the body nervously.

There were many reasons why I didn’t want to touch him, and only one of them was my squeamishness. I had seen too many horror movies and too few dead persons to feel secure around a real corpse, and yes, I did expect him to jump up and grab me just as I leaned over his still form.

That damned smell was back as I crouched down to check his pockets, and the still high body temperature made me shiver with nerves and fear. He felt like a living thing, and I found it hard to think of him as an ‘it’.

I tried to touch his clothes as little as possible as I felt around. His jacket smelled of cloves and tobacco, his pants of weed and urine. For a moment, I hoped he hadn’t peed on the weed because I could really use it, then I felt bad because that really wasn't what I should be thinking having just killed someone.

I found a small packet of weed in his pants pocket, took the gun from his hand, and I felt a smallish bump in his shirt’s front pocket when I resorted to patting him down. His chest was blood soaked though, and my hand got wet and sticky as I fumbled the small key out of its hiding place.

I was planning to put as much distance between me and the corpse as soon as I had what I’d wanted, but as I lifted the key to my face, the sweet, metallic smell of blood overwhelmed me. My hand was coated in it, and even as it dried, it still allured my senses and made my tormented stomach grumble with hunger.

This had to be the worst moment in history to get the munchies.

I couldn’t even think about eating… him. Wouldn’t. But somehow my bloody hand found its way to my mouth, and my tongue snaked out between my lips to have a lick. The taste of blood exploded in my mouth like fireworks, and I heard myself humming with delight.

Then I realized what I’d just done, and this time I really stumbled back, got up, and jogged for the padlocked door, retching. Luckily, there was nothing in my stomach to heave up anymore.

The lock proved to be quite a challenge to my one good hand. I had to wedge it between my hip and the door at just the right angle to get the bloody key in, which took a few tries. When I finally managed to open the padlock, and with it the door, I was drenched in sweat and my shoulder was throbbing again. I carefully pried it open, ready to fumble the gun out of my sweatshirt pocket if anyone tried to jump me, but the room behind the door was dusty, empty and dark. It looked like the entry to a larger clean-room-like storage space, but the door between the small chamber in front of me and the larger unit behind it had been claimed by time long ago.

There were foot prints on the dusty floor, some made by rats and some made by shoes and boots. The scent of cloves and tobacco hung in the air like a forgotten memory, assuring me that I was following the right route. It would have been nice being just as certain where that route was leading me to, but even plain old dumb luck had its limits.

There seemed to be windows somewhere in the bigger room, it would have been pitch black otherwise. My eyes were good enough in near-darkness, but I tried to keep low to the ground as I crept through the crumbling doorway and into the wide, forlorn space.

Following the foot prints and the diffusing scent trail of the man I had killed, I made a bee-line through the vast room and reached another door, this time made of rusty iron.

It wasn’t locked, but made a low, groaning sound as I moved it, and I froze instantly to listen for an alarm. I also remembered how these people had booby-trapped Noom’s house. What if there were bombs around here? What if I stepped into one? I felt another panic attack bubbling up, but this time I stomped it down resolutely. They wouldn’t be stupid enough to trap doors and rooms they used regularly, and as long as I followed the dead man’s tracks, I was on the safe side.

I waited for about a minute, but nobody reacted to the sound of the door. The next time I moved it, I was very careful to do it as slowly as possible. It still groaned a bit, but this time the sound was muted and inconspicuous.

Glimpsing out into the open space in between the old factory buildings, I scanned the surroundings for any sign of movement, ducking when I saw someone walking on the other side. There was light in the first story window right across the cobbled yard, and the figure stepped into the door beneath it. I got a short peek on a set of old, wooden stairs, then the door fell closed again.

To my left, there was more cobbled yard, then a big arched doorway, and in the buildings to the left and right of it more lights and distant voices. Obviously, I had miscalculated the mass of people I’d be up against, but that didn’t mean I would have to fight my way through every person in the factory. Being sneaky was my second nature after all.

Someone moved in the first story across from my entry point, making the light flicker when a person walked by the windows. I ducked again, and listened hard, but failed to hear anything but the distant rumble of too many drunk and coked up people.

I had to get closer, and time was running out; I couldn’t wait any longer. The whole situation was fucked up anyway, and I probably would have to wait forever if I wanted to be safe. There was no safe, not this time.

I grabbed the gun inside my sweatshirt and started running across the yard, to the door on the other side. With only one hand, I was definitely out of luck if anyone saw me because I didn’t have a definitive idea how to use a gun, and as long as I held on to the gun I couldn’t do anything else either.

When I reached the door, I tucked the gun under my arm to reach for the doorknob and opened it. It gave easily and moved silently on its well-oiled hinges, closing as promptly as I had opened it and with no one the wiser about my presence.

As soon as I entered the small ground level room, I could hear voices I recognized from upstairs. Girl-thug and the guy from the speaker phone were up there, talking quite harshly to each other, but that didn’t mean I was at the right place. I had no lust for revenge whatsoever, I just wanted Noom.

His scent finally hit me when I started climbing the stairs as silently as possible.

His personal note was a mixture of cigarettes, gun oil, patchouly and something more male and musky, and I would have recognized it amidst a million people. Noom was here, just a few feet away!

Unfortunately my own euphoria made me run up the stairs— and right into the muzzle of a hand gun.

The last thing I saw was Noom’s bloody, shocked face across the room, then three loud bangs shattered the silence and ripped my belly apart.