Crippled

“Where the hell is the goddamn delivery boy?” asked Joe Herzog as she laid in bed with ice on her swollen knee. The ice did a tremendous job of numbing her pain. Getting pissed off over a late breakfast burrito did not, as evidenced by her hissing noise. “Why does the damn tournament have to be a week away? This is horseshit! All that work for nothing!” She pounded her mattress and sent another jolt through her leg. “Damn it!”

Figuring it wasn’t a good idea to wait in bed for the delivery boy, Joe wrapped her knee in a heavy black bandage and hobbled out of the bedroom wearing just a white T-shirt and blue sleeping shorts. Every hop had her mumbling, “Ouch!” in a low, grumpy voice. Anybody who made it to the finals of a martial arts tournament only to go down with an injury would be grumpy as well.

Her tiny gnome body made looking at her hallway of trophies and medals a chore. Twisting her neck backwards just to look at second place accolades made her shake her head in disgust. “This is bullshit…this is fucking bullshit…” She resumed mumbling, “Ouch!” as she hobbled down the hall of shame and into the living room.

Resting across her tree stump table was a blue karate dress, one she wouldn’t be wearing again for a long time. Joe wiped away a singular tear with her finger before hobbling and cursing towards the table. “I should probably just set this damn thing on fire. Besides which, who the hell wears a dress into combat? It ain’t like…” She glanced at herself in the full-length mirror and frowned at what she perceived to be a lack of beauty. Joe sighed and sat down on her eiderdown couch. “I’ll get rid of that damn dress some other time. Goddamn knee injury…”

All Joe wanted to do was close her eyes and relax until her food got here. The throbbing and pulsating of her knee kept her eyes wide open no matter how comfortable she tried to make herself. And then…there was a knock on the door. More like a feverous pounding that got louder every time Joe tried to ignore it. “That better be my food or else I’m jamming this good for nothing leg up someone’s ass.”

The pounding of both Joe’s heart and front door resumed. “Yeah, yeah, I’m coming!” She hobbled over to the rune-covered entrance, where the pounding grated on her ears some more. “I said I’m coming, damn it! This better be good!” Reaching for the doorknob on her tippy-toes, she almost fell over as she swung the door wide open. “It’s about damn time! Uh-oh…”

It wasn’t a delivery boy. The only food this man was carrying was in his wide gut, about three hundred pounds worth. The scaly orange skin, the dragon-like face, the rotund frame, and the jeans held up by suspenders. A cold sweat broke out over Joe’s face as she fell backwards, giving her a better view of “The Chiropractor” Bargon Sevili. The moniker was silly to her until she remembered that amateur wrestling was his strong suit. She swallowed a lump and said, “Bargon…wha…what are you doing here? The finals aren’t until next week.”

Bargon leaned his drooling face down and said in a deep, raspy voice, “Yes, I know!” He slathered his tongue across his already slimy lips. “Sweet gee-nee girl! Lovable midget pie! Love muffin! Come here and let me…”

Joe screamed in terror before he could finish his cutesy-wutesy sentence. She scrambled to get back up on one leg, but kept falling over and sending more shockwaves through her crippled knee. Her clutches and whiny screams didn’t earn enough sympathy from Bargon to get him to wipe his smile off of his face. In fact, his deafening footsteps on the stone floor made Joe’s head throb worse than her knee.

Instead of trying to get up, Joe crawled across her filthy stone floor using just her elbows to drag her little body. Bargon took his sweet time in approaching his opponent, though the thudding of his boots didn’t help in giving Joe any comfort. She crawled so quickly that cuts and bruises formed on her arms. She swung her bedroom door open and crawled some more.

With adrenaline flooding her system like a biblical disaster, she endured even more scrapes as she hurried over to her wooden chest. She nearly popped her arm out of her socket reaching for the latch, but open it she did. Joe stood up on both legs, her sense of urgency allowing her to numb out her knee pain. The faster she dug through her belongings, the louder the footsteps pounded. Her hands shook as she fiddled with a metal object and some tiny shells.

She loaded the shells into her single barrel shotgun as fast as she could, though not without having to pick them up after dropping them repeatedly. “Guess who, sugar britches!” Bargon taunted in his saccharine ogre voice. Joe didn’t give a shit about her knee anymore. She stood terra firma in the center of her room locked and loaded, her bruised arms still trembling with fear.

The minute Bargon kicked the door open and said, “Ta-da!”, Joe pulled the trigger. She needed this easy victory over someone who was supposed to wait until next week to fight her. She needed to be in first place for once in her life. But the shotgun jammed and blew her backwards, sending her crashing through her glass window and into the grass. Shards ripped at her flesh. Her arms were embedded with glass. Her knee pain flared up to infernal levels. Little droplets of blood stained the grass beneath her. She whined and cried like the second place loser she was.

Even on soft grass and dirt, Bargon’s footsteps grew more obnoxious the closer he got to his victim. He had to squeeze his wide ass through the broken window, but he arrived at his destination all the same. He held the shotgun over Joe’s blood-covered face and snapped it over his knee. He discarded the broken pieces and dusted his hands off like it was nothing. Leaning his head down so that he could be eye-level with Joe, he said, “Give me your knee, you sweet piece of pumpkin pie!”

“Oh god…Oh my god…Please, just get it over with. Anywhere but the knee. Literally anywhere else!”

Despite Joe’s pathetic begging, Bargon indeed grabbed her by the injured leg, causing her to cry out in agony. After picking off a few pieces of glass and getting even more ocular juices out of Joe, he asked, “Are you ready, little darling?”

“…As ready as I’ll ever be…” whimpered Joe as she covered her face with her scarred arms.

“Good, because this is going to hurt like a bitch!” Bargon made good on his promise. He yanked on the injured leg and had Joe yelling in a high pitched, demonic tone.

It did hurt like a bitch. It was the most agonizing thing Joe had been through. But the best part about it? It only hurt for a few seconds. And then the pain was gone. Was she in heaven? Was St. Peter already opening the pearly gates for her? No, she was still on planet earth outside her home. She uncovered her face and wiggled her leg. No pain. She knew the injury was still there, but she didn’t feel like dying afterwards. “You…you really are a chiropractor? Um…uh…thanks?”

Bargon grabbed Joe by her shirt and leaned in so that they were nose-to-nose. His breath radiated with skunk odors, probably due to him not brushing his fangs in a long time. “I don’t need your thanks, Joey-Bowie. All I need from you is to be one hundred percent in the finals next week. That way, when I beat the living piss out of you, there’ll be no excuses. No knee injuries, no glass shards, no bullshit. If you lose to me and get second place again, you’ll have nobody to blame but yourself. You got it?” He threw her against the grass and said, “See you next week, sugar plum” before blowing her a kiss and walking away.

Any gratitude Joe felt for her opponent twisted in the wind when she noticed a foil-wrapped burrito sticking out of his back pocket. “Hey! That’s my breakfast, you asshole!”

Bargon pulled the burrito out of his pocket, unwrapped it, and took a massive bite out of it. With a full mouth, he said, “It’s my breakfast now! Besides, if you want to beat me in the finals and be a winner for the first time in your mediocre career, you’ve got to eat better than this. You’re getting a little chunky around the belly. See you soon!”

As the demonic ogre walked away, Joe clenched her fists and stood up, her knee staying pain free the entire time. She wasn’t thinking about burning her karate dress anymore. She wasn’t looking at her second place accolades with scorn. After a morning like this one, Joe Herzog had all the motivation she could ever want. She would train as hard as she damn well could. She would pump more iron, run more laps, and beat the training bag like it owed her a breakfast burrito.

With her muscles bulging and the shaky adrenaline morphing into raw anger, Joe shouted out, “You should have killed me when you had the chance, you fat pig! I’m not just going to beat you in the finals! I’m going to destroy your career! You hear me, Bargon Sevili?! You’re a dead motherfucker!” Joe raised her fists to the sky and let out a primal scream to anyone who would listen, letting them know that motivation was not an issue anymore.

Duct Tape Princess

Vikki Colt twirled across her wooden apartment floors humming a gorgeous tune while smiling seductively. She kicked off her six inch heels and was left with her long flowing cyan dress and long flowing green hair. She thought back to her performance that evening and grinned even wider at the feel of dollar bills in her hand. The rent would be paid for god knows how many months and she’d have enough left over for something nice. Granted, that room was filled with gangsters in leather jackets. As long as Vikki got paid, she didn’t give two shits where the money came from.

The dancing, humming, and lipstick smiling continued for what seemed like the whole night. She didn’t even know what room of her studio apartment she was in. And then the world of unicorns and rainbows melted into hellfire and dead bodies. Vikki felt a cord squeezing her neck so tightly that her head could have popped like a balloon. She grabbed the cord with both hands and wheezed heavily as an unknown assailant dragged her into the bedroom kicking all the way.

When the burglar finally released Vikki before she could drift into the afterlife, the songstress plopped onto the bed hacking up blood and smearing her makeup. A feminine voice called her a drama queen while the voice’s owner went right to work in binding Vikki’s wrists and ankles in duct tape. The singer tried to suck down as much air as she could, her stomach inflating like a parachute with every breath she fought for. Her vision blurred during this civil war over oxygen, but once she blinked her eyes dry, she could see the shape of the female burglar peeling off a strip of tape big enough for someone’s mouth.

“No! Please don’t! I won’t scream!” begged Vikki in between gulps of bloody oxygen. The home invader silenced her anyways with a strip of tape across Vikki Colt’s mouth. With her hands, feet, and mouth bound, all Miss Colt could do was wriggle around and keep her lungs pumping through her snotty nose. Her head lightened and her vision darkened under this struggle, but she was forced awake when the burglar raised her brass knuckles-wearing fist in the air.

With her free hand latching onto a heedful of Vikki’s hair, the gangster threatened, “Don’t even try squirming out of here or I swear to god I’ll punch the living shit out of you!” Through the neon signs outside the window, the burglar revealed herself to be a raven haired young woman in a leather jacket and jean shorts.

Even with Vikki’s impaired vision, she recognized the woman as Nadia Rinehart, heir to the Rinehart crime family through her marriage to the puffy-haired drunk Johnny. These people were local celebrities for all the wrong reasons. Murder, extortion, money laundering, and beating the cops to the punch every single time. Vikki fearfully swallowed a gulp of blood and panted heavily through her nostrils.

“Did you think I was just going to let this go?” asked Nadia in a disturbingly calm voice. “I saw you flirting with my husband onstage. The kisses you blew him. The hugs. The handholding. If you weren’t too busy singing shitty songs at nightclubs, you could just as easily be a fucking hooker. Johnny tipped you big time, didn’t he? He loved your little performance, huh? Sorry, babe, but this ain’t no open relationship. He’s going to be disappointed when he sees his new girlfriend dead as a doornail.”

Nadia lowered her punching fist and instead used her hand to gently stroke Vikki’s hair. The songstress whimpered and whined through her tape gag as Nadia’s fingers glided down her face and over the bridge of her nose. The gangster smiled sadistically and pinched Vikki’s nostrils shut for the longest time.

The pain in the singer’s chest exploded as she squirmed around in her battle for oxygen. Her eyes bulged like basketballs and her body shook like tectonic plates moving beneath the earth. Just as she was ready to venture into the dark side, Nadia released her nose and fresh oxygen blew through her body whirlwind-style. Vikki’s stomach bounced up and down to acrophobic heights. Her insides tingled as though spiders were crawling across her body.

“You really are a whiny little baby,” sneered Nadia as she peeled off another strip of tape. “I really see no point in keeping you alive much longer. Enjoy your last few moments of oxygen, bitch.” The gangster’s tape hovered above Vikki’s nose, prompting the songstress to use her last breaths to belt a blood-curdling scream through her gag.

The duct tape had touched the tip of Vikki’s nose when a thump at the front door was heard by both women. “Are you in here, sweet cheeks?” rambled a drunken male.

“Oh, you gotta be fucking kidding me,” muttered Nadia as the drunk stumbled into the bedroom while flipping on the light switch.

That was him alright: disheveled hair, biker jacket, blue jeans, and enough alcohol on his breath to make sewage systems smell like rose gardens. Johnny Rinehart, in the flesh. The hair-covered, scar-bitten, ugly flesh. “There’s my little duct tape princess,” he chuckled. “Nadia, baby, you didn’t tell me you wanted to do a three way tonight. If I would’ve known…”

“Sorry, Johnny. The duct tape princess isn’t getting shit tonight. Duct tape princess is going to fucking die in a few minutes,” threatened Nadia while standing up to face her husband. Johnny burped obnoxiously and chuckled again, even after getting punched in the face with Nadia’s brass knuckles, which didn’t floor his big ass. “Babe, you’re getting worse every year we’ve been together. That alcohol is no good for you. It’s no good for us. If you hadn’t been drinking like a fucking pig, I wouldn’t be in this bitch’s apartment right now. What the fuck are YOU doing here? Getting laid?”

Johnny wiped the blood off of his nose and shrugged. “Jesus Christ, do you know how long it’s been since we’ve done it together? We’re always out beating the shit out of everyone and we never have time to be with each other.”

“You’ve really lost your damn mind, haven’t you, Johnny,” said Nadia while tugging on her husband’s hair. “This is business, lover boy. You don’t fuck with business. You were born into this shit. You should know better than to screw everything up. That’s how dickheads like you get killed in this game. Ain’t nothing stopping me from punching the fuck out of you right now.”

“I love you so much right now, girl,” grinned Johnny as he sloppily kissed his wife’s lips. She tried to pull away, but he only brought her closer and the make-out session was getting wet and wild. The two of them shed their jackets and Nadia wrapped her legs around her much bigger man’s waist while he pinned her to the wall.

With her vision getting brighter and her lungs inflating at a steady pace, Vikki Colt decided enough was enough. While the lovebirds were busy blocking the doorway with their bad romance, she sat up slowly in bed and hobbled to her feet. She bounced lightly towards her only escape: the bedroom window. The closer she got to freedom, the harder she bounced. In caged animal fashion, she leapt through the glass back first and prayed to god that she didn’t split her head open.

Splitting her head open would require a landing first. She felt the muscular grip of Nadia Rinehart on her bare ankles while the crazy gangster screamed obscenities at a million miles an hour. Vikki howled through her gag and squirmed like a snake with every ounce of strength she had. The howling intensified as Nadia’s nails dug into her calves and her body was being pulled back inside. “Goddamn it, Johnny, give me a hand with this bitch!” the gangster shouted.

“Anything for you, sweet cheeks!” cackled Johnny, who bumped stupidly into Nadia in an attempt to clutch her waist for extra strength. The drunken moron couldn’t distribute his weight properly and Nadia’s nails dug deeper as a result. Vikki thrashed around with more intensity, not caring if she banged into the brick wall. Part of this life or death struggle also included tugging with her legs. It felt as though swords pierced her body. She could smell the copper blood splattering across her chest and face. Even with bone nearly exposed, she tugged one final time for freedom.

Instead of shredding her legs to pieces, the tug pulled both Nadia and Johnny out of the window with her and the three of them crashed to the back alley concrete below. Bones snapped and crackled. Blood painted the sidewalk and ran down the storm drain. Final breaths grew progressively weaker until the angel of death was ready for his pickup. But none of these violent actions occurred with Vikki, because she landed in an open dumpster padded with puffy trash bags.

The singer’s intense nose breathing made her ill to her stomach as the odor of dog shit and rotten food assaulted her senses. She fought hard to swallow her digested food, but the gag reflex was so powerful that the tape on her mouth ripped apart and the tidal wave of sickness descended upon the trash bags. Vikki felt as though her body was being ripped inside out while breakfast, lunch, and dinner poured out of her now free mouth like Niagara falls. The tightening of her muscles gave her enough strength to pull the duct tape apart on her wrists. She rested a few moments in her own sickness before reaching down to pull the tape off of her feet and vacating the rubbish bin.

The chilly night air felt heavenly on her heated skin. The tears in her eyes cooled off as wind blew on her face. Vikki felt so weak that she could barely stand up after the night of excitement. She might as well have been the one drinking booze out of a trough instead of Johnny Rinehart, who’s broken body lay motionless in the alley. Nadia’s hand however grabbed a hold of Vikki’s red ankles. But this grip had the strength of a little baby rather than a boa constrictor.

Low and behold, Nadia’s roll of duct tape laid beside her, covered in the blood of her now dead husband. The crazy gangster tried to pick her head up to face her would-be killer, but her neck bones kept cracking with every expended effort. Vikki gazed down at the duct tape and back at Nadia. The songstress’s usual seductive smile was replaced with evil anger. She spit out blood on the sidewalk, rolled Nadia on her back, and began peeling off various strips of duct tape.

“Who’s the duct tape princess now, you stupid bitch?!” belted Vikki while coughing up more blood. “You want that drunken retard? You can have him! In hell!” The nightclub singer went to work in sealing off Nadia’s oxygen with the strips of tape. Unlike Vikki, there would be no glorious struggle for Nadia, just defeated moans and shallow breaths. The gangster’s body was broken so badly that bones jutted out her skin. If anything, the torturous suffocation was more like mercy kill. Nadia’s face turned bright white as she drifted off into the night, cold and lifeless like her loving husband.

Vikki plopped backwards against the brick wall and sat down slowly on her tired ass. The breaths she took were deep and delicious despite the garbage stains on her once beautiful dress. Speaking of which, she pulled the stack of hundred dollar bills out of her pockets and gazed at it with the same evil intentions as when she suffocated Nadia. “Who needs an apartment when I can have my very own hit man?” Vikki said to no one in particular. Her soft speech fluctuated into rebellious roaring with her next sentence. “You hear me, Rineharts?! I’m coming for you motherfuckers!”

Crow Cop

“Read me the summary on this one, Hammy,” said Dexter Young as he cocked his magnum while sitting in the passenger side of the van. He tucked the weapon in his pants and pulled a pair of black ski masks out of the glove box, one for him, one for Hammond O’Hara a.k.a. Hammy.

Hammond sat in the driver’s seat flipping through various pages in his binder until he found what he was looking for. “Toni J. Mathews. Age 39. Recently divorced from her husband of five years after citing irreconcilable differences. Part of the settlement deal with her husband was that she was to receive a topaz ring worth fifty thousand dollars, maybe more on the black market. According to my research…”

“Ha! You did research…” chuckled Dexter as he winked at his partner.

Hammond got a good laugh out of it too. “Anyways, from what I’ve seen, she keeps the topaz ring in a safe in her bedroom. As far as I can tell, she has no security systems other than that safe and the only occupant living with Miss Mathews is a parrot named Mirko.”

Dexter blew out some air, shook his head, and said, “I asked you to canvas possible threats in the neighborhood and all you could come up with was a fucking bird? No cameras, no alarms, just a fucking bird? You know what? Maybe we won’t have to stop by KFC after work. I just hope the bitch has a working stove in her kitchen. I don’t see why not. She is a woman, after all; that’s kind of her thing.”

Hammond shook his jowly head and chuckled, “You’re awful, Dexter. You’re just plain awful.”

Dexter slapped Hammond upside the head and warned him, “Remember, no using real names. You’re Hammy and I’m D. Got that? I don’t want you forming bad habits when we’ve got the biggest score of our lives just waiting in there for us.”

“Sorry, man. My bad,” said Hammond as he tucked his ski mask in his jacket pocket. Both burglars dressed in dark clothing that blended in perfectly with the night air. They exited the van and sneaked across the street like ghosts, not prompting one porch light to flare up.

Once they reached the front porch, they pulled their ski masks over their heads and pulled out their magnums. “Ready to roll?” Dexter whispered.

“Ready as I’ll ever be…D!” whispered Hammond as he pulled out his lock picks and worked his magic on the doorknob. Slowly, carefully, and silently, The chubby burglar unlatched the bolt and even held the door open for his partner like a true gentleman. “After you, Dex, I mean, D!”

“I’m warning you, dip shit, if you blow our cover, you’re a dead motherfucker!” snapped Dexter. The two burglars crossed the threshold and Hammond gently pulled the door closed behind him. The entire house was as dark and silent as the streets themselves. Still, Dexter and Hammond weren’t going to take chances and tiptoed across the hardwood floor like ninjas.

They nearly jumped out of their skin when the light came on in the bedroom and a weary female voice asked, “Hello?” Dexter caught his partner drooling through his ski mask when the two of them saw Toni Mathews wearing little more than a sports bra and tiny shorts in the lit doorway. Not bad for a thirty-nine year old, thought Dexter. She had her blond hair up in a ponytail, which Dexter knew was an advantage for a horny partner like his.

Toni rubbed the sleepiness out of her eyes and turned on more lights in the house until she found herself in the living room with Dexter and Hammond. She wanted to snap awake and let out a shriek of doom, but the two burglars wrestled her to the ground with Dexter keeping his gloved hand over Toni’s mouth. The divorcee struggled and writhed while her stifled screams vibrated off of Dexter’s hand, but Hammond was already playing his role to perfection when he was wrapping duct tape around her ankles and knees.

Binding her hands and mouth became a much easier task when Dexter pressed the barrel of his gun against Toni’s nose and angrily whispered, “Shut up, bitch! Shut the fuck up! You make one more sound and I’ll blow that pretty head of yours off your shoulders!” Shaky and teary, Toni had no choice but to lay still while Hammond wrapped tape around her wrists and gagged her as well.

The two burglars dragged her bound body against the couch and sat her upright against the cushions. Dexter kept his gun pointed against Toni’s forehead and silently, but tensely said, “Listen good, lady: we’re not going to be staying a while. We just want one thing and then we’ll be out of here. If you try to resist us or call the police, you’re going to have splattered brains all over that pretty sofa of yours. You understand?”

“Wah! Call the crow cop! Call the crow cop! Wah!” squawked an avian voice from out of nowhere.

“That must be the goddamn bird,” said Hammond with a look of concern behind his mask.

“Thanks, Captain Obvious. Go find the fucking thing and shut it up!” ordered Dexter. Hammond’s heavy and clunky movements towards the back of the house prompted Dexter to snap, “Can you make a little more noise please?! I’d love to have the cops on my ass!”

“Wah! Make some more noise! Make some more noise! Wah!” squawked Mirko again. A subsequent yelp of pain from Hammond followed by the sound of wings flapping caused Dexter’s adrenaline to pulsate throughout his body. The heavy burglar came back into view holding his now bloody nose. “What the fuck happened?”

“That little bastard bit me! I don’t care if I get the chair, I’m killing that bird!” said Hammond.

“Wah! You’re gonna get the chair! You’re gonna get the chair! Wah!” squawked Mirko.

“Shut up, you little piece of shit!” shouted Hammond before firing a round into the dark and prompting Dexter to wrestle him to the ground.

“Are you out of your fucking mind, Hammy?!” snapped Dexter as he held his hand over his partner’s mouth. “You can’t be doing shit like that, you fat fuck! One more outburst from you and I’m putting one between your eyes! You and queen bitch over here can let the bird sing melodies to you for all eternity!”

Hammond removed his partner’s hand from his mouth and said, “Wait, wait! What if we take the tape off of the bitch’s mouth and make her call the little fucker over to us? Are we really going to be outgunned by a goddamn parrot?”

Toni sobbed through her gag and shook her head no at the burglars’ plans. Dexter creepily crawled up to his victim and said, “Oh, yes, yes, yes. You are going to call that little bastard over to us and it’ll be winner, winner, chicken dinner. And just so there’s no confusion, we’re under no obligation to keep you alive during this heist. We’re only doing it out of courtesy. Well, that’s not really true. We do have to keep you alive. After all, the last time I checked…Hammy and I weren’t into necrophilia!”

The two burglars chuckled at the rape joke while Toni’s sobs grew progressively louder even with tape on her mouth. “Hey! Hey! Hey!” snapped Dexter. The third hey was said with enough force to get Toni to stop making noises. “The only noises you should be making are the kind that bring the future KFC meal over to us. I’m going to rip the tape off of your mouth and I swear to god if you scream for help, you’re going to join your birdie friend on the dark side.”

Dexter ripped the tape off while Toni stifled a painful scream, too frightened not to take the threat seriously. “Now that I’ve restored your first amendment rights,” said Dexter. “You know what you need to use them for. Call out your monster.” Toni could do nothing but sob hysterically until Dexter’s “Now!” scream gave her extra motivation.

Trying to keep her lips steady, Toni whistled and said, “Here, Mirko! Come on over to mommy!” The unstoppable sobbing weakened her voice to where she couldn’t pull off a full whistle.”

“Oh, what the fuck was that?” condescended Dexter. “Put some gusto into it, you crazy bitch!”

“Wah! Put some gusto into it! Put some gusto into it! I’m a crow cop! Wah!”

Dexter and Hammond pointed their gun in the voice’s direction while Hammond shouted, “Where are you, you little shit?!”

Dexter felt a hard double kick in the back of his knee, causing him to drop on his ass and accidentally fire a bullet into Hammond’s ass. Dexter’s eyes bulged out of his skull as he watched his partner trying to suppress a shriek of pain while holding his bloody anus. He could see Hammond’s chubby lips quivering like a boat motor. “Hammy…” the burglar said softly. “It’ll be okay. Just lay down and…”

Toni repeatedly kicked Dexter in the face with her bare soles as if her life depended on it. The burglar felt his nose snap in two and a few of his teeth fall out of his mouth. Meanwhile, Mirko flew threw the shadows and nibbled on Hammond’s nose some more, tearing flesh and dining on blood. Both burglar’s screams were as obvious as fire truck sirens and the whole neighborhood’s lights started to flare up.

Dexter could hear the sounds of doors opening and slamming shut in between face distorting kicks to the face. Neighbors with shotguns and handguns burst through the front door and rushed to the scene of the crime, pulling tape off of Toni’s body and asking if she was alright.

By the time Mirko flew back into the shadows, Dexter and Hammond were lying on the floor with gashing faces and rearranged features. Once Toni was free and steady, she removed both of their masks to reveal their ugliest features, to which the armed neighbors made gagging noises of disgust.

“All this crazy shit over a topaz, huh, Dex, I mean, D,” slurred Hammond.

“Sorry, sweetheart. There’s no topaz here. We just like to encourage intruders, that’s all,” said Toni with a sickeningly benign smile.

Dexter opened his swollen eyes as wide as he was allowed and asked, “What the fuck are you talking about, lady?”

“You think you’re the first ones to try to pick apart this neighborhood?” asked Toni rhetorically. “This place used to be a popular gang neighborhood. And then we cleaned it up and lured more scumbags like you to come and join us. We’re making this city a better place one dead motherfucker at a time.”

“But I did research,” whined Hammond while spitting out blood. “I did fucking research!”

“Wah! You did research! You did research! I’m a crow cop! Wah!”

“Shut up, you stupid fucking bird!” shouted Dexter as he reached for his magnum and instead was showered with a hailstorm of bullets from the neighborhood crime watch. Hammond didn’t stand much of a chance either as his body instantly became a pool of blood and organs on the hardwood floor.

The last thing to go through Dexter Young’s mind, aside from the bullets, was a little child’s voice asking, “Can I pet your birdie, Miss Mathews?”