The Wrong Side of Town (Part 1)

The Wrong Side of Town...

Chrissie got up from the bed, just a mattress on the floor really, with a fluidity of motion so characteristic of her. She was graceful by nature.
Careful to avoid waking her lover she stretched languidly and headed for the large window of the attic flat. It was arched like a gothic temple’s window. The whole building had an air of bygone grandeur, of long decayed elegance, a sort of noble decadence bestowed upon it by it’s glorious but very distant past. Now it was just another slowly crumbling old building in the wrong part of town.
The glass kept out the cacophony from the streets, 19 floors lower, but it let the lights in. Glow from the few street lanterns that still worked, brilliant flashes from a nearby blue neon sign that was malfunctioning, going on and off like a strobe. Reflections of a techno-violent, cruel world gone mad.
And yet Chrissie could not move away. She had the status and the credits for it. She could move Uptown any time and so could Wave, her lover, her partner. But she just couldn’t bring herself to do it. It felt like a form of betrayal to her. She had even argued the point recently when Wave had for the thousandth time tried to talk her into moving. In vain.
“If all the good people leave, then we are giving the neighborhood away to the creeps, wrapped up in a festive ribbon.” He had opened his mouth to argue that all the good people had already left, with the exception of herself, himself and stubborn old Mr. Chow across the street, the “vendor who had been robbed a thousand times.”
She had given him no chance to articulate. “I just can’t do it Wave. What will happen to old Mr. Chow and his family if I go too? As long as I am here, the creeps know he’s under the lady cop’s protection. When I am gone, they’ll eat him up alive.”
Wave had just raised his arms defensively and hung his head, silently admitting defeat, again. He just couldn’t win against the formidable Mr. Chow.
When Chrissie had been a punk-assed kid roaming the mean streets of the neighborhood, looking for a gang or a clan to join, it was Mr. Chow who had set her straight, taken her in for a while, given her a job and most of all instilled her with self-respect. She had gone back to school, jobbed in the evenings and on weekends. She kept clean, managed to graduate and, making use of a program for underprivileged citizens, enroll in the Metropolitan Police Academy. The rest was, so to say, history.
Now at 32 she had skyrocketed to detective first grade and offered Mr. Chow the protection of her presence in the neighborhood. To Chrissie, it was the most essential form of payback. Wave suspected that he’d never get her to move as long as Mr. Chow was alive. He just hoped to god that Chrissie would survive as long in this hell hole too.
Chrissie shook her head once, to clear it of the ugly memories of their latest fight and concentrated instead on the mental images of last night’s lovemaking. It had been intense, hungry and yet prolonged. And they had both fallen into an exhausted slumber after it. A goodbye fuck for 14 days. That was how long Wave was gonna be on a mission again. She’d miss him terribly, but she found some consolation in the fact that they wouldn’t part angry.
She headed for the shower, but a reflection of herself in the mirror caught her eye, and unselfconsciously she stopped to look.
She didn’t look half bad she thought.
In fact, she looked great, but admitting the fact would stretch her own modesty way beyond her comfort zone.
Her sweet freckled face was framed by her wavy blonde mane. At the center of it sparkled a pair of honey brown eyes which lit up with each and every one of her usual bright smiles.
At 5’4” she was neither tall nor short. Her body was lithe, athletic and yet unmistakably female. Her big, firm DD breasts rose and fell quietly to the rhythm of her breathing over a totally flat tummy with faint hints of a six-pack. On her left nipple and her navel piercings glistened in the strobing neon light. Her hips were rounded, womanly but firm. Her mons was trimmed down to a well-tended rectangular strip of short blonde hair. A wild orchid tattoo was right next to it.
Her legs were perhaps her best feature, from the rounded, sculpted buttocks on down to her toes, long and shapely and toned.
A strange kind of whitish blemish on her breasts and tummy caught Chrissie’s eye, and she looked at it worried. The stuff one could catch on the streets these days, well there was no telling…
Tentatively she put her finger on one of the lesions and then just giggled relieved realizing it was just dried sperm from last night’s roll in the proverbial hay. She blew a stray lock away from her eyes and still chuckling she stepped into the shower.

***

Shadow sat on her haunches, balancing effortlessly on the massive wooden beam which supported most of the roof’s weight.
She sat and watched, silent, unmoving, not even casting much of a shadow, non-existent.
She was dressed all in black, the leathers of her tight-fitting body suit being snug but comfortable. Her head was covered with a big leather cowl, obscuring her face in its shadow. A katana’s black grip extended over her left shoulder.
She watched. And she listened.
The couple on the bed below her where making all kinds of interesting noises.
The ginger-haired girl was on her back, arching her spine as if thrusting her well-endowed tits at the ceiling. Her outstretched arms converged on the top of the black and purple haired girl’s head, which was bobbing rhythmically between the ginger’s thighs. On the way there her arms squeezed her tits together, further enhancing the effect of the arching spine. Shadow would just love to swoop on down there and do strange, painful and deeply satisfying things to those tits, but she had her orders. She remained invisible, watching and listening.
The women were moaning and panting heavily. Their moans came at ever-shortening intervals and increasing pitch, until a few minutes later they both reached a crescendo, with limbs twitching uncontrollably.
Shadow let them have their fun. She waited patiently as their orgasmic waves subsided. In the meantime, she observed them with increasing curiosity.
They were both very attractive females, she mused, each in her own way. Ginger was covered, head to toe, in freckles. Shadow had found it off-putting at first but curiously very sexy upon more careful inspection. Obviously, the purple-haired woman did too.
They had started to catch their breath, the ginger one lovingly wiping the purple one’s matted hair from her sweaty brow when Shadow made her move.
Quite effortlessly she somersaulted off of the beam and landed cat-like on her feet on their bed. The katana was already unsheathed when her toes touched the bedcovers. It traversed a hauntingly beautiful arc, glimmering in the moonlight and stopped when it reached the purple haired woman’s skin, at the base of her skull.
Sedira’s eyes flew open, wide like saucepans. She opened her mouth to scream, but her voice stuck in her throat as the metal tip of the wickedly gleaming sword touched her lover’s skin.
“Make a single move, and she dies first.”
Shadow’s voice was a malevolent hiss.
“I am only here to convey a message. Behave, and you will both live long enough to hear me out.”
Shadow could feel their bodies relax, just a little bit. “Still, they must know, this won’t be good news” she mused before continuing.
“You-Ming is dead” Shadow delivered the news unemotionally, “there is a new boss in town now. My Mistress Thextra”
Both girls felt a chill running up their spine and spreading through their veins. This was evil tidings indeed. Who had not heard of that crazy, black-hearted bitch and her small army of drug-crazed, genetically enhanced shadow killers? According to the rumor they were close to superhuman. What they were right now seeing seemed to confirm the rumors.
Shadow continued unabated.
“Your debt to the fat Chinese pig is now transferred to my mistress. Now you work for her.” It was delivered with an air of finality. A statement of fact. Like "the earth is spherical."
Sedira felt darkness envelop her, like a cold, dark and slimy membrane that threatened to steal her breath away. It was so unfair! They had repaid their debt to the triad boss months ago. Now they had gathered enough credits to buy a flat in one of the less glamorous places Uptown and to have their records wiped, new identities forged. They were moving out of this fucking hell hole. And now this. It was so unfair.
The words came out before she even realized she had opened her mouth to speak.
“You are wrong. We’re free, the debt is paid fully and with interest.”
Shadow fixed her with an icy stare. Her eyes were actually white, all white, Sedira noticed and swallowed a lump in her throat.
“My mistress says you haven’t. Interest’s gone up. One more job and she might consider it though.”
Sedira nodded affirmatively, putting on her most meek and passive face, mumbling “I understand.” All the while her hand ever so slowly searched for the grip of the heavy caliber rail gun under the pillow.
Her fingertips were brushing the metal when a bright red dot appeared between her eyes. Sedira froze, and so did Sadie’s breathing.
“Don’t be stupid, girl” Shadow chuckled a bone-chilling sound. A small automatic with laser sights had appeared on her left hand, as if by magic and was pointing at Sedira’s forehead while her sword tip unwaveringly touched Sadies neck.
“Do you have any idea how slowly you’d die if you managed to kill me? What Thextra ‘do to you? Not that You are fast enough anyhow…”
“You know that lady cop who lives on 46th street, on top of the creeps’ turf?”
Both women nodded emphatically.
“You have to ghost her. You have fourteen days. And make it humiliating. There is a message to be conveyed.”
Without any warning, the frightening little apparition jumped off of the bed and in two quick strides disappeared out of the window.
Sadie let out a long stream of air and went limp in Sedira’s arms.
The two held each other for quite a while with Sedira hugging the love of her life to her in a fierce embrace while tears of anger and disappointment moistened her eyes.
It was Sadie who spoke first, a lot later.
“We have to do it. I can see no way around it with us alive in the end.”

***
To be continued...