Chapter 34: In between

This must be heaven.

I can’t remember what happened, really. I remember that the murderer tore off her mask to reveal that she was Illy. Illy killed Yuki.

I remember how the bullet missed her because I jerked the gun…I remember the crates labeled high explosives. I remember Orange.

And then I don’t remember anything.

But this must be heaven. White, everything’s white; the floor, the wall, the ed. The bed is wonderfully comfortable and springy and –

A very familiar, bald, rainbow faced man glares down into my face. This must be hell.

“Not you,” I groan, trying to wave my arms in front of me. The Boss – a ghost or not I don’t know – shifts his seat back tentatively. As if my random waving motions can hit anything. “Don’t move, Evans,” he growls, and proceeds to bore me with an explanation of how I died and/or survived. I fall asleep again.

When I sleep, I dream. That, you realize, is quite a stupid statement. In my dream, I see Illy. She’s holding the same dagger as when we first met, dressed in her costume, but her mask is off. At first, her face is blank, like a clean blackboard. Then she smiles a little and shakes my hand. “Round three went to both of us,” she says. “Thanks for the game.”

When I blink, the person in front of me is no longer Illy, but Yuki. We are standing on the bridge where we first met, where Yuki got killed. Yuki is dressed in her white winter coat, her black hair flowing out behind her. She looks lovely.

I smile.

She smiles.


-Finis-

Chapter 33: Paradise

He shoots. I’ll let death embrace me, his chilly fingers creep around my back and around my neck. Yes. I’ve been wishing to die for so long.

***

Run.

You still have much more to live for. Just run.

***
I can feel my legs move involuntarily. I run, and run, as crate after crate explodes. And the further I go, the further I am from Evans. He can’t hurt me now.

And I can’t hurt him.

I watch from the docks as the warehouse is blown into pieces, and fireworks are blown off, filling the night sky with a vibrant display of colors.

Goodbye, Evans.

Enjoy your paradise.

Chapter 32: I hate decisions, especially if the wrong one could cost you your life

I have the longest title! This calls for celebrations! Although I don’t have time to celebrate because I’m hunting down a psychotic, deranged mass murder who has almost killed me twice and will definitely finish the job a third time.

All the same…there’s no time like the present. I take out my emergency champagne bottle and pop the cork. The cork hits the murderer on the head and she falls unconscious, and I save the day! Nah, not really. If I did that pigs would fly. And I’m not accepting ‘swine flu’ as an answer.

She runs into a warehouse and I follow. I don’t think, I always follow. Not a good trait for policemen to have, but why am I talking about this when I’m about to die?

Finally she reaches a corner with absolutely no way out. I smirk. “It ends here, doesn’t it?” I say. How very clichéd, especially when it’s a police officer saying it to a prisoner, gun and champagne bottle in hand. Scratch that champagne bottle.

I raise the gun, my finger on the trigger. “Take your mask off or I’ll shoot,” I threaten. She doesn’t comply. The pressure on the trigger increases.

I pull the trigger just as she pulls off the mask and reveals herself to be Illyasviel Medvedev.

My eyes widen and my hands jerk involuntarily. No. NO. “NO!” I shout, throwing the champagne bottle and gun away. The bullet has veered off to the left and has hit one crate. And suddenly, something I considered unimportant at first slips into my mind. On one of the boxes I saw in the warehouse were the words “CAUTION: HIGHLY FLAMMABLE EXPLOSIVES”.

I hate my job.

Chapter 31: Enter-Fate

Pain shoots through my entire body. Grabbing my chin, I feel a sticky liquid flowing from my jaw. James Evans. No, I can’t kill him. I flinch then take off as fast as I can.

***

Kill him, dear.

Kill. You love blood.

Blood. Remember your thorns. Bleed.

Bleed all those who touch you.

No. I am no longer…

***
I make off for the warehouses situated by the docks. I know that those crates contain explosives. Fireworks, to be exact. If Evans shoots – we’ll all blow up. I won’t kill him.

He’ll kill me. And himself.

Chapter 30: Her

I have tied for the shortest chapter title!

Anyway, today the boss calls for me and a couple of other blokes. Apparently the lab has identified the poison, and only a few pharmacies are authorized to sell it. Plus, whoever buys it has to write his or her name down on a list. He’s sending us to stake the various places out. He also says that whoever asks, Denvers died of a heart attack. I raise my hand.

“Didn’t you just say he died of poison?”

The Chief does his fishy charades thing again before dismissing us and calling for aspirin.

Back at my desk, I pick up a pencil and began to write another report – the technicians have refused to give me another keyboard, so the coffee has lost its best swimming pool. A voice suddenly screams into my ear, “Denvers? Dead?” and I am so thoroughly frightened that I drop the pencil and it breaks. A purse slams onto my table, the computer monitor squeaks and drops onto the floor with an ear-shattering crash. Not that my ears need anymore shattering. Illy can scream, by god.

“Heart attack,” I explain, picking up the broken ends of the pencil, leaving the monitor where it is. How come Illy was strong enough to make a computer fall without even touching it? “Now, if you’ll excuse me, Illy, sorry, but I need to work.” I realize I can’t work a moment later, because that pencil was my last one.

***

We experienced boys of stakeout know what that means.

It’s basically a night of eating donuts and watching people through binoculars, or playing poker and losing a lot of money.

This is pretty much what happens at this stakeout. We all file into the building opposite, wearing various civvy clothes. I’m wearing a red checked shirt and khaki pants, a lot better than some of my friends. I swear, they’ve been in police clothes so long they’ve forgotten how to dress normally.

Every hour two of us will go out and patrol the building discreetly. And on my watch, I have the pleasure of meeting her again.

My partner screams like a girl and dives into the nearest bushes. I pull out my gun, my eyes never once leaving hers, and shoot her. The bullet goes right through her jaw. She runs off without another sound and I give chase, thinking longingly, whatever happened to the donut-and-poker stakeouts of old?

Chapter 29: Run

The very next day, I walk into the office to hear chattering going all around. What is going on?

“Denvers? Dead?” I cry in fake surprise. Well, more like scream into Evans’ ear. I slam my purse onto my desk. “How?”

I sigh. My acting is rather good, however, I cannot mask the pain I feel in my arm. I flinch a bit and grab it.

---later that night---

I find myself out of that handy poison. Time to steal. I put on my gear and head out, creeping across roofs and alleys like a stray black cat.

I pick the lock to the back door of the pharmacist’s. The pharmacist has been brewing all sorts of poisons, new and old.

But a surprise awaits me there.

Bang.

***

The rose is bleeding.

And her petals are turning brown.

Her thorns? Sharper than before.

Chapter 28: Touchy, touchy

It isn’t the most fantastic piece of clothing I could wear, but judging from the other coffee stains on my colleagues’ shirts the coffee machines are staging a rebellion against mankind, so I feel find walking into Illy’s cubicle with a suspiciously brown patch on my last clean white shirt.

She is shouting a few words as I walk in and I cringe. Mother always said I was a good little church boy and I still am. I can’t swear and I can’t stand swearing, except when it’s the creator of the profane himself, my boss.

“Are you in a bad mood?” I ask tentatively. From the black face and the grumpy ‘what is it?’ I couldn’t have guessed.

She glares at me.

“Feeling touchy today, I see,” I call after her, my brain working overtime – which is normal time for most others. If she is the murderer, could Denvers have told her? Is that why she’s so grumpy, because everyone knows now?

I go back to the coffee machine and get another cup of coffee. But like I said, the coffee machines are rebelling, and I get squirted in the face with coffee instead.

Wiping everything off as best as I can without touching my nose, I follow Illy to the meeting room with my half empty cup.

“The strand of hair has been stolen,” Chief says, glowering. “No prizes for guessing who was on guard that night.”

Every face in the room turns to look at me, even the cleaner who isn’t supposed to be in here in the first place. Because I can’t intimidate anybody, I look at the cleaner. I can’t do it with him either so I suddenly find the floor very interesting.

“I give you forty eight hours.” I look up to see the boss, his rainbow colors on again. “Find the murderer, or you’re fired.”