I'M HYPERVENTILATING in the car, having the biggest anxiety attack on the way down. Astrid is unusually quiet. I didn't say shit about killing anyone but she's not an idiot. The drive into the bowels of West Seattle is just as boring as West Seattle itself. It leaves too much time alone with your thoughts. After a few swerves and dirt roads we reach the humble home of one Andrew Andros Cowboy whatever-the-fuck. I'm sweating bullets as we pull up to his place. From the outside it's a meh one story house with a few rooms. I find a key under a fake rock outside the front door. This gimmick has to be the saddest thing I've seen in a long time. I unlock the door. Me and Astrid slip in unnoticed by the neighbors, if he even has any. I bring Astrid in as I want a lookout in case one of the other roommates comes home early. The place is quiet and serene. Easy in, easy out. Nothing to fear. That is until a mannequin dressed in clothes with a blank expression moves towards us. We both have the biggest fucking heart attack and scream as Gwen comes out of her room unexpectedly. She's the uncanny valley in real life. A fucking plastic person without a shred of emotion. A genuine sociopath.
“JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!” My heart explodes.
“Oh, thank god. I was afraid it was Andrew.” Gwen says with no inflection. It's an afterthought of an sentence.
“OK, whatever. I'm with The Family. No questions, don't ask our names, we were never here. Just let me work and you go hide in your room.” I am not dealing with this creepozoid. “Just tell me where he keeps his drugs.” I want to get out of here as fast as possible now.
“Dressing draw in his room along with his guns.” She says like a robot.
“Guns?” My eyes light up. I'm sure he won't miss one or two, especially when he's dead.
“He waves them around all the damn time. Uzis, rifles, handguns. He just shoves it in our faces when he's drunk.” Gwen's speech is weird. It's like she's rehearsing a script. I'm starting to have doubts about her story. Her body language is off too.
In my time traveling I learned to read people real fast. Body language is everything. Sociopaths all have the same blank reading pose. They stand still, their face is expressionless, and they speak in a monotone voice. They only emote in reaction to your own emotions. Without the ques they're just stuck in reading mode. Right now, Gwen reads as a stone cold sociopath. Not even Emily was this bad.
I turn my back on her and get to work. I don't have time to listen to this living doll recite stories to me. I pull out some rubber gloves, the plastic bags with the poisonous powder, and I open the door to Andrew's room and start poking around. It doesn't take long to find his shit. There in the first fucking draw of his dresser is a tun of coke, heroin, shrooms, and pills. I start with lacing the coke as I figure that'll be his first party favor. If I lace everything, chances are he'll die before he can sell it and it won't take any druggies with him... hopefully... in theory.
“HI ANDREW!” I hear Gwen shout. I didn't even hear the door open and the fucker is already home. Why does everything have to fuck up this royally? Shit, I'm fucked. I can hear through the door that Astrid is introducing herself to buy me time. There's no place to hide in his room. His windows are those stupid, narrow sliding glass ones that I sure as fuck couldn't fit through. I'm fucking 5'11” and weigh 158lb! My fat ass ain't getting out so I gotta go through him. I grab the poison powder bag, put it in my gloved hand, and run out.
One second the beefy nitwit is being awkward around Astrid. The next his head tilts a bit to catch the blur that just shot at him. He's not a fighter, as anyone who even went to a beginner's boxing class would have the instincts to throw their hands up. He barely processes the woman running at him. I get right in his grill and plant that plastic bag right in his face. All hell breaks loose.
He coughs, staggers back, and goes to throw a punch at me. He barely connects, brushing by my cheek, but it still knocks me back. Astrid rushes into his legs and Gwen starts hitting him with a lamp. This dude is huge and knocks Gwen the fuck out. He kicks Astrid across the room with one leg. He glances at me but already has written me off as a threat. He switches focus to the woman in front of him; Gwen.
He lunges at her and begins to strangle her. I grab the nearest object, a gottverdammt drinking glass, and slam it into his head. Nothing. He elbows me back and returns to strangling Gwen. Jesus. Astrid is running into the kitchen. I go into his room to get one of his guns but he quickly punches me in the side of the head and I hit the wall. Astrid returns, weapon in hand. She has a huge cast iron skillet and breaks his leg with it. I get behind him and I kick him in the balls. Between the two of us he finally screams. He begins to sink into the floor. He starts panting and gasping and finally turns red. The poison is starting to get to him. He spends about 4 minutes throwing up and choking before he dies. Gwen is also a goner. Dude got the poison powder all over her face while she was being strangled.
Reality comes back to us and all at once me and Astrid come to a very obvious realization; we're huffing poison air. We race outside, slamming the door open. The two of us gasp huge breaths of clean, woodland air hoping it will help. The paranoia has us wondering if the powder got to us too. The adrenaline wears off and we get our shit together. The poison doesn't work on skin contact alone or we'd be dead. It, well as far as I remember, had to be ingested. Andrew got it all over his mouth as did Gwen. Once me and Astrid get our fear under control we begin the clean up, vacuuming as much of the stuff as we can.
Astrid wipes her prints from the skillet and puts it in Gwen's hand. I bring the coke out on the counter so it looks like he did a line before going postal. We come up with a lie in case the police or anyone else asks. Our story; we were hanging out with Gwen then Andrew kicked us out when he got home and started arguing with Gwen. Hence why our prints and whatnot are there. We agree to be sketchy on the details and just go “Gee, I barely remember that day.” It's flimsy. Very flimsy. The whole thing is so obviously fucked.
I call Jer-Bear and give him the lowdown. He says a cleaner is gonna swing by and take care of everything for us. So all that vacuuming was a waste of time. I ask him about the rest of the drugs and guns. Astrid's ears perk up and her eyes are on me. “Yeah, yeah, all of it?” I ask. “Gotcha.” I look at Astrid and I smile ear to ear. Time to rob these corpses blind! Nothing like grave robbing before the stiffs are even in the ground.
We grab some duffle bags out of the car. Astrid usually uses these for art supplies but this time we stuff 'em with the drugs I didn't lace, guns, and whatever else we can steal. The poison coke stays behind obviously. Nothing builds a friendship quite like committing murder and selling drugs together. It's warm, fuzzy moments like this that remind me I do have friends who love me.
How does one go about selling drugs and guns in a modern surveillance state? Surprisingly easily. It requires you to know the right people, of course. That you avoid technology. Do things the old fashion way. Our first stop in fencing this shit is a photocopy place in the U District. As cliché as it sounds, I know a guy. The dude at the counter is a made man for a local gang and does a very poor job of hiding it. Probably shouldn't have told me when we first met. Seattle is known for many things and common sense isn't one of them. I've sold drugs to him before. I text him in our coded lingo. Plausible deniability is key. I arrange for him to buy the guns. I've got another friend who deals drugs at raves, Tiffany Bernard. She's married to his pretentious fetish photographer and is one of the most insincere people I've ever met. I do keep one goody for myself; a Sig Sauer P238. It's small and got some stopping power, so I keep it in my pocket. I don't know shit about guns but a small handgun with big bullets is just right for me.
As we drive through the nicer parts of Seattle I insist we blast Hustle Bones by Death Grips loud enough for the ears of everyone around us to bleed. Astrid keeps the car running as I hop out with the guns. I duck into the shop and my boy Corey, the wannabe mobster greets me. He's barely keeping up as I show him the good. His boss, Zan, is there to check the guns out as well. He's a guy I've met before. I once applied to get a job at his burger joint. Officially he's just the manager of a few stores in the U District. Zan is kind of the head crime lord of The Ave, if you can believe The Ave has or needs one. He leads us into the shop's basement. Zan says '...and this is where we keep our Chinese immigrants' as we enter.
“You're the only person who ever laughed at that joke. I like you.”
In the back of the basement is a section that has mattress everywhere. It's a makeshift shooting range. In the corner nearby are a bunch of smashed up florescent lights.
“I call this the break room because someone keeps coming down here and breaking all our spare lights when they're pissed.” Says Zan nonchalantly.
We go through the guns and test them one by one. Each one that passes, being all of them, is greeted with a number Zan mumbles off and Corey nodes. I keep one of the handguns for myself, just in case. The gun testing is wrapped up and the guns are locked away in a safe hidden behind some supply boxes. We head upstairs to get my cash. Zan takes us into the office. Corey has a server running I try to catch a glance at. I can tell from what little I can see of the screen it's running a surveillance program. Probably from a private contractor. Zan finishes counting the cash and tosses me some serious fat wads for the haul. Between me and Astrid it's round 15k EACH! I've never had this much money in my entire life.
I fly out of the place and back into the car. I chuck the cash in the backseat. Off to dealer number two we go. We speed over to Cap Hill to dump the drugs on Tiffany. It's a dull affair by contrast. She greets us outside of her apartment and gives us a measly few hundred. Still, money is money and we didn't get busted yet.
With the hard part out of the way it's time for a little R&R, by which I mean the drugs we kept for ourselves. We pop some gabos and head to the Pike Market to make up for our previously scheduled drug binge. Allegedly you're supposed to be sober to use magic but I've slowly caught on that it's only for the introduction period. After that, you can go back to binging. I see Jer-Bear and Gregory drink beers all the time. I see Silas burning through joints like the Washington forests catching fire in August. I once saw a witch put coke in a nasal spray bottle and just get lit all day with no one being the wiser.
We wander around, pissing our newfound money away. Very dumb of us to not even try avoiding suspicion but fuck it. We stagger into one of the fancy, tourist trap grocery stores. My first purchase is hardly exciting but I get a fancy French roast coffee. Astrid stocks up on expensive European candy. After that the drug train blunders into Nordstrom for us to get new digs. New coat, new boots, new jeans, new panties, new bras. Our 80s montage spending spree ends rather anticlimactically. We hug outside and say some awkward goodbyes. Astrid takes off back to The Hill to go get dinner with her boyfriend. I head back to Wallingford to go home as I'm running on instinct. We all have the muscle memory that guides us when we're fucked up. By the time I'm halfway there I realize I don't live there anymore. It's no big deal. A quick trip down memory lane couldn't hurt. I can still catch the 26 back to Georgetown so I figure I'll just go bar hopping for a tiny bit and head back.
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