For almost three hours, I’d sat outside the Tasty Cup Cafe. I had sipped at the bitterest coffee in existence – and ignored a slice of cake so inedible it didn’t even tempt flies.

​

Across the two-lane street from the cafe was the focus of my attention. Alphonse’s Bric-a-Brac, a small store selling... well, basically, crap. If you wanted an item that was out-of-date, defunct, a manufacturer’s reject, or second-hand and likely useless, this dim-lit junk store was a place for you to explore. I’d walked around the dump a day earlier, in disguise, and left wondering how such a place could exist. In the clothing section, I’d seen trousers possessing two different sizes of leg – an amusing highlight amid the poorly sewn, hideously coloured ranges. The tech aisle featured an offer on water-damaged boxes containing computers which predated Windows (and I mean any version of Windows). And the small food section? Just a glance almost gave me gastroenteritis – many cans and packages were six years past their use-by dates; and living things skittered inside the cereal boxes.

​

My venture into the shop had given me a glimpse of its solitary storekeeper. He was forty-odd years of age, but excessive drinking, an addiction to cheap cigars (and maybe other drugs) and a disdain for anything healthy, made him appear over sixty. His limbs were skinny enough to be called spindly, yet his torso had a sagging beer gut. And the guy’s ugly head led me to label him Rat Man: long, wild black hair streaked with grey; a small narrow face, no forehead to speak of, beady dark eyes, a bulbous hook-nose, a tiny mouth, and a mess of whiskery beard. He wore patched, stained jeans and a black T-shirt displaying a cartoon devil playing an electric guitar. Faded-to-green tattoos snaked up his bare arms.

​

During my visit, a young woman – aged between fifteen and twenty – had approached Rat Man and been taken through the door behind the counter. She hadn’t returned from the shop’s back room during the half-hour I’d remained ‘browsing’. This, plus her pasty complexion and sickly condition, had confirmed to me what this store really was. The shopkeeper returned to his chair behind the counter after being away for ten minutes. A nasty kind of glee lit his eyes – and I’d have happily gouged them out.

 

*     *     *

 

My problem today, on this miserable drizzly afternoon, was Alphonse’s solitary would-be customer. The lady was in her sixties, heavily built, and seemingly intent on examining every goddamned item in the dingy emporium. A glance at my watch confirmed she had been browsing for ninety-six minutes. If not for her, I would have been in and got my business done by now.

​

“Will you please fucking buy something..?” I muttered under my breath.

​

Now the woman held a fake brass trophy. Its handles were of different sizes and out of alignment.

A voice chirped in my ear from the earbud receiver there.

​

“Patience,” Pearl chided. Her soft purring tones were almost joyful. “Sheesh, for a guy who uses the name ‘Slowly’, you really are in a rush...”

​

“This isn’t slow, it’s glacially turgid.” The miniature mic taped to my throat transmitted my whispered voice. “I tell you, she’s got five more minutes. Then I’m going to go in, shoot her in the head and get to work.”

​

“Please don’t.”

​

“You haven’t seen the stuff she’s been looking at. She deserves killing for reasons of awful taste.”

​

“She might be bored. Or maybe she’s gone in to get out of the rain.”

​

“She should go somewhere else,” I stated flatly.

​

“You’re grumpy because of the lousy coffee in that cafe.”

​

My eyes followed the old lady checking out an oversized can of insect killer. For God’s sake, don’t buy it, I pleaded to myself. Who knows what the can contains? It might wipe out your entire neighbourhood.

​

“I’m not grumpy, I’m pissed off. And my ass has gone to sleep.”

​

I paused, not thinking about the woman, the shop or even the mission. Here I was engaging in conversation with a partner I trusted completely. Hell, I was enjoying it. Only a year ago I’d been a lone wolf, an assassin who would kill practically anybody for money. The number of targets in the ground – and vanished off the face of the earth – due to my skills, would terrify a normal person. Now I was still a killer, however my targets were chosen by the organisation I’d joined: my victims didn’t just deserve to be killed, they needed to be. Pearl, the voice in my ear, had recently nursed me back from near death, and fought beside me in battle while I was injured. She was my handler and partner. Somehow, against all the distrust and paranoia I’d trained into my younger self, I’d come to accept her as my friend. My only friend. Ever. Even if she delighted in being a pain in the backside.

​

Inside the shop, the can of insect (and possible people-) killer was returned to its shelf. My female nemesis strode to the front door of the shop and exited.

​

“She’s gone,” I reported, “Thank God.”

​

“Good, no need to slaughter her.”

​

“I’m going across. Call the store now.”

 

*     *     *

 

While I paced across the road, I saw Rat Man react behind his counter at the rear of the shop. His landline phone had rung, and he propelled himself on his wheeled office chair to pick up the receiver. This distracted his attention from the front of the store.

​

I entered, closed the door, and drew out my mobile phone. Turning my back on the shopkeeper – as if for privacy – I pretended to read a text message. My free hand locked the door and flipped the OPEN/CLOSED sign around to tell the world outside the shop had shut. Afterwards, I turned about, put my phone away, and headed for the counter.

​

Rat Man was speaking into the phone and growing more agitated by the second.

Good, let Pearl keep him occupied. Let me get to the counter before he has any chance of reacting. Because if he senses I’m not a casual shopper and he’s got a hidden shotgun at hand, things could get messy.

​

I had advantages. First, I did appear to be a casual shopper. Open leather jacket, Hawaiian T-shirt, dark pants; my left hand held a grocery bag in which a loaf of bread was plainly visible. My hair was close-cropped and I’d applied fake tan to give me a bronzed look; add to this a pair of glasses and a friendly smile. Second, my clothing hid my toned physique, the suppressor-fitted pistol at my hip, four throwing knives, and clips of spare ammunition.

​

“What are you talking about, lady?” the storekeeper blurted. “I haven’t had a visit from any safety inspector...”

​

He looked from the phone to me, now halfway through the aisles to his counter. There was embarrassment in his expression – obviously I’d heard his loud side of the phone conversation.

“Our tax dollars at work,” I said, and chuckled, getting closer.

​

A harassed nod formed his response. Then: “What the heck do you mean, an infestation?”

​

I reached five paces from the counter and stopped. In a low hiss, I told Pearl: “Go.”

​

What my partner said to the shopkeeper next changed his expression from confusion to outright bafflement:

​

“Now put the phone down and raise your hands.”

​

Instead of complying, he froze.

​

So I drew the pistol out and pointed it at his face.

​

“Do what the lady said.”

​

The bafflement didn’t leave his face, but he obeyed.

​

His hands went up above his head.

​

“Seriously...” he gasped. “You’re robbing this place? Jesus, I have only four dollars in the till...”

“Clamp your jaws together tight,” I rasped. My smile was gone, replaced by something real nasty. What he saw in my eyes turned his stomach and chilled his spine.

​

I watched his teeth come together, the jaw muscles flex under his ratty whiskers.

​

And I shot him through both palms.