budge.
“ID please,” it said. I flashed my card at it.
“Flax, Calliope. First class. Violations including …”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“You are not a registered occupant of this residence. If a registered occupant of this residence is with you at this time, they should provide their ID now. If you are not with a reg—”
I leaned on the buttons next to the door until someone got sick of my shit and buzzed me in. The door was still talking when I slammed it behind me.
Inside, the elevator was out, so I headed up the stairs. The place smelled like piss.
When I shoved the stair door open, I almost ran into some woman with big lips, hips, and tits. She had a mean black eye.
“Excuse me,” she said. She kept her eyes down and tried to go around me.
“Nice eye.”
“Yo, get back here!” some guy yelled from around the corner. From the look on her face, he put the shiner there.
“A regular Romeo, huh?” I said. She stared at me.
“What?”
“You gonna take that?” I asked her.
“What, are you taking a poll?”
“Did you hear me, bitch?” the guy hollered. “I said get back here!”
She pushed past me and went down the stairs.
“Yeah, fuck you, then,” I said as the door slammed shut behind me. I was there for a reason, and she wasn’t it.
I turned the corner and went down the hall until I found 613. When I knocked, someone in there threw something; then footsteps stomped up to the door.
“Fucking bitch,” a guy said under his breath from inside.
The door flew open and a big guy stood there. He had on a tank top to show off his big arms, but half his size was fat. I knew his type; they showed up at the arena all the time. They had big arms and big mouths, but they couldn’t go three rounds.
“Who the fuck are you?” he asked, making a face. He was the same guy that yelled after the girl.
“I’m looking for Zoe Ott. She in?”
“Who?”
“Ott. Scrawny. Red hair. Big beak.”
That made him mad. He knew who she was.
“Oh, that bitch.”
“She here or not?”
“You got the wrong apartment,” he said.
“Records say she lives here, asshole,” I said. The guy was starting to piss me off.
“They’re wrong, dyke.”
I checked her last known address again to make sure. The number said 613. I looked past him to try to see in, but he moved to block me.
“I said she ain’t here!”
“Did she used to live here?”
“You a cop?”
“No, asshole—”
“Then get the fuck out before I either call one or kick your ugly ass out of here.”
“Like you kicked your lady’s ass?”
He gave me the finger and went to shut the door.
“Yeah, I bet that’s the only thing you ever get up you, limp dick,” I said through the crack, and the door stopped. It opened back up, and the dude’s face was red.
“What’d you just say to me?”
“I said fat pieces of shit who hit their lady can’t make their dick get ha—”
He moved faster than I thought he would, and he caught me off guard. He put his hand on my left tit and shoved me hard. I went back on my ass, cracking my head on the wall behind me.
“Fuck you, bitch!”
That was it. I was pissed before, but that was it. He looked surprised when I got back up and came at him. He even tried to shut the door, but he didn’t make it. It slammed against my boot and I shoved it back open with my shoulder. I reached through with my dead hand and grabbed a fistful of tank top and skin, then pulled him out into the hallway.
“Ow! You fu—”
Still holding him with my left hand, I creamed him with my right fist, and he went down like a sack of sand. He wasn’t out, though, just pissed.
“You want it like that?” he said, blood coming out of his nose as he got up. He came at me like a bull and got his big arms around me when he hit. My boots came up off the floor and he heaved me back with his fat gut. I went down on my back, and he came stomping toward me.
“You want it like that?” he said again. “Get up bit—”
From the floor I shot my leg out and put the heel of my boot right in his paunch. His eyes bugged and I thought he’d puke, but he just staggered back. His face went dark when I got up, and I saw death in his eyes. The guy was a straight-up psycho. He blew blood through his nose, down onto his shirt.
“You’re dead, bitch …”
He came at me, and I swung. I broke his jaw, but he kept coming. A door opened behind him and someone looked out, but went right back in. He slammed me into the wall by the stairs and I locked my wrists behind his fat back.
I squirmed under his sweaty arm, scooting behind him. With his gut hanging over my arms, I spun him, pulling him down until we hit the stairwell door and it banged open. He went down on the landing with me on top of him.
People get a look when they start to lose a fight, when they know the beat-down is coming. He got that look when he fell. He went nuts, trying to buck me off and get back up, but he didn’t have the abs for it. I got one knee on his left shoulder, pinning him, and planted my other foot a couple steps down. I hit him with the dead fist, and his lip split open. I hit him with the right, and one of his teeth broke off.
I’d been put in the hospital twice in my life, both times by fuckers like him. I forgot about the skinny bitch with the weird eyes. I hit him again and his nose crunched under my fist. The door slammed open behind me.
“I’m calling the cops!” an old woman screamed. “You hear me?”
He tried to push himself away, but he slipped and started going down the stairs. The door slammed shut as he rolled, landing on his back on the next landing down. I followed him and put the toe of my boot in his ribs. I kicked him twice more, then knelt back over him. I hit him in the face until he shut up and quit moving.
I stood back up and wiped my nose. It was bleeding. He was in a heap in the corner, nose mashed and mouth full of blood. My knuckle was cut and blood was coming out fast, dripping off the ends of my fingers.
I could hear people out in the hall, and from up above. It was time to get out of there.
“Asshole.”
The trip was a bust. The bitch was going to have to wait. I took the steps two at a time down to the ground floor and went out the way I came before the cops showed up.
Faye Dasalia—The Healing Hands Clinic
Deep within the shadows of a disused alley, I slipped between a trash bin and a brick wall, into a dark culde- sac. The ground was littered with trash, where pitted brown ice still lingered from winter. On the far side was a
