01:05
Episode 1: The Original Blueprints
Part 5
Brenda Kitsune did not like the way the early morning sun lit her long platinum blonde hair, at least not the way she thought she would. She stood in front of a full-length mirror turning back and forth to see just how her tresses set off her buttercup-yellow pants-suit.
Brenda frowned at her hair. With a wave of her hand she changed it from blond to auburn, her pant-suit to pastel green, and the room to browns and violets. She smiled at her reflection.
“Much better,” she said aloud.
Brenda returned to her desk and her breakfast. A whole, raw salmon spread wide and already partially consumed lay on butcher’s paper. Brenda tore strips and chunks away from the pink flesh and gobbled them down smearing her cheeks and chin.
Benny Reaver and Carl Johansen stood in the hallway outside Brenda Kitsune’s office. Carl was a small, thin middle-aged man in a bright blue sport-shirt and brown dress pants. Carl’s rat-like face bore two scars in the shape of two’C's — the mark of Carlo Capagio. The scar announced to all comers not only that Carl was once threatened and let go by the current consigliere of the Capagio family but that he was also a survivor and one tough bastard.
Benny was the exact opposite of Carl. He was a young unblemished farm-boy who towered two feet over Carl, his head permanently ducked to avoid too-short doorways and too-low ceilings. Benny had worked as a bouncer for a biker bar in Nevada until the he broke a customer’s head — with another customer. The management bought Benny a plane ticket to Minneapolis and, once he was there, politely asked him to find another job. Then the bar relocated.
“I will not knock,” Carl whispered fiercely to Benny. “I went in first last time. It’s your turn, God damn it.”
“Nuh-uh!” countered Benny. “I went in last time. There was blood all over and she had a fuckin’ tail, remember.”
Carl glared at his young companion and knocked on the door.
“Next time you do it,” he growled.
“Yes?” asked Brenda through the door.
“It’s Carl and Benny Miss Kitsune. You sent for us.”
“All right. Just a minute,” replied Brenda.
Carl and Benny were both more than happy to wait in the hall. After a moment Brenda called them in. Carl opened the door as if there might be an armed man behind it. He entered the room only after first looking both left and right and assuring himself that there was nothing unsavory lurking in a corner. Brenda sat behind her desk de-fished and auburn-locked. Benny entered the room after Carl but with the same care. The two men crossed the room in haste, Carl’s rat-nose working away at the lingering scent of fish. Both men stood mute before the desk and neither looked Brenda directly in the eye. Brenda smiled.
“I got a job for the two of you,” Brenda told them. “I want you to go to a house and kill a man. Can you do that?”
She handed Carl a slip of paper with an address. He looked at the paper and nodded, then stuffed the slip into his pants pocket.
“Good,” Brenda told him. “Do it before five. He won’t be there tonight.”
“Should we call you? Ya know, when we’re done?” Carl asked.
“I’ll be watching,” Brenda answered. “Don’t fuck it up.”
The two men hurried back out the door as fast as they had come in and for a moment Brenda sat behind her desk reveling in her power.
There was no warning: no wall of flame engulfed Brenda, no clap of thunder roared, the room did not spin, and Brenda certainly did not feel herself turned inside-out. She blinked and when she was finished she stood in the back yard of a modest suburban ranch-style house. In a green steel lawn chair before Brenda sat a middle-aged blond in a pink quilted house-coat. Dry oak leaves blew around the chair.
“Did you speak with your hired men?” the woman asked.
“Yes mistress. It will be taken care of tonight.”
The woman nodded. Brenda stood absolutely still with her eyes wide and locked onto the woman. Even though nothing on her changed it looked as though she might turn and run at any moment.
“See that it is. There will be others — a man and a woman. Be careful of them.”
“Yes mistress.”
“And Brenda, this is very important. I will not allow you to fail. Do you understand?”
“Yes mistress.”
Again Brenda blinked and she was back in her office. She stood on rubber legs breathing fast and shallow hearing her heart beat loud in her chest while the fish in her stomach flipped.
“Oh God!” she shouted and ran towards her desk arriving just in time to kneel over a metal trash-can and vomit into it. Brenda knelt there for ten minutes shaking and heaving. When she stood she did so with a bracing hand on her desk. Brenda waved her arm above her head and the room swirled around her. When it resolved the room was dark and dominated by the desk grown to proportions of a large car with the angles of a stealth bomber. Brenda didn’t smile at her handiwork but turned and left the room at a trot.
EPISODES
1 2 3 4 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
