The Crystal Shard Chapter 1 Pt. 1

Chapter One Pt. 1
I woke disoriented, looking about my bedroom, unable to remember the events of the night before. But something still seemed different somehow. I stood looking around. Same fluorescent walls, same canopied bed, same spiral carpet, still something wasn’t quite the same. I left my bedroom and walked down the hall thinking.
Same titanium glass floors, same pictures. . .
I walked into the living area and finally understood why I felt this way. It wasn’t the way my room looked when I woke, rather it was the scent. I could smell the blood all the way down the hall in the back of my house. There were three dead bodies strewn about the room in various places.
No four, I thought noticing a man missing an arm next to the far wall. I bent down to examine the body closest to me. When I slid down, I noticed that there was dried blood on my forearms and shirt.
I committed these murders. Oh well, they must have deserved it. Either that or I was in a really bad mood last night. The man was one of my favorite clients and I had planned to save his death for a few more weeks at least. I recognized the other men around my house from dropping the first man off. They were crystal dealers. Quickly I ran toward my library entering the twenty-five digit code to unlock the safe which was hidden behind a few choice editions of Edgar Allen Poe–a set of books that normal people would have locked up in a glass case free of deteriorating oxygen. The display flashed green and I pulled on the shelf. The hidden walk-in safe behind the shelf the safe that had contained a lifetime s supply of crystal was completely empty. Not even one small gem had escaped the thieves’ plunder. Suddenly the events of the night before came back to me.
I had just taken a few crystals — my chosen drug — when my alarm system informed me that I had a few visitors headed up my driveway. Politely, I had waited for them to ring the doorbell before answering the door. When I did open the door, I was shoved to the side by a surly looking man with green-highlighted hair. Another man, who I could not see at the time, held my arms behind my back, pressing me against the wall. The man restraining me had me facing where I could see everything that was going on. There were only the four men. They had cracked my new top security system without even so much as a batted eyelid, and were now emptying all of the contents of my safe into three small bags. One of the men filled his and sauntered his way braggingly toward me. He was the one who had shoved me in the beginning — the one with the green hair.
“Thought that you could keep the existence of your little stash from us, sweetheart,” he said, waving the bag about my face. I knew that its expandable contents contained enough crystals to keep me happy for twenty years or more.
“This little bit here is going to make us very rich.”
“Why should we travel halfway across the universe for them when you have some to spare here?” he laughed. And I recalled thinking that I was going to have to air out this room for a week to rid it of the stench of his putrid breath but I didn’t respond to him.
“Good night, sweetheart,” he said. I saw the bag that was formerly in front of my face swing down hitting me in the temple. The man holding me dropped me to the floor and I landed face down on the metal flooring. I think I broke my nose. I watched as the men filled up their bags and passed them out my still open front door into a car that drove off alone to make the delivery, but I was unable to move. The crystals ingested earlier had both kept me from passing out and prevented me from having any muscle control at all. The men however did not leave; they stayed behind, joking with each other, drinking my liquor and having a few crystals that they had saved for themselves. Eventually I could stand to stay still no longer. Out of sheer anger I overrode my body’s system and stood up, taking a laser knife from my belt at the same time. I was aware of all of them looking at me with mild curiosity.
“Now you’ve given me a headache,” I said, pushing the button on the knife that released the blade. Swiftly, I plunged it up to the hilt, into the skull of the man closest to me, who turned out to be the man with the green hair. I looked up as his blood poured over my hand, just in time to react to the man running towards me with his arms raised. I removed the knife from the now lifeless man’s skull and swung it toward my oncoming opponent. He ran past me but did not manage to escape unscathed, he had left his arm behind. Upon noticing this he began to run repeatedly into the wall next to my fireplace screaming like a loon, until my ears could no longer stand his high-pitched squeals. I slit his throat and turned back toward the remaining to men.
My client ran from the room, fearing for his life, to look for another nonexistent exit in the back of my house. I ignored him for the moment and instead tuned my attention to the man sitting on my sofa. He hadn’t moved a muscle since I began killing his comrades. He seemed too confident. As I moved toward him menacingly, he raised his head, causing his thick hair to move away from his eyes. He looked at me and I decided that he was too secure in his existence to be allowed to exist. I lashed out at him, meaning to take his eyes out of their revolting sockets.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he told me nonchalantly, making my knife pause mid-swing.
“Why the hell not?” I asked not wanting to go into the ‘but—you’re—not—me—are—you?’ argument.
“Because I can make you a very rich young lady,” he said pulling out a nail file. I laughed and then allowed my knife to slice through the air in a purple arc. He looked up at me his eyes wide in pain and astonishment, as his jaw fell into his lap.
“What makes you think I’m not rich already?” I asked him. He made a gurgling noise in response and I swung the knife upward through the base of his skull, far enough to see the tip of the blade coming through his hair. His eyes rolled up into the back of his head and I tugged effortlessly on the hilt, watching him fall backwards on the sofa. Blood was now splattered on my forearms and chest and I still had one more person to take care of. He coincidentally ran out of my hallway at this very moment. I used the flat side of the knife to stop his escape. The laser burned through his shirt and into the first few layers of his skin, leaving a bleeding wound, though I hadn’t even touched him with the actual blade. He fell to the ground, screaming.
“So how should I kill you?” I said, stifling a yawn before pausing and thinking about it for a few moments.
“On second thought, you don’t get a choice.” I shoved the knife through his throat and into the floor beneath. If he hadn’t been screaming in pain, I would have heard it sizzle as the liquids in contact with it boiled. As his screams finally petered out into nothingness, his soul fleeing the mortal world, I turned my back to him.
“If you don’t mind, I’m going to bed.” And with that I had walked to my room and passed out on the bed#SYMBOL \f "Symbol"188
And so I awoke to this. Now that I knew what I was dealing with, I went back to the living area and surveyed the damage. A priceless vase was shattered on the floor underneath the man with no arm’s thick body, my favorite antique rugs were covered in blood, along with my sofa, even my coffee table was cracked down the middle and I can t remember at all how that could have occurred. And my floors were covered in dried blood that I would have to scrub myself.
“This is what I get for a night of fun...” I grumbled.
I began with taking off my ruined clothing and shoving them into a garbage bag along with the damaged rug and broken vase. I piled the bodies into my car but it didn’t have enough room for all of them at once. I had to take them one trip at a time, plus another for the furniture, to the local fire pit that was normally left unguarded. Today however, it was being guarded, for whatever reason but my bags weren’t checked. The day guard even helped me get them out of the trunk. Silly fool#SYMBOL \f "Symbol"188
I returned home around noon, now able to see my floor, that should have been giving off a shiny metallic gleam, but instead was drenched in blood. I sighed and grabbed a bucket from the hall closet. It only took a few minutes to wash the blood away; the splattering on the walls was an entirely different thimble of neutron star, however. They weren’t coated with layers of washable titanium. I cleaned them the best that I could and then called Alice: my housekeeper. She came over right away with the proper chemicals and began to clean the walls that I described as happening after a wild party the night before. She didn’t ask any questions; she never did.
The next week I spent looking around town for replacements for my furniture along with an upgraded intruder alert system, fighting my worsening withdrawals. I found replacements that were better than what I’d had in the first place.
But before I could leave I had a couple customers that I had to take care of. Both of them were no-good and this would be the last time that they went across my doorstep on their own two feet. My security system warned me of my visitors before hand as usual, and I answered the door as the bell rang. My first client had arrived. His name was Cameron. I had known his surname at one time and although I was technically supposed to keep records of my clients, I don’t remember it. The filing cabinet in my living area was just for show.
Cameron had short bleach blonde hair and freckles. He was also three months late on my payments, with possibly no intention of paying anytime soon. I still didn’t know exactly how to kill him, but as he walked in the door an idea came to me.
“Hello, Miss Mila. Terribly sorry but I don’t have your payment as of yet. My wife insists upon taking care of our money lately, I’ll get it to you soon though.”
“That’s all right, Cam. I have a way that you could work it off, if you don’t mind waiting for your session for a few minutes.” I told him sweetly.
“Certainly, I’ll do anything to help you.”
“Come into the kitchen then.” He followed directly behind me, overjoyed that his pathetic lie had worked on me. I pointed to the drain.
“I dropped a spoon down my drain this morning; could you pull it out for me?” I asked innocently, and despite the obvious falsity of the statement he believed me. Cameron sauntered toward the sink, obviously pleased that he could pay his debt so easily. He stuck his hand into the drain, fishing for the lost silverware. However, as soon as his hand descended down the drain, its presence disrupted the laser beams inside, causing the garbage disposal to activate automatically. A spray of blood twirled out of the drain as his entire arm began to pull inward. He was in such a shock, he couldn’t scream, instead his mouth remained open in mute surprise, until his arm broke off at the shoulder and he was free of the drain. He turned to me, his mutilated arm, gushing blood onto my clean floor.
“You little . . .” he began.
“Threat detected!” a ringing voice echoed around the room. Cameron stopped short. After my crystals were stolen, I had a new system installed. This one was meant to keep annoying pests out of your yard. Instead I used it to achieve my own murderous accomplishments. A few seconds later high energy neutron lasers shot from hidden places about the room, reducing Cameron to a smoldering pile of sludge.
I doubled over in laughter over my own cunning. I hit a button on the wall and a robot reaching only to my knee, scurried from beneath the sink, mopping up the little mess that was once Cameron. Just as it was finishing up, my doorbell rang again. I hadn’t even heard the announcement of his arrival. Quickly I went to the door to find my other insignificant soon-to-be-dead customer. He was wearing a suit—something I had never witnessed before and he looked strained.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Vanite, I can t stay today. I just came by to give you your payment for the last few months. I’m glad that you are so lenient about this. I’ve included a few extra thousand for it being so late. I’ll be by next week for my scheduled appointment.” He handed me a bulging manila envelope and then scurried down the steps.
Damn, I guess I only get the joy of testing my security system once...