No Dogs in Philly by Andy Futuro

the
scraps of flesh and fastening them around his own
ankles.
    “ What are you doing?”
    “ I…have been…naughty.”
    He tightened the shackles around his legs and
then started on his arms; his neck bulged strangely. She saw under
his earlobe where a player would be was another tiny satellite
device identical to the first, its legs jammed into his skin. A
spasm crossed his face and a sound like a hyena laugh squirted from
his mouth. He tightened the shackles on his arms, and before she
could even process what he was doing, he flicked the key down into
the hole.
    “ No!” she screamed.
    “ Yes,” he said, calmly, and then
there was another hyena laugh that set her skin crawling. “I’m
afraid it is quite ne-necessary now. Please…if you have kindness in
you, the syringe with the red label…please.”
    She stood still. The spasms happened more
quickly now, more hyena laughs; he was shuddering and then he
looked at her and she felt again the feeling of the day going to
night and a fear radiating from him like a wave. It forced her back
and then she ran to the worktable and scrambled to find the
syringe. There it was, in a special holster of its own, packed and
ready. For a second she marveled at how neatly it had been placed,
how ready amidst the clutter, how he had prepared for this
inevitability while working through his experiments. She ran back
to the table.
    “ The girl…” he said. The twisted
smile was lasting longer on his face; his arms and legs were
straining against the chains. She saw that if he was free he would
hurt her now, hurt many people. “Look for the girl…in the fish.”
His hand grabbed at her, stopped by the chains; she stabbed the
syringe into his chest and pounded down the plunger, and then
scrambled to the stairs. She stayed just long enough to make sure
he was still, and then she flew up the stairs and out of the
house.
     

Chapter 6
    Morning. Shit—should have set an alarm. She
jerked herself out of bed and lay on the floor. Across the dirty
gray carpet and mounds of clothes and bottles she saw the
clock—11:34 a.m. Time to get up, maybe. She stood and then shimmied
to the toilet and barfed. She found her peacoat in a pile and
grabbed a handful of Claritol. The sick in her stomach calmed and
the jackhammer in her skull became a simple pat on the head. She
surveyed her apartment—her third apartment in as many months—and
was filled with disgust. No furniture but a mattress, no rooms but
the kitchen-bedroom and toilet separated by a screen. What was she
paying for this shit?
    She found her nicest clothes in a pile and saw
they were covered in blood. She’d broken the heels of her stilettos
and tossed them in a dumpster on her flight back to the apartment,
then when she’d gotten back she’d torn off her clothes, downed a
bottle of gin, and cried herself to sleep. Sure she’d seen people
dead, seen people killed, maybe even killed one or two herself in
the end (it’s not like she went around checking). But to see a man,
even if he was an elzi, rip himself apart like that, and then her
friend, well, colleague at least—she’d seen him around—strap
himself in like that and then make her snuff him. That wasn’t fair,
Friar. You knew what you were doing. You brought me in because you
didn’t have the guts to do it yourself. You were a brave
sonofabitch, braver than me for sure, but there’s different kinds
of brave and you tripped on that last step.
    She found the faux-fox coat she’d bought after
the Favre case; she’d had it less than a week and already it was
covered in blood. A metaphor? A warning? The peacoat was as drab
and dirty as ever and had that bitter all-night-drinking smell that
never seemed to go away, but at least it wasn’t bloody. She found
some clean(?) panties and jeans and then chose the trickiest bra
from her lineup—one with a micro-razor in the strap and a tiny dart
launcher in each tit. The range was shit, six inches maybe, but
enough to conk