On the dark rain-slick streets of the dirty city, in the garbage-strewn alleys and the shady back-street businesses with the blinds pulled down, they had a name for her: The Lady in Red. Rumors passed in whispers, nervous glances over the shoulder: she could be there. She could be Anywhere.
Lady H did not mind these rumors. These rumors were better than the Gossip and Complaints, the little people with their petty thoughts and petty crimes -- it was Good for them to fear her.
Tough men had made these streets run red with blood, and who was to say a Dame could not do the same?
Lady H loved the feel of a gun in her hand: the power, the weight, the fact that a single pull of the finger could put an end to the whimpering cries on the person on their knees in front of her, on a cement floor in a basement beneath an abandoned building, down a street with no streetlights, overrun by rats and filth.
This sick and dying city abandons its buildings, and the World of the Swells had abandoned her, left her for dead.
They did not know that Lady H would not go down quietly. Lady H would not go down at all.
Coming back to her office, she closed the door behind her, the glass in the door frame rattling its loose fit. Yes, the office needed work, but there were other pieces of business that had to be attended to first, dirty business that so often ended in lead and blood.
"Is that you, Lady H?" her assistant Huma called from around the file cabinets. Those file cabinets: what they contained could bring this very city to ruin.
"It's me, my sweet," lady H said as she approached her raven-haired assistant. Huma wore dark red lipstick because that is what lady H liked: Huma did Everything that Lady H liked.
"I have a glass of Vodka on the desk for you."
Hillary picked up the chipped glass and made quick work of its contents.
"You know what I want you to do Huma."
"Oh Lady H, you know I hate this part..."
Lady H removed the gun from her purse, the gray metal still warm from finished business.
"Put the barrel between those red lips, Huma."
"Huma started to speak, realized it would be of no use, then simply did what she was asked.
"Suck on it, my sweet Huma. Suck hard."
Huma sucked on the barrel of the gun, her head moving back and forth, causing her long sweep of dark hair to cascade down to the cleavage contained in her tight pink sweater.
"That's right, Huma," Lady H said, patting Huma softly on the head before withdrawing the gun.
"This whole damned dirty town will one day suck on my gun, I swear it," as a look of fear crossed Huma's pale yet exotic complexion.
"
"You know I wouldn't hurt you, right Huma?"
"Yes, Lady H," Huma replied, a trace of uncertainty in her voice.
"Ah, Huma, but actually I would. If you ever let me down or double-crossed me I would shoot you as surely as I shoot those men in the basement."
"I -- I understand, Lady H."
"No one crosses Lady H", Lady H said, while Huma poured her another shot of vodka...
I am Laslo.
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