(Working chapter 1) ---Black bile oozed between Grandfather's lips, and dripped onto the attendant's bloated abdomen. The drip became a trickle, which became a steady stream, and soon he was vomiting a thick torrent of the shining liquid. ---Where it touched the attendant, it boiled and frothed and formed a sickly lather, and as it bubbled it ate away at the flesh. The skin on the man's stomach was becoming liquid and starting to slide around. Beads of blood sprang up where the upper layer had been completely dissolved. ---Grandfather's head lolled forward, and underneath his bushy, flaking eyebrows, his blind eyes rolled insanely. With a sudden fluid movement of his arm, he unhooked the straight razor from its holster and flipped out the dull blade. It was just as he remembered. ---His obscenely gnarled hands trembled, and his breath was rapid. Grandfather hunched over the attendant, reaching out and stroking the places that had been prepared by the mucus. His jaw still hung slightly open as he bent down for a closer view... ---And Grandfather began to shave. (Working chapter 2) ---Plum opened the miniature door and stepped inside. He was in what seemed to be a reception room; against one wall there was a booth occupied by an obese young man, and ahead of him a wide corridor quickly turned a corner. The room was small and lamp- lit; the dim light and yellowed wallpaper, thought Plum, made it somehow seem underground. ---There were vast piles of coats in every conceivable place. Space had been cleared in the middle of the room, but Plum had to step over heaps of dark cloth before he even had enough room to shut the door. The highest of the coat-towers loomed, threatening to topple over. In his mind Plum knocked into one and it came tumbling down, pressing on him and making him breathe musty air. ---The man, whom Plum thought of as the attendant, was intently staring at something underneath the counter of the booth and fidgeting. Perhaps he was playing with a puzzle; at any rate he did not acknowledge Plum, and he seemed to be holding his breath. ---“Pardon me,” said Plum. “May I leave my coat here?” ---The attendant frowned, still concentrating on the activity. After a moment he let out a long rushing sigh, then finally looked up at Plum, somewhat accusingly. ---“One pays inside. This is the cloakroom.” ---“Yes, I thought it was,” explained Plum. “I wondered whether I might leave my coat here?” He gestured vaguely at the piles as if to justify his question. ---The attendant glanced underneath the counter again, then back at Plum. He seemed to make a calculation. “I'm afraid this room is full. You'll have to put it in the back.” He jerked his thumb toward a doorway Plum had not noticed; it was in the booth's shadow, framed by stacks of coats. ---“A-ha, thank you.” Plum took a step toward the doorway, then hesitated and looked to the attendant to make sure he had properly understood. However, the man was again absorbed in his unknown occupation, and Plum felt that further questions would somehow provoke him. ---He made his way around the front of the booth, stepping over a discarded fur. There was a thick wall of coats just inside the doorway, long enough so that no light escaped underneath them, and for all Plum knew the next room was completely dark. He turned sideways and pushed against the mass with his shoulder; it briefly yielded, but only to swing back and bear down on him. He had a sudden fear that if he continued to push, it would simply surround him and he would be unable to move. ---After a final heave, though, he was through, and he found himself standing in a long, narrow chamber with a low ceiling, lit by an exposed bulb. Around the perimeter, forming a rounded oblong, was a high railing, onto which hangers were affixed; the hangers, of course, bore coats of all sorts. The space between the rails was not great, but Plum could move comfortably enough, and he began to look for a free hanger onto which to hang his own overcoat. However, the coats were very densely packed, and it was impossible to tell which hangers, if any, were empty. He supposed he would have to reach blindly into them, though he felt a sinking reluctance, for no reason he could name. (Working chapter 3) ---Grandfather slept restlessly. He had finished working for today, or perhaps he had finished yesterday's work and there was no more for today. It was of course possible that there would never be more. However, he was prepared; he wore his vest, though it was not his usual practice to retire clothed. He was glad he wore it; the vest gave him an excited, nearly sick feeling, and he knew he could rely on it. And without having to touch it, he knew too his razor was in its holster, secured to the vest. At times he felt an unbearable urge to grasp the smooth bone handle and hold it tightly, but he did not act on it. Once it occurred to him that perhaps he could not move his hand at all, but he dared not risk trying, in case he turned out to be right; and since there was no outstanding work, there seemed no good reason to do so. ---Although he had been sleeping for some time, Grandfather did not dream. At least he did not remember ever dreaming, though he often half recalled events, and thinking about a recollection later it sometimes seemed to have been a dream. Now, though, he knew he was dreaming, because in his recollections his heart did not beat, and his hands did not twitch, and he had not seen so clearly in a very long time. The mucus rose in his throat; it was warm and thick. He felt an overwhelming anticipation. ---In his dream, Grandfather was surrounded by dark, heavy coats, and there was work to be done. (Working chapter 4) Plum fought back an urge to tear ass out of there, and never look back, but he had a job to do. He looked towards his goal. The end of the room and hopefully, a way out. Row upon row of coats, one at waist level, the other at eye level. He could just make out the ruddy glow of a flickering light, and what sounded to him, like a one winged moth attempting to commit suicide up around the corner and off to the left where the coats ended. He pushed on, suddenly, something sharp and hooked snags his shoulder forcing him around with a startle. A wire hanger that had fallen into the envelope like pocket of a ladys rain slicker had done its dirty work inside his left bicep, making a suprisingly deep and filthy puncture wound. "I fucking despise wire hangers" he said, matter of factly towards the idiot behind him working the entry counter, now clearly out of view, and probably ear shot by this point. "And fur for that matter, you fat bastard". By a stroke of sheer luck, right next to the rain slicker there is coincidentaly a vacant spot for his coat. Hanging his coat his arm begins to throb as only a puncture wound can ache. He could also clearly feel the warm trickle of blood running down is arm towards his moist and musky armpit in time with the rapid beating of his heart which was now ringing out as loud as a bass drum in his temples. He despised the night shift, and since the death of his partner Luke Handy, almost a year ago, to the day, he has been working the late shifts and wacko cases that no one else in their right mind in the department would take, like this one. I mean, who ever heard of a crazy old blind man in a suped up wheelchair killing folks randomly and with no preference, other than a good clean shave? Working a Metropolitan area with no set pattern over the last twenty years? No one, but Plum and a few others, that's why he was assigned this job, he was glossaphobic and had an intolerable stutter when dealing with the press, and this case was one more killing away from being a media circus. He's no fool, he knew that he was the mayor's secret weapon for a quick re-election, or maybe just an expendible scapecoat. But there was something else troubling Plum, what did this old man do before he was in a wheelchair? Maybe he hadn't always been in that chair, he was probably somebody's son, father, grandfather, husband. Plum snickers at this notion, then, noticing a twinkle of light coming from a small pin on the slicker's collar, he takes it down and investigates. A shriner's fund donation gold-member-clip-broach, clearly only gold plated, but still not the kind of gift that a charity gives away flagrantly to their various philanthropists and donaters for being penny pinching Jews either. There is something else too, the pin is older than him by thirty years, making it well over a clean half a century old, but that's not the only odditty, for the first time Plum has also begun to notice that all of the coats in the room are, strangely enough, from all sorts of different time eras. Some are from the twenties, the sixties, the eighties others more recent styles, some even older, some aristocratic and glamorous, while others are cheap and lower middle class. This freak observation is coupled by his noticing of a very queer odor in the coat room that is practically borderline nauseating. The putrid smell is both quite pungent and overbearing. A cross between Elizabeth taylor's white diamonds perfume, mothballs, body odor, and men's old spice. There is another more powerfully disturbing smell mixed into the other more mundane smells. Almost, most certainly, unnoticable to the untrained, but definitely there to the nose of the wise. The smell of fresh urine and working bile. Intermission. By -=Dark_Angel=- and horus8.