Rainy Day

It was a rainy day she sat next to the window with her feet propped up on the chair back and her elbow resting on the windowsill.  She took a slow drag off her cigarillo and leaned her forehead against the cool window.  It was morning; entirely too early for her to be putting up with him.  She exhaled loudly.

            “Must you do that now?”  She looked over at the little man sitting on her couch; he was making hand motions over an object sitting on the coffee table.

            “I must,” he responded in a gravely voice, “You like walking right?”

            “I can walk fine without that,” irritation crept into her voice.

            “Well I’m done now so you can stop grousing,” he glared at her, “How’s the arm?”

            “Fine, go away.”

            “Gladly,” he scuttled out the door closing it firmly behind him.  She rested her forehead back on the window and watched him walk down the stairs to his car resisting the rain at every step.  She grimaced.  She had never understood magicians, for some reason they all hated weather and did everything possible to keep from being affected by it.  Her kind though, the wandering samurai as they called themselves did everything they could to be affected by any and all weather, hot, cold, wet, it didn’t matter they loved it.  She gently stood up and hopped over to her cyborg leg sitting on the coffee table, she sat down on the couch and gingerly reattached the leg, flexing it to make sure that the magician had actually fixed it.  She took another drag of her cigarillo and stood up.  She smiled, yes the wandering samurai, those warriors who had been altered either by choice or by force.  They all had cyborg parts that made them stronger, faster, meaner and smarter.  She walked back to the window and sat on the sill; there were always those few wandering samurai who harkened back to the old days and pointed to the ones they had taken their name from and therefore acted honorably.  She made a noise of disgust.  Honor.  It was stupid; she was in it for the money the big fat payoffs you got after you finished a kill.  That was what she loved.  She picked up her gun and pointed it at a random target in the parking lot.  She squinted through the rain, this was what she loved, the rain beating down on you, wetting down your hair and soaking through your clothes like the cold fingers of seaweed and making you squint through a haze that reminded one of a smoky bar.  She pretended to fire off a round.  Yeah, she loved her job.

            She stood up and walked lazily back to the bedroom where she pulled on a pair of black pants and a black sweater and her boots.  She put her gun in its shoulder holster and picked up a duffel bag as she walked outside.  She stood for a moment and lifted her face to the clouds letting the rain fall into her eyes and trace the patterns down her face that tears would normally follow, then she sauntered down the stairs and hopped into her black Honda.  She got in, locking the door behind her out of habit, not necessity.  She put the key into the ignition and lovingly turned it smiling at the engine purr, she slowly put her foot on the brake and lightly gripping the gear shifter, put the car in reverse and then drive.  Once on the road she pressed the gas pedal down as far as it could go and let the car speed up to its maximum; she had lightning fast reflexes and cops could never catch her. 

            A few hours later she was back at her apartment leaning her forehead against the cool window.  The rain was still falling and everything looked much like it had that morning.  She had stripped down to an over shirt and undies and was once again smoking a cigarillo.  She smiled and licked away a drop of blood that had landed on the corner of her lips.  She took a drag of her cigarillo and looked languidly in the direction of her couch.

            “Someone’s going to have to clean that up,” she said surveying the bloody mess that had been a state senator.  She had lovingly, slowly and sensuously shot him and then ripped him apart.  That was how she survived, the cyborg parts that were a part of her body – the leg, the arm, the heart, the lung, the ear, the foot, the ribcage and the eye – demanded blood, ran off of blood, human blood.  She propped her feet up on the chair and took another drag of her cigarillo.  She loved the rain.