Total pages in book: 67
Estimated words: 80391 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 402(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 268(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80391 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 402(@200wpm)___ 322(@250wpm)___ 268(@300wpm)
I was just putting my uniform in my duffel bag and zipping it up when a knock sounded on my front door.
“Hey,” I said brightly when I found her on my front porch.
She smiled exuberantly at me before coming inside and closing the door behind her. “You want a water?” I asked, trying not to notice the shortness of her shorts.
She was wearing really short, and by really short, I mean, I could see her ass cheeks short, gray knit shorts. Her top resembled what used to be a t-shirt that had the sleeves cut off with what resembled a butcher knife. The shirt said “Lone Star Saturday Night” on it with a bear smoking a cigar underneath it. The armholes of the shirt weren’t actually armholes, but more like large...slits. I could see the black sports bra she was wearing, as well as the tattoo’s that ran down both of her sides.
She nodded. “Yes please.”
A couple of minutes later we were walking up the sidewalk that ran along the road beside our apartment. We lived in what amounted to a large circular subdivision of apartments. It was a large loop about a mile and a half all the way around.
We took a left once we reached the end of the parking lot, and I finally scrounged up the nerve to ask about something I’d wanted to know for a while now.
“So, tell me about your...pets.” I said hesitantly.
She looked at me sharply and smiled a little hesitantly.
“I thought you guessed. I wasn’t really trying to keep it secret.” She said dryly.
I shrugged. “I can guess for the most part, but I would love some confirmation. My imagination runs away from me sometimes.”
She giggled. Fucking giggled, bringing my attention from the road in front of us to her mouth.
“There’s not really much to say. It’s exactly like what you heard on the news I’m sure. I worked at Evan’s Pharmaceuticals for a little over seven months. There were quite a few things that were bothering me while I worked there, but the ‘testing on animals’ thing really took the cake. I broke them out, loaded them into a rented UHAUL trailer and then came back home. That’s why I had to move from my old place in the Hills.” She explained.
I nodded. “You didn’t want them to know where you lived.”
She nodded enthusiastically. “Exactly. I just couldn’t live with myself if I allowed that. But I’d been having problems with them before that. It was weird. One time I’d stayed a little late, and I ran into a man coming into my lab that I’d never seen before. We were assigned small labs of our own where we tested the products to make sure we abided by the state regulations. He’d been surprised to see me there so late, and I never saw him again, but I knew instantly he wasn’t supposed to be there. The next day was when I started keeping count on all my supplies. The weird thing was, was that I started losing my tools, not the drugs. Beakers here. Large glass vials there. I’d started getting suspicious right along the time I left.”
I looked over at her face before returning my attention to the bike rider who was headed our way before replying. “That’s weird. But a lot of people that make their own drugs steal things like that so they don’t draw attention from the feds. Did you ever do a full inventory?”
“No,” she shook her head. “I was going to, but then when I wandered out of my area of the building and found the animals; well, let’s just say I didn’t take it very well.”
I rolled my eyes. “No, I probably wouldn’t have either.”
We walked in silence, watching the neighborhood kids play a bout of kick the can, laughing at their antics as they pushed and shoved to get the runner out.
“I used to play that when I was little. Gosh, I didn’t think kids got out to play like that anymore.” Adeline observed.
“I never got to do anything like that. I would’ve killed for a neighborhood like this when I was growing up. Well, when I wasn’t sick, that is.” I said.
“You were sick when you were a kid?” She asked sharply, startling me out of my observation of the kids.
That’s when I realized what I’d just said. Fuck. Would she look at me differently when she knew how sick I once was? I didn’t really want to ruin what was left of our walk on things that neither she, nor I, could change.
“When did you get your first tattoo?” I asked, changing the subject, and hoping that she went along with that subject change.
I saw her eye me speculatively out my peripheral vision for long moments before deciding to answer me. “When I was sixteen. My sister bet me thirty dollars to do it, banking on me chickening out. Thirty dollars was a lot of money to a teenager whose father refused to give them money because he thought they’d spend it on frivolous stuff. So I got this one.” She said, pointing at her wrist. “Walked up the tattoo parlor and asked for a sugar skull on my wrist, and the woman gave it to me that day, not even asking me if I was eighteen. Little did I know that the woman was an apprentice and was super excited to get anyone to work on besides fake skin. Should have found out how much it was beforehand, though, because otherwise I would’ve never done it. Cost me two hundred bucks, and I had to call my dad down to the shop to pay for it.”
I burst out laughing. I could just see her dad storming down to that tattoo parlor in his colors, ripping the apprentice a new one for tattooing a minor. “And what did he have to say about that?”
She smiled wistfully. “He didn’t, really. At first, he was kind of miffed, but eventually he got over it. He was the one that took me for the next couple of them. This one,” she said, indicating a line of script I’d read a million times before. “I got the day he died.”