Welcome to chapter sixteen of an ongoing gritty noir series from ‘Sin Street’ created in partnership between Kate Granger and Sissitrix. Chapters published weekly on Friday’s.
Follow a woman’s desperate tale of humiliation starting in a pit of despair before her rebirth, revenge, and resurgence. This series began in a dark place because it must.
Previous Chapters: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15
“I need you. For fuck’s sake, what have you done?”
“Calm yourself, Erin.”
“Calm myself? I’ve just seen a fucking pod army being kept warm in an underground warehouse. Was this your doing, Sissitrix?”
“You aren’t making any sense. What do you mean, a pod army?”
“Your pods Sissitrix. With hundreds of people in them. Fucking soldiers, to be precise, and with an armory surrounding them.”
“Is this at the place where Rex sent you?”
“Yes.”
“He never told me where the pods would be used. They are your people, Erin. We did this for you. It seems Rex believes the time is right to reveal our backup plan.”
“Why is a backup plan needed?”
“Because Red October is coming.”
“Coming for who, Sissitrix.”
“For everyone, Erin. Eventually, Red October will be all-consuming.”
“You’re not making any sense. Red October began as a serial killer. An idea of evil incarnate moving among us with a countdown timer. Now it’s an organization, some would call terrorists.”
“Where are you right now, Erin?”
“How come you don’t know where these pods are?”
“Because we each agreed to play our part without leaking information. You must call Rex, and if he needs me to help explain this to you, I will come.”
I sat on the filthy floor outside my army headquarters in front of my car. Complete darkness somehow felt safer than the warehouse of death constructed in my name. Rats scurried close by, but I felt unafraid because the sleeping faces inside Sissitrix’s pods were far more frightening than vermin eating scraps.
I stared at my phone and scrolled through calls, noting Max was ringing at least every five minutes, determined to unsettle or reach me. I hit redial and waited, desperate to snarl at someone.
“What do you want, Max?”
“Don’t go home.”
“Why not?”
“Red October is waiting there for you.”
“You are Red October, Max.”
“I was, but you fucked that up. You’re like a wrecking ball and completely out of control.”
“How have I fucked your evil game?”
“You removed The Enforcer’s body. You were seen driving away in an old truck from our home.”
I wasn’t in the mood to explain Rex’s involvement. Max would extend the boundary of blame as far as needed so long as he wasn’t inside it.
“Where are you now, Max?”
“I’m safe; you don’t need to know where.”
“We must meet. I’ll see you on Collier.”
“The half-sunk coal barge in the old docks?”
“Yeah. We’ll meet in hold four at 7 p.m. I’ll send you a sketch map; it’s easy to follow.”
“And if I say no?”
“Check your bank accounts, Max.”
I bowed my head, waiting while he realized what I already knew. The one thing we had left in common was our mutual desperation to make sense of a worsening nightmare. Multiple conspiracies were playing out with Red October on one side, with some bizarre plan involving Diana with Rex and possibly Sissitrix on the other.
I heard Max’s enraged screams. They continued for a minute while he checked his many bank accounts.
“You’ve cleaned me out bitch.”
“You lied and ran away, Max. What the fuck was I supposed to think after you murdered The Enforcer?”
“I didn’t kill Simon, Erin. I was there when he died.”
“You gave the order for some bastard to drop him off the roof with a rope wrapped around his neck. I’d say that makes you his killer.”
“I’m a puppet on a string.”
“Yeah, Max… well, if you want to see twelve billion dollars again, you’ll dance to a new tune.”
“How did you do this? How the fuck did you steal my money?”
“I’m your goddamn CEO, Max. I planned to move the cash somewhere safe weeks ago, then executed that transfer last night.”
“Safe for who, Erin?”
“For me, Max. I see nothing but double-crossing going on out there, so I’m becoming increasingly more attracted to my own safety by the minute.”
“I want my money back, Erin.”
“Coal barge, 7 p.m.”
I disconnected the call, simmering with rage, fairly certain Max had been all in with Red October until they had no further use for him. Rex was another matter. The fucked up maverick was next on my list to call.
“Hi, Erin. Do you like my gift?”
“We must talk soon.”
“That warehouse is my masterpiece. Those M4 rifles are brand new. The working parts all match per weapon by serial number, which is important because it reduces misfed rounds.”
“Rex. Where are you?”
“I’m busy right now. I’d rather not meet until I’m done.”
“I’ll come to you, Rex. If you are loyal, tell me where you are.”
The line went silent, and humming from the armory warehouse became more apparent as I counted Rex’s pause. He was into something, probably neck-deep in blood and guts, but I needed to rally the troops and get to grips with the situation.
“I’m at Max’s house.”
“He said Red October is waiting there for me.”
“Not anymore.”
I ragged the car through my underground bunker and across Sin Street, not caring about traffic lights, crossings, or even sidewalks. I ran against the clock and a mountain of problems that were gradually shifting onto my shoulders.
I repeatedly slammed a balled fist onto the steering wheel, screaming my frustration, mulling the events that led to Max’s death. I cursed my blind rage that gave Red October what they wanted.
“Rex, Max, Diana, Sissitrix… what the fuck is happening?”
I screamed at nobody while on a white knuckle ride, slewing around corners, gunning the V8 engine hard along straights. The gates at Max’s house were wide open, and Rex’s truck was already parked in the driveway. I slipped in behind, grabbed my Glock from the passenger’s seat, and headed inside.
Every light in the house was on, but I stepped cautiously until a shuffling noise led me to the living room and Rex. He was hunched over something I couldn’t make out.
“You won’t need a pistol. I’m unarmed and on your side, Erin.”
“What side is that, Rex?”
“The side that wants to kill all of these Red October cunts like the four I have in here.”
I stepped closer, gagged, retched a few times, turned around, and projectile vomited on the white marble floor. When I looked back to make sure my eyes hadn’t misled me, I was sick again.
“You chopped people up?”
“It’s neater this way.”
Four bodies, three male and one female, lay on a plastic sheet roughly ten meters long on each edge. They had been carved up, with head, arms, and legs off, assembled in their full state with small, neat gaps where joints would normally be.
“I exsanguinated each one through the femoral artery.”
“You fucking bled them to death?”
“Yeah. I hit the bastards with laughing gas first. After that, dragging them until their legs lay over the sunken jacuzzi bath was simple. A catheter into the femoral artery, and ten minutes later, they’re dry as a fucking bone.”
“Where is their blood?”
“Down the plug, feeding rats in the sewer by now, I expect.”
“Couldn’t you just shoot them, Rex?”
“These Red October bastards were going to kill you, Erin. They killed my family, so it had to be slow.”
“These specific men and woman killed your wife and child?”
“I dunno. They’re Red October, and that’s good enough for me. I won’t rest until they’re all dead.”
“Why did you come to this house?”
“To kill Max. He is also Red October.”
I held both my hands up and screamed.
“Stop!”
“What is it, Erin?”
“Fucking stop, now.”
“Okay… what’s happening next then?”
Rex sat on the sofa while I stared into a jacuzzi bath that Max and I had shared and made love in a couple of times. A ring of blood had dried to a grim crusty veneer around the flat rim at the bottom.
I glanced around the room and saw at least thirty sulfuric acid glass carboys bearing prominent hazardous warning signs.
“I need to get rid of these bodies, Erin. Can we at least agree on that and then talk?”
“Yes.”
He seemed completely lucid. I couldn’t believe I helped Rex pile body parts in the jacuzzi, but I did, trying as far as possible to do it reverently while my protector carelessly tossed them in at three times the speed I did.
Rex passed me a respirator, making sure the seals fit properly around my face before emptying acid into our death bath.
When the jacuzzi was full, Rex opened the room patio doors, and I strolled outside while his victims stewed. Once I removed my respirator, a faint, acrid whiff of dissolving human flesh pervaded, and I made a mental note to burn my clothes.
I sat calmly on the outdoor furniture, staring at the stars, wishing I had a single malt to ease my guilt and surly temperament. When Rex appeared with a bottle and two glasses, my night was complete.
“We can’t keep murdering people indiscriminately, Rex.”
“It’s not indiscriminate. We’re surgically removing a societal cancer, and you’ve just woken up to the fact that you’re in a war.”
“I didn’t start this war.”
“No… but you walked into it, Erin, right slap bang between two warring factions. Max used you from the moment you woke out of a nightmare. You should thank god he reached out to Sissitrix.”
“I know about Max and this war now, but to what end?”
“Control of Sin Street. Current vested interests have it, Red October wants it. You were the avenging angel that could remove the former while the latter waited in the wings, letting you do all the dirty work.”
“Where do you come in, Rex?”
He downed a double, winced, and poured another, swirling it respectfully. Rex glanced at me, and I saw the madness gone, replaced by all the sadness of a lost love.
“I’m going to kill the whole fucking lot of them, Erin.”
“Is that what the warehouse is for?”
“Not so much for me. It’s a gift for you. I can kill everyone that matters in Red October one by one. It’s actually cathartic because, during every killing, I imagine the dying cunt I’m throttling is the same one who raped my wife and child.”
I stared at Rex, imagining the bestial rage that drove him. I suffered a similar affliction caused by Brian and my rape, but his justification for vengeance and bloodthirst far outbid mine.
“Why do I need an army?”
“You want to bring Sin Street to order?”
“I want the ordinary people who live here to be safe. That’s not quite the same thing.”
“The Mayoral Election is the moment to do that, Erin. Pick a candidate and back them, or campaign for yourself. You have the money, and now, an army is ready to march to your drumbeat.”
“How do you know I have the money?”
“Oh, come on… Max might have his head up his ass, but I don’t. Bankers enjoy a good thrashing as much as I do. Diana knew about your massive capital transfer last night an hour after you completed it.”
They knew about my war chest and said nothing to Max, which meant whoever Rex and Diana were loyal to, it wasn’t either side gunning for me. The question on my mind was whether they were entirely loyal to me.
“Why did you create the army?”
“Diana told me too. She saw someone like you coming from a mile away. There was always going to be an avenging angel. It might have been a man, but it ended up being you.”
“Why did she pick Sin Street as her home?”
“Diana wants a small piece of this place. Here, in Sin Street, her people thrive because they’re protected. Bankers, lawyers, and the working class, a sliver of each with exquisite proclivities, are her people.”
“Nobody judges anyone in Sin Street.”
“Exactly. Here, everyone is somewhere on the monetization ladder and protected by that fact.”
“Or exploited because of it. What’s in it for you, Rex?”
“I’ll kill everyone in Red October. Others, too, if you ask nicely or when they threaten you. Then I’m drifting in the wind.”
I cupped my glass, staring at him, sitting a couple of meters away with the gaunt face of death masking his madness. He looked as normal as any vengeful man who’d lost a family. My problem was whether Rex could be trusted.
“If I command, will you follow?”
“Have I not done so already?”
“Not really, Rex. You’ve killed a lot of people without me asking or even knowing.”
“My primary order is to keep you safe, Erin. You should not question how I achieve that goal.”
I stood up to leave, already late for meeting Max. Repeated unanswered messages and missed calls on my phone meant his patience would soon wear thin.
“We need a place to stay, Rex.”
“This house is fine. Once the slurry drains from our jacuzzi, a few cans of air freshener will spruce the place up. I’ll have enough security here in an hour to make Max’s fortress safer than he ever did.”
“Okay. I have errands to run.”
“I won’t follow you, Erin, but please tell Max from me that I shall kill him last.”
“And if I tell you not to?”
“That’s one order I won’t follow. Max is mine on account of his recruiting of serial killers and what they did to my family. He fucked Bliss up as well, so if I don’t kill him, she will.”
There was little point arguing with him. Rex wouldn’t listen to me anyway. For now, at least, Max was safe, although I couldn’t fathom why I cared. Any tenderness I’d felt for the man who set up and funded my recovery was lost in a chasm of horror that dominated my soul.
I pulled into a layby, switched off the engine, and sat in darkness, scanning backward to see if Rex or anyone else followed. My phone kept on vibrating, so I scrolled through the list.
Max.
Max.
Max.
I’m on my way.
Thank fuck!
When I arrived at the old docks, a few junkies loitering around a fifty-gallon oil drum burned rubbish to keep warm.
“Twenty bucks.”
“Ten bucks, and you’ll fucking smile when moving that barrier.”
“It’s twenty bucks to enter bitch.”
I raised my hand from beside the seat so he saw the Glock clearly. The vagrant recoiled, not knowing that I wouldn’t kill him. He was exactly the kind of person I wanted to help by stopping the flow of hard drugs and providing medical pods to flush that shit out of him.
“Ten bucks is fine, ma’am
“Yeah, I thought so.”
They took a few minutes longer than necessary, sullenly moving a temporary barricade with more refuse and steel poles than anything else. I was sure Max paid the twenty bucks, not caring about any principle at stake.
I drove slowly and stuck to the main drag, following a trail made by every other car that had gone before me for years. Nails, glass, and other tire-puncturing debris lay outside of the worn tracks.
I parked behind Max, directly adjacent to the old coal barge. When the V8 engine noise was cut, the whole place took on an entirely different, sinister feeling. I exited my car, tucked the Glock down my pants, and stood for a few minutes watching, waiting, and listening for signs of trouble.
The rusting hulk of Sin Street’s old ocean-going coal delivery and storage barge was enormous. It listed at an angle approaching ten degrees, looking tired and sick, leaning against the pier where heavy stanchions had crushed into steel bulkheads.
The hull was pockmarked with rust. In some areas, sheet steel had lost the battle and thinned, surrendering to jagged, ruddy holes of all sizes. Collier was a sad relic of Sin Street but an apt flagship for the City’s deterioration.
A cigarette butt burned brightly, and I heard Max’s shuffling feet just inside a door leading to the coal storage holds. I crossed a double-width wooden plank and pointed inside.
“We can’t be heard in there.”
“It’s fucking rank and very slippery, Erin.”
I walked past him, and Max followed. There was no way he would kill me or set that up. Twelve billion reasons drove Max’s decision-making process right now.
“I want my money back, Erin.”
“Are you running away, Max?”
“No.”
“You should leave today and never look back. Red October has no further use for you. Is that about right?”
“I’m negotiating a truce with them.”
“Using twelve billion dollars that you don’t have anymore?”
“I’ll get it back, Erin. You won’t hold out for long.”
“They didn’t know you were buying up Sin Street real estate, and now they do.”
“Rex made that common knowledge to marginalize me. I am as much in no-man’s-land as you are. Handing over twelve billion dollars keeps us both safe.”
“Except, you don’t have twelve billion dollars.”
“You stole from me, Erin.”
“Which you stole by exploiting a sick system.”
“You don’t know what you are dealing with, bitch.”
“Enlighten me, sweetheart.”
I lit the hold using the torch from my phone, setting it on a shelf where it pointed across us. We stood on a narrow gantry with rusty railings, one of which Max had firmly gripped. The blackness surrounding us was an ingress of seawater that flooded every hold.
“Be careful with that railing. It doesn’t look safe.”
“I can swim if it fails.”
“Fuck knows what’s down there, darling.”
“Thirty feet of seawater, Erin.”
“Will you tell me who Red October is?”
He turned to face me with a face ashen gray, either by fear or the light of my phone, I couldn’t tell which.
“Red October is politically motivated, like an action group with specific goals. In some countries, we align with the right wing; in others, we favor the left, dictators, monarchists, or centrists. Whatever flavor of politics is most electable becomes our proxy, one way or another.”
“I’ve never heard of them, not even in whispers. When you say action group, do you mean a cabal of billionaires manipulating the system?”
“Red October doesn’t campaign in their own name, but yes, people like me are the principals of the organization.”
“Why have you come for Sin Street?”
“They already had Sin Street until the Mayor and his cronies broke away.”
“The cuckold Mayor?”
“Puppets are never really all that relevant. Elitists on both sides, including me, are controlling all of this.”
“And the twelve billion dollars?”
“That’s Red October’s election campaign fund. I’m sure you can see how dangerous it is for you to retain it.”
I sighed heavily because now everything made sense except the Mansion House and its dreadful hi-tech underground bastion.
“Sin Street’s gang leaders and Red October are two sides of the same coin, Max.”
“Like Janus. The god looking in both directions.”
“Fighting against each other to the death.”
“They will probably unite soon and carve up the spoils because outright war between the two factions is pointless, Erin.”
“You’re all greedy cunts driven by profit.”
“I guess so. Sin Street as a deviant universe where anything goes… that’s a big fucking revenue stream.”
“What do you have in mind, Max?”
“Hammers and Anvils, Erin. You’re either shaping the world or being shaped by it. People who work in Sin Street will be allocated resources, homes, script notes to spend in our shops, and recreational rights based on their assessed value.”
“That’s real end-of-the-world nightmare stuff, Max.
“This is how people should be managed, Erin. Kids will become wards of the City, cared for until they are old enough to generate revenue. The nuclear family system is defunct.”
“Everyone else visiting Sin Street is a client?”
“Spending dollars and making us rich beyond belief. We’ll reinvest, of course, but only by working hard will people earn benefits.”
It made sense that Diana picked me to lead a revolution because I was avenging, as was Rex, and that bloodthirst was personal, not monetary. She needed people with as much hatred coursing their veins as those who were planning to bend humanity to their yoke.
Rex’s army was the only thing standing in the way of Max and his buddy’s outright control and monetization of every soul in Sin Street, perhaps the world.
“You can still be Sin Street’s CEO, Erin.”
“Fuck no, Max. This has gone far enough.”
He lunged at me but tripped, knocking a small anchor into the water. A heavy chain followed it, spooling into the blackness, and Max struggled to dodge out of its way. The noise was deafening, echoing off steel walls like a thousand hammers beating. Its vibration shuddered through my body as more chain links slipped over the edge of the gantry.
“Give me your hand. Quickly!”
He reached out desperately, and I gripped Max’s fingers as he tried to escape from the mass of chains that kept running away. He slipped on a slick diesel-coated gantry deck. The chain end whiplashed, wrapping around his ankle and pulling him over the edge so powerfully that it dragged me along with it.
The weight hauling him into the hold pulled me to the edge, where I kneeled, arching my back, barely holding my ex-boyfriend’s head above water. He was terrified, shrieking in pitiful desperation, but I had a reasonable grip on him and could just about hold on.
As I stared into Max’s face, all I could see was every mass-murdering megalomaniac for a thousand years. I saw my soul, lost to bloody vengeance, with him applauding every vile act I’d committed, collecting prize money as I progressed toward targeting his enemies.
I cried for salvation.
I wrenched my hand free of his and screamed. The horror evident in Max’s eyes when he realized I was letting him drown would haunt me forever, but I knew I deserved that and probably a great deal more.
My palms rested flat on both knees, and I watched Max struggle, swimming upward, holding position inches below the surface, wearing a contorted expression, pleading for my mercy.
As his strength waned, my lover and boyfriend slipped below the water’s surface until I saw only blackness.
Beside his watery grave, I sobbed while on my knees, cursing myself, but in my heart, I knew Max’s death was a better deal for humanity.
Dive deeper into Sin Street on Sissitrix.com, where violence lurks in every alley and sex is a weapon. Brutal characters, tangled plots, and dark places in a corrupt neo-noir city that will drag you into its chaos. Written by Kate Granger, illustrated by Sissitrix.
I am seeing these wonderful artworks squeeze slowly onto my phone screen using airline WIFi. Such incredible depiction of the docks and amazing scenes of mayhem. Your art is the only thing on this damn airplane making me smile. Even the mini wine bottles are warm.
I'm a week overdue with my take, but I've been wanting to use this paraphrase for a long time:
"Mistah Max--he dead."
Apologies to T.S. Eliot--and Joseph Conrad, for that matter. But thank Christ that goddamn worthless discount pseudo-Machiavellian fuck-up is off the board! God, what a blessing! Cue the standing ovations! A pathetic "villain" figure, if you want to dishonor villainy--sort of a bush-league villain, like the kind Disney puts out there for their atrocious "Star Wars" products. I knew he was bad news from the start, and Erin pegged him with a strap-on to rival a self-propelled 155mm artillery piece by robbing him of 12 billion overnight! Now she has an army, 12 billion in ready cash, a psycho killer ex-mercenary sub at her beck and call, a second psycho killer female sub, and Sissitrix the armorer, who, most likely, is running this whole thing, unbeknownst to all the principals. And of course, five-star pro-domme Diana, another candidate for being at the top, or possibly in a joint venture with Sissitrix.
Aside from Max being sent to Davy Jones' Locker, I'm content with putting #16 in with the transitional episodes in the Sin Street saga. You've both given us big-time plot points, reveals, and surprises in the last few installments, so we needed an intermezzo, and this is it. Now that uber pain-in-the-ass Max is deader than a can of tuna fish, and sleeps with them as well, we can uncover more mysteries. Great work on providing a pleasant, rewarding pallette cleansing experience in this one!