The Red Light district had its own brand of perfume… and it clung to her like a putrid cocktail of sex and tequila, lip frosted with poison and lies. The Hearts territory was an intriguing infestation of mankind and had come to carry the presence of Aspen O’Hara as much as Devil’s Avenue did. She’d come into the Jabberwockies world with nothing to give but a fury that had been tamped down for too long, a taste for revenge, and a fascinating web of connections - for a military sniper. That web had soon extended into the sheets of the Hearts, tugging at ankle and wrist - knots applied taut and dangerous along the ribs and spine of whomever.
“Enlighten me.” A breath in a room that bore the dance of roped shadows; the delicious cacophony of the sex trade pulsating around them to a beat that mirrored the pulse sported within a slick throat.
Gratification was provided in information, traded for praise that split through the brutal expression of Aspen as a pleasant purr. Into the damp night, she’d stepped not five minutes after. Her pocket lighter, her mind fuller. An inhale cleared her senses, head tilting in an acknowledging nod to the man that loitered on the steps of the establishment before she set off in the direction of Devil’s Avenue. In the direction of her home.
The loft was crammed in a forgotten alley; hidden behind a steel roller door covered in graffiti tags. The ground floor appeared abandoned save the gleam of a motorcycle parked on a platform of dust. An iron staircase spiraled up in the corner, to the loft above. Aspen had taken the building for herself eighteen months ago; choosing it for the loading dock it backed onto. Into the confines of that building, her sigh was one to instruct the droop of her body. Steel spine, loosening. Proud shoulders, drooping. The information plucked from the sweet mouth of the Heart unfurled within her mind; a distraction that occupied her until the creak of the floor above her.
From the band of her jeans, the beretta that rested snug against her lower back was pulled free. The second step of the stairs missed. Knees bent, back to the rail, Aspen ascended into the darkness of her loft that housed someone other than She.
In the minimal moonlight that slid through the windows, she caught a flash of a semi-familiar countenance - preoccupied with her belongings.
As the lights were flicked on, Aspen leant against the frame of the only entrance above the stairs - the gun’s muzzle rolling along her jawline in thought. Her drawl was light, quizzical. Wickedly polite and at odds with the stare that levelled on her uninvited guest.
“Is there something in particular that you’re looking for?”
Posted 09-10-2021, 08:54 PM
RED BLOODED TRESPASSER
