Shadow Zone - Part 3 - The Gangster's Girl

The voice that you heard in the shipping container is still ringing in your ear like a catchy song. But there is nothing catchy about it. It's just morbid. Spooky and morbid. After the noise of the gunshot had died down, you fumbled your way out of the jungle of shipping containers. You reached the only place where you knew you'd be able to get your thoughts in some semblance of order and then think how to get out of this strange jam. The place was just another shady bar from the hundreds of shady bars in the city. The bartender was Sam Jiggles, a fat man with two chins too many and a bad case of combover on his balding dome. For some reason Sam was wearing a bow-tie today. You took a stool near the bar and ordered your usual. Sam brought you the drink with as much compassion as a coroner shows to a corpse. The foul smelling liquid looks specially rancid today but you knock it down your gullet anyway. 

The burn from the alcohol sends jolts and shakes all the way up to your brain and the first thing that comes to your mind voice in the shipping container. You remember the voice, it belongs to a girl from years ago. The girl died because you were too confident for your own good and for hers too. It was not a pretty death. Her father was one of biggest gangsters in the city and he gave you a hell of time for fucking up something as simple as drop money and pick the girl operation. As clarity slowly dawns, you realize that you fucked up your last pick and drop operation too when someone bumped into you on the sidewalk. This calls for another glass of the burning firewater. You signal the barkeep and he slides another glass filled with transparent, brown liquid. 

Night progresses. 

The clock in your head says it's around 3 AM when you move your ass from the stool. The bar swirls for a while and it takes a few seconds for the whole scenery to stabilize. You take a step towards the door and then another and another but the door is not getting any closer. A man appears in your field of vision. It's almost 3.05 AM and he is wearing black sunglasses. He looks a little like a penguin.

"We've been looking for you all over," he says as you stumble in his arms and puke all over his penguin suit.

Awakening

Your head pounds like thousand gerbils jumping on a tin roof. You open your eyes and it's only darkness. You think you've gone blind but after two seconds of furious blinking you realize there is a black cloth bag over your face. The stink of vomit if all over you. This should teach you to not drink on an empty stomach, but when have you ever learned from mistakes like these? Your hands are tied too and tied tight. You try to speak out but your tongue is cotton wool in your mouth. 

"Finally, you're awake!" A giant voice booms so loud that it hurts the deep bottom of your brain. Someone pulls the cloth bag off your head and the lights hurt like everything else.

"What the fuck is all this?" 

Everything is a blur and you can only make out blobs of people standing in front of you. You close one eye and try to focus but even that doesn't help. Someone throws a glass of water in your face.You shake the water off your eyes and look at the people around you. It's the gangster and his men. The same person whose daughter died because of your mistake. He has you tied to a chair and the chair is in middle of a pentagram. There are black candles burning on all five points of the pentagram. This is some heavy hoodoo shit. 

"She's back?" you ask.

"She's back," the gangster smiles, "my little doll is back."

"What does this have to do with me?"

"She needs your soul."

"Fuck you."

The room suddenly falls all dark and the candles light up on their own. The pentagram glows with a throbbing red buzz and then you see Nancy Negative's ruined body lying in another pentagram across the room.

"This will hurt a lot," the gangster grins at you again. 

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Ah, magic hoodoo shit. SHIT!