The flight home from Africa had given me a buffet for thought; there was little that didn't come to mind in what seemed to be a never ending flight rife with nauseating smells and even worse images to entertain me during the nine hours I was stuck in the aisle seat of what seemed to be a deceivingly small plane that housed far too many people with far too many body parts for stink to hide. Had I not been lost in endless, bottomless plates of food for thought, I might have become a nuisance enough that the easily victimized flight attendants would have offered me a seat in first class merely in order to remove me from the general public. While that wasn't a rare occurrence, I found myself in enough of a haze that I wouldn't callously emit all kinds of disturbances that would unsettle the other passengers. Instead, the soft violin harmonizing with a steady, heavy bass in the headphones that were snugly fit in my ears allowed me to divulge myself in what might seem like a party of one misery fest, but in truth? Rarely did I find myself wallowing in thick clouds of anguish at my own expense. This was a practice I had attempted to rid myself of in younger years, blindly believing that I was better than that kind of pathetic emotional response when in all reality, emotional responses were probably the only kind I possessed. My goodbye to the soul and body of the first woman I'd loved had sent me realing, though it was reeling in a different direction than I'd expected... Initially, I'd been prepared for the Tasmanian devil that surely lingered beneath my flesh to surface with it's fever pitch winds and elaborate destruction of all things solid in it's path, but the decimation never occurred. Instead, I had been filled with a sense of calm that I hadn't known since the tides of amber left my body and I was no longer a slave of a chemical substance.

The flight back to the United States offered me solace of humanity before the shreds of the substance were pumped from my veins once more upon landing at the international airport that was the gateway to my home. As the plane touched down, a rush of boring and mundane thoughts floated to the surface, reminding me of obligations and responsibilities that I had vacated during my annual sabbatical to my homeland. Rodger had left a dozen voicemails on my phone, but I hadn't heard word from any of my other so called associates. Did that mean things were all fine and dandy? Surely the shop would be in flames, my apartment vandalized, and my actual position of employment rendered void. Okay, maybe that was a little dramatic but the opportunity was far too great to keep from siddling down that negative road. Minn, my personal storage unit (read: dumpster) could have unhinged her jaw and maybe swallowed the building whole! Spencer could have sold the place for whatever it is he wanted, and Rodger... Maybe the man had gotten himself into a situation I could attribute to his stupidity, and further chastise him for. Maybe Azrael had put a bounty on my head and I could sneak into his apartment and set Church loose... Maybe Tobi would eat the hunter if I paid him enough. It wasn't long before my footfalls had led me to the very shop I'd been wondering about, my eyes greeted with a site that was verifiably the same as when I had left it. Maybe they hadn't even bothered to work; I wouldn't have been surprised, nor would I have truly cared if the miscreants I associated with bothered to show up. I didn't even own the shop, I was merely there as an 'artist' and for ... profitable reasons.

The music filling my ears changed from melancholy to dark, sadistic, and nearly putrid in nature until I could connect the music to the rather expensive sound system I'd installed into the shop. The bass line of the songs steadied my hand as I picked up the piece I had been working on pre-'vacation', filled with a sense of pride and determination as I began to focus on the design that the ivory was morphing into all until the bell of the shop rang it's satanic pitch and I was forced to turn my head and attention away from the precious weapon. I should never have turned the lights on.

My gaze hung heavily on the intruder, the crystalline morphing into a judgmental light almost white color as I scrutinized the offending individual. He surveyed the shop with a tenacious disgust, the emotion warping his too well groomed features almost instantaneously as he entered the shop; the way he glowered at the dust gave me the distinct urge to rise and sneeze on him or some other kind of bodily function that might disgust someone who, rather obviously, was a germophobe in the most amusing sense of the word. With a wry twitch of a smirk tickling my lips did I acknowledge him with my brows rising in almost a thoughtful manner as his light, tenor words permeated the previously bass-heavy air.

"Of course he did."

Azrael, the bane of my wayward existence, had sent this suspiciously pretty man to the shop, offering me both customer, profit, and homage to my affinity of illegal behavior? I'm touched. Perhaps touched isn't the right word, but instead irritated that he had the nerve to send someone my way... But then again, they do say irritation is the first sign of affection.

Kiss my ass.

"Blood, bodies and all things organic happen to be my specialty. I would say yes, I find it on my list of skills to remove blood from a white shirt, then again... I could never say I have experience in the matter. None."

With the obviously untruthful words lingering in the air mismatched with my ill-presumed good humored smirk, I regarded the man with a more explicit gaze as he continued to explain why fucking Azrael had sent him my way. Maybe the guy really was a poof after all and my illusion of his fairy self wasn't too off base... Perhaps I should have tested the theory.

"It would seem, then, that your source was spot on. I am ... you might say, a connoisseur of all things related to anarchy and illegal dabblings."