The sun was blistering down on the city, and Rhea headed to her shop to fix multiple fans and air conditioners and work on the profitless repairs of Kamon's cars. It was then she first encountered the two-faced cat.
The garage door was opened to keep the shop from turning into a greenhouse. The shop was scattered with new tools, disorganized parts, and broken machines waiting in line on the floor.
After dropping a screwdriver while working on a bladeless fan, it rolled across the floor and behind one of the sets of drawers. Rhea knelt to look behind the space and saw three eyes looking back at her—a skinny, matted, orange tabby. Two faces, two minds smashed together: the left eye gold, the right blue, and the middle green. Their noses and whiskers twitched, and all three eyes scanned the environment. One of their eyes turned and looked at Rhea. She jumped back, falling into one of the shelf sets knocking a collection of bolts onto the ground. The cat gave no scattered reaction, just stared at the woman.
Rhea settled and looked at the animal crouched in hiding. They licked their lips and looked up at her.
"Hello, strange ones," she said in a whisper. A tiny meow, the tabby swishing their tail. Rhea smiled. "You girls seeking shelter from the heat?" She grabbed the screwdriver and got up to return to her work. "Stay as long as you like."
She watched them from a distance as they slowly explored the shop, weaving through the clutter and rubbing their faces on objects. Their purring echoed off the walls and Rhea enjoyed their balletic presence. They jumped up on one of the tables close to her, where they lounged in a neat shade block, eyes closed as they relaxed atop the single-view drawing blueprints of an inline-four engine. Their stomach moved up and down with each breath, and though they were sadly skinny, their body took up more than half of the four-foot-long table.
Watching the resting animal, Rhea approached slowly, placing a hand on their stomach. Eyes opened, head raised, but as Rhea's hands delicately stroked their matted fur, the cat relaxed and allowed the gentle contact.
The cat proved they didn't scare easily. Not even when the Kipsy gang drove their obnoxiously loud and ugly cars through the streets, their presence causing Rhea to close the garage door until they were gone.
"You two have names?" Rhea asked the cat as they sat watching her work. They gave a meow and twitched their ears. "I'll give you names. You're Harper," she said to the gold eye, "and you can be Scout," she named the blue eye. She gave them a gentle scratch behind the ear, and Harper and Scout flopped onto their back and purred again with pleasure.
Sunrays thinned, and Rhea turned on the inflorescence she had mounted on the walls of the shop. With a headlamp strapped on her forehead, she was elbow-deep in an inline 6-cylinder DOHC engine belonging to the triad while Harper and Scout lounged on their back. She was in the process of rebuilding the 1991 engine block, replacing bearings, timing chains, pistons, valve springs, cam bearings, chain guides, tensioners. An unprecedented job that was probably worth $10,000; done for free. She tried not to think about the loss of income—release material greed, focus on the joy of the intricate work.
She was lost in the machine, beginning to piece things together again when voices pulled her from her mind. Voices were not common on her street, especially once the sun had sunk below the sea.
There was small laughter that came from a woman weakened on booze. A faint click of heels and a deep male voice. On the surface, it did not appear like an unusual situation, but there were sharp pricks of fear gnawing on the back of Rhea's neck as she heard the voices radiate from down the street. She turned off the lights on the walls and the headlamp and gradually opened the side door of the shop.
Rhea peered onto the road and saw two figures walking down the opposite side of the street, the few working lampposts casing half their faces in shadow.
One was a tan woman with a slim black dress and heels studded with gold. Her dark hair fell over her thin body, emeralds on her ears. The other was a tall man with dark skin and animal fur thrown over his broad shoulders. His black hair was cut short and the shadows across his face emphasized his strong jaw and handsome stiff face cracked with a fake smile as he looked down on the woman. Silver chains wrapped around his neck and wrists. She could not make out the words of the voices, but the man's was deep and thick and the girl was releasing light laughter, stumbling slightly.
Harper and Scout weaved out of the shop between her legs and then froze. Their hair began to prick up their back and they released a deep hiss from the back of their throat. With bared teeth, they turned around and ran down the other end of the alley.
The girl suddenly stopped her babbling and Rhea saw her freeze under a street lamp as the man aggressively grabbed her wrist. The girl shouted and tried to pull away and Rhea had an urge to intervene.
But she did not get the chance. Skin thinned and veins began to pop on the man's suddenly claw-like hands and then his head rotated on his neck and a massive hyena head was atop the shoulders. It opened its jaws down to its chest and swallowed the woman's head whole.
Rhea clasped her hand over her mouth to muffle the scream, but it leaked through her fingers and the hyena's sharp ears turned its head towards her huddled form in the alleyway. Harper and Scout hissed by her ankles and then ran down the alley towards the other street behind them.
Hello there, came the voice in her head, the hyena's face stretched in a haunted smile.
Rhea lowered her hand.
"Do you know who that was?" she asked. Rhea had recognized the girl instantly—she looked a lot like her father.
I do not care about the names of my prey, it said. And I don't care about your name either.
The phantom dropped the woman's body and bounded towards Rhea, who turned and ran back into the workshop and slammed the door. She could hear the thump as it hit the door. Then the hyena's head began to laugh as its fist smashed through the small foggy window in the center of the door. The hand reached for the lock and Rhea gripped the stone in her pocket and tried to slice the phantom's hand with it. She got in a small strike and saw a little smoke leak from the human/animal hand, but its aggressive movements tossed the stone from her hand and it skidded towards the corner of the shop.
There was a screwdriver behind her and Rhea gripped it and tried to stab it into the phantom's hand before it could retreat through the window, but despite her desperate strength, the screwdriver didn't make a dent. She felt in the darkness of the shop and felt a chain wrench brush her fingers. She gripped the chain and wrapped it around the wrist of the phantom before it slunk through the busted window, latching it on the chains around its wrist. She then began to pull with what strength she had left. The arm pulled through the window until its shoulder was jammed against the door. She continued to pull.
The phantom released a howl that made Rhea's head headache, and then it was gone. A small amount of ash fell to the ground and suddenly a small puff of smoke appeared and suddenly evaporated.
Rhea stayed on the floor for a moment, body shaking, mind racing. She gently stroked her fingers across the small pile of ash that she assumed was the damaged hand. They had to be in this world to influence it, she thought.
She pushed to her feet and turned back on the lights of the shop and searched until she found the tossed stone. She put it back into her pocket and stepped out into the street where the headless body of Katiuska Mendez was sprawled.
She thought about contacting the cartel…but she didn't expect they would be understanding, and she worried coming forward would place a target on her back. She thought about leaving the body until it was discovered by someone else…but again she thought that would be too risky given the corpse was so close to her shop.
Rhea looked at the body with a sorrowful expression. She was so young. She didn't deserve what fate had tossed at her, but what's done was done. She grabbed some of the gasoline cans in the shop and pulled a lighter from her pocket. When the body was soaked, she flicked on the lighter and tossed it onto the gasoline-drenched body. The smell of burning flesh erupted with the flames, an acrid stench that kind of smelled like roasting meat, but with a more pungent and sickening quality.
She waited until there was nothing but ash and a few chard bones. She then collected the remains in a bucket from the shop and closed up for the evening, needing to wait until at least tomorrow to fix the broken door window. She headed to the Datuma district, staying off main streets, swinging the bucket in hand as though it contained nothing of importance. The district was quiet tonight and she met no trouble when she finally reached the ocean. She stood on the slab of concrete that stood 30 feet over the crashing waves. When she knew there was no one around, she dumped the bucket and ash danced through the wind and landed onto the rushing sea, which carried the remains of the girl and her untimely death into nothing.