Katja from the Punk Band Read Online Free PDF Page A

the payment. Now get the fuck out.”
    The man goes back to the circuit board in his hands, tilts the blowtorch at it. The flame bursts forth bright and harsh and threatening.
    “Kohl, please. I’ll pay you what I owe you, I will. But I need something for now.”
    “You don’t have any money for now.”
    Nikolai thinks quickly, desperately. “I can get some more money. Please.”
    “It’s taken you four weeks to come up with this, Nikolai, where the hell are you going to get even more money before the end of tonight? Rob another one of your junkie friends?”
    “I can get the money,” Nikolai lies. If he can just get enough to see him through the next few days, he’ll be able to figure out what to do next, but there’s no way he can come up with a decent plan while still so spun.
    “You’re not getting a thing until I get the rest of what you already owe me.” Kohl flames the circuit board. The smell of hot metal pirouettes into the air, pure energy.
    “ Kohl .”
    And Nikolai has a hold of Kohl’s arm and immediately knows he’s done the wrong thing, but before he can take it back the other man swings around, drops the circuit board and the hand now wraps around Nikolai’s skinny throat, squeezes. Kohl lifts him clean off the ground and drives him across the room and into a wall, pins him there. The blowtorch wavers before Nikolai’s face. Kohl’s eyes are swollen by the curving plastic of his glasses, and the story goes that he almost burned them out while high on one of his varied concoctions playing Space Invaders for seventeen straight hours and now needs the bubble-like protection to stop him going completely blind.
    That’s the story.
    Or one of them.
    A whine escapes Nikolai’s nose and he’s too afraid to say anything.
    The blowtorch flame roars across his neck.
    “If you ever want me to even consider selling you or any of your junkie friends anything ever again then you’ll do what’s good for you and get the fuck out of my joint right now.”
    He says it softly, soothingly, and it confuses Nikolai’s soggy comprehension further, takes him a few moments to recognize the threat. Another wave of the blowtorch confirms this.
    “Misha!” Kohl shouts through the door and the muscled woman barges her way in just as Kohl shoves Nikolai toward her. Without a moment’s hesitation she lashes out and hooks Nikolai heavily and cleanly across the chin, dropping him to the ground like he’d been shot in the head.
    Little blossoms of light fill his vision and they bloom into great bright explosions as he is lifted onto his feet once more and then there is a second, greater impact in his stomach that doubles him up. The only thing that stops him collapsing to the ground once more is the fact that the woman has a hold of his hair.
    His head is pulled upward abruptly and his neck makes an uncomfortable snapping sound. He squints through the pain and sees Kohl’s bug-eyes looming before him.
    “You bring me the rest of what you owe me by tomorrow night, Nikolai. Then we can talk further.”
    Nikolai starts to speak, feels the metallic taste of blood roll across his tongue and dribble down his chin. “I . . .”
    And that’s all he can manage before he is being dragged down the stairs then through the electron massacre of the arcade before being dumped onto the wet street.
    He lies there for some time, vaguely aware of those that are passing him, of the deals being done and bodies bought and sold. Finally he opens his eyes and the ground beside him is awash in garish, reflected neon. His mind catches up with what has just happened and he sits up.
    “Fuck.”
     

CHAPTER FOUR
     
    So Nikolai is fucked, good and proper, robbed of the one piece of good luck that he has had lately, robbed of the spoils of his dead friend’s equipment and so he’s doing what he always does when he doesn’t have drugs to lose himself in and that is to lose himself in games instead.
    He’s already sold all of the