Nirvana Bites Read Online Free PDF Page B

what I hoped was face height. A couple more bullets whistled past and into the lift.
    â€˜You stupid fucking bastard,’ screamed Baldy. ‘Don’t shoot me, you arsehole.’
    I wheeled round. With one hand he was trying to clear foam from his eyes like a kid in a bubble bath. With the other he was reaching inside his overall.
    Time for a change of plan. I shot another foam blast into the lift for good measure. The jet was weakening. I heaved the extinguisher back into the flat and then turned and ran back to the stairs.
    â€˜Quick!’ I yelled. ‘Down the stairs. We’ll get them as they come out of the lift.’ I was rewarded by hearing Baldy yell, ‘In the lift! In the lift! Come on, you fucking idiot! COME ON!’
    I thundered my feet on the stairs until I heard the lift doors close, the blood pounding in my ears and my breathing ragged in the sudden silence.
    Out of the hall window I watched Baldy run out into the street, swiftly followed by a taller, thinner version of himself. Shit! I’d just had a rumble with the Mitchell brothers. As they ran, flecks of foam flew from them and floated upwards like reverse snow. They jumped into the removal van and sped off with a screech of tyres.
    Now that they were gone, my stomach felt free to assert itself. I retched violently. I rested my head on the cool glass for a moment and took a few deep breaths. Then I turned to look into Stan’s ruined apartment. The black cloth had smothered most of the shattered aquarium, but vicious shards still covered the floor on both sides of the door. I picked my way over them, grateful for the thick soles of my Doc Martens. A quick search of the penthouse produced no Stan. I was beginning to have serious doubts about my sanity when a muffled sound from the wreckage under the cloth caught my attention.
    I grabbed a couple of towels from Stan’s sparkly bathroom and wrapped them round my hands and lower arms before gingerly pulling back the cloth. The fear of being slashed by glass was in stiff competition with the fear of what I might find. I wasn’t sure my stomach could handle a sample of Death by a Thousand Cuts.
    I peeled back the cloth, glass tinkling to the floor as I did so. Inside was not Stan’s bloodied corpse, but a rolled-up rug – and a jolly expensive one too, by the look of it. Like a grisly pass-the-parcel, I embarked on this second layer of wrapping until the prize was revealed. Stan was trussed like a chicken, his ankles and wrists tied behind him and looped together. The front of his white T-shirt was wet with two dark red patches, and I wondered fleetingly how the glass had penetrated the rug. His mouth was covered by a strip of masking tape and above it his eyes were full of terror and pain. When they focused on me, they filled with tears of relief and he gave a strangled sob.
    I ripped off the tape.
    â€˜The bastards pulled out my nipple rings,’ he moaned before throwing up violently over the wreckage.

5
    THE POST-TRAUMATIC aftershocks didn’t hit me until I was safely back home on my security cushions. In Stan’s flat, I’d continued to ride the adrenalin wave with the skill of a Bondi Beach surfer. The first thing I did was use the mobi (bless it’s little digital heart) to call the third house. To my vast relief, Ali answered. I needed someone who would respond fast without asking a load of questions or recommending an aromatherapy massage as a solution.
    While waiting for him to arrive I performed some rudimentary first aid on Stan’s torn chest: Savlon, plasters and two paracetamol. I found some Valium in his bathroom cabinet and gave him a couple for good measure. I considered dropping some myself, but decided I couldn’t afford to slow down yet. I found a broom and swept the debris in the hall and doorway back into the flat so that with the door closed there would be no indication of the carnage within. Meanwhile, Stan stumbled