Waking up alone was never more disconcerting. What do you do when your house is empty, and the window is open, letting winter air into your squalid little place in the world? The glass on the ground belies the idea that the window is just open. The grease in the carpet, shaped in shoe-prints, also belies the idea that I had awakened in the night to close the window. The tinkle of breaking glass coursed through my memory. A shaking young woman in big snow boots and a dirty sun dress, clinging to my bedroom wall next to the doorframe, is probably the strongest confirmation of my suspicion that something is amiss.
"Who are you?" I ask. Her eyes widen with terror, and her hand goes to her mouth, one finger pointing up. It takes a second for my sleep-bitten mind to recognize the universal sign for silence, and I nod once, stepping back to my night stand. My throwing knives, usually there, were in the kitchen. I'd been sharpening them before bed. My samurai sword was in the coat closet, on the shelf above the bar. I didn't own a gun.
A clatter from my living room announced the presence of another intruder. This one knew how to swear, and proved it in a deep, guttural voice. I heard another thump, and a second voice, this one somewhat raspy, accused the first of treachery. A muttered conversation was held, and I heard the word bedroom, quite clearly.
The girl seemed to hear it, too. Her soot-smudged, elfin face looked like a scared rabbit, and she knelt, reaching a hand up one thigh, beyond the boundaries of her dress' hem. For a second, I wondered if she were a crazy pervert, but she withdrew her hand, and I saw the gleam of brass knuckles. She slid from the kneeling position back up the wall, flattening, with her left hand cocked, ready to slam the knuckles home when someone came through the door.
The gleam of the broken glass on the floor drew my eyes, and I grabbed a washcloth off of the lip of my dirty clothes hamper, wrapping it around a conveniently knife-shaped piece of glass. Makeshift blade. I held it point-down in my right hand, and carefully positioned myself in the shadow of the door, so that I'd have a moment's concealment before I attacked. I took a moment to wonder why I was trying to help this girl, and decided that I was just a sucker for pretty, dirty, brass-knuckle toting girls in snow boots and sun dresses.
The door shook, and muttered cursing was clearly audible. Rather than try the doorknob, the fool kicked my door in. I heard a feral scream of fury from the girl, and, amidst a slow-motion collage of splintered wood and shocked surprise on the face of a bulky, sluggish thug, she attacked. While everything was still floating through the air, she'd landed a ferocious blow to the man's throat with those wicked brass knuckles. He collapsed, grasping at his collapsed windpipe, while his ally, an angular man with a hooked nose, leapt over him, a police-baton in one hand, and a brick in the other.
Knuckles swept a hooked leg at the second attacker, which he deftly jumped. Her follow-up attack with the left hook was blocked with a sickening crunch, as his brick came down on her hand. Yowling with primal fury, she bit him, and his baton raised high in the air.
"Fool, move!" Came a voice in my mind. Drawn back into reality, and cursing my sluggish response, I darted forward, planting the seven-inch shard of glass in the second attacker's armpit, my forward movement carrying him into my cheap plaster wall, and then through it. He wouldn't be getting up again. I stood, turning to my strange visitor.
I probably made quite a sight, myself, I reflected. I don't wear much when I sleep, so I was standing in my black boxer-briefs, my equally black hair, usually straight, instead standing defiantly on one end, my bangs nowhere to be found. My palm was bleeding heavily, where I had driven my makeshift shank into the armpit of a man I hadn't even known. I tried to think of something to say to my strange guest, but found no words. She smiled, a strange expression, and gave me an odd look of something that could have been respect. I turned to look at the fallen men, once more.
She gasped, and I felt her hand on my left shoulder blade. It took every ounce of control I had not to whirl or counter-attack in some way. I lived in a rough neighborhood, but I knew it was her, so I just waited to see what she was doing. I felt her fingers tracing my tattoos, first the Dragon and Tiger chasing each other's tails in the shape of a Yin-Yang, on my left shoulder blade. Then, the Kanji for Eternal on my right shoulder blade. I felt her breath on my back, as she breathed a reverent sigh, and turned me gently, to face her.
"Are you a Dragon, too?" She asked, an intense look of passion on her face.
I wanted to say no. I had no reason to say yes. She was obviously crazy.
"Yes."