• Possibly NSFW
• sitting in the bathtub sucking her thumb
• plopping into the sewer below
• versus when I don’t
• running with scissors wasn’t smart

Tune In Next Time Part 17                             Click Here for Earlier Installments

Now I remembered. The 7 train ran under Tessa’s old neighborhood. I couldn’t help picturing her sitting in the bathtub sucking her thumb, batting her lashes and beckoning for me to join her. But she had moved to a nicer place out in the suburbs years ago. Her lashes were batting again as we rode the subway. We were alone in this train car. What was she up to now?

“Tessa,” I started, but I didn’t say more. Something was amiss. I felt we weren’t alone after all. The train’s motion caused a discarded newspaper to rustle. I looked more closely at the heaps of garbage arrayed throughout the compartment. My natural suspicious nature is keener when I have people actively trying to kill me versus when I don’t, and right now I was suspecting everyone. Especially Tessa.

Just as I feared, the detritus in the subway car concealed yet more ninjas. These were not from Ninja-Vision. They were one of the mercenary dojos. Possibly NSFW. The Ninja Society of Furtive Warfare wouldn’t ask why Tessa wanted to hire them. But I did.

“Why?”

“How did you know it was — hic — me?”

“You can drop the act. You really were scared back there, with ninjas you hadn’t hired about to pounce on us. Yet your hiccups didn’t go away — because they were fake all along!”

“Ninjas! Attack!” she screamed. If running with scissors wasn’t smart, then running with a submersible digging machine on a moving train was something there’s no word for. But it’s what I did. I turned on the machine and brandished it at the ninjas whenever their camouflage faltered.

The train braked hard and I lost my balance, falling onto the digging machine. It sliced through the floor and plunged straight through the tracks of the subway tunnel, boring downward with me still hanging on, eventually plopping into the sewer below.

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