Read Katja from the Punk Band for Free Online

island there’s an upper limit as to how nice places get and that limit is just below slum . It’s nice in the sense that the windows are still in place and the fencing is intact. It’s nice in the sense that Nikolai has walked along the street and not had to duck out of the way of roaming groups of youths who wouldn’t think twice before engaging in a little game of junkie ball. Nice. But not really.
    He’s found a low wall around the back and has jumped into the overgrown garden and has been waiting in the bushes there, trying to figure out what to do next. The gun is in his pocket and his senses are sparkling from a hit of the drug Kohl gave him. It’s something new, something different, and his body is taking time adjusting to it.
    There’s a dried-out swimming pool in front of him, the cracked walls of which have been covered in tag art that bends and twists, and he has to pull himself away because he feels as if he is starting to be drawn in toward it. He jogs around it, toward the rear wall of the house. There are a set of large patio windows beyond another overgrown bush and he can see light and movement coming from within. And shouting.
    He leans through the foliage of the bush, trying not to make any noise, looks in through the window. He sees a small kitchen constructed mostly from chrome that has lost all its shine and now resembles what he imagines the inside of his gun barrel to be like.
    He watches for a few moments then catches a glimpse of someone striding past the door into the kitchen on the far side of the room and then a moment later another figure following quickly after. He is left with the impression of large spikes protruding from the figure’s head but that can’t be right.
    The shouting continues but softens as the two go deeper into the house and Nikolai considers whether to stay at the window and hope they come back into sight, or try to follow the voices.
    This is the man. This is the address.
    Kohl had never mentioned anything about anyone else being there.
    Shit. What now? What now?
    Nikolai’s gun hand flexes. He jogs around the side of the house and comes to another lower building stuck to the side — a garage. The wall is scabbed in the same graffiti as the swimming pool and makes his head dance as he slowly makes his way around.
    Voices again. Shouting.
    Something crashes around inside the garage and he’s at once glad there are no windows and annoyed there aren’t. Instead he listens and the shouting gets louder, another crash.
    Then silence.
    One beat.
    Two beats.
    Three beats.
    And then the sound of a gunshot.
    He jumps away from the wall and finds himself staring at the gun he holds as if to reassure himself that it wasn’t his weapon that made the noise, that he hasn’t fired it by mistake with his arcade-weary index finger.
    He holds still, suddenly wanting to be away from there, regretting his desperation at agreeing to what Kohl had asked of him for the minimal hit he had needed. But it’s done, it’s done now and here he is at the stranger’s house and a gun has been fired and now the door to the garage is opening noisily on the other side of the building.
    He leans into the wall, holds the gun upright in his bent arm as he imagines you are meant to in situations like this.
    And he hears a voice say, “Shit, shit, shit.”
    Then there is the sound of the door closing again, crashing down abruptly, and he hears movement back inside the house again. He rushes along the back wall, purely on instinct, and reaches the kitchen window just in time to see the spike-headed figure flash past going in the opposite direction from before, and so he continues along the rear wall until he reaches the other side and there he waits.
    He presses a nail into his mouth and chews hurriedly on it.
    Just enough time passes for him to consider leaving, abandoning the whole thing and just trying to find another way to get Kohl his money, when he hears a door open toward the front of the