Counting To Thirteen.

A cat burglar attempts to save his life by stealing unique items from a list.

Counting to Thirteen

Lucky Rocksunding cursed his name from the day he found out that he only had thirteen days left to live. He'd made a deal with Edward, believing that it would extend time, but the deal included one thing that he must do within thirteen hours or the deal was off. If he'd stopped to consider the full impact of what Edward wanted, he might have been sickened by it or found it a barrier to saving his life, but Lucky was desperate enough to do anything he was asked, just to save his suddenly unlucky hide.

Being a cat burglar had been a way of life for so long for Lucky, he couldn't see himself doing anything else. But for some reason, his luck ran out when he'd decided to rip off the biggest wheel in town and gotten caught. It seemed this particular wheel was deeply connected with the Mob and ready to end Lucky's streak permanently.

To his vast relief, that's when Edward, the big wheel's ace lawyer, had stepped in. The slick shyster was somewhat of an enigma to Lucky, but beggars can't be choosers in his position. This Edward guy had managed to convince his client that he had just the thing for Lucky to doin order to prove how sorry he was. The wheel then gave Lucky thirteen days to do something spectacular in order to prove his contrition; after that, it was made clear Lucky was a dead man unless he impressed the wheel.

When Edward finally got around to explaining what Lucky had to do, Lucky had been forced to make him repeat it twice. When he tacked on the thirteen-hour time limit, the cat burglar was even more stunned, afraid and sickened. But what choice did he have?

He'd never done anything but rob before. What Edward had outlined to him was robbery, of a sort, but it went way beyond stealing. He would do it, he had too.

Lucky ordered the storage containers by mail under assumed names with cash supplied by Edward and from several medical supply houses. He got the other items he needed even faster. The timeline meant Lucy had to do one an hour. He took the map that Edward had given him and studied the location of each 'robbery'.
"Here goes nothing," Lucky breathed, licking suddenly dry lips nervously. Soundlessly he climbed through the window. He crept through the dark apartment to the bedroom.
Without a sound, he slit the throat of the man sleeping in the bed. Carefully, he removed the required organ from the still warm body stored it in a container he carried with him. Once outside, he took the time to draw a line with a pencil stub through the number one on a tiny list from his shirt pocket.

Obviously, few people know that the wheel was an organ broker and Edward was the president of that part of his organization. If you could pay, the wheel would get you any organ you wanted, guaranteed free of disease and fresh. Lucky threw up in the nearest dumpster and forced himself to continue on to number two.

Number three was a woman and this gave Lucky pause at first, but fear for his own life make him grit his teeth, finish her remove the required organs to another container. He was shaking almost continuously by now, but he held it down to a slight tremor by sheer willpower. He moved on quickly, afraid to think or feel anything, since that way lay madness.

Number Five didn't die as easily as the others, he thrashed and gurgled for so long, Lucky was afraid someone would hear and he would be caught. He was forced to hold that one down and smother his last cries with a pillow. But he got the organs he needed and managed to get out fairly quickly, considering.

Number seven was one of the more difficult harvests since the required organ was skin. Lucky spent precious minutes skinning his drugged victim before killing him; the process reminded Lucky of a caterpillar shedding its pupa. He had some difficulty fitting the single body-sized piece of skin into the storage container but managed finally.

After changing his jumpsuit, as he had been told to do after each harvest, Lucky layered lye over it in an industrial waste barrel that had been put in the back of his borrowed van, again as he had done for each of the others. Edward had thought of everything; down to the last detail. If he'd had time, Lucky would have been as impressed all to Hell.

The steps were second nature now and he found the job getting easier and easier the more he did it. He shuddered ad the idea when he had microseconds to think about it, then thrust it out of his mind. Briefly, it occurred to him that he was a serial killer now., but he didn't have time to acknowledge this fact and what it meant.

For a while after that, the numbers blurred together and became indistinct. So much so, that Lucky began to behave like an automaton, breaking in, killing the donor, removing the requested body parts to a storage container and leaving. He barely noticed time or space; so intent did he become on finishing his trials by blood so he could live to a ripe old age.

Number eleven proved to be the easiest of all of them so far. To Lucky's astonishment, the intended donor's eyes popped open, and she had smiled as he cut her throat. It took a little longer this time to harvest and store what was wanted from her, as he was puzzled by what had happened.

Perhaps in her sleep-dazed mind, he was the Angel of Death, a welcome visitor for some reason. He didn't have time to think about it any longer, he only had an hour and a half to do the last two on his list.

His sleep-deprived eyes looked for the address of number twelve. He groaned. The next one was way across town! Lucky fired up the van and squealed out. Speed was of the essence if he was to get finished on time. Getting into number twelve's place proved to be tricky. he had to disable multiple alarms and silence guard dogs. It took almost too many precious minutes just to get in because of a near disaster with a glass house, presumably a greenhouse.

When he did, Lucky had some trouble finding the donor. The house was huge with several wings and multiple bedrooms. Finally, he found the master suite, door ajar. If he'd had time for thought, Lucky probably would have hesitated when he saw that, but time was running out rapidly. He silently entered the room, barely moving the door to do so. He approached the bed.

The man in it moved restlessly but did not awaken. Lucky was just going to turn him over and slit his throat, when he turned over by himself and looked straight at the cat burglar, astonishment and anger in his eyes. Lucky's knife had already done its work, as if on autopilot, before he realized who number twelve was.

As Lucky stood up, with the still beating heart of donor number twelve in his hands; the lights in the room came on. Lucky blinked, blinded for a time. When he could focus, he saw Edward standing in the open door of the bedroom, his hand still on the light switch. The lawyer was smiling and pointing an ugly-looking revolver at Lucky's heart as he moved toward him.

"Thanks Lucky. I owe you," he said. "II just couldn't convince the man it was time to step down and let me take over. Not just the illegal organ business but the whole empire. He was old. He was dying and still he held on; I had to take steps," Edward explained calmly even as he thumbed back the hammer of the pistol.

Lucky gaped at his next words: "But you do realize someone has to be number thirteen, right?" The cat burglar reacted instinctively. He threw the bloody knife that he still held in his hand straight into Edward's heart.

"Yes Edward, someone DOES have to be number thirteen," Lucky said as he stood over the lawyer and watched him die. 1,398 WORDS