Curse of Arachnaman Read Online Free Page B

downing her soup.
    Every so often people would come in, ogle her steam counter, and buy heaping containers of greasy but freshly cooked Chinese food. From where I sat, I also noted that pretty much everyone ordered the same stuff that my family tended to default to—beef with broccoli, chow mein, sweet and sour pork, and hot and sour soup. It was kind of a sad testament of how little we Westerners really knew or maybe wanted to know about Chinese cuisine. I made a mental note to write down a list of alternate dishes that Mrs. Zhang might want to serve. Or maybe “mistakenly” substitute for one of the more common and boring stuff. The upside would be a pleasant surprise for the customer, who might ask for more new things from her next time. Of course, the downside was the total mind-fuck factor, which would mean angry complaints and demands for refunds or a night-long odyssey in one's toilet.
    When my order was finally put together, I marched outside and walked in the direction of police sirens. No surprise there, given the overall sleaze quotient of the general area. A break-in? Sure! A carjacking? Oh, yeah! A murder? Pfft—why not? Sometimes I wonder how the Disney studios would interpret my city and especially neighborhoods like these. I figured that they'd make my trip to and from Mrs. Zhang look like a really edgy Little Red Riding Hood. You know, with the studio artists all toked out or something.
    I didn't have to walk too far. Beck Street, which was kind of known as a haven for the criminally whackjob-y types, was also a favorite police hangout. It was also a part of my route home, and I couldn't avoid it even if I wanted to. Two streets down from Mrs. Zhang's takeout joint, I trotted over to the corner and found myself huddling with a handful of homeless dudes. I thought they were just residents loitering in a street corner, but I was so wrong.
    "What's going on?” I asked, pointedly ignoring the strange looks my family's dinner was getting from my impromptu peeps. One started flapping a hand in front of his face, as though he were shooing off flies.
    "Dunno,” someone grunted, and I instantly smelled a really potent mix of alcohol, cigarettes, and rotting teeth that nearly knocked me out. The hunched lump standing beside me pointed a gnarled finger down Beck Street. Well, he looked like a lump because he was, you know, hunched, and he wore ten layers of filthy coats. “Looks like a mugging or somethin'. Probably a rob'ry. Or a thief."
    I inched away from them when I realized that their attention had completely shifted from someone else's crime spree to one that was possibly theirs. Yeah, like another mugging. This time, with non-spicy Chinese food for their target. I tried to look calm and a little more grim because I figured that I'd give off pretty intimidating vibes that way.
    By the way, I also suck as a judge of my own vibe-giving. Instead of changing their minds about me, they inched their way closer, their eyes—those that I could see in the semi-lit area—fixed on the bag I carried, so that we kind of looked like we were practicing some weird group dance move in the shadows of a side street.
    "Yeah, cool. Better get back there, you guys, or you'll get in the way of the cops. Know what I mean?” I said, raising my voice a little in case that helped make me look tough.
    "'Ey, kid,” someone barked. I thought I saw a large hand appearing from the mass of dirty bodies that was slowly bearing down on me.
    "Hey, watch out!” someone yelled.
    They all threw themselves down on the ground in a chorus of half-drunken grunts, while I just turned tail and ran down the street, keeping Mrs. Zhang's food close to my body.
    "I said, watch out!"
    I threw a glance over my shoulder. A couple of shadowy figures were running up the street as well, just several feet behind me. They were also in the middle of the street the whole time, while I ran along the sidewalk. I suppose the icing on the cake was that they were