The Great Eviction Event Unfolds Chapter 4 free porn video

Charlie/Charlotte-1 Saturday, December 13, 2014,10:31 am.

Charlie banged the phone onto the cradle. “Fuck!” he shouted, smacking the can of stew across the kitchen. It was the 20th random call he’d made, and the only one that someone had picked up on the other end. In desperation, he’d shouted “Hello! Hello! Is anyone there?”

The line was active. He could tell the line was active. “Hello!” he’d shouted again in a cracking voice. Since 9:24 pm, last night, his voice was an octave higher than normal. Normal being a relative term, as nothing was normal about Charlie Castle now.

“Hello?” he shouted again. The line crackled, cleared for a long moment that Charlie missed in his near-hysteria, crackled loudly again, and died with an electronic shriek.

What could he do? Hit the redial button, he thought immediately. Yanking up the handset again, he hit Redial and waited. Nothing happened. The line just sat and did nothing. “Go through!” he ordered harshly. “You connect me back to that phone, right now, you asshole phone!” After a moment, an AI voice announced that the call could not be completed as dialed.

“Why the fuck not?” he screamed. “You connected before, dammit!” He punched the wall beside the phone in frustration, grimacing in pain. Even as a boy, hitting drywall that hard with his fist would hurt. He was no longer a boy, however, his fist decidedly smaller and more delicate now than before. It looked like his sister’s fist, were she around to compare it to.

“What about *69?” he questioned desperately. “Would that work?” He tried it to no avail. He had no idea what number he’d even called, not even the fucking area code. “Fuck!” he screamed again in frustration. His voice was more than 2 octaves higher when he screamed.

Grabbing the phone off the hook, he jammed it against his forehead. “Think,” he muttered, “think, damn you, think!” 315? Was the area code 315? It was, he thought, remembering the 3, skipping to the left before hitting the 5 in a pyramid configuration. He grabbed out his cell phone and Googled area code 315: “Watertown, New York,” he muttered. He knew no one in Watertown, or the whole fucking state of New York, for that matter. Why had he called there? Who had picked up the phone on the other end? How did he know it was a girl?

“Another girl,” he muttered disconsolately.

Hitting Redial again achieved the same result as before. The phone had a memory function, but the phone was ancient and the LCD was cracked and utterly useless, showing only a grayscale rainbow across the display. You could thank Maddie for that one, he thought. Stupid 11-year-old a-hole. Charlie exploded in tears.

No matter how trying his present travails, nothing approached his ordeal last night. At 9:24 pm, Charlie had brandished the knife he’d stabbed Howard with in the neck only moments ago. He’d severed the carotid artery, getting doused in hot blood as Howard staggered away, gurgling.

“What the fuck did you do?” Dennis screamed, lunging forward. He swore violently as Charlie caught his forearm with a wild slash of the knife, opening a wound that immediately gushed blood. Dennis stagger back, clamped his hand over the wound, and stared at his writhing fellow rapist.

“You cut his fucking throat, you asshole!”

“Good!” Charlie screamed, terrified regardless. Dennis was 2 years older, 8” taller, and outweighed him by 60 pounds. He was starting center on the Patriots varsity football team.

“You fucking faggoty-ass queer! Get outta my way before I cut your fucking balls off with that thing!”

Traumatized by the multiple rapes and sodomizing, Charlie burst into tears. “Don’t come near me!” he screamed. “I’ll cut you like I cut him!” He swung the knife recklessly sideways and back, banging his wrist on a wooden post. He grimaced, reflexively pulling it against his stomach. Dennis missed the opportunity to charge and wrestle away the knife. Then the lights went out.

Charlie screeched and instinctively dropped to his knees. He bobbled the knife for a moment when his hand struck the wooden floorboards, but instantly retrieved it and clutched the knife in both hands, extending it defensively in the dark. He panted wildly, afraid to move, afraid what Dennis would do to him in the dark without the knife. He also feared that Howard would die.

“Fuck!” he huffed, then berated himself for giving away his defensive posture. Dennis would attempt to circle around behind him. He had a phone; he had only to pull it out and turn it on. Charlie’s iPhone was the pocket of his jeans, wherever they were.

“You stay away from me!” he panted shrilly. The sound of his new feminine voice made him croak, “What?” in response. What was wrong with him?

He turned his head this way and that, listening intently. The shed was perfectly still. The heaters had failed with the power, and already, Charlie felt the creep of cold air between his bare thighs. He wore only a torn t-shirt and his sneakers. It felt wrong, even before he touched himself anxiously.

“What?” he squawked, falling back on his tail. Dennis had made good on his promise, somehow getting a knife between his legs and castrating him. His penis was missing as well, indicating total emasculation. “Noooooooo!” he screamed in protest.

The blood! Where was the blood? A wound like this, even unfelt, would leave him gushing blood just like Howard. Only what his desperately searching fingers revealed was not a removal of anything. In place of his scrotum and penis was a cleft. He gasped as his fingertips encountered moist lips, and the roughly circular mouth of an opening. His probing middle finger left no doubt what that opening was. He jumped up in panic, shrieking again and dropping the knife. It clattered to the floor and he clumsily kicked it away.

“No!” he panted softly. He was confused, hallucinating. The assholes had put something in his drink. He’d stupidly let them get him alone and had accepted a cold beer from Howard. He’d even more stupidly let them get him alone in the shed behind Howard’s house on the pretext of smoking a blunt, gotten high with the two juniors, and then drank another beer. While making jokes about his masculinity, Howard made it clear he expected a blowjob from the faggoty little freshman. Things quickly degenerated into homosexual rape.

“What the fuck is going on?” he panted. He’d felt movement earlier, but ignored it in his terror. Now he groped the small mounds beneath his ripped t-shirt with horror. He had breasts. He had a vagina instead of a penis and scrotum and he had breasts. His voice was different too, higher even when heard in a hoarse whisper. He was hallucinating.

“Dennis ... what did you do to me?” he croaked. Putting aside the impossible for a moment, he crept toward the shed door, knowing that once the power returned, he was dead if Dennis caught him there defenseless. Howard was dead, either way. No one could survive a catastrophic blood loss like that. He’d murdered his rapist.

“Bullshit,” he muttered under his breath. “He deserved to die.” Or spend the next 30 years in jail for homosexual rape and sodomy. Fat chance of that ever happening, he thought. My word against theirs, and Howard and Dennis would say I begged for it.

He inched toward the door. Why hadn’t Dennis pulled out his phone and activated the flashlight? Why was it so quiet in here? Howard had thrashed wildly right to the instant the lights went out in the shed; since then, not a sound. Had he really died that quickly?

“Dennis? Can I please just leave?” He stood still, horrified at his high voice, and his stupidity at using it. What was wrong with him? Did he want to die? Why not just offer his neck for slashing?

“Dennis wouldn’t use a knife,” he muttered silently. “He’d beat me to death with his fists.” After raping me again, he didn’t articulate.

He couldn’t flee the shed half naked. Especially with this new female body of his. If he really was female. He cautiously fingered his breasts again, then the absence between his legs. This couldn’t be real. A guy didn’t switch sex at the flip of a switch. Not that anyone had cut power to the overhead lights. They went out by themselves, just like that. Just like he’d changed to a girl.

He could see the door. Just enough light snuck in around the edges to make it visible in the darkness. He listened, waiting for his eyes to better adjust. He needed to see the shed’s interior before he made a move. Impossible as it seemed, he thought that he was alone in the shed.

When his eyes had adjusted sufficiently to discern the corner Howard that had blundered into trying to escape his blood, he looked around, unable to spot Howard or Dennis anywhere. The door hadn’t opened, of that, he was certain. Where were his jeans, flannel shirt, and coat?

He located all on the floor at the end of the work bench. Howard had raped him there, while Dennis forced him to perform oral. He forced back tears, intent on finding his underwear. They were beneath the bench.

He hurriedly dressed, leaving the flannel shirt unbuttoned. His mother ragged on him constantly on how sloppy he looked with his shirts left unbuttoned, but he ignored her by rote. Dennis, or Howard, he didn’t know which, had yanked it off getting him on his knees to be raped, in the process ripping his t-shirt at the neck. He doubted being unbuttoned made any difference in his being raped.

The shed door was unlocked. He pushed it open and turned around. Pulling out his cell phone, he activated the flashlight app and shown the beam throughout the shed, looking behind and under benches and into each corner. A tremendous amount of blood identified where Howard had fallen and died. No body laid in the blood. No sign of Dennis, either. What happened here? How was he a fucking girl?

Howard’s house was dark, so were the few others in sight on Pratt Drive. Charlie could detect no lights in any direction, not even near the interstate to the west. The power failure looked pretty extensive, then. “Hello?” he said quietly, listening to his voice. How was he a girl?

He should run, he thought. Get away from here just as fast as possible and call his mom. It was insane to hang around with Howard presumably dead, and Dennis on the loose. Whomever contacted the police first stood the best chance of being believed about this. He’d been raped. He’d killed his attacker, a fellow student in defense. He’d need to prove the assault, at least prove that he’d been violated anally multiple times. That meant the hospital and a physical exam, probably having a rape kit done. “Fuck,” he moaned, just wanting to go home.

Turning away from the house, he raised his cell phone and reactivated the flashlight app. He faced the shed, and then took a step inside. He had to know for sure. Pulling out his t-shirt, he shown the flashlight inside and gasped. He really had breasts. Small, just big enough to fill his hand, but bigger than some girls in his class, he thought. His chest had also reshaped, slimming into a more narrow waist. He could tell that his hips were also affected, bones more pronounced than before, protruding through the skin. He looked like a girl.

“Nooooo,” he moaned. “This isn’t possible. How can this be possible? I’m not a girl!”

The strangest part, what he found most distressing to deal with, was the missing objects between his thighs. He’d been accustomed to feeling them his whole life; the lack of constant contact and movement as he walked made him feel inadvertently bow-legged in response. He stopped and adjusted his jeans three times even before making the street. He refused to shine a light down his undershorts; he just refused to. He dreaded the thought of going pee. He had to now.

Get away from Howard’s house, he thought; that was tantamount. The entire family were rednecks, Howard one of the worst in high school. He drove a hopped up Dodge Ram puck-up with tires nearly as tall as his ego. His mother and father were drunks, his older brother George an ex-con that worked at Harrigan’s Citgo doing mechanic’s work. He couldn’t believe he’d been lured here in the first place. He headed north up Pratt.

He lived on Cecelia Street. The walk home was ¾ mile distance, first left on Old Airport Road to Main Street, north 3/8’s of a mile to Jackson, a short dogleg on Douglas to Cecelia, and then a five minute trek to his house. Charlie had never taken a more frightening walk in his life.

He arrived shivering, verging on hyperventilation, and freaked out of his mind. “Mom?” he croaked running up the drive. “Mom, where are you?”

He’d not made it to the bend on Pratt before coming upon his first wreck. The black Suburban had continued straight onto the adjacent property, down the hill, crashing into the corner of the large ranch house. Charlie stared at the odd sight, wondering why no one had gathered to await the cops. Was the driver drunk? Was he injured? The headlights shown; it’s why he’d spotted the wreck in the first place.

Call 911, he thought. For yourself, if no one else, he thought distractedly. He shivered and crossed his thin arms. Per his weather app, the temperature was 28 degrees and falling. He hastily buttoned the flannel shirt, cursing his stupidity for not retrieving his coat before leaving the damned shed. He hadn’t even considered it, how brain-dead was that.

“Pretty fucking,” he muttered, watching his breath issue as steam. “Even for a fucking girl, that was fucking brain dead.”

He pulled out his phone again and dialed 911. He couldn’t continue like this. The driver might be injured, or worse, and he had a crime to report. Also the death of his fellow student and rapist, Howard Slater. And let them know that his other rapist was on the run.

The call connected and started to ring. It continued to ring 7 times until the line went dead. Charlie pulled the phone from his ear and stared at the screen. The power was out; he supposed that could affect 911, especially if the outage was widespread enough. In fact, it surprised him to even get a signal, much less 4 full bars. Cell towers must have backup power supplies, like hospitals and supermarkets, and the old landline in his house. He tried again, but with the same result. “Great,” he muttered uncertainly, pocketing the phone.

Should he go down and look? What if Dennis caught him here? What if the police showed up and found him splattered in blood. His t-shirt stank of it; it matted his tangled hair on the side and in back. The long hair his rapists put to good use during his ordeal. Charlie jammed his eyes shut and fought not to cry.

What finally decided him was hope of finding a coat in the car. He’d already decided no one sat behind the wheel. He slowly approached, constantly sweeping his gaze back and forth, fearful of being jumped from the bushes. Dennis might be anywhere. He smelled antifreeze, realized the engine had continued to run long after the crash. He heard the ticking sound engines make as they slowly cool. It had quit only moments ago, he thought, as he came up the street. Steam issued from beneath the crumpled hood.

At the driver’s side window, he dug out his cell phone and activated the flashlight app again. The front seat proved empty, also the rear seat; he couldn’t tell about the big storage area in back. He’d need to check the back windows to confirm that. What stopped him from doing so was his reflection in the driver’s side window.

“What... ?” Alarmed, he swung his head back and forth, staring open-mouthed at his feminized reflection. His eyes were rounder and his lips thicker, his cheekbones more pronounced, his nose thinner and his chin narrower. He gawped at an older version of his sister Madeleine.

“This is impossible!” he cried. “I don’t look like this! I’m not a girl! How can I be a girl?” He laughed, nearly hysterical with confusion. Was he always a girl? Had his mind just snapped tonight as he’d been raped?

“No!” he choked, backing away from the car. “I am a boy! I was born a boy! I refuse to believe this!” He fled.

He discovered four additional wrecks on Old Airport Road. In every case, the vehicle had run off the road: one into a tree, a second into a telephone pole, snapping it in two. The 3rd vehicle, a Ford Bronco had clipped the rear of a parked car in someone’s driveway before nailing an oak tree in the front yard. The 4th vehicle, a UHaul rental truck, had overturned near the intersection with Main Street.

Charlie stopped at the first two wrecks to check for any injured; the engine of neither vehicle ran, and both had sustained extensive front end damage, resulting in coolant loss. Both engines steamed in the cold air. In both cases, Charlie checked inside with his cell phone flashlight, and discovered seat belts unexpectedly buckled in both cars.

On the console of the second car, jammed against the stick shift, was a purse. He spotted a cell phone in a slot in the dashboard above the console. The doors were locked. He spotted no blood or other sign of injury to the driver or passenger, though impact with the telephone pole had triggered the airbags. A light film of white residue from the airbags had settled on most surfaces. It looked eerily undisturbed.

“What is going on?” he muttered. “Where the fuck is everybody?”

Four wrecks in a quarter-mile on a busy stretch of road, and not a sole in sight. Even discounting the power failure, wrecks like these would be heard in the surrounding homes, and someone would rush outside to investigate. Yet no one surrounded the cars, and no emergency vehicles had yet arrived. How many wrecks had occurred in the small town, he wondered? No power failure could explain this. And certainly not his transformation in the shed.

Fighting back fresh tears, he yanked out his wallet and dug out his student ID. “Right there!” he hollered at the Uhaul. “See right there... ?” He lofted the illuminated ID and flashed it in every direction. “You can see right there—!” He jammed his fingertip on the printed name beneath the photo. “Charles D. Castle! Male student! 16 years old! A sophomore at Jefferson County High School! See—a boy!” He threw out his arms and spun in circles. “So what is this shit, huh!? He smacked his thin chest. “What’s this all about, people?”

He screamed. He screamed loud as he could. The shrill objection reflected back at him from the nearest houses. Reflected back at her.

“No!” he spat, stamping a foot. “I am not a girl! I’m not!” Clenched fists at his sides, he dared anyone to argue differently. No one did. “Fuck you,” he muttered, heading off.

The UHaul had continued to run, engine at idle, rear wheels spinning with an uneven whir from the differential. Pausing twenty feet distant, he turned back, wondering how a truck turned on it’s side could continue to run on. He supposed it was possible if the fuel tank contained enough fuel. The pickup wouldn’t care what direction it faced as long as it stayed immersed in gasoline. He smelled gasoline, in fact, and backed farther away. It hadn’t set in yet that he’d witnessed no instances of fire tonight. He’d been in the shed during the time where falling aircraft plummeted to the ground. None had impacted close enough to draw his attention, and none of the wrecks he’d encountered so far seemed catastrophic. Still, glancing over his shoulder at the darkened town to the north, he subconsciously observed that something besides two missing rapists and a spontaneous transsexual was greatly amiss in White Pine, Tennessee tonight.

Jesse-3 Friday, December 12, 2014, 8:40 pm

Jesse parked around back of the US Bank building. A vintage Ford Escort had smashed into the rear of a white plumber’s van exiting the parking lot, was rear ended by a Chevy Camarro, which in turned had blocked the way of a driverless gold Nissan Pathfinder. The RAV4 barely fit between the Pathfinder’s rear bumper, and a low stone wall on the right. Jesse didn’t bother to park the SUV, instead, pulled up directly before the entrance steps and killed the engine. Lights burned invitingly in the bank-building’s main lobby. He wondered if the entrance doors were open. “Better be,” he muttered angrily. He doubted if they would be, however; the event occurred at 6:24 pm, well past normal business hours.

He called Carolyn’s number again. “I’m at the bank. Just to warn you, I plan to break the front door glass if necessary to get inside. I’ll worry about the consequences, later.” Indeed, he prayed for the opportunity to explain himself. Just let Carolyn be inside. He took the steps three at a time to the main entrance. The doors were locked.

Before committing vandalism, he called the cell phone of his partner, Ken Donninger. Ken was a 9-year veteran; he wanted a second opinion on this course of action first. Even with an logical explanation (did he just think the word ‘logical’?), this was breaking and entering a commercial establishment, and that of a bank building, to boot. Due to being federally insured, bank robbery, including any attempt at doing so, fell under federal jurisdiction. He’d answer to the FBI for this, rather than local authorities.

Ken Donninger’s line rang 7 times, and then went to voice mail. So did his brother Rocky’s, and then Sergeant Whitaker’s, the 2nd shift duty officer’s; also that of Corporal Rittenhouse, his training officer. Tony was a sergeant, now, Jesse mentally corrected, working out of the North Hollywood Division. He hadn’t seen Tony in quite some time. They should grab a beer, soon, and catch a King’s game.

Jesse stood with a cantaloupe-sized chunk of curb in his hand. He had no memory of descending the steps to find it, or re-ascending them to stand before the front entrance. He rubbed his face with his left hand, feeling lethargic and dazed. Carefully setting the heavy chunk of concrete by his foot, he dug out his iPhone. The time read 8:50 pm, so he hadn’t clocked out for long. He turned away from the entrance and stared up at the night sky.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” He rubbed his face with both hands. “You’re ex-Navy, and a cop, dammit!” He slapped himself stingingly hard across the right cheek. “You do not freak out under pressure and you do not give others reason to question your usefulness and authority. It’s an emergency, no different than what you trained for since you were 18 years old. Get your shit together, mister!” He slapped his cheek again, hard enough to make his eyes water. “LAPD does not countenance weaklings or assholes!”

Seething, he grabbed the projectile and hurled it overhand at the right-hand door, ducking away and raising a hand to protect his face. The curbstone went though with a muted thud, arcing halfway across the lobby, before thumping down and skidding across the polished marble flooring to bang loudly against the bank’s interior entrance doors. It wobbled a moment before coming to rest. The entrance door had shattered into jigsaw pieces of glass at the curbstone’s impact, though it remained intact within the frame.

Embarrassed and frustrated, Jesse stood erect. “Now, you gone and done it, asshole,” he muttered, looking around. “Felony B&E.” He guessed that since US Bank lay beyond the lobby and elevator bank, enclosed by a second window front, he’d not officially committed bank robbery. “Let’s leave it at that, shall we?”

It took only a soft push against the glass with his coat-wrapped fist to cause the assembly to buckle inward, and disintegrate. Careful of the odd shard remaining in the doorframe, he squat, and stepped through beneath the handrail. Listening intently for an alarm—even if silent, an alert would be sent the moment he’d hurled the curbstone through the glass—Jesse stood upright and tread gingerly across broken glass to the mostly clear elevator lobby beyond. He knew a light blinked frantically on a panel in the building’s security office; possibly inside the bank, as well. He couldn’t worry about that now. He thumbed the elevator up-button.

Wait, he thought. You’re trusting the power to remain on while you ride an elevator to the3rd floor? “Oh, no, no, no, no,” he muttered as the bell dinged and the stainless-clad doors slid aside. Not only that, elevators could be remote-operated during a break-in from the security office, or an off-site location if no security office existed on-site. He wouldn’t subject his safety and well-being to chance. He took the stairs.

On the 3rd floor, he banged open the stairwell door and raced 30’ down the corridor into the corridor adjacent, and then three doors down to the offices of Cleveland & Rand, Attorneys at Law. He banged on the glass doors with both hands before realizing the door on the right was open. He yanked it open, to an unexpected rattle of keys. It took a heart-stopping five seconds to convince himself that neither the keys in the lock, nor the purse with the partially spilled contents on the floor, belonged to Carolyn.

“Carolyn!” he hollered. “Carolyn, are you here? Anybody?” Stepping inside, he bent and roughly shoved the lost cell phone, leather change purse, hair brush, and container of Tic Tac mints back inside the purse. “Anybody here?” he hollered again. Ignoring the keys in the door lock, he stepped into the reception area and scanned down both hallways. Carolyn worked down the right hallway, in the second office on the right; she handled most of the firm’s pro-bono work. Her boss, Jamie Cleveland, headed up the firm, and was the co-founder’s grandson. No one named Rand currently worked at the firm.

“Carolyn?” Dropping Sue Davidson’s purse on the reception desk—he’d recognized her cell phone with the signature black and white Mick Jagger protective case—he charged down the hallway and banged open Carolyn’s office door. No one remained inside. Nor in any other office of Cleveland and Rand, as devoid of humans as the rest of Sherman Oaks tonight. Back in the reception area, he stood panting, cursing under his breath. Where are you, he wondered.

Jesse returned to Carolyn’s office. He was certain she’d already left before the event. The lights were out, the desktop was meticulously straightened, and Carolyn’s purse and coat were missing. He checked every desk drawer and those of the only unlocked file cabinet to be sure he didn’t overlook her purse. She had left, sometime before 6:24 pm, then. Which meant she could be anywhere now.

Not wishing to leave Carolyn’s place of employment unlocked, Jesse crossed to the entrance doors and removed Sue’s keys from the lock. Returning to the reception desk, he dropped her purse into the bottom right-hand drawer and slid it closed. He had her number in his contacts, which he called now, waiting the interminable 7 rings for voicemail to pick up.

“Hi, Sue, it’s Jesse Duran.” Sue was the the law-firm’s junior partner, Jamie’s soon to be ex-wife, and Carolyn’s best friend from college. It was she that had recruited Carolyn away from the Monroe County’s Public Defender’s Office 3 years ago. She was the same age as Carolyn: 31. Jamie Cleveland was 49 or 50, Jesse couldn’t remember which.

“Hey, I’m at your office in Sherman Oaks. I put your bag in the receptionist’s bottom right hand drawer, and I’m locking the front doors when I leave. I’ll have your keys with me. You can pick them up, or I can drop them off, or I can give them to Carolyn to bring in.” He paused, afraid to proceed. “Look, I hope you’re okay. If you’re out there, you know as well as I do how fucked up everything is right now. If you hear from Carolyn...” He stopped, choking up. Rubbing his eyes with his free hand, he finished. “Call me, or have her call me. I’m afraid for everyone’s safety, right now. Do whatever you can to stay safe, and call me when you can.”

He hung up and left the offices, locking the doors behind him.

Coincidentally, the same Erwin Street that Jesse had emerged on after discovering the wrecked circulator bus, continued intermittently east, finally ending at N Clybourn Ave., south of Bob Hope Airport. Carolyn and Jesse lived two blocks north of the 12800 block of Erwin Street in Valley Glen. Jesse headed there now in the RAV4, traveling east on Moorpark Street toward Coldwater Canyon Avenue. He made detours north and south as necessary to bypass blockages. The drive was exceedingly frustrating.

“Mom, it’s me, you’re 4th and Likewise. I’m hoping you’ve heard from Rocky by now, or the three girls. Can you tell me what’s going on in your neck of the woods?” Conversing even with her voice mail, Jesse unconsciously added a Southwest twang to his voice, which clearly amused his mother when he called or visited, which wasn’t nearly enough.

“I don’t want you to worry about me, because I’m fine, I promise, but something odd occurred here Los Angeles. I haven’t been able to contact Carolyn, or Rocky, or Uncle Johnny yet—” He hadn’t thought once about his Uncle Johnny, nor his numerous cousins in the area. “—I just keep getting pushed off to their voicemails. I’m on my way home now to—hold on, Mom—” He backed to avoid a blockade at Wortser Avenue engineered by a UPS van and a FedEx Ground delivery. The roll-up rear door of the FedEx truck stood open, an upright hand-truck loaded with two large boxes outside on the ground, a third sitting on the low tailgate. Even in Sherman Oaks, an open delivery van invited pilfering. It appeared no one had bothered.