Gunmen
The soft reflection of the boy in the window made her heart race: An old reaction, to a new target.
Sighing she adjusted her gun against the railing, her watch read 10:15 pm, and glancing at it she inferred that the boy would not return to the window just yet.
Spinning, she sat uncomfortably below the ledge of the roof, safely across the street from the boy’s window. Her breathe held itself uncomfortably in her chest, until it dawned on her that she should breathe, and it came billowing out, seemingly destroying the acquired silence of this city corner. She winced, and desperately attempted to regain control over her nerves. But with a spinning head, and sweaty palms, her hands shook easily, and control seemed farther and farther away.
She had never known the boy it was now her job to kill, but his soft polite face, just about her age, made her stomach twinge with guilt, and on this warm breezy night, his life, and all potential it contained, would cease to exist at her hands. Being new to the job left her painfully weak at moments like this, but she had finally been allowed on her own for a mission, and this kid would not ruin that for her.
He returned to the window now, and she quickly adjusted her gun, relieved when angle was perfect, and her target acquired. Soon, with two shots to the chest, whoever this boy was, and whatever problem he had caused would be history. His image became clearer and as he drew the translucent curtain back, her fingers tensed on the trigger. For the slightest moment, his movement was entirely convenient; her shot was crystal clear, it was now impossible to miss. And then she made her first mistake.
She really looked at him.
And just as her eyes focused, he stretched, completely unaware to the danger of his unexposed chest. And suddenly she seemed blinded by his unquestionable image of strength and beauty. Completely caught off guard she gasped, and the concept of harming said beauty suddenly seemed horribly criminal, and decidedly wrong. Frozen in the dark, she watched, heart racing, and unable to take her eyes of the stranger it was her job to kill. Time was running out, he would go to bed soon, and her opportunity would be gone.
But she couldn’t move. He seemed sad, scared even, and some instinct, some infuriating primal instinct, urged her to comfort him. What could be causing him discomfort? His angelic figure now slightly slumped, and almost out of breath, was the purest form of life to her, and she couldn’t possibly kill it. She began to put down her gun.
And as she did so, somewhere behind her left ear, a second gun cocked. Her stomach turning ice cold, she froze.
“Pull the trigger.” a gruff voice said, his voice soft, low, and almost mocking.
That was it, this whole time she was being watched.
She was never really alone. They never trusted her, and now they knew they were right not to. But she couldn’t kill him.
“You job is not to play God,” he continued, more threatening now “Just to simply carry out his actions.”
But she was frozen still, unable to think, breathe, or run. She knew, of course, that she was not God, but neither was this sweaty man behind her. And yet, he moved slightly, prepared to shoot, and she realized that his moral standing made no difference. She was disposable, and he held a gun to her ear. Just as the boy below her, she could, and would die easily, perhaps, even aiding the pace of this man’s evening.
But death was not yet hers, and this boy needed to die.
as the traffic lights below her silently switched to yellow, an eerie fog drifted from the city air vent. Its tendrils mixed with the dull yellow light, and up it floated towards the waiting boy’s window.
Swallowing, she crouched, and took aim.
***
Across the street, in his apartment, Michael looked carefully out the window, not yet sure if his assassin had arrived.
Back in the kitchen the microwave sounded, and he moved silently to retrieve a dinner that he had no plans to eat. Opening the door, he grabbed anxiously for the plate and winced, having made contact with an unexpected heat. His focus was such that he reached, and simply did not remember. Swearing quietly, he closed the microwave door, and frowned as he read the time on the digital monitor:
10:15 pm.
His breathe came out in a sudden gale, and as he leaned against his marble counter top, he reflected on what had to now be the longest day of his life. His life itself in fact, had been sealed, just that very morning.
It had started out just as any day might have, with a morning walk in company quarters, and a briefing on his next target by a long winded assassin who would begin by ticking off each one of his victims over the years, for seemingly no reason, but to remind Michael, that while he was no longer new to the world’s most deadly company, he was still yet to be a veteran, and for that reason, still disposable.
With lunch came the same meal that he’d consumed for all of the two years he’d been working with the company, and on this day he recalled watching amused, as the youngest students trained in the atrium of the warehouse. Looking down from the window in the lunch room on the second story, he smiled as a new girl, about his age, struggled to wrestle her over sized partner to the ground. His attention switched however as murmurs from the next room over caught his attention, and as they continued to crescendo, he found himself holding his breath, listening to a intriguingly quiet dialogue.
“Some of the younger ones are going to have to replace the old, they’re simply becoming over confident,… we didn’t think it would happen, and yet here we are,”
“So, what are we to do, bump off the older agents?”
“Why don’t we have the new recruits do it, they’re still too new, they don’t know their co-workers yet, and they won’t know the difference. Their first target…Can be the one they are set to replace.”
Michael’s breath caught in his chest, and a small, pathetic gasp escaped. His unexpected eavesdropping had lead to an unexpected bomb there was no disarming, He knew older agents; some of them were his friends. Whirling around he faced the door the noise was coming from. His stomach turned to ice.
There glaring suspiciously in the doorway, were the two men, that just moments ago, were planning the death of his colleagues.
“You heard” one said. It wasn’t a question, but Michael stuttered a negative anyway. It was useless. If there was ever men in this world that could see through lies it was these two standing in front of him now, and unfortunately, they also happened to be some of the most dangerous. They ran the company. They ran Michael’s life.
Just then, out of the men issued some sort of high pitched whining. It exploded from their mouths, ricocheting around the small lunch room, leaving a ringing in Michael’s ears, and a burning in his conscious. finally, when Michael was moments away from bursting from a building feeling of panic, the noise ceased. Their faces remained grotesque. Their mouths seemingly torn open by hooks, now hung, portals to a bottomless black. A grimace slipped over and remained until it sat there, morphing their entire face, while somehow managing to avoid their beady eyes altogether. They stayed like this, in this God awful image of lurid madness, and they carefully looked Michael over. Their gaze alone seemed to melt his extremities, and he remained, helpless to the wills of his own fear, and entirely at the mercy of these cosmically unstable beings of death. And try as he might, Michael couldn’t begin to wrap his mind around what that outburst had meant. In the end, it was his own mirrored, subconscious reaction that told him. A nervous contraction in his stomach let out a quick sharp “ha” from his lungs. And suddenly he was laughing.
They had laughed.
That noise had been laughter.
And now? They were smiling at him.
His stomach heaved and threatened to turn its contents across the too bright linoleum of the floor before him. These men never laughed at anything at all, and now suddenly here they were chuckling away. In him he felt a powerful hatred building. Despite the crimes he may have committed against humanity- mainly the assassinations of some hundred targets-these men and their presence seemed the ultimate affront to the face of goodness in the world.
Plain, simple purity was nothing to them. They’d probably eaten it for lunch in this very room.
He wished he could turn back the faded cracked, analog clock, hanging on the wall to his left; take back what he had heard. Make them never say it. Make him never hear it. Make them never know he heard it.
But the dominoes had been set into motion, and now he obtained vital information that would bring down the company if he told anyone. They were trying to knock off their veterans.
Of course he would never tell anyone, but telling these men that was useless. They had probably already made the call to end his life.
“We should have the new girl do it” said one.
They looked at each other and nodded, seemingly needing no other words to confirm how Michael’s death would take place. One looked him over once more, a scientist looking at his specimen, a surgeon looking at his patient, a murderer looking at his victim.
“Well, have a good one, Tyler” he said. They left.
Tyler had been an assassin gone rouge last year. He attempted to take out the CEO and was dead by morning. Michael could understand the mess up. His following morning was starting to look similar to Tyler’s last.
