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fizzwillard

I wrote this for a creative writing course i took in high school. we had to write an opener to a novel and my teacher instructed me that if i wrote another goddamn story about gnomes and dragons like i normally did he wouldnt even accept it. so i sat down with a dime of kb and some sonic youth and here it is...



As I ran up the stairs to the fifth floor studio apartment of my mentor I recalled being five years old, burying my entire body into Pluto at Disney World. At that age people were always telling me I had a great future ahead of me. At that age I had the imagination to dream, or maybe just enough ignorance, I’m not quite sure which. In middle school I still heard these predictions. My straight A’s and constant school activities didn’t keep them singing the same song as the melody changed to one of an if. You have a great future…if…followed by some fault of mine. If you applied yourself, if you grow up. If. If. If. In high school I was sick of the if’s and whoever uttered these words. All those backstabbing effigies remained in my mind and none of them burned to the ground. They were the only fuel keeping me warm, the only fuel keeping me alive. I wanted to feel the dark cold smoke of silence in my mind again. Two years ago, in that interrogation room, Officer Blowme didn’t tell me I had a great future. He told me this was my last chance, he told me this was the end. Maybe somebody finally understood me.
As I sprinted up the stairs my life flowed like a movie and I noticed a downhill trend. The worst part was how happy it seemed to make me. It gave me a lazy smile, one that fit me all too well. Recalling all those old movies and stupid commercials, I wondered if this meant I was to die when I opened the door. I looked into the peephole like I was staring death in the eyes. The fact that all I could see was a rough silhouette of myself with blurred contours and a slight protrusion of my face gave me an uneasy feeling that would haunt me perpetually. I knocked once. Mentor always told me “if they don’t hear you the first time, they’re not listening.”
After a few seconds of staring at the door in fervent apprehension it opened and he let me in. His abode was beyond humble. It was nothing but the largest rat hole I’ve ever seen. Three large, mostly empty rooms and a bathroom. There was very little I knew about him. I knew that in a small scale universe, he was the best at what he did. Also, I knew I trusted him. Something I didn’t do much of anymore.
Seth was already there, sleeveless as usual, sipping what, based on the little I knew about him, I assumed to be a rum and coke. I asked for three shots of the ****tiest vodka around. It felt like battery acid closing my throat. All the way down to my stomach the feeling awoke my senses and I was ready for anything.
“This is the only test. Let’s go,” Mentor said calmly and walked out the door as Seth and I followed. He was not one for excess conversation. He only ever said anything one time.
The drive through the lazy Oregon rain seemed intense and I felt my finger shake lightly as I played with the automatic window in the backseat behind the driver. I looked up through the misting sheets of water, trying to see at least one star. The clouds that kept view in overcast all day hadn’t turned in for the night. No big deal, I gave up on wishing a long time ago. We pulled into a parking garage adjacent to a hospital. This seemed like a good mode of escape, if that was necessary in the proceeding moments. Out of the garage, our destined location was half a block away. Walking down the street at the 2 A.M. hour I kicked a rock and watched it skip through puddles, hit the curb, fly straight up a couple feet, then fall back down until it remained idle, resting against the rough cement.
Mentor led the way behind Old Moses Bar to a back door he opened upwards of a thousand times. We walked through the bar, finding a few knocked over chairs and two or three drunkards swapping fictional stories of a time when wrinkles and stern expressions didn’t hide the youth inside. A dark corner beckoned mentor and revealed a stairwell as we ventured closer. As soon as we reached the top of the stairs the test would begin. I still tasted the vodka. I recalled the briefing.
“Keep control. Get the job done.”
Midway up the stairs I didn’t feel the fear or nervousness that wrapped me tightly an hour prior.
“Are you scared?” asked mentor much to my surprise.
“No,” I replied with confidence. When you’re not afraid of dying you’re not afraid of anything.
Mentor put his hand on the doorknob and I felt my fingers and ankles shake. He opened the door. We caught them at a poker game. Four of them. Each sat at his own side of the table. One corner was pointed directly at us, making the table into a diamond from my vantage point.
“To each his own,” mentor yelled at Seth and I.
I pulled the trigger with confidence. My target doubled over onto the table after the bullet ripped open his chest. It wasn’t a kill shot so I fired again, hitting the middle aged, suit wearing man in the temple. Simultaneously, Seth put a slug in the shoulder of the man on the left side. Then one in his head. The closest of the four, mentor’s target, fell to the floor with blood slowly seeping out of his neck. As this occurred the man on the far side of the table threw it over and hid behind it. Mentor and I dove into the bathroom. Seth rolled behind a couch, two feet from the left wall. Mentor peered at the overthrown table as the door creaked slowly.
“Don’t kill me, I’ll give you anything, just don’t kill me,” the man pleaded.
“Throw your gun over the table,“ Seth yelled.
The man did so quickly, anything that had a chance to save his poor soul.
“On your knees, hands behind your head!” Seth ordered.
He did this even quicker. Mentor motioned at Seth. He stood and walked towards the man on his knees until he was facing him at a distance of three feet. Mentor watched Jason look into the man’s eyes. He had never killed until 30 seconds earlier. He recalled mentor’s words, “above all, the job is to kill.” Simple as that he raised his arm a few inches, his hand jutting into the air until it sat an inch from its previous vice. I saw Seth’s gun revolve around his finger three times then stop and the bullet fired, hitting the man’s neck, two inches below his jaw. The sound of the shot echoed in my brain as I watched the man fall to the floor with a thud.
“****ing bastard, I will ki…”
It wasn’t he man screaming. The shot didn’t echo. It was Seth. Mentor shot him in the right upper torso.
Moments later we dropped from the fire escape to the ground and made our way to the parking garage. Recalling all that had happened in the last two minutes was dizzying. We had completed our mission. I didn’t know who they were but that didn’t matter. I didn’t know why mentor shot Seth. It wasn’t Seth’s life I cared about, but the uncertainty of it all caused me to erupt, “What the **** was that for? He was on our side!”
Then I felt the butt of his revolver hit me square in my jaw.
“Don’t say a word.”
Mentor was not the biggest man but he had extraordinarily strong arms and could swing a dead weight revolver about as hard as anyone I knew. The shear force left me breathless and my jaw in excruciating pain. I threw myself into the backseat and tried to muster at least one word but my swelling jaw made this impossible. Mentor looked at me in the rear view mirror and his stolid expression said it all- “we are not talking about this.” We didn’t drive to mentor’s place, but to a hotel twenty miles out of the city. Mentor watched the road intently as we drove while I sat there stolid with my jaw slightly askew.
After a night of tortuous dreams of gun shots and screams I awoke to see mentor sitting at a small table sipping coffee and reading a newspaper.
“Anything about last night in there?” I asked.
“Nah, cops didn’t get there ‘til this morning, I’m sure of it.”
That didn’t make sense to me; then again, nothing about last night seemed to make any sense.
“Why did you shoot Seth?”
“You passed the test, he didn’t. The mission was to kill the men, not to act like a hot-shot movie star. In this business, failure is synonymous with death.”
With death, I thought. This relationship seemed like the only one I’d ever feel again.
“So now what?”
“LA, we’re leaving right now.”
Mentor’s distaste for conversation and my own shaking self confidence made for a quiet ride and ample time for introspection against the back drop of Northern California. After a few moments I couldn’t even think straight and drifted into a daze for much of the ride until the radio sparked my interest.
“Little is known at this time, the only leads police have turn up nothing. However, there is evidence linking the five bodies to the mob.”
I couldn’t stop listening and let the words rip into my skull. We pulled into the parking lot of the motel and got a room for the night. Mentor left immediately for a purpose he decided not to enlighten me with. I didn’t want to think. I clicked on the TV to find more coverage of the murder. I surfed the channels to find something dumb and mind numbing. Major League filled this role quite nicely. I needed a drink. Drinks. Many. I rummaged through mentor’s bag and found a bottle of rum. Around 3 am I vomited. The rest of the night was a blur.
“Five Slain Baffles Police,” He announced loud enough to wake me up at 8 am. He chuckled a bit, something I never heard from him before.
“Why is that funny?”
“They’re not baffled, they know exactly what happened.”
“They won’t tag it to us, or you, will they?”
“They’ll tag it to Seth, he was the only one that didn’t belong there. Easy case for any detective.”
“Makes sense.”
“Here’s the next one. Study up.”
Mentor handed me a picture of twenty something year old man in blue work shirt. He had dark brown hair and blue eyes. I was told to memorize the face and the only fate for this man was death. I wasn’t given the reason for his death, but that was mentor’s policy. I did know this was the one. When mentor enlisted me two years ago, he told me that if I trained under him eventually I would get my one chance. My one chance to be a made man. This was it. I would just have to do this one thing. Clear cut, it meant I had to kill again for financial security. It meant a further killing of my own soul would bring perceived wealth. I was warped enough to believe this is what I wanted. I wasn’t sure which of my perceptions was correct. I still didn’t know how it felt to kill a man, last night kept emotion buried somewhere far away.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I dreamt of a tiger that night. And a hole. That’s all I could remember when I woke up. There was an address on the nightstand. Undoubtedly it was my target so I put on my other set of clothes and walked out the door. I grabbed a donut and orange from the counter in the lobby. I caught a ride on a public bus towards my destination. Watching the city didn’t interest me and my thoughts turned to the donut. I kept sticking my finger into the hole then pulling it out. A particularly attractive woman in a black and white striped shirt seemed rather offended by this pseudo sexual display. I felt like chucking the orange at the uppity *****, but I resisted the temptation. It wasn’t about sex, I was trying to figure out what my dream meant. Never mind, it was probably about sex. Most things are.
The apartment building was much nicer than I expected. I sat on a bench, pretending to read a newspaper with my gaze transfixed on the double doors, the only front entrance to the building. I was at least 30 yards from the doors so I ran little risk of suspicion from my pursuit. I pulled the picture from my wallet and saw what seemed to be an average factory worker. However, his residence did not match my perception of how this man’s life should be. Nine A.M., over two hours of pretending to read a newspaper. I skipped over a full page of editorials regarding the shooting. I read the sports, entertainment, and world affairs sections. In the middle of an article about a riot in Peru I saw the door open and the man came into view. I expected him to walk or take the bus, but he unlocked a mid size sedan and drove slowly down the street. I immediately hailed a cab. My intent was to follow, but as to arouse no suspicion in the cab drive I said I didn’t know the address of where I was going but knew how to get there.
After several minutes the car pulled into a parking garage so I claimed a Starbuck’s as my destination. The drive shot me a curious look, seeing as we had already passed two Starbuck’s on the way. To further the ruse, even if for no reason at all, I wandered inside a place that exuded more sarcasm that I thought I was capable of. I felt dirty to be associated with anyone that frequented this place. Anyone. Anywhere. EVER. With much emotional difficulty I ordered a cup of coffee, sat down and kept my eye out for the man. Much to my delight he walked right by the window two minutes after I sat down. 3 feet of sidewalk and a half inch of glass was all the separated us. I quickly shot up, tossed my coffee in the trash and followed him from a safe distance. He entered another apartment building much to my dismay. I was hoping he would go into a place of business so I could find out where he worked, some place he would be on a set schedule. I decided it would be too suspicious to follow him in so I just walked around the city for a couple hours, then returned to the apartment building he lived in. I took up my seat on the bench again and watched for him. Nobody had gone in or out of the building in almost an hour and I was getting very bored. I figured there was a good chance that this was going to be the site I used to do my job so I jotted down notes about escape routes and possible hiding places. The building itself was six stories, brown with green trim around each window, and a row of balconies outside each of the middle rooms. The odds of him living in one of these were not good, but the ease of a shot to them nearly made me wet. I decided he probably didn’t live in one of these so I looked for an alternate plan. I would either have to cap him off as he left the building or get inside and do it….or scrap the whole idea of doing it anywhere near the building. Across the street and about 20 yards down from the main entrance there was an alcove for shipping to the back of a Chinese restaurant. It would provide ample darkness to hide for a good while. This was one thing I had in my favor. The closest pig station wasn’t for another 6 blocks so I had little fear and getting away would be easy enough. Luckily, the entrance to the expressway was only two blocks east of here. I was taking notice of everything ambient in the area now. The stone facades of buildings and street signs were all too static, with a future infinitely definite as far as I was concerned. I thought it would be a good idea to take notice of what else happened here, especially at night. So I went back to the hotel and slept until 11 and made my way back to the apartment.
I decided my hit would probably go down between midnight and four a.m. so I kept track of everything that happened in that span. From midnight to 1 a.m. 258 cars passed the apartment, 46 pedestrians, including 6 pizza delivery men. From 1 to 2 there were 193 cars and 29 pedestrians. From 2 to 4 it was basically dead, 100 cars in those two hours and only 15 people. Around 1:45 something strange caught my eye. Another man seemed to be doing the same thing as I. This made me extremely nervous.
Considering the little info mentor gave me, the chance that there was more going on than I knew was a constant aching in the back of my mind. The line between certainty and doubt was now so blurry my only conclusion was that I was involved in something big, huge. Even when I had been a newbie under the wing of mentor there was always much more going on than he ever let me know. He generally let me find this out on my own. He always told me this was for my own growing experience. I was starting to think there was more reason to it than that. I recalled two years ago, when my life nearly ended, and for all practical reasons, it did. The pain of those fateful nights still haunted me, mostly in my dreams as I was able to drown them out when I was awake. I took my mind off them and focused on the other curious man, considering him the biggest threat to my job and thus, my made life.
I wondered if my target was a little more than he looked like. This was obviously true, most factory workers don’t attract the kind of bounty mentor had alluded to. But how far his ties were I still did not know. I thought for a second that the other man was some sort of hired protection and perhaps was waiting to kill me. So I got up and walked around the block. He didn’t move a muscle throughout this whole endeavor so I scrapped that idea. Then it hit me, he was here to kill the same man I was. I was so sure. I’m the kind of person who perceives the world with very little certainty but when I’m right I am right and I’d right this certainty to hell and back. This made for quite the quandary. This made me hate mentor for the way in which he presented the situation. All I knew was there was competition, and in this industry competition usually led to dire circumstances. I was beginning to wonder about my life. Worrying about my life was something I gave up on two years ago, but I still wondered and pictured it hanging in the balance.
I watched the man for another 45 minutes. He was jotting notes into a notebook and keeping careful watch of everything around him, but given my position, he gave me little attention. I decided he was probably just taking orders like I was. Just another pawn in a game of chess that certainly made my old world seem like nothing more than plastic game pieces. I wanted to make contact, so I could learn all I could about what I was already in to. I walked over to him. Just as I sat down on the same bench I felt nervous as hell.
To show him I wasn’t trying to bother him I said, “I’m just waiting for a bus, I won’t be here long.”
“That’s cool…no big deal,” he said, despite the fact that the only bus stop around was a half block south. I couldn’t tell if he knew that, or even cared.
“What ya writing,” I asked, looking for some clues.
“Oh, I’m an author, or trying to be anyway, I’m just finishing a couple chapters,” he said like he had it planned out for weeks. I glanced down at the paper to see a couple lines of scribbled notes and a couple half-assed drawing of the scene, just like I had drawn.
“Well, I’m sure you’ll get him sometime,” I said and slowly walked away. After a few seconds of those words churning inside his head he erupted. He ran after me and knocked me to the ground and held a gun to my face.
“What the **** did you just say?” he said with a ferocity I had only seen once in my life.
“6D.”
He held the gun to my face, jamming it into my cheek. He looked into my eyes. They didn’t move it all, his or mine, then he lost all his intensity and rolled over and lay on the concrete.
“Who are you working for?” he asked, I guess he decided my life wasn’t worth ending just yet, not until he at least got some information from me.
“I don’t know his name, I’ve known him for years, but I know nothing about him.”
“Ok.”
“I’m really in the dark on this one.”
“I figured you might be.”
“Huh?”
“You’ve been at that bench since 11.”
“Damn, I thought I was the one watching you.”

 

fizzwillard

“Yeah, I liked your little walk around the block routine, I nearly pulled my gun on you then.”
“Do you know why this guy is supposed to die?”
“Not a clue, my mentor just gave me the address.”
“So where was your one test?”
He looked at me in confusion then realized we were working for the same man. He became much more slow and purposeful in his words.
“Low level crime boss in Reno.” These words crushed me as I realized even more I was just a pawn in the game.
“Mine was Portland.”
“Jeez.”
The other killer and I were at Denny’s for some coffee and to try and figure out for ourselves what was really going on. He was 24 and had been working for mentor for 3 years now, he had been a coke junkie and mentor helped him get clean and got him small jobs as a runner and dealer. He had killed only once under the guise of mentor. Then he asked me how I started working for mentor.
“It happened two years ago, when I was 17….”
I quickly explained the most stripped down version of what happened. That’s all he cared about. Back at the hotel however, I recalled everything that happened….

“You said you wouldn’t do it again,” she said as she ran out the door.
“Katie wait...” I screamed and ran after her, “You don’t understand.”
“What don’t I understand, you said you were done, look at your arm, you haven’t been yourself at all, look at you,” she cried as her soft palm ran over that jagged pain on the underside of my left arm. I looked at the scar just as she did. I pulled her close to me as a single tear fell from my eye and I told her, “just be here now.”
We walked up to my bedroom and lay in my bed together. She held my hand and kissed my head and I knew I was safe, but being safe from the world was never a problem for me. The only thing I feared was myself. I ran my fingers over hers and told her.
“One day in seventh grade I came home from school, nobody was home and I was just standing in my room and I fainted. I woke up 45 minutes later with a twisted knee and I had no recollection of the entire day. My mother called and asked me where my sisters were, and I told her that they weren’t up yet. I didn’t know what happened. A few more times that year, I would fall into that and I would forget everything. I was so scared and I had no one to turn to. I couldn’t talk to my parents, they didn’t want a freak for a son. They wanted a straight A’s perfect little *****. I didn’t understand what was happening, how would they? They would just take me to a psychotherapist. My mom couldn’t handle it, she would implode. So I kept it to myself. I turned myself off from the world. I came home from school everyday and just sat alone in my room, reading books about psychology and anything I thought might help find my answers. Over time it got easier to tell when they were gunna happen. I was powerless against it, I would fall into a trance. It would last for days. Everything seemed so blurry. The only way to get back to being myself was to punch something as hard as I could. Eventually I couldn’t feel a thing and I cut myself. I had been in an episode for days. Then the other night I got so ****en sick of it. I stayed up late, ‘til everyone was asleep then went out to the garage. I found a nail. I kissed the ring you gave me then I pressed it hard into my skin. Then ripped it all to hell in the shape of an S.”
The tears were flowing so fast now. She grabbed me and held me. She kissed me everywhere and I felt as if I was laying inside her and everything was finally starting to get better. I kept that secret to myself for so long it felt so good to let it go. We didn’t talk for almost an hour. Then she said, “why an S?”
“I have no clue, I just did it,” I told her. That was the truth. I don’t know why I did it. I just did. And that was it.
“How did we get to this, one minute everything is fine, then bam, the end of everything seems like it’s right here,” I said to her, and as delusional as that thought was, it seemed true.
“Well, what is going right in this place.” Those words ripped into me so hard.
We didn’t talk much more that night, just the smallest pleasantries. I was still stuck in the dreams of a wasteland. She was in the world of a beautiful oasis. We dreamt so differently, but that’s what kept so close to each other, why things got so crazy and volatile. There was too much talk of the future. I never knew how to believe in the future. Around 3 a.m. that same night Eric called me.
“What’s going on dude,” he always sounded excited.
“I’ts 3 am, sleeping,” I tried to sound tired even though I was plenty awake.
“I have an idea, and it’s gunna work,”
“***** you cooking?”
“I ain’t cookin’ this time.”
“aight man, I’ll help you whatever way I can.” He found trouble wherever he went. Got kicked out of school at 15, now at a new school, in a new city, has found a way to piss off a very small minority of punks who would find it quite satisfying to beat the hell out of him for a small price. He needed money. A lot. Five grand. The problem with us is that once one of us was there we both were. So I owed just as much as he did it seemed. I was getting fed up with the world anyways, I didn’t care about myself at all. So it was a go.
I said good morning with a kiss on her forehead. Outside there was a lazy sunset fighting its way above the clouds and I looked down at her face, with the golden rays finding her eyes.
“I don’t know if I’ve seen a more beautiful sight,” I said as I ran my fingers down her arm and back. We got up and made waffles.
As the syrup spilled on the 1970’s budget living fine china my parents had bought so many years ago she looked straight into my eyes and asked me what my dream was.
“Huh?”
“You know…the one vision of your life that makes everything worth it.”
I had never really thought about my life in that way but I took every word that came from her lips as scripture so I put some thought to it. One place came to mind and I told I’d take her for a walk and I could show it to her.
We walked the curving streets and caul de sac’s I grew up on.
“Heh, I’ve ran through this yard so many times, they put this garden in last year, completely without my prior knowledge. So one night I’m running home from Scott’s house and we both just biff it on this tiny fence and go flying head over heels.”
We kept on walking past the park where we spray painted and playgrounds where we played basketball. Then we were there.
“Here is where my dream is,” I told her and held her hand as we walked up the cloverleaf of the pedestrian bridge.
“Highway 10, a beautiful sight of modern conveyance and convenience, I can see how it’s dream like. Pavement and all.”
“No, not this, what used to be here.”
Facing the eastbound traffic of a million people heading to their employer in Minneapolis and St Paul, looking through the seven foot high fence from 200 feet above the pavement, I saw it all like it used to be.
“Behind the sound wall right there – there’s a hole in the fence. That’s where we left school in seventh grade, all the cool kids were smoking cigarettes and there’s where the pond used to be where we caught tadpoles when we were seven. The woods continued just next to that and we got high where nobody else ever cared to look for us. There’s the sand where used to jump our bikes. The path we rollerbladed forever in the July heat. I remember when we called it the desert. We had so many nights here. Now we stand on these twisting monuments. I miss the monuments we created for mere moments at a time, my dream is to have it all back again. When I’m with you, I remember it so much better.”
We stood there and kissed above the screaming cars for what it seemed like forever. I grabbed the fence to know I was really there and it wasn’t a dream. We went back to my house and lay in my bed close enough to feel each other’s dreams. I drifted off to a different world…
I woke and hopped out of the tiny motel bed that had a stank that gave me the uneasy feeling that this bed had been used for more than sleeping. I was afraid to read the newspaper or turn on the TV; I had enough pseudo haunts and I didn’t want to deal with a real one. I opened the door slowly and strolled down to a convenient store. Grabbing a Mountain Dew, I got the strange suspicion someone was watching me. I guess that’s what starts to happen when it’s your job to watch others. I looked up the red LED shining on the surveillance camera, cracked a slight, loosening smile then paid for my drink and walked out the door. The only distinctively arousing sight was a green moped weaving in and out of traffic. And suddenly it’s two years ago I thought. I remember it so vividly, running around downtown, a place I never belonged but always excited me.
A block from the building of my pursuit, I was tapped on the shoulder.
“Thought I’d see you here eventually,” said Jason whom I almost expected to see.
“Yeah well, that’s business,” I said cracking another loosening smile.
“Yeah, things took a turn.”
“Oh really,” I said back and suddenly realized his face wasn’t nearly as cheerful as his always chipper speech.
“We’re not the only ones out for him”
“****….how big is this thing?”
“No clue, this is all I know, and get this, he’s a civy.”
“full?”
“Completely.”
“Doesn’t add up.
“Not at all, but anyway. Last night I follow him to a bar. And after I watch this pathetic punk hit on everything, all to no avail, I follow him back here. But get this, I’m about to leave and I look up at that window, and I see a rifle jutting out a couple inches.”
“wow.”
“So I take off.”
“how far do you think this goes”
“far.”
Above the restaurant lived the owner, Soo Yoo and his son, Charlie. A cheerfully upbeat man who neither grasped the irony of his name nor what was to be enacted from his apartment window.
“Oh yes yes, man come use my room last night. Pay me 100 dollars, very pleasing, very pleasing,” he said when Jason pressed him for a little information.
“Did he say what he was doing,” I asked.
“He making movie, bring camera and everything.”
“Alright, do you know if he’s going to be back at all.”
“He say he wanna shoot all week so I say ok. I let him alone for big Hollywood man.”
With the minor difficulty of communication the conversation aroused no puzzlement at all within the grateful movie set provider. Jason and I went through numerous helpings of sweet n sour chicken and rice as we muttled over the situation.
“I guess we just have two people to watch now.”
“I guess that’s all it means.”
“Meet me at fifth and main at 10:30. I’m cooking up a plan.”
“Deal.”