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.”