Its Short Story Time
The Job
I am pinching the bridge of my nose. I'm weary. Lack of sleep, lack of rest, lack of everything. Build up a sleep debt and it haunts you all week. I can't maintain a normal conversation without yawning halfway through.
The car smells like old farts, wet carpet and dirt. I shift my feet and the papers on the passenger side stick to them, crinkling in protest at being moved from their resting place. It is raining and cold. I can stand rain and I can stand cold I just hate them together. The windshield fogs up, despite the best efforts of the defrost vent.
My stomach is in a knot, I want to throw up, I am so nervous. The cold sweats and prickles all over my body. It is hot in my coat and in the car yet my body insists on making me shiver. Making all the little hairs on my body stand on end. It feels like I want to sob, there is that hitch in my throat. I keep calm with deep, low gulping breaths of air. I need to stay focused. I need to keep my cool. I need to be the fucking rock which all others destroy themselves against.
This has to be the longest car ride in the history of car rides. When I was a kid, my parents drove us to Orlando for a vacation. Seventeen hours in a car was nothing to the length of this ride. Funny how your mind slows time when it wants, five minutes can stretch into a lifetime. I just want this afternoon to be over. I want it to be tomorrow. I want to not have to think about this anymore.
My palms are clammy; I can't tell if it is because of the rain outside or my nerves. I can do this. I can and will do this. No one is as big and bad as me. No one. I shove my right hand into my sweatshirt pouch and touch the revolver for reassurance. Like I need to be more sure that this isn't a dream. It is cold, heavy and smooth, just like me. I am a smooth mother fucker.
The car finally pulls onto the last street. I have gone over this route, this plan, a thousand times in my head. The sewers are belching out the normal hot mist, so common on days like this. People hurrying from one building to the next, bustling down the streets in the normal inner city pace found everywhere. Hurrying to their ulcers, and graves. Always a tomorrow, always something coming next. I wish my next would get here already.
The door creaks open, and swings outward with that heavy dead weight common to old two door cars. Put one foot out and the other will follow, I'm sure I can make it, my will is like iron, and nothing can stop me. I'm on the curb in the drizzle. Warmth in my stomach yet my face is cold and slick. I don't look back at my friends in the car, I have to do this one thing and time and life can go back to normal.
I thought my feet would be heavy, that I would be stuck to the cement, but I effortlessly glide across the sidewalk to the door and then up the stair well. A Mexican lady on the second floor glares at me as she sweeps the dirt out of her spotless, Christian, pristine apartment. Ignore her. Focus on the Job. You are smooth, you are steel, you are the fucking rock. Third floor, fourth floor. Why is it there is always one wooden step that has to bitch about how bad they have it?
401, 403, 405…407. Four Oh Seven. Four leaf clovers and seven dwarfs. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John with the seven year itch. John, Paul, George and Ringo visit the Seven Wonders of the World. Four elements and seven colours in the rainbow. Such a simple number yet its weight and importance hung there in front of me, the calm little still before the storm. I'm numb. Palms sweaty, air heavy, everything is quiet except for my breathing and the patter of rain on the window at the end of the hall.
I take a breath and exhale. I can faintly hear the television in 407. The incessant banter of shit on TV is the same no matter where you go. 407's door is thick, two dead bolts and a key lock in the knob. The front is scuffed from age, feet and life. I knock on the door. Same staccato beats as if I was visiting my parents, my sister, anyone.
My hands rest in the kangaroo pouch as I hear the floor creak and someone scuffle to the door. How can my tongue be so dry when the rest of me is soaked? I see shadow behind the peep hole, then the locks start clicking and the door opens. Jim stands there before me. Hair wild and mussed, arms akimbo, sleep in his blood shot eyes. I can smell the smoke and funk of the apartment trickle out in the hallway. Rage pulses through me. A hot bath of emotion and feeling, courses along all the nerves in my body. Jim looks at me with a smirk of contempt. The way a kid would look at a bug they intend to smash.
Jim, he isn't better than me. He is the asshole that would pour salt in your hair at lunch, the bastard that would fart next to you in line and blame you for it. He looks so pathetic standing there in boxers and a wife beater. I can smell the beer from the night before on his breath. He isn't the rock. He is just a sack of shit that thinks feeling up passed out girls at a party is his God given right. That raping my comatose sister was a favor because he was 'showing her a woman's place.'
"What in the hell do you want?"
I am the rock. I am the smoothest mother fucker out there. I feel like I am going to pass out. My head is heavy and my neck is filled with sand. He deserves this. Why wait for justice when God gave me the ability to mete out punishment on his behalf? I feel my right hand pull the revolver from the pouch. It tugs against the fabric, protesting, no, begging me not to draw it out. It seems like this draw takes an hour, I see Jim's eyes widen in realization of what is going on, he knows. He looks to the door and moves his hands to close it. The gun is free of the pocket and brought up to bear on him. A slow motion ballet between us, silent yet graceful. I place my foot across the threshold to stop the door from closing and pull the trigger.
I remember fireworks from when I was a kid. The ones that would soar deep into the ink of the sky and with a rib cage rattling boom, explode in a brilliance of light to hundreds of oohs and ahhs below. Except this time it was a whoa from me and an ahh from Jim. The bullet had struck him in the pit of his left elbow. A second before, Jim was intent on slamming the door in my face and now he is collapsing to the floor. Howling the obvious.
"You shot me! You fucking shot me! You God Damn little bastard…ahhh my arm."
He flails on the floor moaning and screaming at me. The room smells like ozone and fireworks. It is at this moment I decide that I am going to do something completely the opposite of smooth. I vomit on the floor and on Jim. The blood, the smell of the gun powder and the intensity of the situation is just too much. All this furious anger, my pent up hatred, my plan reduced to him screaming at me and this morning's waffles on the floor.
"You are a sick fuck! Do you know that? God damn man."
I lift the gun again and just empty it at the writhing form of Jim on the floor. Shot after shot clamouring out of the barrel. I think the tears in my eyes came from the vomiting, I can't tell, I just know that I am crying. My hitching sobs and primal roar are the only other sounds I can make out besides the gun shots. My right hand hurts from the vibration of the gun. The pistol has wooden grip that did nothing to soften the kick of the blasts. I looks like I hit Jim with three more shots, maybe even four. I can see a hole in the floor from a wild shot though.
I almost throw up again. I didn't know it would smell this bad. Barf, smoke, blood and guts. Movies never prepared me. I clean my eyes with my thumbs, shove the gun back in my kangaroo pouch and hurtle down the stairs. Third floor, second floor past the Mexican lady, she leaps back in fright, blesses herself and begins to pray. I'm on the first floor. On the way out. Through the front doors to my friends and the car.
I am the rock. No one is as bad ass as me. I am smooth, I am tough. I am fourteen years old and I have killed a man.
I am pinching the bridge of my nose. I'm weary. Lack of sleep, lack of rest, lack of everything. Build up a sleep debt and it haunts you all week. I can't maintain a normal conversation without yawning halfway through.
The car smells like old farts, wet carpet and dirt. I shift my feet and the papers on the passenger side stick to them, crinkling in protest at being moved from their resting place. It is raining and cold. I can stand rain and I can stand cold I just hate them together. The windshield fogs up, despite the best efforts of the defrost vent.
My stomach is in a knot, I want to throw up, I am so nervous. The cold sweats and prickles all over my body. It is hot in my coat and in the car yet my body insists on making me shiver. Making all the little hairs on my body stand on end. It feels like I want to sob, there is that hitch in my throat. I keep calm with deep, low gulping breaths of air. I need to stay focused. I need to keep my cool. I need to be the fucking rock which all others destroy themselves against.
This has to be the longest car ride in the history of car rides. When I was a kid, my parents drove us to Orlando for a vacation. Seventeen hours in a car was nothing to the length of this ride. Funny how your mind slows time when it wants, five minutes can stretch into a lifetime. I just want this afternoon to be over. I want it to be tomorrow. I want to not have to think about this anymore.
My palms are clammy; I can't tell if it is because of the rain outside or my nerves. I can do this. I can and will do this. No one is as big and bad as me. No one. I shove my right hand into my sweatshirt pouch and touch the revolver for reassurance. Like I need to be more sure that this isn't a dream. It is cold, heavy and smooth, just like me. I am a smooth mother fucker.
The car finally pulls onto the last street. I have gone over this route, this plan, a thousand times in my head. The sewers are belching out the normal hot mist, so common on days like this. People hurrying from one building to the next, bustling down the streets in the normal inner city pace found everywhere. Hurrying to their ulcers, and graves. Always a tomorrow, always something coming next. I wish my next would get here already.
The door creaks open, and swings outward with that heavy dead weight common to old two door cars. Put one foot out and the other will follow, I'm sure I can make it, my will is like iron, and nothing can stop me. I'm on the curb in the drizzle. Warmth in my stomach yet my face is cold and slick. I don't look back at my friends in the car, I have to do this one thing and time and life can go back to normal.
I thought my feet would be heavy, that I would be stuck to the cement, but I effortlessly glide across the sidewalk to the door and then up the stair well. A Mexican lady on the second floor glares at me as she sweeps the dirt out of her spotless, Christian, pristine apartment. Ignore her. Focus on the Job. You are smooth, you are steel, you are the fucking rock. Third floor, fourth floor. Why is it there is always one wooden step that has to bitch about how bad they have it?
401, 403, 405…407. Four Oh Seven. Four leaf clovers and seven dwarfs. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John with the seven year itch. John, Paul, George and Ringo visit the Seven Wonders of the World. Four elements and seven colours in the rainbow. Such a simple number yet its weight and importance hung there in front of me, the calm little still before the storm. I'm numb. Palms sweaty, air heavy, everything is quiet except for my breathing and the patter of rain on the window at the end of the hall.
I take a breath and exhale. I can faintly hear the television in 407. The incessant banter of shit on TV is the same no matter where you go. 407's door is thick, two dead bolts and a key lock in the knob. The front is scuffed from age, feet and life. I knock on the door. Same staccato beats as if I was visiting my parents, my sister, anyone.
My hands rest in the kangaroo pouch as I hear the floor creak and someone scuffle to the door. How can my tongue be so dry when the rest of me is soaked? I see shadow behind the peep hole, then the locks start clicking and the door opens. Jim stands there before me. Hair wild and mussed, arms akimbo, sleep in his blood shot eyes. I can smell the smoke and funk of the apartment trickle out in the hallway. Rage pulses through me. A hot bath of emotion and feeling, courses along all the nerves in my body. Jim looks at me with a smirk of contempt. The way a kid would look at a bug they intend to smash.
Jim, he isn't better than me. He is the asshole that would pour salt in your hair at lunch, the bastard that would fart next to you in line and blame you for it. He looks so pathetic standing there in boxers and a wife beater. I can smell the beer from the night before on his breath. He isn't the rock. He is just a sack of shit that thinks feeling up passed out girls at a party is his God given right. That raping my comatose sister was a favor because he was 'showing her a woman's place.'
"What in the hell do you want?"
I am the rock. I am the smoothest mother fucker out there. I feel like I am going to pass out. My head is heavy and my neck is filled with sand. He deserves this. Why wait for justice when God gave me the ability to mete out punishment on his behalf? I feel my right hand pull the revolver from the pouch. It tugs against the fabric, protesting, no, begging me not to draw it out. It seems like this draw takes an hour, I see Jim's eyes widen in realization of what is going on, he knows. He looks to the door and moves his hands to close it. The gun is free of the pocket and brought up to bear on him. A slow motion ballet between us, silent yet graceful. I place my foot across the threshold to stop the door from closing and pull the trigger.
I remember fireworks from when I was a kid. The ones that would soar deep into the ink of the sky and with a rib cage rattling boom, explode in a brilliance of light to hundreds of oohs and ahhs below. Except this time it was a whoa from me and an ahh from Jim. The bullet had struck him in the pit of his left elbow. A second before, Jim was intent on slamming the door in my face and now he is collapsing to the floor. Howling the obvious.
"You shot me! You fucking shot me! You God Damn little bastard…ahhh my arm."
He flails on the floor moaning and screaming at me. The room smells like ozone and fireworks. It is at this moment I decide that I am going to do something completely the opposite of smooth. I vomit on the floor and on Jim. The blood, the smell of the gun powder and the intensity of the situation is just too much. All this furious anger, my pent up hatred, my plan reduced to him screaming at me and this morning's waffles on the floor.
"You are a sick fuck! Do you know that? God damn man."
I lift the gun again and just empty it at the writhing form of Jim on the floor. Shot after shot clamouring out of the barrel. I think the tears in my eyes came from the vomiting, I can't tell, I just know that I am crying. My hitching sobs and primal roar are the only other sounds I can make out besides the gun shots. My right hand hurts from the vibration of the gun. The pistol has wooden grip that did nothing to soften the kick of the blasts. I looks like I hit Jim with three more shots, maybe even four. I can see a hole in the floor from a wild shot though.
I almost throw up again. I didn't know it would smell this bad. Barf, smoke, blood and guts. Movies never prepared me. I clean my eyes with my thumbs, shove the gun back in my kangaroo pouch and hurtle down the stairs. Third floor, second floor past the Mexican lady, she leaps back in fright, blesses herself and begins to pray. I'm on the first floor. On the way out. Through the front doors to my friends and the car.
I am the rock. No one is as bad ass as me. I am smooth, I am tough. I am fourteen years old and I have killed a man.