Run Faster Than My Bullet, or Destruction as a Finale (Part II)
Raaf by Michal Chelbin (Dior Homme, 2016)
Words: 5,320
Genre: Drama, Coming-of-Age
Mature Content: Moderate (Violence/gore)
“Hey, which club are you in?”
There was nothing remarkable about the school grounds. Catcher had never attended public school a day in his life, though he wasn’t so naïve. He’d seen enough schools in various cities from the outside looking in to know what to expect. Mundane brownish-red brick. Four storeys high. Cracked concrete. Shortly trimmed lawns. Low red iron gate and chain-link fence. Yeah, nothing special. Boring, in fact.
Miss Harley pulled up to the far-left kerb on Tarfside Lane near the back gates beside the football field and tennis court. A row of grey flats between an abandoned lot and overgrown trees was on the right side of the street (a forgotten cemetery lay beyond the trees). Three blocks of high-rise housing estates (at least twenty-two storeys up) was at the end of the road behind them. A security cam pole was close by, though Mr. Jonas didn’t appear concerned. Catcher suddenly couldn’t breathe again when he took a hesitant step outside the car and pulled up his black face mask. He checked his watch: three-thirty p.m. Time to hunt the Enemy, Robbie Robinson. Operation Robinson Crusoe (so-named by Mr. Jonas): begins now.
A low brisk breeze cut through his hair and cheeks like a knife. Aside from a line of parked vehicles, the street was vacant and he heard nothing but traffic from the opposite road and children’s voices chirping loudly from over the school wall on the football field. Apparently, the grounds were far from deserted. He wiped the sweat from his palms on his trousers and found his right hand reaching for his harness concealed under his hoodie. His sweaty palm gripped tightly the handle of his pistol. For what reason? He didn’t know. Security? Yes, he felt safer this way.
He scrutinized the red iron gate and turned back to the adults hidden behind the glass of the Hudson Hornet. They were waiting. He had no choice.
The path was clear. Catcher climbed over the low gate and trudged through the Enemy zone in the paved alley on the right of the building. He was slow, cautious, silent. His breath remained in his chest. His head throbbed, yet there were no buzzing wasps. He double checked his surroundings before scaling the chain-link fence into the empty tennis court and he made his way towards the field, cutting left.
I am a ghost. You don’t see me. No one will.
He observed his shadow stretching beyond him in the sunlight and counted his paces in his head. Five hundred. Seven hundred. One thousand and twenty... He had a slight idea of where he needed to be, but not exactly.
Just walk. Look like you’ve been here before. No one sees me. No one will.
For a moment, he tore his eyes from his shadow and found a flock of three or four girls (thirteen? Fourteen? They were a little taller than him) laughing and talking to his left. They were coming up the opposite side and didn’t appear to notice him. Red ties. Black cardigans. White collar shirts. Black skirts and stockings. Black-and-white converse shoes (wait, were students allowed to wear those?). Face masks. He didn’t have a uniform, only a mask. He would have been wearing a mask regardless to protect his identity (he had been doing so, as required, since he was about eight-years-old), but that was the only thing he had that made him appear normal. No uniform.
Shit.
They kept talking and scrolling on their phone screens and brushed right past him.
No one sees me.
He tried to breathe. Nothing. He studied the main school building and headed for the brick wall that led to the blacktop. He kept his head low, his chest throbbing with his head and drifted past a chain-link fence on his left. Again, he was distracted. Screaming. Lots of screaming. Horrible, piercing screaming. He jerked his head towards the noise and halted, mesmerized. On the other side of the fence, a flock of at least twenty girls or so (twelve or thirteen, perhaps?) in white T-shirts and navy trousers sprinted around in large circles, kicking up dust. They howled like wild dogs and chuckled maniacally. One of the girls with silky dark brown hair tied back in a ponytail tripped in her tracks and landed on her stomach. She rolled over to her side and giggled. Two other girls (one with a dark shaggy pixie and the other with bushy red curls) came to her aid and tried to help her stand. Epic fail. All three fell down and continued to laugh in the dirt.
Catcher furrowed his brows at the scene. He didn’t understand. Why were they so happy? He had fallen many times before and he found nothing funny about it. He vaguely recalled that Frankie deliberately tripped him down the stairs once (classic Frankie). It hurt like a bitch and he broke his arm. Mr. Jonas, especially, wasn’t pleased. Frankie, naturally, said it was an accident.
“Bullshit, Frankie,” Mr. Jonas said. “Is my face a joke to you, man?”
Mathilda, Ruth’s older cousin, was still alive then and she fought to contain her ferocious giggles (the agency had been quiet without her and while Catcher was never good friends with her-or any of them-he found himself half-expecting to hear her laugh at David and Frankie’s stupid remarks, but there was only the pang of silence). “I mean,” she said, “it’s no secret you despise the kid, Frankie. Everyone here knows it.”
“She’s right, you know,” Mr. Jonas agreed. “I’m not stupid.”
“Classic Frankie,” David said.
“Shut up, David,” Frankie growled.
Mr. Jonas and Mathilda said, “Shut up, Frankie.”
Shut up, Frankie. That was their tiresome sitcom routine because Frankie was one of those people who believed the world needed to hear his opinions regardless. The unseen live studio audience couldn’t get enough, apparently.
Cue the laugh track. Yeah, hilarious. If our lives were a bloody movie-
He didn’t notice the girl with the pink barrettes at first. “Hey, which club are you in?”
He jumped at the sound of her voice on his left and took two big steps back. She was around his age (twelve?), about his height (or maybe an inch or two taller) and had straight black hair that fell to her mid-back. The right side of her bangs were clipped back by two pink barrettes and she wore what the other twenty girls were wearing. She looked a little Asian, though it was hard to say for sure.
Catcher had been told by Mr. Jonas many times he was half-Japanese and when asked if that was true, the woman confirmed, “Why of course. It was in your paperwork when I rescued you from that maternity ward. You don’t see it?”
Sure, Mr. Jonas. Super vague origin story and I’ve never seen this so-called “paperwork”, but whatever you say, sir.
Of course, David and Mathilda felt deserving enough to offer their two cents and bickered over Catcher’s “true” ethnicity for weeks. “You think Catch-22 looks Asian? Because I’m kind of seeing it, but...?” Mathilda asked David one day in the office. David was part Korean so there was no doubt Mathilda believed he had the proper authority to make a conclusion.
“I’m seeing Dutch,” David said, grabbing Catcher’s face to scrutinize him.
“You see what?” Mathilda asked, taking her chance to grab Catcher’s face from David.
“Dutch,” David said. “It’s the nose. Definitely the nose.”
“Yeah, but look at his eyes.”
The back and forth and touching and probing went on for half an hour and by that point, Catcher was done and shoved the adults back. “Will you guys piss off?! God!”
“Well, someone’s on their male period again,” Mathilda said, flipping her long black curls and laughed.
Hilarious, Mathilda. I’m dying.
“Sorry,” the girl said with a smile and held her arms behind her back. Catcher came back to reality, forgetting where he was momentarily. She took two steps forward. Catcher, again, took two steps back. “Didn’t mean to scare you. I just saw you standing here all by yourself. That’s a neat outfit you’ve got.”
Catcher blinked hard and analyzed his mission wardrobe. Dark purple turtle-neck, black hoodie, black trousers, black military boots. He looked back at the Barrette Girl with a dreadful frown. “Um, okay...” he mumbled and nervously flicked his eyes behind him to the school building. His face felt hot and sweat trickled down his brow and under his arms.
“Are you new here?” and she took two more steps towards him. Catcher remained rooted, his chest tightening. He avoided her eyes and focused on the grass instead. He delicately scanned over each individual blade and counted the ones bathed in the orange sun.
She said, “It’s just... I don’t think I’ve seen you around before. Is that like, for a club or something? That get-up makes you look so dark and mysterious.”
Catcher nodded, though he didn’t know why.
One thousand six hundred seventy-eight...
“Really? Wicked! Which one?”
His eyes darted everywhere but to her face. Sweat seeped between his thighs and down his crotch. He hated when that happened. The buzzing of wasps was not far away. “Um... drama?”
Shit, you fucking idiot! Why the hell did you say that?
“Wow, really? That’s awesome! I was sort of thinking-”
Why are you still talking to me, God?! I don’t know you! I’m sure you’re a nice girl, but seriously!
“Look,” Catcher said, his voice shaking, “I’ve gotta...” He turned sharply on his heel, ran for the brick wall and leaped over its tall height without faltering. He thought he heard the girl say, “Whoa,” though he was sure he imagined it. He then sprinted across the blacktop to the first doors he saw to the building. He didn’t want to be rude. He had no choice. He glanced down at his watch: three thirty-four p.m. Four minutes lost. Not a lot, but critical all the same.
Damn.
“Time is a phantom menace,” Mr. Jonas always said (though Catcher didn’t actually know what the fuck that meant. Miss Harley told her once before that it reminded her of Star Wars, although Mr. Jonas acted like she had no idea).
No more obstacles. I can’t fail. Mr. Jonas needs me and I can’t fail her. Ever.
He didn’t understand people. Why did people feel the need to talk to strangers they didn’t know? People were strange.
* * *
Mr. Jonas checked her watch: three thirty-five p.m. Her mind elsewhere, she put her book page-down across her lap and leaned back in her seat. She scanned the beige roof and slicked back her hair, certain a hair or two was out of place. She then found a wet wipe inside her jacket pocket and feverishly ran the rag over every inch of exposed skin.
“Harley?” she began.
Harley turned around in her seat and regarded Mr. Jonas with her clear blue eyes. “Yes, sir?”
“Do you notice that every time we do this, Catcher seems like he’s on the verge of an anxiety attack? Why is that, you think?”
Harley was silent and flicked her eyes onto nothing in particular. “Is that what you think, sir?”
“You don’t take notice, Harley? Look, I have anxiety. I know what it’s like. It’s miserable. The difference is, I’m an adult and am on medication for it. I can easily hide it from people if I need. Catcher is a child. He has nothing to be anxious about. I don’t understand it. Why does that boy doubt himself? He’s brilliant, you know. I mean, we don’t make him feel that way, do we? We give him everything he needs, don’t we?”
Harley studied the school grounds, her eyes far away. “Well, it’s as you say, sir. He’s smart.”
“Indeed, he is.”
“Smart people overthink things.”
Mr. Jonas sat up, an idea forming in her eyes and she snapped her fingers. “Yes. There it is.” Another thought then replaced the old one. “We’re not evil people, are we, Harley?”
She locked eyes with her, flabbergasted. “Of course not, sir. Why would you say that?”
“We take care of him. I saved him from that place, from his mother. I didn’t have to. You and I both know she couldn’t care for him. We gave him a chance at a better life. He’d be dead or out on the streets someplace if it weren’t for me.”
“Of course, sir.”
“Then... why do I feel something is missing?”
Harley turned around and adjusted her rear-view mirror. “Sir, you doubt yourself, too.”
There was a long silence before Mr. Jonas spoke again. “I’m afraid he’ll end up like her.”
“His mother?” Harley asked. Mr. Jonas nodded. “He won’t. He’s not like her.”
“You told me before when we were in Hong Kong, he reminds you of her.”
“Sometimes, yes. But I know he’s not her. He never will be.”
* * *
Why can’t I be like the rest of them?
Catcher had never heard that song before. In fact, he didn’t frequently listen to music. Mr. Jonas wasn’t exactly uncultured. She owned a decent collection of classical music and Ray Charles on vinyl. He had also been exposed to a handful of musical theatre through Mathilda when she was alive; spontaneously bursting out into showtune numbers was her annoying quirk (Catcher heard through the grapevine somewhere that once upon a time, stage school was her pipe dream). Her colleagues found her behaviour irksome, but since she had been gone, everyone had said at least once they missed her singing (including Mr. Jonas). That was as far as Catcher’s musical education extended. The only song he knew the lyrics to by heart was “Sun and Moon” from Miss Saigon. It was a love song, and he didn’t know anything about love, yet whenever he found himself stressed or anxious, the words offered him a unique comfort. Unlike most kids, he didn’t own a smartphone. He didn’t have a Spotify. He didn’t run any social media accounts. Anyone who worked for Mr. Jonas gave up those basic freedoms. It was prohibited. Identities must remain hidden. Mr. Jonas couldn’t afford for her agents to be transparent to millions of faceless strangers or distracted from their missions. Catcher was no exception. His age was of no importance to Mr. Jonas as long as he was useful and if that meant keeping him ignorant to things most other kids knew, so be it.
I am useful and I won’t fail her.
Three thirty-seven p.m. The song assaulted Catcher as he climbed the stairs to the second floor. He had forgotten to keep track of his paces when he ran away from the Barrette Girl. The hall was empty except for three girls. He stood firmly at the top landing and watched with delicate intrigue. The tallest of the three girls with wavy waist-length black hair and a red scarf tied in a band around her head held out her phone in her palm and lead the other two girls in a rambunctious dance. All three had the shirts of their uniforms tied above their midriffs as the music thundered from the sleek device. Rap? Hip-hop? Something like that. None of the girls noticed him as they pranced up and down the hall like wild animals attempting to impress a potential mate.
Wait, what?
Yeah, he had seen enough nature documentaries to make the random connection. Catcher couldn’t say if he liked the song or not. It was different for sure. He knew he couldn’t stay there forever and Mr. Jonas expected him to complete the job, but he found it difficult to tear away from the girls. He studied their jumping legs, counted their paces. Their rhythm was a little off based on the uneven number of paces in accordance to the beats, but he supposed it didn’t matter. They were just kids, not professional dancers. The girls ran into each other and burst into a fit of giggles.
Catcher found himself smiling. He reckoned he didn’t know shit about dancing and would die of humiliation, yet he wished he could join them.
Is this what other kids do, go to school and dance to rap music in their spare time?
Maybe... Fun... Was this what fun looked like?
He didn’t want to fail Mr. Jonas. He never wanted to disappoint her. However, he didn’t want to wake up that afternoon. He didn’t want to prepare his weapons and drive all the way down to this bloody school to hurt someone. He didn’t want to do the job. He wanted to stay where he was and hope the girls would acknowledge him and ask him to come play with them. He didn’t know how to dance, but he supposed all he had to do was mimic what the girls did. That’s what he always did. That’s how Mr. Jonas taught him. That’s what Frankie and David (but mostly David) taught him to do in his first training sessions out in the woods many years ago. Watch and copy. This is how you assemble and load a gun. This is how you avoid hitting a snag. This is how you use a suppressor. This how you use foil to prevent the inside of the suppressor burning the gun. This is how you aim. This is how you maim. This is how you kill a traitor: two shots, just to be safe-get him in the heart, never the face. All right, your turn. Watch and copy. Because he knew more and more each day that he didn’t know anything.
And he remembered with a heavy pain weighed in his chest that he was not a student here, he was not among them, he was a stranger looking in with a loaded pistol and grenades strapped to a harness, and he came here to kill someone.
* * *
Is this dancing? Am I doing it right?
Catcher could still hear the song as he rounded the opposite corner to his left. Rectangles of sunlight flooded the dim hall, devoid of people to his knowledge. Most of the kids were apparently outside on the grounds. Why? And what of the teachers? Was there a staff room somewhere or were they ghosts? Hogwarts ghosts. Funny. And a hidden swimming pool-and what the hell is a Hufflepuff? (At least, Mathilda sang a song with a lyric like that once.) Catcher smiled.
Yeah, amusing.
He didn’t know if he was dancing and, in that instance, he didn’t care.
Wait, when does school let out?
He checked his mission watch: three forty-two p.m. School had to be over, correct? Why then were there so many kids just hanging around? Clubs? Oh, right. The Barrette Girl said something to that effect.
I’m alone.
He hooked his thumbs on each side of his harness and counted his paces; it had to be even to the music. He swayed a little to the left, then the right and monitored his footwork. No, this wasn’t dancing, but he tried.
Spin-spin the air
DJ on the mixer na na na
Watch how we murder them like rah-rah-rah
We come so far
Praise to the most high kumbaya
He stole a glance at his milky reflection in the window to his right. Bloodshot. His eyes were dark and bloodshot, his skin was spotty, his left cheek was pimply (yes, pimples were his new torture), his middle-parted fringe was oily with sweat, his hair was tangled and frizzy, and taking a peek under his mask, his teeth were a little discoloured.
God, I look like shit.
That’s why Mr. Jonas asked him if he had slept earlier.
Yes, Mr. Jonas, sir. I did sleep. Thanks for asking because you’re obviously so concerned about my health being “vulnerable,” whatever the hell you mean by that.
Frankly, he always looked like this. Nothing could be done about it. While Mr. Jonas would strongly disagree, he thought himself to be rather ugly.
“You want to be like the rest of the other ugly little boys in the world, Catcher?” That’s what Mr. Jonas asked him when Catcher said he wanted a haircut. “Why butcher a part of yourself when it doesn’t need fixing?” That was two or three years ago. “If I’m being honest, and I am because I would never dream of lying to you, you were the prettiest little baby I ever saw. Most newborns-especially boys-are strange looking, but you were beautiful and you’ve grown into a gorgeous young boy. Well, young man, really. Most boys are frightful. You’re not one of them. Trust me when I say you’ll look hideous with short hair, Catcher. Don’t do that to yourself.”
Catcher learned that Mr. Jonas wasn’t just obsessed with her own hair but Catcher’s as well. At first, he loathed the constant petting and combing Mr. Jonas subjected him to. He didn’t fight it anymore. He was used to it. He had finally accepted that the woman wanted him to be someone else and Mr. Jonas often gave unusual answers to simple requests. Nothing about her made sense. It was better to stay silent.
He pulled out a hair band from his pocket and tied his hair back before hiding it beneath his hood. He breathed hard, allowed his heart to pound the walls of his chest and yanked on his black gloves. His right hand found his heavy pistol and he removed it from his harness. He hated guns. If he had the choice to live without them, he would. He checked his grenades, checked his back-up knives (if plans were fortunate, he wouldn’t have to resort to either). Good. All there. The hall tilted. Violet coloured his vision and wasps rang in his head. He wasn’t ready. He wanted to dance alone to the music until the sun set.
‘Cos we on fire
DJ spark up the lighter
Music taking me higher
I’m feeling it, you feeling it
No free will. He had to do this. He felt the music all right, but not his purpose.
* * *
The Enemy was asleep.
The man with squinty brown eyes and the mousy brown crew cut and tan trench coat. Catcher was positive this was the same man from last night. Ninety-nine nine percent positive. He had the man’s profile memorized and found the Enemy by sheer dumb luck. Catcher didn’t know what he was doing, where he was going or how many other students he’d run into.
Am I past the point of no return? Should I just shoot them if they get in my way? Or should I threaten them and let them go, make them promise to remain silent and forget what they saw?
He didn’t want to hurt any kids. He was a kid himself and found himself on the receiving end of a gun before. Many times. He was even shot at. Hurt like a fucking bitch. He’d rather be stabbed. It was far from pleasant and to this day, he flinched at loud, surprising noises. However, if he had to hurt them, if he had no choice...
Mr. Jonas was strongly against hurting innocents not on their kill list, especially after the bullshit in Hong Kong three years ago. Although she also said desperate times call for desperate measures and if that meant-
Catcher wiped the sweat from his brow against his sleeve. The only thing he knew that if luck was on his side, the Enemy was here somewhere in this building and he hadn’t yet left. Indeed, he hadn’t. All the classrooms appeared empty, except for one. In the very last room (of course; classic media trope as Mr. Jonas would say for all the damn books she read), the Enemy sat at his desk, his head down. Catcher listened to the faraway music playing from the Scarf Girl’s phone and slipped into the room.
You can kiss my ass and go to hell
You can see my life
Looking like a picture
He was a ghost. The Enemy didn’t stir. He could do this, clean, quick. No one would ever see him or know he was ever there. Everything was in order. Quiet and calculating, Catcher raised his pistol. He refused to see the tilting room, the violet light. He ignored the sweat running down his face, seeping from every crevice under his clothes, the strong urge to urinate. He didn’t want to hear the buzzing wasps, his thumping heart, his breath trapped in his chest. No, he could do this. David taught him well in the woods those odd years ago. His aim was sharp. He never missed. (Well, normally.)
He wished his life looked like a picture. Unfortunately, as Mr. Jonas told him once, there was never a big-ass neon-lit sign that said “Shit Is Gonna Be Real Easy, Kid” on his way down to Earth (from wherever babies came from before they ended up in somebody’s womb-a mother of some sort? A mother he never knew. A lady, he assumed who gave birth to him in a ward, if Mr. Jonas was telling the truth. Why did you leave me, Mum?). “No one ever promised that life was going to be easy for you,” she said. It was one of the few things Mr. Jonas said to him that he knew for a fact was true. It was especially true now.
His bullet barely left the barrel when the Enemy leapt up. Sure, the suppressor limited the noise, but it was not a silencer as the tool was often named by the general public. Within earshot, it still made noise. To paraphrase T.S. Elliot (as Mr. Jonas would do), the bullet was released not with a loud bang, but a dry snap. Chh-chh. And somehow, the Enemy sensed it in time. Catcher underestimated the man. The bullet was meant for his head. It grazed his left shoulder instead. The Enemy howled and collapsed to the floor. Again, Catcher aimed. Again, he was thwarted. The Enemy was clearly experienced. He flipped over his desk and the bullets impaled the wood. The man had no weapon within reach, yet he was fast. He thrust the overturned desk forward, crashing against a row of student desks. Catcher kept firing even though he knew it was fruitless. The raging mob of desks stormed towards him and he was knocked to the ground. A stray bullet whizzed in the air and took out a fluorescent lightbulb. Sparks and shards of glass rained down. When Catcher regained his composure and stood back up, brushing glass from his clothes, the Enemy was gone.
He spat to himself, “Damn.”
He emerged from the classroom, checked his watch: three forty-eight p.m. Wasted time, time he would never gain back. He looked around, anxious, started again down the hall to his left and halted. The Scarf Girl and her friends were in his vicinity, watching him. He furrowed his brows, took two steps back and raised his pistol. The girls shrieked and ran around the corner.
“He’s gotta gun!”
He heard them thunder down the stairs and lowered his weapon. He didn’t intend to shoot them. Just an empty threat.
Just stay out of my way. Please.
* * *
Unfortunately for Catcher, people did stupid shit when they were scared shitless.
He spotted the smallest girl with shoulder-length auburn hair and grey-blue eyes first (she was definitely East Asian of some sort). She was accompanied by a taller black girl with plaited dark hair. He had no reason to hurt them. They were a good distance away from where he needed to be. The Plaits Girl was crouched behind a bookshelf in the library, searching through the material and the Auburn-Haired Girl was behind her, waiting patiently for her friend but clearly disinterested in the ocean of books around them.
A few rows away, he detected a shaggy brown-haired boy talking animatedly to a dark blonde girl with pigtails. The Shaggy Boy was the first boy Catcher saw that day; he was beginning to think the school was an all-girls’ institution. The two of them were preoccupied on the computers and didn’t acknowledge the Enemy brush past them. He held his bloody shoulder and retreated to the furthest shelves. The man didn’t see he left a trail of blood for Catcher and the error was his undoing. (Rewind: Catcher regarded his surroundings from the hall, remained in the shadows and exited through the back doors of the main building. There were no children outside here. He examined the drops of blood splattered across the ground and followed them to a separate red brick building. The library.)
No one saw or heard him enter. He was a ghost. He found the staircase to the second floor of the library, crouched into position on the middle step and lingered, watching the area below him through the banister. Three girls. One boy. And the Enemy. Neither saw him up there. The song from the hall echoed in his head. It was fine. He’d rather hear music than the wasps. He checked his watch (three fifty-six p.m.), repositioned his gun and aimed.
Let’s just get this over with. See me on the dance floor.
Chh-chh.
You can tell the way I’m doing well
You can tell the way I’m gonna sell
You can kiss my ass and go to hell
Two bullets spliced the man’s right hand.
Chh-chh.
Two more bullets slit the man’s right ankle. He cried and folded sideways behind the shelves. Catcher felt nothing. He knew the man was a criminal and it was either the criminals died or he died. One less vermin in the world. He was doing everyone a favour. The children at the school didn’t have to worry about him anymore. He could have taken him out in one second, one bullet through the skull. Mr. Jonas and David told him never to shoot the traitor in the face, but Catcher didn’t care anymore. Neither were there to ride his arse.
Suffer. Yes, he wanted to see the man suffer. The man’s vicious cries attracted the kids and they were soon upon him. The Pigtails Girl screamed. The Plaits Girl gasped and held her hands to her mouth. The Shaggy Boy turned white and staggered back. The Auburn-Haired Girl was different. She got down on her knees and examined the Enemy’s condition with a fierce look in her eyes that made her seem older. All the children were distressed, but Catcher was satisfied and reloaded his cartridge.
It’s all right. He can’t hurt you anymore. He’s a criminal.
The Auburn-Haired Girl turned to the others and said, “Call someone. Now. Go!”
The Pigtails Girl was the first to run. The others stayed rooted.
“Mr. Watson,” the Auburn-Haired Girl said, “you’re going to be fine. Charlie’s getting help.”
Mr. Watson? That was a legend, a lie, a double life. Robbie Robinson. That was the Enemy. Mr. Watson and Robbie Robinson were different, but the same. Robbie Robinson was the criminal wearing the skin of Mr. Watson, the teacher-a lying teacher.
Catcher felt disgusted and aimed his pistol again. The Auburn-Haired Girl was in his shot. He waited for her to move a few degrees to her left. Perfect shot. That was the only distance he needed.
“Bastard,” he whispered and fired.
Four bullets. That was more than he needed likely, but it completed the job. Better safe than sorry. Four bullets caved through the man’s skull. All the children yelped and jumped away. Mr. Watson, or Mr. Robinson-whoever the hell he was-was no more. Bloody, nearly faceless, he lay flat against the ground, lifeless. Catcher dropped his pistol to his side and checked his watch: three fifty-nine p.m. Operation Robinson Crusoe: closed.
“What the hell are you doing, man?!”
To be continued...
Run Faster Than My Bullet Copyright © 2021 by Juno Dante Night
Some rights reserved.