P&P Prompt: Have you ever watched someone die?
The first time he did it, he wasn't even thinking. The man had a wicked-looking switchblade in his hand, and it had flicked out as fast as the patient smile he'd been wearing. "You want a message for Jarvon," he'd sneered, stepping at least six inches past Buster's comfort zone. "I'll give you one, pendejo..."
The reedy accountant stumbled backwards, nearly knocking over a trash can in the process. He felt his heel slap down in the edge of a puddle of god-knew-what, as his hand flew into the pocket of his coat, fumbling blindly until his fingers closed around the grip of the handgun. Pulling it from his pocket, Buster brought both hands up to muckle the gun, pointing it at him with a fierceness that was mostly fear.
"Don't," he managed to bite out, clenching his teeth so they wouldn't chatter, or mangle his words by making them stagger out in pieces. "Put it down or I'll--"
"You never held that little matchstick in your life, let alone fired it," the heavy scoffed, a smirk twisting up one corner of his face, carved deep by the streetlight at the end of the alley. "You're just an errand b--"
He'd always read in books how shots "rang out" when they were fired, but this was hardly a ring. Guns were not bells, after all, they were incendiary weapons, and the one in his hand went off with a bang. The recoil threw him backward, and he nearly dropped the gun in his shock, flailing to keep hold of it once he realized what he'd done. He hadn't hit the man square in the heart, or the head, but there was definitely a forebodingly large pool of blood amassing on his chest, high up near his shoulder, and his eyes were wide as he tried to speak from where he now lay on the ground. There was a low, gurgling sound coming from his throat, and Buster realized with a detached, distant sort of horror that he'd hit him in the lung.
"Oh my god," he whispered, eyes wide as he stared down, paralyzed. "Oh my god." Slowly, his own lungs remembered their function, and his breath came rushing through him in ragged gasps as he stuffed the gun back into his pocket. This was bad. This was beyond bad. Loren hadn't said anything about killing him - just to try and move things along a little, get some information on why the laundering operation had been held up ... but the light in the man's eyes was dimming, and ...
The rattling sound stopped, and Buster felt his own blood run cold, as the pool on the ground stretched slowly toward his shoes, slick like oil in the dim light. Panic rushed in around him like a vacuum, pushed him from all sides until he felt as though the slightest fall breeze down the alley could push him down onto his face. He forced himself to swallow, pushing down the stinging feeling behind his eyes and fighting the ball of cotton amassing at the back of his throat. Numbly, he reached into his coat for his cell phone and flipped it open, accidentally hitting the auto-dial button for the Chinese place on Verser Street before he finally managed to dial the number he wanted.
Each ring seemed deafening in the silence of the alley, until there was a click and a terse, irritated, yet sluggish voice on the other end of the line. "Hello?"
"Loren," Buster gasped. "I need--"
"Heywood?! What the hell are you calling me for?"
"He ... he's dead. I think. It ... looks like it anyway oh god Loren. God. Shit. I ---"
"I'll be right there."
Buster didn't even really notice the line had gone dead. He held the phone to his ear, letting the dial tone drown out everything else, a familiar sound in the middle of a chaos he hadn't imagined while he was tying his shoes that morning.
"... I killed him."