MISSION-BASED
I had him down the alley.
Surprising maneuver, considering its paltry success rate. Name one naïve dumbass you've seen turn down an alley and survive its uncontrovertible annihilation. Predictable chase scenes ending in blood, just like this one. In fact, I was barely able to get the thought out before he hit that clockwork dead end.
Right on cue. In this environment, there's one at the conclusion of every alley.
I'm having a hard time making out his face, but that's par for the course. Before he turned down the alley, we had shared some minor hand-to-hand. And, even then, everything was a blur. That's how these situations go. Ask all the cleaners, they'll tell you the same. So he caught me with a sharp blow to the left eye: He got lucky and he got me leaking. But it only made me angrier, and he eventually paid the price for it when I buckled his kneecap with a pinpoint stomp of the heel. Delinquent payments delivered. The joke looping in my mind as I laughed inwardly, watching him hobble out of there as fast as his sabotaged legs could carry him.
It wasn't a big deal to let him get ahead of me. Had to reload anyway. Details. Everything in its own time.
I strolled towards his way with the piece casually hanging from my hand like car keys. I wasn't in any hurry to use it. Wanted to savor the moment some. I'd been chasing this one for a day already, and the kill would open serious doors. So ten more minutes of his fear-soaked revelations meant nothing to the inevitable endgame. After him, I'd be onto the next kill, a block over.
Always room for one more. Same deal, different dystopia.
"So you thought the alley would throw me off your trail," I snickered, tugging lightly at the trigger, testing its resistance. "How's that working out for you? A little better than terrible? Sad bastard." I put on the silencer for fun. I hadn't used it in awhile, and it was accruing obsolescence.
He didn't answer or make a move for me, just stood there, pathetically walking in a semi-circle, resigned or confused I couldn't tell. His arms thurst outward, as if he was trying to break up a bar fight between friends. Perhaps that was his way of making peace with his metaphysical manufacturer, settling for silence and a bizarre ballet.
I thought about upping the ante and giving him a match, to see if he might light himself on fire. That would be a spectacle worth remembering. I know I've never seen it before. Make a note on that score: Self-immolation. The manufacturer is taking recommendations. I've been testing his schemes for months. He never turns me away when I've got suggestions. Which is always.
Poor bastard. He'd been tortured enough. I walked quickly toward him, raised the gun to his temple and pulled the trigger.
His unfortunate head bloomed like a crimson flower across the asphalt, a firework of terminated potential. I don't know what that means, but it leapt into my brain as I watched the gory scene unfold like…well, a flower, even though that's redundant. Killing is my thing. Words? No fun at all. Can't stand them.
The text page was immediate, interfering noisily with my reverie.
"One felon to go," it read, offering me a set of coordinates in the process. I glanced at them and nodded, giving the corpse at my feet a swift kick to make sure it wouldn't move. It didn't, but you never know. Stranger shit has happened.
I bailed on the alley and hit the metropolis running. Time to clear this city and satisfy that unquenchable urge for murder. Otherwise, I'd be up late and the unrelieved stress would make my TMJ flare up like no one's business. Then there would be the pain, and then the anger, and after that, it would get scary.
Killing mellowed me out. Especially this early in the morning.
It wasn't long before I found the last one, without even paying attention to the coordinates in the end. It wasn't a secret where the guy was hiding, after all. You guessed it. Alley.
See, they all know I'm coming. And there's nothing they can do about it, because it's all part of the plan. Intelligent design. The great watchmaker's grandfather clock. Whatever you want to call it, there are two truths it houses -- my job is to kill without dying, their job is simply to die. End of story.
Which reminds me of where we are now. I didn't want to wait anymore. I was ready for those doors to open, to move onto the next set of jobs. I had gained some invaluable experience in this city, but I was quickly tiring of its uniformity. All the streets looked the same, and I knew the intricacies of each of them.
And there wasn't much to learn after that. Every whore wore the same red get-up, every gangster looked like Sammy the Bull in platforms. The innocent bystanders all fell down in the same hurt, betrayed way as they expired. Even the bullet-ridden windows broke apart into identical shards. At first, I thought that the whole thing was getting to me.
But I quickly realized that it was worse. Boredom. The death-knell of civilization.
And so I just kept plugging away, the bodies falling like the NASDAQ. And it was never enough. That is, until you leave. Until you get to that next level and everyone begins to know your name. Then they start firing the minute you get into town, which is a compliment of sorts. Shows you've come a long way. Something to hang your hat on.
Until then, you had to deal with addled jokers like these, who ran down dark alleyways in hope of salvation. Couldn't think their way out of Sesame Street. Dumb-luck fools.
I raised the gun, and repeated some smart-ass line from a movie I can't remember the name of. But the screen went dark.
Mom.
"Unplug that goddamn thing right now and get out of here," she bitched, technically once again because I ignored her earlier demands. Which were of the same nature. I didn't mention them because I felt it wasn't important.
"One more level," I whispered to myself but it was too late. She'd already marched into my bedroom and started unplugging the console, yanking the cables from their sockets.
"One more level!" I repeated, shouting this time. But she was having none of it.
"This is the last time I'm going to tell you. Get your ass out of here and on that bus. Right now. Or else this thing will be living at the bottom of the trash truck come Thursday morning." She towered over me, hands on her hips, until I begrudgingly lifted myself. "Do I make myself clear?"
I shrugged, and grabbed the stuffed backpack lying at my feet, marshalling myself upward.
"Like I said, last time. I don't want to have to tell you this again," she barked gruffly, before turning on a heel and moving out of my room. "Or else you'll be in serious trouble."
I made a gun with my forefinger and thumb, and fired it at her receding backside. Nothing happened. So I got on the bus.
