That Night, That Thing, That Monster

The brown sack, caked with dirt, was all she could smell. It was taped at her neck, tight enough to make every breath a struggle. Her wrists, likewise, were taped tightly together, digging into her skin. The rough carpet in the back of the van burned as she was shoved inside.

When the doors were slammed shut, she began to panic. Her breathing came rapidly, causing the tape to cut into her neck. She rolled onto her knees and barely managed to stand before the van started moving, her shoulder smacking into the side as they sped off. She felt her way along the metal wall until her knuckles smacked into the van door. She trailed her fingers down the length, but as soon as they found the handle, the van turned sharply to the right, throwing her back down onto the wretched carpet.

The van made several more sharp turns, so instead of fighting to regain her footing, she resigned herself to clawing at the tape around her neck. A few turns later, the van stopped. She had made no progress trying to get the bag off, and now her panic swelled again.

The two men returned to open the doors and drag her to her feet. As soon as her feet hit the pavement, she started running blindly forward.

She screamed as loud as she could. “HEELLLP! HEEEELLLL-”

She took a fist to the solar plexus, knocking the last of the word out of her mouth. As she doubled over, the men drug her backwards, forcing her up a sidewalk and through a door. She smelled vanilla, clean laundry, and dirt. But mostly dirt.

The vanilla and laundry were replaced by the smell of more dirt as their footsteps echoed down concrete stairs. At the bottom, they paused. Seven locks clicked, one right after the other, each one more terrifying than the last.

The fabric of cushions clung to her jeans when they pushed her down into a chair. When one of the men slipped a knife between the skin of her neck and the duct tape securing the bag, her entire body seized up and she held her breath until the bag was pulled from her head. She blinked dirt from her eyes. The man, blond with a very bulky build, cut the tape off her wrists as well, then stepped back against the wall. The other man was standing on the opposite side of the dining hall. He was visibly a lot younger, with brown hair and a much slighter build.

She had expected a small cement room, but she was sitting at the end of the longest mahogany table she’d ever seen. Instead of small gray walls, she found intricate paintings, wooden carvings, and gold. From the ceiling hung a golden chandelier. But none of that, not even the crystal or fine porcelain laid neatly out on the table, could hold her attention.

What did was the little black book on the table in front of her. It was lying innocently on her plate, but she didn’t believe it benign.

The big wooden doors behind her slammed shut. She spun around, and found that the two men had left.

She nearly knocked over her chair as she flung herself at the door. Of course they were locked. Suddenly, laughter tore through her in place of sobs, startling herself. But this fit was cut short when a second pair of doors, identical and opposite to the first, opened.

In waltzed a man in a black and red suit and a mask made of gold. He stood with his fingers splayed on the table while the doors slammed shut behind him.

“Sit.”

When she didn’t, he straightened into a more relaxed position and gave the order again, in an accent she didn’t recognize but infuriated her.

“Sit, sweetheart.”

Her knees tried to buckle, but she caught herself on the edge of the table. Other than that, she didn’t move.

He unhooked a dagger from his belt and buried it hilt deep into the table without breaking eye contact. The sound of the splintering wood was deafening, and she slammed her eyes shut as adrenaline like nothing she’d ever felt rushed through her. When she opened them, he was leaning against the table, staring at her.

She grit her teeth and sat down. Slowly, the masked man did the same.

“Aryan Moore. I assume you know what sort of business you’ve been brought here for. I understand you are retired, though I would call it ‘on the run’, but this is the sort of thing you can’t escape. My sources say you are the very best at what you do, have done, 73 times before. What in the hell made you think you could escape? What makes you the exception?”

She blinked. “Was that- I’m sorry, that was all addressed to me? I- My name is Amara Reyes. I don’t know who- what-”

“Ms. Moore.” mask man said with strained patience. “I asked you a question.”

The room was starting to spin, and she could feel her breathing catching up with her amped up heart rate.

“I am not the exception.” she blurted out. “Clearly.” She glanced up slightly to see him tilt his head.

“Open that book.”

Amara’s vision blurred as she flipped open the cover. The first page was blank, but the second was filled, top to bottom, with names, addresses, and dollar amounts. They had all been written in the same handwriting, and they had all been crossed out. She flipped through page after page of names until she was on the verge of turning the beautiful white tablecloth green. She shit the cover.

“I trust you know what it means. But, since we are on the record,” he gestured somewhere vaguely, then chuckled and leaned forward. “I am offering you a job, sweetheart. I suggest you take it, otherwise, who knows what could happen. Well, I do.” Laughing, he stood. “Do we have a deal?”

She still hadn’t realized the weight of what she had just been asked to do. Worse, of what she had just agreed to do.

A hitman. He wants me to be his hitman.

She was back in the van with the bag over her head, but her wrists were free this time, and she was twice as nauseous. On her lap lay the names, addresses, and price tags of 103 dead people. It was crushing her; took too much effort to hold, even to look at. So when the masked men’s cronies came to drag her from the van, the ground underneath still moved and twisted as though the van had never stopped moving.

Sunrise brought dread, nightfall brought terror. Suddenly, couldn’t stand to look at herself in the mirror. With three days under her belt since what she could only bring herself to refer to as that night, with no contact made by the masked man, Amara was left to wonder if it had all been a dream. But the black notebook sat there, her nightstand holding the impossible weight of those names effortlessly. It was the one reminder that she really had agreed not only to working for a monster, but to becoming one herself.

Day seven since that night started when Amara woke to rustling in her room. Through the dark, she saw 3:35 A.M. in blurry red numbers.

Then the window slammed shut.

Panic took over, and the next thing she knew, Amara was standing across the room with her hand on the light switch. No one was there, nothing was missing. But something had been moved, and her blood ran cold when she saw it.

The notebook was open.

She had a name, an address, and a 20 grand dollar sign that made her drool despite the situation. Spit turned to bile, however, as she began what she had resigned herself to do. One step down the stairs. She told herself that she had no choice. Another step down. That she was in danger if she told anyone. Across the living room rug. That she would be killed if she didn’t go through with this. But not only was she afraid, disgusted, and numb to the thoughts in her head, she was curious.

At some point, as she drifted in a haze through the kitchen and out the door, fear stopped driving her forward, and something else took the lead.

It was that thing that she couldn’t wash off with the blood, as she sat in the tub at four in the morning. She scrubbed at her skin until it was raw, staring at red. Red red red red, in the water, on the walls, caked in her hair, and seeping from places on her arms where she’d scrubbed too hard. But that thing could not be scrubbed away. It scared her more than the masked man, more than death itself. It was the thing that made her so sure now that he had hired the right girl.

She woke to $20,000 in cash on her night stand, two hours after bleaching the tub, two hours after it had finally sunk in what she had done.

She was a monster.