Namaste

by Sean Platt

  “I don’t give a motherfucking fuck what they are, cue ball! Drop that shit like it’s hot or we’ll put you down!”

  He turned slowly, robes already starting to dry and swish at his legs as he was accustomed. His hands were still together at his stomach, beads still between his thumbs and fingers. He looked at the two men who’d emerged from the inner door. Of course they had left it open behind them. They were well trained, but scared. Amit watched as their eyes darted from his face to his hands, then to the two dead guards. He could read them as if they were holding signs. Few men had been tried in fire. Rules and procedures meant little once nerves took over. Non-holistic training didn’t understand the power of rituals — of habituating your body to respond without need for conscious thought.

  “I was given these beads by my first teacher and do not wish to scratch them. I am going to place them in my pocket.”

  “The fuck you are!” yelled the same guard. The second man hadn’t spoken. Both had their guns clasped in their hands, arms stiff and elbows locked. Even if their hands weren’t in a death grip (which they were; Amit could see the white from their fingertips) the locked elbows would betray them once they pulled triggers. He was five feet away. In the men’s current states, they would miss him for sure.

  Keeping his hands plainly visible, Amit dropped the beads into his pocket.

  “Okay, fucker, you’ve got your beads. Now get down and kiss the concrete!”

  “I do not wish to dirty my robes beyond their current and unfortunate state of soil.” Amit looked down at the blood crusted fabric. “Standing should suffice.”

  The second guard took one hand from his gun and drew a police nightstick.

  “Get down or I knock you down,” said the second guard, who wore a long scar on one cheek.

  Amit looked at the man and made a few calculations. He shrugged, lifted his robes, and knelt.

  “I said, lie down.” The second guard advanced.

  “Tell me,” said Amit. “Will I find the Right Hand inside?”

  The guard stopped. The man with the gun looked over. His eyes again flicked to the dead guards on the steps.

  “What do you want with the Right Hand?”

  “What does one always want with a hand? To follow it up the arm, to eventually find and remove the head.”

  The second guard hauled back in a very predictable arc, then swung his nightstick at Amit’s face. Amit allowed the guard to strike him, shifting his shoulder into the blow and ruffling his robes behind the strike. He moved with the blow behind the robe’s flutter, dimming its impact. Then he flinched away as the guard followed through, yelling in feigned pain. The guard would think he’d struck Amit hard across the face, but he’d actually only given him a light glancing blow on the shoulder. Of course, in time, the fact that Amit’s face didn’t redden would give him away, but by then the guards would be dead.

  “Shut your fucking riddling mouth,” said the second guard.

  The first guard said, “I don’t like this.”

  “Of course you don’t ‘like this.’ He just killed Tom and Barry. Call the cops. We’ll hold him until they show.”

  “Don’t forget to mention the dead men at the gate,” said Amit.

  The second guard hit him again. Amit once more rolled with the blow, this time deflecting off his back. He screamed.

  “You sick fuck. You just murdered four men.”

  “Four bad men,” said Amit.

  “And you would have murdered us, too?”

  “I will, yes. I am sorry.”

  The guard raised his nightstick again, but this time Amit ducked the blow entirely. The guard’s momentum carried him around. Amit stood, hardening his fist so the first two knuckles were protruding, then drove those two knuckles with years of focus-trained force into the back of the guard’s neck. He was dead before his follow-through finished.

  The other guard fired his weapon, but Amit was watching the gun’s muzzle while killing the first man. As he’d known it would, the shot went high. Amit took two steps before the man could react, folded his gun hand back on itself, and squeezed the guard’s hand so he shot himself in the head with his own weapon. A blossom of spatter bloomed on the fluted column behind the guard. Amit dropped the dead hand, stepped over the body, and entered the lobby.

  He wanted to yell for the Right Hand, but there was little point. The Right Hand would not respond to his summons. If anyone responded, it would be more guards. Would there be more? There were already six. The Right Hand had a lot of money and a risky position, but was, in the end, only a right hand. He wouldn’t have an army protecting him like the boss. Maybe killing was done for the day. Amit hoped so. He looked down and smoothed his robe, annoyed at the blood spatters salted across it. He’d tried to be so careful.

  Amit stopped and listened.

  For a while, the house seemed silent, but true stillness held no breath. While Amit couldn’t hear a heartbeat through walls (well, more than one, anyway), a heartbeat was but one electrical stimulus. Amit had spent hours in the monastery opposite another monk, listening to the minute sounds the other man made by simply existing. Feeling his energy. Sensing him: the opposite of the suspicious feeling a person gets when he or she is being watched — an itch that speaks of eyes on their body. Sensing another was like that, and in time, a monk in practice could learn to feel and hear and sense the difference between an occupied room and an empty one.

  He walked into the study off the foyer. Empty.

  He walked into the formal dining room. Empty.

  Kitchen, second study, living room, library. Empty.

  Amit approached the grand central staircase, which wound from curled ends to a second story balcony leading into the home’s deeper rooms. The newel posts looked pearlescent, marble or ivory. The wide staircase seemed almost made of stone, though it couldn’t be; it wasn’t supported, and a solid stone staircase would crumple without supports. It must have a metal infrastructure, faced in stone.

  He decided it would probably not creak.

  Still, Amit treaded lightly up the stairs, minding each motion, along with his breath, sinking into each muscular contraction in his legs, slowly spreading his weight like batter poured into a pan. Step by step he reached the top, then tested the landing, found it silent, and made his way into each of the upstairs rooms. Finally he found a room that felt different.

  Master bedroom: occupied.

  Amit couldn’t see anyone, but now that he was in the room, he could hear him. The nervous twitter of a heartbeat, the short, shallow breaths. This wasn’t a guard. The Right Hand had no family. It had to be the man himself.

  Amit sat on the bed facing a bank of curtained windows, allowing the springs to sigh beneath him.

  “Nisha once showed me a movie,” he said, looking down and running his hands idly across the expensive bedspread. “It was called Moonraker. The villain’s name was Jaws. The man had amazing, metal teeth that could bite through anything. So his name was appropriate, given such powerful jaws.” He looked up, addressing the curtains. “But you are not like that, are you? They call you the Right Hand, yet I have not heard that you have anything special about your right hand. I thought you might have a fake one. Or perhaps one made of bone-crushing metal. But as I have heard of you, I have heard nothing like that, and one would think it’s the sort of thing people would mention. Still, I don’t know. Maybe you are in some way enhanced, like the villain Jaws.”

  Amit looked at the curtains. There was no sound or movement. The night outside had gone dark, without any moon. There were security floods mounted outside — he’d seen them on approach — but he had never raised the alarm, so they were off. Like in the bedroom. The only light was a wedge bleeding in from the brightly lit hallway.

  Amit stood and walked to the light switch. He turned on the lights, then knotted his hands behind his back and started to pace.

  “I do not understand why you did what you did. I do not understand what drives you. I am not
even sure of the forces that drive me, or whether my karma will be improved or denigrated when I am reborn in my next life. I cannot know those things, and do not care, right now, to explore them.”

  He approached one of the black-out drapes and raked it aside, revealing a large and apparently very frightened man with a short, brown crew cut and a solid build, perhaps 40 years old.

  “But what I can discover — and which I am quite curious about — is how you got your nickname, without an interesting fake hand to go with it.” Amit looked down at the man’s right hand, which was just an ordinary hand, bedecked with several large rings. He met the man’s gaze and waited for him to speak.

  “I was only following orders.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  “I just want you to understand, I was only doing like I was told. Doing my job.”

  Amit considered, then nodded. “Like your guards.”

  The Right Hand swallowed.

  “I will make you a deal,” said Amit. “I will spare your life if you tell me two things. I say this as a practitioner of Sri, which means I cannot break a promise.”

  The Right Hand, still backed into the corner, nodded.

  “The first is why you are called the Right Hand.”

  “Because I am the boss’s right-hand man.”

  “But you have nothing exciting about you that pertains to your right hand. No metal grip. No robot glove.”

  “No.”

  “Have you ever considered it?”

  “No.”

  Amit nodded. “It is a shame. The name has such potential.” He turned, so his back was facing the Right Hand, and slowly strolled forward, clasping his hands at the waist. Looking wistfully toward the door, he said, “Then the second thing I would like to know is where I can find the boss.”

  He heard the Right Hand’s clothes rustle before he heard his muscles pop and spring to life. The air was disturbed to his right, so he ducked and caught the arm that tried to encircle his neck. He pivoted, then rolled his shoulder and back, tossing the man to the floor. He struck the wood hard, losing all of his breath. Amit stood, unperturbed, and listened as the man’s heartbeat tripped a crazy tattoo in time with his breath. He resumed looking toward the floor, now with the Right Hand at his feet.

  He knelt on the man’s chest, pinning him down.

  “It isn’t a difficult question.”

  “Fuck you,” said the man on the floor.

  “I see. So, you would rather die?”

  “He will kill me worse than you.” Amit twisted his face, wondering how one person could kill “worse” than another. Killing was either accomplished or not. A “worse” killing should, in theory, result in no killing at all.

  “You mean that you would be just as dead.”

  The man said nothing, scowling up at Amit.

  “If that is the case, you might as well help me. You may perhaps improve your karma in so doing. When you die, perhaps you will not have to live again as a slug.”

  The Right Hand spat at him. Amit tried to dodge, but caught most of the spittle on his cheek.

  Amit reached down, took hold of the man’s right hand, and held it up in front of his face. The Right Hand tried to pull it away, but Amit held firm. Then he dug his fingers into the sides of the man’s wrists.

  “The wrist joint is composed of bones like marbles, connected by ligaments,” he said, his strong fingers pinning the hand in place. “But because of this, it is hard to get them back exactly right when one is popped out of place … say, by an overly aggressive massage.”

  Amit rubbed with both his finger and thumb, massaging the man’s wrist from both sides. He pushed very hard, summoning strength that could only be honed from exercising the smallest of muscles daily, and the Right Hand’s wrist gave a terrific pop as his tendons snapped. The wrist felt like a bag of loose rocks. The big man made a blood-curdling scream, as if the world was ending around him.

  “I am so sorry,” said Amit. “I am new to this.”

  “I can’t tell you where he is!” screeched the Right Hand. “He’ll kill everyone I know!”

  “But you only know criminals and murderers” Amit pushed again. Another tendon popped. A large, boulder-like bone began to bulge from the top of his hand. A bruise blossomed under the surface. Again, the Right Hand cried out, rolling and thrashing.

  “Jesus fucking Christ!”

  “I hear that Jesus is a good man,” said Amit, nodding pleasantly.

  “They’ll kill you! They’ll kill everyone you know! They’ll kill everyone you love! You don’t know who you’re fucking with!”

  Amit moved his hand from the man’s wrist, then bent his middle finger far enough that it touched the veins on the back of his hand. Something else popped inside, very, very loud. A bone ripped the man’s skin on his palm, causing a rivulet of blood to run down his wrist.

  “I know exactly who I am fucking with,” Amit said, examining the mangled hand as if it were an interesting bug on a slide. “But unfortunately, I have nobody left that I love.”

  The Right Hand was screaming and thrashing, fighting for breath among his screams. Finally he managed to yell, “Oh my God, it hurts!”

  “Shh. Focus on the pain in your shoulder to distract you.”

  He looked up. “What?”

  With a very hard, very powerful short stroke of his other hand, Amit shattered the Right Hand’s collarbone.

  “Jeeeeesussssss!”

  “Tell me where the boss is and I will stop. Despite appearances, I am not enjoying this.”

  “You broke my neck!”

  “Your clavicle,” Amit corrected. Then he gave a small, good-natured chuckle. “Oh, listen to me. You’re making me sound like a doctor.” He pressed his thumb into the area where the Right Hand’s clavicle (not neck) had been broken. After 30 seconds of screaming, he stopped.

  “I figure this is like hangman.” Amit returned his attention to the man’s hand. “After enough tries, the man is hanged.” He shrugged. “And after enough fingers, you are no longer any good as a ‘right hand.’ I can break two more. But then I will simply kill you.”

  “I! CAN’T! TELL! YOU! What don’t you understand?”

  Amit bent the man’s pinky back until it snapped. Another wound opened on his palm. Blood was getting everywhere, and Amit noticed with irritation that another few drops had landed on his robe. Nothing got blood out, and his feet were already so stained.

  “HOLY FUCK, OKAY, OKAY, JUST STOP, HOLY SHIT JUST STOP!”

  Amit stood, then backed up. He sat on the bed again with his hands clasped in his lap, looking down as the Right Hand tried to roll up to a seated position. His hand was useless, so he couldn’t manage it. He writhed while Amit patiently waited.

  “Fine …” the Right Hand panted, forcing his words between breaths. “I’ll tell you.”

  Amit put his palms together in front of his chest, smiled, and gave a small bow of thanks.

  Chapter 3

  12:26 P.M. ON SATURDAY

  Amit had never tortured a man, but it couldn’t be hard.

  In the end, none of this really mattered. A man who was pure of spirit and had nothing to hide would be able to endure the pain and escape into bliss. Only the truly vile would suffer. Existence was suffering; the Buddha had given that thought to the world. Amit would be putting a finer point to the Buddha’s meaning.

  “If you would just tell me what I want to know,” he said to the thin, wiry Asian man hanging upside down in front of him, “none of this would be necessary. You saw what I did to the others. You know what I will do to you. I would like to politely request that you consider this logically.”

  “Fuck you!” said the hanging man.

  “I would like to offer you a second chance, despite your response,” said Amit. “Think about what is likely to happen next. You will be in great pain, and in the end, you will tell me who gave the order as I have requested. It is not weak to tell me now. You have this impression that suffer
ing somehow lessens the impact of what you will be giving me. It does not. It is simply wasted pain. So far, you are the only one of your fellows who would be able to walk away. The others will not be walking again. Why would you throw that away in the pursuit of some vain sense of … ”

  “FUCK! YOU!”

  Amit shrugged, then stabbed the razor-sharp X-Acto blade through the man’s cheek. The hanging man screamed. Amit dragged the blade further down, widening the slice. When Amit pulled the tiny knife away, blood was dripping into pools on the floor. The man’s teeth were visible through his closed mouth.

  “I would not chew on that side for a while.”

  “Fuck you, beaner!” the bleeding man spat.

  Amit turned his head sideways and looked at the man with a scrunched-expression. “Do you think I am Hispanic? That is incorrect. And your slur is surprising to me, seeing as you are a minority yourself. I had figured we would share kinship.” He stabbed the blade into the man’s arm, then ripped it upward, opening his sleeve and flesh at once. The man bellowed appeals and profanities to many deities at once.

  “I need to know who gave the order,” Amit said to the man once he calmed down.

  “Your mother gave the order.”

  “She did not. And again, I must express my confusion at your obtuseness. What do you think I will do if you don’t answer? You know I will continue to injure you, so why do you persist? Does some part of you think that after enough time, I will simply stop? Because I can assure you I will not. This is a matter of some importance to me.”

  Amit looked at the hanging man, dangling from the barn loft, hair seeming to stand on end, face red from too much rushing blood. Although now, a good amount of the blood was spilling onto the dirt at both of their feet, and Amit, who was barefoot, had to keep sidestepping it. Nothing stained the bottom of feet more than blood (other than mulberries) — a lesson learned back at the monastery, with all of his spilled — through accident and on purpose — to find limits during his training.

  The Asian man was still staring with an obstinate glare. The puddle was getting quite large from the gash on his arm, and his ragged second mouth was copiously bleeding. Amit had had to step back quite far. When he moved to cut the man next, he might have to wet his feet. He wondered if there were any work boots in the abandoned barn. He knew there were several pieces of farm equipment that might make for good torture devices, should further persuasion be required.