The Price You Pay

by Aidan Truhen

  Mr. Price…

  Yes Fred.

  Fred on his fucking highrise. Fred with his big ol’ gun. Fred Fred Fred I really want to kill that motherfucker. Fred looks down his sights and he sees that hood the doc had in her pocket and I can fucking hear his breathing as he touches the trigger.

  From half a mile away Fred puts a bullet right through the damn hood.

  Right.

  Through.

  The middle.

  I tell you that was unbefuckinglievable. That guy—that was some shot man.

  If I’d been wearing that hood that would really have fucked up my day.

  But instead there is just melon everywhere.

  FRED YOU UNGRATEFUL PRICK you fucking ruined my melon.

  Price?

  It’s just fucking truculent is what it is. I mean a man brings you fruit as a peace offering and you shoot it in the face with a fucking M82. You should be fucking ashamed.

  Tuukka, kill the doctor. Immediately.

  Yeah Fred that’s not gonna happen.

  It’s not going to happen. The doc’s here with me looking doc-ish as hell and she was kind enough to take my hood off a while back so now I’m just checking out the awesome view. I tell you this place is great and oooh look over there on that second-highest tower is Tuukka but he’s not alone. He’s got some kind of leg brace so he can stand up and move around and his hand is all bandaged up. These things are maybe a little obscured because he’s horizontal. He’s bucking and twisting but it’s not doing him a lot of good. Volodya has wrapped him in duct tape and he looks like an exhibit from the Smithsonian and every time he lunges too hard he cuts himself on Lucille and shrieks. After a moment or so they just roll him sideways and he goes off the top of the tower. Three or four floors down there’s a kind of slanted section where the real expensive rooms in the hotel used to be and he bounces and rolls down that bit and then it’s on down forty floors.

  Volodya waves to Fred.

  Lucille says: LUCILLE!

  See the thing is Fred that you’ve misunderstood your situation.

  Silence.

  Fred if you so much as touch that rifle this conversation is gonna come to an abrupt conclusion and I do mean that. I’m gonna say a few things Fred but if you move at all you’re gonna die and I’ll just let the epilogue speak for itself. You’ve got exactly that long to think of something to say or do that’s gonna save you but frankly it’s gonna have to be very good. You’ve misunderstood Fred and it’s time you get a grip on what’s taking place here. I mean above and beyond being screwed obviously and yeah the doc definitely took a hand in that. Although, I have to say, I didn’t know until I woke up lying here by the parapet whether you were fucked or I was but I guess that’s how it is with that young lady and she and I will definitely be discussing that later I assure you. Anyway Fred here’s what it is. When you came to town you were this high-and-mighty warrior with all your influence and your money and your toys and you were the fucking divine wind that slays the world. Any man has to respect that got to make way for it. But then you did something that was beneath you when you took Sean’s money and still to this day I have no idea why you would do such a dumbass thing. I mean you got the Seven Demons, and they are not an organisation for this kind of thing Fred. They are for destabilising nations and killing presidents and you’re gonna take on a walking business plan and a basically ordinary guy. Why would you ever do that man? That is bush league. But then something happened and this is where it all went wrong for you Fred. I moved faster than you and I killed Johnny Cubano and from that moment on you looked weak. If I didn’t take you down someone else would maybe try, and your people knew that. It made them desperate or dumb or in one case horny, which is a questionable response as these things go, but no more so than the others. But then I took another and another and that was it. I can’t tell you exactly when it happened but along the line you stopped being the Seven Demons. You were just Fred and his bad people and there ain’t no one scared of that. It ain’t an honoured order of international power it’s just a PR guy with a pool-cue case and some others just hanging around.

  But that’s the thing Fred the Seven Demons never lose. That’s what that name means. So the people you see here—Volodya and Lucille over there who just dropped a screaming Finnish burrito five-hundred-and-forty-seven feet into rebar, and Rex whose brother you killed, which was a total waste of infrastructure man, and Charlie who just shot a woman she barely knows without a second thought and who got inside Karenina’s head so bad she went and arranged her own murder, and the doc and me—we’re building the new Seven Demons right here. It’s not you any more, Fred. It’s us.

  Now out of respect I’m gonna ask you one time whether you want to join these new Demons as like an elder statesman figure and do exactly what you’re told and introduce us to all your expensive government contracts and so on, or whether you prefer just to go away somewhat and that’s that.

  Yes.

  What?

  Yes I will join you. Of course.

  Uh well Fred that’s really unexpected I kinda figured you would yell at me and scream and stuff and we’d have kind of a showdown here.

  No. I am a rational man.

  Well uh this is embarrassing. There’s so much bad blood between us Fred.

  Look into your soul, Price, and tell me that you cared for Sarah. Tell me honestly that you give a shit about anyone who has died. Anyone in the world, in fact.

  Aw Fred I see what you did there. You just tried to make me say I didn’t care about the doc here and get her to change sides. Or maybe you wanted me to say that I did care about her and that would get her to change sides. I’m really not sure.

  Nor am I.

  Well Fred that was a noble attempt but the thing is there is blood on the ground. There is darkness and suffering. I guess we could work that out but you know Fred the problem between us that is like completely fucking insoluble?

  I don’t believe there is one.

  There is man.

  And that is?

  You shot the melon.

  What?

  That was a present man.

  Price—

  No man that was a present and you shot it.

  Price!

  You shot the melon Fred. There’s no coming back from that.

  Price—

  Click.

  And then the noise.

  SAY ONE THING ABOUT REX and his boys when they make some place ready to come down that fucker is coming down. And they are professionals man so all the paper is filed and that building is off limits to the populace. They say accidents will happen but they don’t—not with shit like this. Not unless someone like Mr. Friday and his Poltergeist friends just up and deletes the work order just when someone like Fred is looking for a perfect place to be. But I mean man how unlikely is that. I guess real unlikely so long as you have a computer person on your strength but you know by that time Karenina was mostly just a femur. Well it’s tough at the top.

  Especially if you are Fred.

  Starting at the bottom of the Triangle building there was a ripple in the air like the world was breaking like an old video game and then this noise you couldn’t hear because it happened inside you in your bones and I could feel it go through me and away into the sky and then one floor at a time there was that same pulse. WOM. WOM. WOM. One after another until it was just a single sound and a single standing wave in the air and as it reached the top where Fred was standing there was a brief puff of flame and smoke. WOM WOMPF!

  The whole building just stopped being a single thing and became an inventory of falling parts.

  And there at the very top I saw something just for a second: a man running, lunging in a weird staggering pattern as if he could evade what was happening, as if somehow he could survive, because even Fred in the end really wanted to
live. And then the thing that was happening reached out and took him and it was as if it had actually grabbed him and pulled him into the heart of the collapse, and the whole giant pillar of dust and fire began to contract as if he was sucking it down.

  And then it was over.

  A pile of rubble where once there was a tower.

  Yeah.

  My name is Jack.

  And that is the Price you pay.

  I’M JUST SAYING DOC JUST SAYING is all that you could maybe have said to me like: Hey Jack your plan is terrible I have this much better plan and it involves my drugging you and replacing you with a watermelon and then—

  Price for fuck’s sake—

  I mean I’m glad you liked my exploding building doc but—

  Price—

  No doc come on I was in fear of my life there. Also and this is a serious question, where the fuck did you get a beheaded corpse in that kind of timeframe? I mean is that like someone you just had lying around or what even is that?

  Honey our relationship is real new and I just don’t think you need to know every jot and tittle.

  Okay that’s fair actually, but let me ask you this then, are you gonna follow my instructions now that I’m like First Demon I mean is this going to be a workplace hierarchical issue?

  No Price because obviously I’m gonna be the boss I mean that’s just obvious.

  Why would you be the boss I’m like the man who took down the whole—

  Price seriously what do you care so long as you get to do appalling things and sass people and get laid?

  Well that is entirely true but what do you care about job titles so long as you’re basically running the whole thing anyway?

  …That is true.

  Of course it is.

  Fine you’re the boss, Price.

  And so are you.

  If you cross me I will kill you.

  So long as you use me for sex first.

  Clearly.

  You know I still don’t know your name.

  No you don’t.

  So I’ve got this plan I’m going to shout out a random name each time we go to bed until I get the right one.

  That’s fine but you should be aware that I will go out and kill someone by that name each time you do.

  You are officially to be known as doc forever and just you remember it.

  I live to serve your every need.

  Okay see that’s me taking charge there.

  Yes.

  I mean that like electrical as well as—

  Yes Price.

  Did you bring your—

  Yes but oh that reminds me I got you something call it a present.

  Aw for me you shouldn’t have—

  I did here.

  Is this what I think it is?

  Well unless there was someone else in the building.

  You found me Fred’s head!

  Actually someone else found it but you know they weren’t all that happy about it so—

  Wait one minute this reminds you of sex?

  Too soon?

  I can’t even—nevermind—actually you know what that gives me an idea.

  SO CHARLIE YOU LOOKING for permanent employment?

  Hell yeah.

  Well yeah okay I’m—yeah. Doc I know. Volodya you coming back to work?

  Of course Price.

  Rex I got to tell you there’s maybe less about straightforward patriotism at work here and more about making a shit ton of money. It’s illegal and really entirely wrong. You in?

  Yes Colonel I understand deep cover. I’m with you sir.

  Okay uh—

  Tree of Liberty!

  Okay and—

  LUCILLE!

  Okay that’s about that.

  WE’RE NOT CALLED THE SEVEN DEMONS just because it sounds killer. We are what we are. We don’t take stupid jobs and we don’t take quiet ones or soft ones. The people we work for are also the kind of people who become our targets. It’s a question of who pays more and when.

  Me.

  Doc.

  Rex.

  Charlie.

  Volodya.

  Lucille.

  And Fred’s severed head on a gaffing stick.

  You know what they say about golfing in Florida? You don’t have to be a fast runner to escape the gators. You just got to be faster than the slowest guy on the links.

  If you want to join it’s like that. You don’t have to be crazier than me or weirder than doc.

  You just have to be scarier than Fred.

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