The Killing Games

by Antony J Woodward

  “You!” the boss jabbed his finger at Arron, “get the fuck out my office,”

  Jean went to leave too, but a stern glare told Jean to sit the fuck back down.

  Arron left, more relieved to be dismissed than offended that Jean had been made to stay.

  “You got any leads?” the Commissioner enquired trying to repress his rage. He rooted through a draw in his desk, found his ashtray and cigarettes. He extended one to Jean, who of course accepted.

  “No,” he answered.

  “Fuck… We need to do something. We need to find this “Fairy Killer”.”

  “I am working on it Sir,”

  “Well not hard enough, what about the other case?”

  “The hitmen?”

  “That one,”

  “I don’t think we’ll ever know. One day the target will land on a mortuary slab and it’ll be the end of it…”

  “You still think it’s the target that’s killing them…”

  “I suspect self defence…”

  Both men paused to take a few drags on their cigarettes.

  “What about our little turf war…?”

  “Still ongoing…”

  “Well the big brass want some fresh meat Jean, so you better start wrapping it up…”

  That was an order that Jean knew needed fulfilling as soon as possible. “Here’s what you should do, when their little bitch fight has played out you’ve found yourself the ‘Fairy Killer’”

  “Are you suggesting that the loser is framed as the ‘Fairy Killer’?”

  His boss nodded. “An unfortunate accident befell him, before the truth behind his crimes could come to light…” Obviously he had given it some thought.

  “And let me guess, you think if we do that we’ll piss off the Fairy Killer too…?”

  “Y’know those sick fucks take pride in their work, it’ll piss him off. He’ll make a mistake… Bam… we catch the cunt,”

  Jean shrugged half-heartedly. It wasn’t a bad plan. He took a hit on his cigarette.

  “Now go, make it happen. But don’t fuck it up. I don’t want the powers-that-be getting wind of a little stunt, they’re already pissed off that Melun is in the headlines…” his boss warned. His anger was beginning to dissipate.

  Jean nodded, he stubbed out his half finished cigarette and left the office.

  It seemed he was going to have to crank up the turf war a notch.

  As Jean weaved through the cubicles and offices of the police station, he weaved through the perfect veneer that had been erected for the public eye. Was the force corrupt? Of course, but who wasn’t in this town? Paris’ big gangsters had a soft spot for Melun and they used it as the training ground for their youngest and brightest. One of Jean’s jobs was to make sure these new rising stars didn’t inadvertently end up in prison, as much as he could. He wasn’t a miracle worker and the Parisian mafia was under no delusions that some idiots just weren’t worth the effort.

  Now it seemed the mafia had big ideas for the two opposing forces that were starting to battle it out for Melun. Unfortunately there was only room for one promotion, so this battle of theirs was going to be to the death. It was Jean’s little pet project and he’d chosen his horse to back already, he’d been goading and nurturing him as best as he could.

  As Jean climbed into his car and started the engine he could only describe the upcoming brawl as something of a boxing match. He’d picked his fighter, he’d trained him and now it was time to prepare for the big event.

  -----------------------------------------

  A date. It didn’t seem real, he didn’t know how to process it. It felt so alien on his tongue that he couldn’t bear to say it out loud. He was going on a date, with a boy. This wasn’t some power-fuck, or side-step in an elaborate game of lies. This was someone who wanted to date him, for no other motive than to date him. Sure Chris had already floated the possibilities that Pierre was doing it for some ulterior motive, but he couldn’t find a single reason why he would.

  No, Chris was left the uncomfortable truth that Pierre wanted to date him based solely on him being… well… him.

  A footstep caught Chris’ ears, he froze and strained to hear. He was stood in his studio, washing brushes in his little sink. It was well into the dark of the night and it seemed an unlikely time to visit. He heard the footsteps again, only they didn’t sound like Alexis. He didn’t turn the tap off, instead he gently placed the brushes down and pressed himself against the nearest wall. He slid along the wall in time to see a broad dark haired male appear in the doorway, he entered armed with a piece of wire strung between two fists.

  Chris hit the nearest light switch with his elbow, the studio fell into darkness instantly. The hitman recoiled audibly grunting in surprise. Chris, with the advantage of familiarity with the studio, slipped towards his sink and grabbed one of the paintbrushes he’d deposited.

  He was approaching the blinded and disoriented hitman within seconds.

  Eventually the hitman’s eyes adjusted and he turned for the doorway to exit, he was assaulted with a strong chop to the throat. It was such a sudden and powerful impact that his throat collapsed for a moment and he spluttered. Suddenly a foot was kicking him in the gut and he fell backwards, narrowly missing the easel and half finished painting upon it. He splayed out and coughed violently, it was difficult to swallow and breathe. The affected breathing was starting to make him feel a little panicked too.

  Suddenly someone in the darkness was upon him.

  “Who sent you?”

  And then there was a punch square on his temple, then another.

  “Who sent you?” the voice repeated.

  A further two strikes rained down on his temples and gave him an aggravating headache.

  “The broker!” he stammered, his throat was raspy and scratchy.

  Chris halted the next hit that was intended for him, he knew it was pointless to push further. He wouldn’t know, just like all the other hitmen.

  “Please let me go…” the man whimpered.

  He was the first one to beg for his life, that was surprising.

  “How do you dispose of bodies?” Chris ignored his plea. He was knelt upon the hitman, pinning his arms with his knees.

  “What?”

  “How do you dispose of bodies?”

  “I-I-Ah, I chop them up…” the hitman answered confused.

  “Right…” Chris nodded to himself. It sounded a little ghastly but it was better that his previous ideas.

  “Please let me go…”

  For a moment Chris wanted to genuinely believe he could set this bastard free and no further attempt on his life would be taken, but he didn’t believe for one second he would be safe. He lifted the paintbrush into the air, then swiftly plunged the handle of it straight into the man’s eye and into his brain.

  The hitman yelped in a raspy and strong shout of pain, then bucked and spasmed underneath his pin before abruptly falling still. Chris wasn’t in the mood to take any chances, so he wriggled the handle around in the wound a little just to make sure. The mushy sensation travelling up the brush was a little nauseating. Satisfied the assassin was assassinated, he pulled the handle free. A wet schlop sounded around the room as it was torn free.

  He padded to the light switch and turned around.

  The hitman hadn’t bled in any significant way yet, only a small pool of blood had collected in his eye socket. His eyeball had been ruptured and come loose of its socket and now hung down the body’s cheek. This wasn’t the sort of problem he could brush into the corner of the room and sort out in the morning. He now had a dead hitman in his art studio…

  His Aunt was sleeping upstairs in the main house, completely unaware that a man had just died on her grounds.

  “Cut him up hey…” Chris grimaced to himself. He looked at the brush in his hand, brain matter was stuck to the end. He tossed it into the sink and turned the taps off.

  Now he needed to get himself a saw, he suspected the gar
age would have just the thing…

  He returned a few moments later having procured a hacksaw from the garage.

  He stooped to the dead body, but before he placed the teeth of the blade to flesh he faltered. Not because he was squeamish, not that he was particularly looking forward to cutting through human flesh and bone, but because he suddenly thought about the blood-loss. Hacking him up now would only make a blood-bath.

  “Shit…” he sighed to himself.

  Where could he do this? He thought of the garden, but he wasn’t so sure the lawn would soak up the blood and what if his Aunt happened to look out of the window? It wasn’t viable. He thought of the garage, there had been a sheet of tarpaulin he could commandeer. Yet, he glanced to the dead man as if he expected some input to this dilemma, it still didn’t feel safe.

  Perhaps hacking him up wasn’t the best idea? What was he going to do with the pieces of the dead man? Shit, he hadn’t even thought of that.

  Chris placed the hacksaw down and decided that perhaps he needed an entirely different plan. He glanced to his watch, it was just past one am. Whatever he was going to do, he was going to have to do it quick.

  Damned hitmen, they kept disrupting his life and throwing it into chaos.

  If only he knew who had placed the bounty over his head…

  -----------------------------------------

  Chris awoke from the nightmare with a pounding heart and a slimy cold sweat breaking across his skin. It was always the same nightmare; his mother in the limousine and the gunfire, then his dead father chasing after him. Always the same, and he didn’t understand why it kept recurring, or why it affected him so. His conscious self had little time for his dead parents, barely affected by them or their deaths. Yet his subconscious self kept chewing it over and over…

  He peeled the damp sheets off his naked self and swung his legs out of bed. It was five thirty five am. He’d been in bed for three hours which was nowhere near long enough time to sleep, but he wouldn’t be able to sleep now. He felt his beating heart slowly dissipate and ease down, but he still felt sticky and clammy.

  Perhaps it was the hitman, maybe he’d stirred emotions to the surface? Was that it?

  The body had been disposed of, after a fashion. Chris wrapped the body in tarpaulin, taped it together several times and then managed to bundle it into his Aunt’s jeep. A dead body was very much a dead weight, and he’d struggled to manoeuvre it. With the body finally loaded, Chris had drove uptown and then drove deep into a little woodland. Chris could drive, he just didn’t have a license. He was too young for one, but the minute he could apply he was going to. He’d been taught rather well by one of the many cronies his mother had made baby-sit him on weekends he was out of boarding school. In the dark of the night in a desolate woodland, Chris had dragged the body from the jeep with only a pathetic torch for light. It was small and weak, but Chris could hold it between his teeth and it gave him both hands to work with. He dragged the body over fallen trees and through all sorts of woodland debris, a cumbersome and painful task in the pitch black. It had been a little eerie as the sounds of his struggle echoed around him. Satisfied he was far enough away from the dirt road, he cut open the binds and unrolled the dead body. By now Chris was exhausted, his back was aching and he was perspiring heavily. He dropped the torch, had to fumble for it before he could then proceed to tug the tarpaulin from under the corpse. Something black dropped out of the corpse’s jacket pocket.

  Overhead the sky rumbled and suddenly it unleashed a downpour. Rain lashed down suddenly, so Chris folded the tarpaulin quickly and rooted for the dropped black object. It was a cheap black phone, but Chris retained it. Maybe it would be useful.

  And now, while he was sat on the edge of his bed, that black phone illuminated. He glanced to it, then collected it. It had received a new text message.

  It looked like cryptic jargon, a meaningless stream of numbers.

  He placed the phone back on his bedside table.

  He was curious what it meant, but he strongly doubted he’d ever learn.

  Chris suddenly thought of the other mobile phone he’d procured, he stood and went to one of his many bedroom drawers and removed it. It was low on charge but it too had just received a text message. He opened the phone, it being a clamshell design and a hark back to much simpler times. It seemed the phone had received a number of text messages since Chris had stole it. He opened them, but only one was written in English. The others had been in code, or in Polish.

  “R U OK” was all it said. The number wasn’t saved in the phone, no number had been.

  The phone was utterly anonymous. Chris opened the pictures folder, just out of curiosity. He expected to be greeted with a stock of default images, all probably intended as wallpapers. He found one solitary picture and it made him laugh a little. It was a picture of the owner’s dick, in poor and grainy resolution. It wasn’t a particularly appealing penis, too much skin and a curious angle to it.

  He closed the phone wondering quite why the hitman had decided to take a pic of his dick on a burner phone like this. Burner phone, Jesus it was like he’d fallen into some sort of spy movie. Chris turned his attention to the freshly acquired phone, he found no dick pic or anything remotely useful. He deposited them in a drawer, well hidden.

  He padded into the bathroom and turned on the light.

  With a little twist he set the shower running, his head felt thick with the lack of sleep but he wasn’t likely to sleep any time soon. As the water heated up his mind turned to Pierre, the strange boy who had somehow magnetised him. What was it about him? Something fluttered in his gut when he thought of him, an indescribable sensation he had never experienced in his life. Chris climbed under the jets of water and shook the thoughts from his mind, but they had already triggered a semi-erection.

  CHAPTER SEVEN:

  It seemed Chris had got away with it again. His late night excursion had completely passed everybody by; there was no dramatic news report about a body in the woods and his Aunt hadn’t noticed her Jeep had been borrowed either. By all accounts it seemed that Chris had gotten away with it once more. Just like the previous ones. And he’d disposed of this one without having to hack up the body. The dead hitman by the creek was a dead-end it seemed, while the police had crawled extensively all over that crime scene they can’t have found anything to go on or he would’ve been interviewed already.

  So Chris had relaxed, perhaps they’d find the body within the next month but the rain would’ve long washed away any evidence by then.

  The day at college had been uneventful, though Alexis had been her usual unpredictable self. She’d brought a small homemade candle in as a peace gift for Emma, which had been sweet until she confessed to Chris that the second layer of the aromatic candle had been spiked with urine. Chris could only imagine how awful it would smell after the candle had been burning for a few hours. Vanilla and piss.

  He was surprised that Alexis was a chandler on the side. He only hoped that he wasn’t on the receiving end of one of her ‘gifts’. Pierre had been flirty with Chris during the day and Alexis had noticed, but she’d said nothing. Though the odd time Chris was sure he saw a glare of jealousy. As for Alexis she’d not once mentioned Le Bont this week, perhaps they were on the downs? Last week she’d endlessly mentioned him, now she went to great lengths to talk around him.

  As Chris pottered about his art studio he was convinced that he should anticipate Alexis dropping by. Something in his gut told him she was going to drop in and be her usual provocative self. He was somewhat banking on it, for he couldn’t concentrate on anything in his studio. Every time he sat before the easel he flashed back to the dead hitman. It was frustrating as hell.

  Perhaps he just needed to get out of here and do something different? He’d suddenly become consumed by art, it had become a monster that had invaded every aspect of his life.

  Once upon a time Chris had found his solace, and his sanctuary, in a swimming pool. Perhaps he sho
uld find the nearest pool and go for a swim, clear his head? He’d liked to walk to clear his head, but that didn’t feel particularly safe anymore.

  Hell, was anywhere safe? He’d been attacked in his own studio…

  “I know who you are,” the voice startled him. He spun sharply and was surprised to see Samuel Le Bont hovering at the doorway. He was grinning to himself and it was a little unsettling. He was dressed in a long grey coat that seemed impractical for the humid evening, a baseball cap and what appeared to be shiny bottoms.

  Behind him two rotund men hovered, they weren’t twins but they might as well have been. Short, pale, fat and hairless. They were dressed in black bomber-jackets, jeans and vibrant T-shirts with generic art printed on the front. A gold fat chain sat around their wide necks.

  Sam stepped inside but his cronies didn’t. Instead in perfect unison they turned and stood with their backs to the door. Were they bodyguards or something?

  “Nice!” Sam appraised a painting Chris had been mounting, his tone of enthusiasm was a little too overcooked.

  Chris didn’t say anything, instead he stood and watched this older man mooch around the room. He was taking his time, he was in no rush.

  “And I thought art was just painting fruit and shit…” he remarked as he hovered over a crucified Jesus. He admired the level of detail, silently impressed by Chris’ skill with the brush.

  Again Chris didn’t respond.

  “Christopher Bourgh,” Sam turned to face him satisfied by his private perusal of art.

  Chris didn’t react, but he was surprised that Sam knew his full name. Obviously Alexis had mentioned it. Something about that unnerved him slightly.

  “Callinghurst,” Sam added, that slightly goofy smile didn’t shift.

  “What about it?”

  “You knew my brother,” the smile faltered a little, it seemed to sharpen on his face and take on a hint of darkness. Or was it malice?

  Chris didn’t guess there was much in the way of denying it now. Now he would just tread carefully. “Jason…”