A Killer's Memoir 2: New Contracts

by Mark J. Allen

  “Who are you?” Jay asked me. I saw a screwdriver sitting on the table I was grabbing the money off of. I grabbed the screwdriver and put my bag down and picked up the hammer on the way over to where Jay was.

  “Everybody keeps asking me that,” I told him.

  “Are you from another dealer or some vigilante who doesn’t like drugs? What’s your story?”

  “What’s my story?” I asked him. “I’ve got a girl who’s being held hostage until I kill the right number of people and I’m really pissed off about it.” He looked confused.

  “So why don’t you just kill him?” he asked. As his face continued to bleed he began to sound more and more mumbled.

  “I didn’t even think about it,” I said sarcastically, “because that would put her in danger genius. I’m getting really fucking tired of people asking me questions and really fucking tired of having to do what I’m told.”

  “Sounds to me like you should have protected her better,” he said, now gaining some of that fight back by spouting off a smart assed comment. I glared at him in anger, not sure what to say. Instead I let my actions speak as I moved the screwdriver right below his knee, pressed it against his skin and hit the top of the screwdriver as hard as I could with the hammer.

  The screwdriver went two to three inches into his leg and he yelled out in pain.

  “Please, leave me be. I won’t mention anything about it, I won’t come find you or anything, you’ll never see me again,” he pleaded.

  “You’re damn right about that,” I told him. “Look up.” He looked up to see the propane tank from his grill hanging on the garage rafters next to a grenade. The pin on the grenade had a slack wire connected to it that led to the garage door.

  I could see him processing what was going to happen when I put the garage door down as I watched his eyes follow the wire to the door and then look at the garage door opener that I had taken out of my pocket.

  “No man,” Jay said. “I promise you don’t have to do this. You really don’t,” he said.

  “Quit your fucking whining,” I told him.

  “I won’t tell anybody who you are or why you were here, I’ll blame another drug dealer, I’ll help you get her back, anything man,” he said.

  “It’s too late for you,” was all I said. I grabbed my bag and stepped out of the garage. I hit the button on the opener and heard the garage motor start. I tossed the opener in the garage with them and began walking away.

  The explosion was different from in the movies where the good guy walks away with an explosion behind him without flinching. I could tell the garage door was close to the bottom and could almost hear the pin pull from the grenade and hit the floor. Seconds later the grenade exploded, igniting the propane and other chemicals within the garage.

  The blast from it made me jump and I felt the pressure hit my back as pieces of wood and everything else fell around me and hit me. I was unscathed from it but definitely felt it happen. I walked to my car, threw my bag in the trunk, and headed home. My list was shrinking and I wanted to get it done as quickly as possible but I knew after taking those hits I was probably going to have to re-bandage my side as well as rest.

  Emma

  As I was driving my mind danced backwards to the past as I thought about much I missed Emma and everything she had done for me and everything she had made me feel. My mind went back to one particular night.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked me after finding me sitting on our porch, staring out into the empty fields on the acreage we owned.

  “Nothing,” I said as I smiled at her, but she knew me better than that. It had only been a month since I’d been out of the hospital and she knew me better than I knew myself.

  “Tell me,” she said as she sat down on my lap. I put my hand on her back that was exposed from the shirt she was wearing, held on by a couple of strings.

  “You’re perfect,” I started and before I continued she spoke.

  “And that’s a problem?” she asked with a smile, joking around. I smiled back.

  “I’ve done a lot in my life,” I said. “I’ve taken more lives than I can count. Women, just like you.”

  “You did what you had to do at the time to survive,” she said. “And nobody is perfect; including me.”

  “I think you’re wrong though,” I told her. “You’re the most perfect person I’ve ever met and I really don’t know what you see in me.”

  “You have many good qualities,” she said.

  “Like I’ve killed people?” I said half joking, half serious.

  “Like you didn’t kill me,” she joked back. “Serious though, you are a wonderful person and even though you have a dark history that you were forced into by unfortunate circumstances you retained your good side and stayed true to the person you are. We’ve talked about this and how you even showed it through the jobs you had to do, for example you wouldn’t take a contract unless you felt the person deserved to die.”

  “That shouldn’t be my decision,” I said.

  “That may be true but that decision was put in your hands and you didn’t have any choice. You were meant for more and you survived and maybe it was that you were meant to save me.”

  “Sometimes it is just hard to believe that I deserve you,” I told her. I wasn’t trying to be down on myself; I just felt like she was worth a lot more as a person than I was given the things I had done.

  “Unfortunately for you, and fortunately for me, you don’t have to or even get to make that decision; I do,” she smiled. “I am grateful you came into my life because I’ll now forever feel safe.”

  “What if I can’t always protect you?” I asked her.

  “You can,” she said confidently. She then leaned in and kissed me. “I’m pretty sure we were made for each other. You were meant to save me and I was meant to act as the piece of the puzzle that got you out of the business you were in. And now you don’t have to do those things that make you feel this weight of guilt anymore.”

  She kissed me again and adjusted herself so that she was straddling me. Small kisses led to rough kisses, which led to me breaking the couple of small strings holding her shirt together. She looked at me when I did.

  “Oops,” I said, “sorry.” She smiled as did I and she got up and we both removed our clothes. We made love out on the chair on the porch and then went inside and made love again. We ended the night lying next to each other looking into each other’s eyes.

  “You don’t have to kill anymore,” she told me as we fell asleep. Now, driving on the road I heard her words clear as day, as if she was right next to me. I pulled the car over and got out, slamming my door.

  “Fuck!” I yelled as I began beating on the hood out of anger and frustration. I punched it several times, releasing my pent up tension and continued to yell. She had told me I didn’t have to kill anymore and she had wanted me to not kill anymore. Now here I was, brutally killing people because I couldn’t protect her like she always felt I would.

  I began to think and finally made a decision on what I was going to do next. I took my phone out, dialed, and put it to my ear.

  “James?” my sister said as she picked up the phone.

  “Where are you?” I asked.

  “Where have you and Emma been?” she asked. “We haven’t seen you guys around and were getting a little worried.”

  “I need you to get mom and dad and get out of the house,” I told her.

  “What? Why?”

  “Please just do it,” I said.

  “James, what’s going on?”

  “I’ve run into some trouble, please get mom and dad out of the house. Call them up; ask them to meet you in town. Tell them it is urgent and that you would like them to meet you right away.”

  “You’re scaring me,” she said.

  “Can you get that done?”

  “Yes, but please be careful.”

  “Always little sister, always.”

  Home

  I drove slowly down th
e road my parents lived on and stopped right before the last hill so that my vehicle wouldn’t be seen. I got out and made my way around the property line and approached the shed from the back.

  I slowly moved my way behind the back of the shed and pushed my ear to the wood to listen. I listened for about a minute but hadn’t heard a single noise. I started wondering if maybe Justin wasn’t there right now and then I began to think it’d be impossible for him to be there the whole time; surely he left every now and then.

  I began to move my way around the shed, passing by the side of it, and peeked my head around the corner. I didn’t see any movement and the door was shut tightly. I briefly glanced up at my parent’s place to see if I saw any activity from the house but it appeared as if my sister had gotten them out of the house.

  I drew my pistol and slowly moved my way towards the door, much like a cop would. There was just a single latch holding the old door and I undid it as quietly as I could.

  I opened the door quickly; gun raised and stepped inside only to find that the shed was empty. Not empty, but with nobody in it. It looked exactly as I remembered it. Nothing seemed to have been disturbed until I saw a red light in the corner of the room. It was a camera and it had moved very slightly and focused on me.

  Just as soon as I had noticed the movement my phone rang. Without even looking at it I knew who it was going to be.

  “Disappointed?” Justin said as I answered.

  “Where are you?” I asked him.

  “It doesn’t matter; you’re breaking the rules I gave you,” he said.

  “We need to talk,” I told him. I hadn’t expected not to find him here and I was a little panicked now as there wasn’t much I could do to defend Emma if she wasn’t even here.

  “Then talk,” he said, “you don’t need to see my face to talk, so talk. What do you want to say?”

  “Can you just let her go?” I knew it wasn’t going to happen but it was the first thing that came out.

  “No,” he said. “What collateral would I have if I let her go?”

  “I’ll still complete your work I just need to know she is okay, I can’t think straight and I can’t continue to push on knowing that she may not be okay.”

  “I disagree,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think you’ll push harder not knowing if she is okay or not. You’ll push your body to every limit and kill every single person I ask you to kill to ensure that she is okay.” I hated to admit it but he was right and he knew he was right. I had nothing on him unless I completely quit caring about her.

  “Where are you?” I asked him.

  “We’re at a safe place where nobody will find us unless I want them to find us,” he said.

  “But you were here at one point?”

  “No,” he said. “We recreated the inside of that shed. It was mainly hay and odds and ends and all we had to do was make it look pretty similar and you’d remember it how you wanted to remember it. You didn’t even pay attention to the walls, marks on the floor, nothing. You had enough panic, anger, and distress, that you missed all the important details that would have let you know that we were not in that shed.”

  “Why go to all that trouble?”

  “You think I want to spend my time in a dark, dusty old shed? I can walk out this door and go anywhere I want without having to sneak around or worry about somebody seeing me.” It actually made perfect sense.

  “What can I do to get you to let her go?”

  “You can complete your job,” he said.

  “You and I both know that’s not going to work,” I said. “Whoever is giving your orders is going to order you to kill me and her as soon as everything is done.”

  “What are you talking about?” he said.

  “Somebody else is giving you your orders and I want to know who,” I told him. He laughed.

  “Making up a fantasy in your head mister detective?” he asked sarcastically. “I’m calling the shots. I’ve always been calling the shots and I should have been since the day you and Phil came to get me.

  “You’re out of control,” I said, angrily.

  “No, I’m in control!” he yelled. I didn’t say anything at first. I felt as if I was getting to him but I knew he wasn’t going to tell me who was giving his orders.

  “You had to think about giving me time,” I finally said, randomly.

  “What are you going on about?”

  “You had to think about giving me time. It was odd, there was nothing to think about, you were either going to give me some extra time or you weren’t. But you had to think about it, which told me you needed to ask somebody if you could extend the countdown.” He hesitated, which made me think I was correct in thinking somebody else was calling the shots.

  “You’re hallucinating,” he said. “Get the next job done,” he said. “Only a few more and then I have a couple of extra you need to do and she’ll be okay.”

  “Fuck you,” I told him. He didn’t respond right away again.

  “James, you’re trying my patience. And I get frustrated when my patience is tried and I get bored when I’m frustrated and when I get frustrated, honestly I just start looking for a girl. Conveniently I have a pretty one right here who I bet has a very soft touch and a very warm feeling, so do hurry before I get too bored.”

  “I am going to kill you,” I told him.

  “I’m sure,” was all he said.

  “Who visited Hunter?” I asked him which caused him to hesitate gain.

  “Get the job done Wolf,” he said as he hung up the phone. I felt as if I was very much in his head but he wasn’t giving me anything to work off of. I had no idea where he was and the more time that passed the more I felt like I was never going to see her again.

  “Now I never have to worry,” she had said. “I’ll always be safe.”

  As I headed out of the shed my phone rang again. I hadn’t even put it away so I pulled it back out.

  “One last thing,” he said. “I told you if you came anywhere near where I was, or at least where you thought I was, that there would be repercussions. Should I take them out on her?”

  “No,” I said loudly.

  “Fair enough,” he said. “Your decision has been made.” I heard the click of the phone almost as simultaneously as I heard the explosion. My parent’s house burst at the seems as if it had been laced with dynamite throughout the entire thing. I knew they weren’t in there but I was still angry.

  The force of the blast pushed me off the ground and slammed me against the shed. My ears were ringing and I couldn’t hear anything.

  “FUCK!” I yelled over and over. I finally composed myself and got back to my car. I had to finish the job and I had to finish it as quickly as I could.

  Intruders

  I headed back to my house to prepare for the next job and as I pulled into the drive I noticed the door was open. I had been thinking so much about where Justin had been and where Emma could be and how she was doing that I hadn’t even noticed it until I was in the driveway.

  I got out of the car but left the door open so it wouldn’t slam shut, just in case somebody was listening for me to get out of the car. I drew my gun and looked around but saw no signs of anybody. I walked slowly towards the door, straining my eyes for any bit of movement.

  I stepped inside the door and before I could react I saw a bat coming down on my arms. It hit right in the bend of my elbows and forced me to drop my gun. I turned to swing but felt the thud of another bat on the back of my leg. I went down hard and started to get up until I saw the gun pointed to my head.

  “Don’t move,” the man holding the gun said in a thick accent. I looked up at him, staring down the end of his gun that was placed about a foot from my head. “Get up,” he said. I did as I was told and got up. The guy that had hit me in the leg behind me grabbed my arms and put them behind my back. The guy holding the gun pointed in a direction with his head as they took me further into the house and into
the living room.

  The guy holding my arms placed a zip tie around my hands but I noticed he placed it pretty loose. The slack would have been enough to get out of it if I wanted to but I waited to see what these guys were here for first.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “An enemy,” the guy with the gun said.

  “Why are you here?”

  “I want to see the list Justin gave you,” he said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The list of who to kill,” he said.

  “No idea what you mean,” I lied. He pulled the gun back and then hit me across the face with it.

  “Do not fuck with me Wolf, I need to see the list now,” he said. The cheek he hit me in stung and I could feel blood running down it from a gash the gun created.

  “Why do you need it?” I asked him.

  “That’s no business of yours,” he said.

  “Look, if you want to kill Justin I’d be glad to help you, but his list won’t give any hints to his whereabouts.”

  “I do not want to kill him,” he said, “I want to see who he wants killed. I will then make sure to kill everybody on it before you do, so that he has no real use for you.” His plan didn’t make any sense to me.

  “Why?”

  “I think it is clear don’t you?”

  “Apparently not,” I said. I turned to the guy behind me, “is he always this difficult?” The guy holding the gun kicked me in the stomach and I bent over as the air left my lungs. The guy behind me pulled me back up to my knees and I looked back up to the gun.

  “If Justin has no use for you he will kill you,” he said.

  “False,” I told him.

  “Why do you say this?” he said, his accent coming through even thicker.

  “If you kill everybody on my list and he has no use for me he will kill my girl and then he will try to kill me. He won’t succeed in killing me, trust me he has had plenty of opportunities and failed. I will kill him and afterwards I will hunt you down and slaughter every single person you know until you are begging for me to take your life.”