“No pressure,” Noel said with a sigh, as she took the plunge and began typing out the opening scene of her soon-to-be-published novel.
***
As the sun helplessly gave up its last dying breath on the horizon before the talons of night fully sunk in, Rebecca prepared herself for work.
“Just another day at the office,” she mused, as she licked her finger and put it to the window, making a hissing sound with her tongue, as if to snuff out the lingering rays of light like the wick of a candle. Turning back to her mirror with an amused smirk, she finished drawing a precise black line of liquid eyeliner around her deep blue eyes. Then she winked at herself, as if to test out its effect, and blew her reflection a kiss before turning away.
Rebecca had a reputation for being calculated, merciless and ice cold. She had to be; she was a hired killer, and the best money could buy – lots of money. Quickly reviewing the file on her newest target, Rebecca burned the image of the soon-to-be-lifeless face into her memory.
“Cute, but naïve,” she said, as she gazed emotionlessly at the young woman smiling back at her from the reconnaissance photo she had taken. “This ought to be an easy one.”
Carelessly flipping closed the cover of the file, Rebecca decided she would take her time and have some fun with this one.
Her typical modus operandi was to get inside her victims’ heads and toy with them, which is how she earned her reputation for being so cold-blooded. To her, it was an art, and it gave her great pleasure. People often hired her for “vengeance hits,” as they called them, jobs that required more than just putting a bullet in someone’s head. These jobs took finesse, passion, for it was passion that usually put these people on the hit list to begin with. Cheating husbands, mistresses, backstabbing friends, all were targets, and the ones who hired her had a score to settle, ruthlessly and with as much pain as possible.
This particular hit, however, was personal. Rebecca had chosen to pursue her target for her own vendetta and had taken some “personal time” to do it. After all, she could use a little vacation time, she reasoned, and what better way to spend it than doing what she loved most? With a Cheshire grin, like a cat looking forward to playing with its prey, Rebecca spun around and headed out the door, with an almost-imperceptible extra bounce in her step.
***
Looking up from her laptop and stretching her neck that had gone stiff from being in the same position for the last five hours, Noel glanced out the window of the coffee shop and was startled to see it was almost dark outside. The rain still fell steadily, and she watched as it drizzled down the window like long, fat worms, distorting the headlights of the cars passing by.
She had been so immersed in her writing that she had lost track of time. Glancing down at the clock on her screen that read 5:53 p.m., Noel decided she had done enough for one day and gathered her things to go home. Nate would be off of work by now anyway and was probably already waiting at home in their apartment in eager anticipation to hear how her first day as a bona fide author went.
Driving home, Noel reflected on the progress she had made. She had written roughly three chapters and was quite pleased with how the plot was building. She especially liked how her main characters were already developing so strongly, and she thought about this at length while waiting at the last traffic light before turning onto her street.
Her heroine and her villain were so alike yet completely different, opposites really, like yin and yang. One could not be defined without the other, for it was in the essence of the comparison of the two that each had her identity, as if to say, “I am me, because I am not you.”
On the one side, she had her heroine who was good, loving and wanted to save the world and right all the wrongs. She was the quintessential figure of what every little girl wants to be when she grows up, that “super” woman who changes the world and everyone loves. And who wouldn’t want to live up to such noble aspirations? That was the beauty of being a writer, Noel thought. If she couldn’t be this kick-butt woman in real life, she could definitely bring her to life in the pages of her book.
Then, on the other side of the equation, she had her villain, the sinister arch-rival. She was the pure embodiment of the dark side, the shadow, the part of the self that we try to ignore and deny its existence. Everyone has one, Noel thought, a shadow self, a place deep within where darkness pervades, where pain and unforgiveness is stored, where unholy thoughts are conjured, and where the fine line is drawn between sanity and insanity, light and dark, good and evil.
Really, both of her main characters represented aspects of herself. One was everything she could hope to ever be, and the other was everything she feared and loathed. Through writing this novel, she would have to face that, and as a result, be forced to come face-to-face with her own demons. Noel shivered a bit at this notion. Then, as if to save her from her runaway thoughts, the light turned green and she drove the last short distance to her apartment, a little faster than usual, and she really hoped Nate would be home to greet her.
As Noel walked in the door, Nate practically pounced on her as he covered her in kisses. She felt slightly overwhelmed in his flurry of affection as he took her jacket, her purse and her laptop bag and shoved them in the entry closet, then looked at her with eager eyes framed under raised, inquiring eyebrows that said, “Well? How did it go?” Noel laughed at his silly enthusiasm, gave him a big hug and kiss on the cheek, then proceeded to tell him about her story over huge plates of spaghetti with his special sauce that he made just for her.
“I’m so proud of you, Noel. It sounds amazing so far, and I definitely wouldn’t want to meet your antagonist in real life, that’s for sure,” Nate said between bites. “How do you feel about the progress you’re making?”
“I feel pretty good about it. I definitely don’t have a second to waste, though, and I’m kind of feeling like I might have bitten off more than I can chew.” Noel sighed and focused on twirling the spaghetti on her fork to avoid the overwhelmed feeling looming inside.
“You’ll get through it, babe. Just remember what the publisher said about this having the makings of a best-seller. Besides, your job is to just get it written. Then it’s the editor’s job to make sure it looks good and makes sense.”
Noel laughed. Nate was always so optimistic, and even though she knew it wasn’t quite that simple, at this moment, she didn’t care. She just wanted to enjoy his company and let him dote on her. She could stress about her writing tomorrow.
***
That night, Noel had a hard time going to sleep. Nate was already snoring lightly beside her while she stared wide-eyed into the dark. Her mind was a noisy chatter of thoughts and ideas, and several times she quietly got up and went to the other room to take notes so she wouldn’t forget them in the morning. Finally drifting off well past midnight, she swam in and out of fitful dreams like flash frame images of her story playing on a movie screen.
TUESDAY, APRIL 12TH
When the alarm went off in the morning, Noel had to force herself out of bed. She felt like she hadn’t slept at all. She didn’t remember what she had dreamt, but she had a nagging, anxious feeling in the pit of her stomach that left her feeling “off” and extremely agitated. It took every ounce of energy and motivation to get herself dressed and ready to focus on another day of writing, and she had a pounding headache.
As she poured herself a cup of straight black coffee, and was just putting the mug to her lips to take a sip, Nate walked into the kitchen and said incredulously, “In all the time I have known you, I have never seen you drink coffee… let alone black!”
Startled, Noel jumped and spilled some of the coffee on her clean shirt. “Dang it, Nate,” she snapped. “Why do you have to sneak up on me like that?!”
“Rowr, someone’s a little grumpy today,” he said, then, whistling in his uninterrupted good mood, he sauntered into the other room to get his shoes without waiting for a response.
Annoyed more than she should have bee
n, even in a bad mood, Noel glared icily at the back of his head and mumbled under her breath, “Watch yourself, buddy.” Then, in a fit of temper, she threw the mug into the sink with a crash of broken ceramic, spilling coffee everywhere, grabbed her laptop, keys and purse, and left for the coffee shop without saying goodbye. Once there, she focused on channeling that emotional energy into her writing.
***
Rebecca plopped down in her favorite chair and pulled off her boots at the end of a satisfying night. “Let the games begin,” she whispered, smiling to herself.
She had already begun tracking her prey, laying little traps here and there. They were just innocent things, really, just to toy with her for Rebecca’s own enjoyment. This was only the first phase, after all. No need to overdo it; there was still plenty of time.
As Rebecca strategized her next move, she pondered her target. No one else knew about this new obsession of hers. Not that she had anyone to tell anyway, but not even her very few friends, if you could call them that. Other contract killers, really; those were the people she associated with. After all, those were the people with whom she shared the most in common. Who else would understand this seemingly gruesome fascination she had with death and the bringing about of it?
Even so, personal hits were a delicate matter. Everyone had one from time to time, but they were risky. It was too easy to make a mistake, to be compromised due to being too close to the situation. Emotions and assassination were like mixing bleach and ammonia – highly toxic and would have you dead before you knew what hit you. So keeping quiet about the whole deal was the best approach. Plus, it wasn’t uncommon for contractors to go underground for a few weeks at a time, only to resurface suddenly and unexpectedly. It was part of not getting caught, letting the dust settle after a hit. So she had no concern at all about her so-called vacation arousing any suspicion or curiosity.
Rebecca’s personal target was unique, in a way. Most contractors personally went after people who didn’t pay up, or who betrayed them in some way. It was even common to snuff out the competition if they started infringing on each other’s clients. None of these scenarios were true in this case, however. No, this particular thorn in Rebecca’s side was not even someone she had dealt with before. In fact, they had never actually met.
For Rebecca, this person was an adversary, a threat in her own right. Although not a competing contractor, her target was definitely a competitor for power, and Rebecca couldn’t have that. She was the very best in her field, and everyone knew and respected that. She had rank, seniority, and some of the most prestigious clients in the country, including senators, CEOs and even the vice president of the United States. She had a reputation, and she was at the top of the food chain. In the world Rebecca lived in, she was God.
Now, for the first time ever, Rebecca felt her reign threatened. This new rival came seemingly out of nowhere and quickly caught her attention, which was no small feat. She didn’t waste her time or energy on the inconsequential.
This person, however, was anything but inconsequential, and in fact, was very powerful; she just didn’t know it yet. She could completely destroy Rebecca if allowed to come to full power. Rebecca recognized it from the moment this new foe had come into her awareness, and she made the decision right then that she would not let that happen. If she had anything to do with it, her target would never know her true potential. In fact, Rebecca intended to completely wipe her from existence, to be forgotten forever, as if her short stint in this world, in Rebecca’s world, had never even happened.
This thought pleased her. “Let’s just turn the heat up a bit, shall we?”
With a self-satisfied smirk, she kicked her feet up, leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes for a little snooze.
SATURDAY, APRIL 16TH
The rest of the week had gone by in a blur. Noel was making decent progress with her writing, but she was ever conscious of the looming deadline. The fact that she had three weeks left and was not quite on pace, with less than a quarter written, made her stressed and edgy. It didn’t help that she still wasn’t sleeping well and was waking up more and more exhausted every day.
Nate was taking it all in stride but had clearly kept his distance the past few days, which only irritated her more. Noel knew she was being grumpy and impatient, and she felt bad that Nate was the brunt of it, but she felt such tremendous pressure to get this manuscript done… and get it right. She didn’t want to just slap it together; she wanted to pour her heart and soul into it.
Since Nate was out doing guy stuff with Jeff and some other friends for the day, Noel decided to take advantage of the alone time and do some writing at home. Now, sitting comfortably at the desk in the second bedroom they used as an office, she stared at the blinking cursor on her computer screen. She tried to read back through what she had written so far, but her mind was unfocused and kept wandering. She felt agitated, as if something was gnawing its way through her subconscious like a worm in a corpse.
***
Startled by the sound of thunder, Noel jerked her head up off her desk. She must have dozed off, she thought, as she got up out of her chair to look outside. The sky was dark with heavy clouds, and the rain had begun to fall, slowly at first, then all at once in sheets. She could hear the drumming on the roof of her top-floor apartment and the clinking echo as the water hit the vents for the ceiling fans. She always liked thunderstorms; they were so peaceful to her.
She stepped out onto the covered balcony where she could smell the rain and watch the downspouts work overtime with their chugging and gurgling sounds. Closing her eyes for a moment, she listened to the rhythmic pattering as the steady downpour bounced off of all the different surfaces. She breathed in the sweet, dusty smell through her nose, held it for four beats, then let it back out in a big gush out her mouth. “Man that felt good,” she said, feeling much more relaxed.
Opening her eyes again, she watched as puddles began to form in the low points in the common grassy area below. “Dang, this is quite the cloud burst,” she commented as the lawn became littered with small puddles that then grew into each other, forming bigger puddles. Completely enrapt with the growing puddles, she imagined that the largest ones in the center of the yard looked like a giant face. “There are the eyes,” she said to herself, pointing with two fingers in a v, “and there are the nostrils… and yep, there’s the mouth!” she said victoriously.
This was fun, she thought, as she looked around the grassy area identifying other puddle figures and shapes like one would do with clouds. The rain was already beginning to let up, and although the sky was still very dark and overcast, the drops were falling at a much lighter cadence now, which made the whole scene look surreal. Then, as if it couldn’t get any more entertaining, she noticed the earthworms starting to make their way onto the sidewalk, and she watched them in gripped fascination.
First, there were only a few here and there – their long bodies stretching onto the sidewalk to be the first ones to welcome the sun when it decided to peek out again. “You guys better not dry out like that,” she said in a mock scolding tone, as she thoroughly enjoyed the spectacle in front of her. More and more worms were inching their way to the surface, and Noel couldn’t help but think how much her grandfather would have loved to be there right now if he was still alive. He had loved to fish and was always going on about his nice, fat night crawlers.
These worms were indeed fat, and now there had to be fifty or more of them, and there were still more coming. Looking across the common area to the sidewalk on the other side, she couldn’t see any worms. For whatever reason, they all wanted to be in this one spot, right in front of her balcony. “Where are they all coming from?” Noel wondered.
As if in answer to her question, the worms started pouring out of the ground in droves, especially from the center of the lawn where her puddle face still was. In fact, they seemed to be oozing out of the places she had identified as the nostrils and the mouth. “Gross,” she said, not likin
g that association, but she couldn’t help to continue watching out of sheer disbelief.
The rain had completely stopped by this point, and the clouds had taken on a shiny iridescence. They were still dark, but they were more of a light grey color, and the little bit of light coming through cast an unearthly glow over the yard, giving the puddle face an odd life-like dimension with cheek bones, brows and a chin. It was kind of creepy looking, Noel thought, as she continued to be mesmerized by the illusion of the dancing light on what now looked very much like a real face.
The breeze blowing ripples across the puddles only added to the illusion by making it look like the mouth was opening and closing, and by this point, Noel’s imagination was running away with her as she thought she could hear the whisper of her name carried on the wind. “Noooeeeel,” the puddle face mouthed in a breathy voice.
Suddenly, Noel’s hair stood on end as a chill crawled up her back. “That’s my face!”
“Ha ha ha ha!” The face began to laugh, and Noel couldn’t move. All she could do was stand there and watch as the worms came spilling out of the image of her own face in the yard – out of her nose, out of her eyes and out of her mouth.
She gagged and choked as if she could really feel them coming out of her mouth and then managed to find her voice. “NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!” she screamed. “NOOOOOO!!!!!!”
The face just continued to laugh and kept saying, “Noel… Noel… Noel…” It got louder and louder until the whole ground and balcony shook and she fell forward over the rail.
***
“Noel, wake up!” Nate was shaking her frantically and looked absolutely terrified.
“Aaaaaaaa! Get them off me!” she screamed, rubbing her hands all over her face as she slowly became lucid. Then, she sat there at her desk, her whole body trembling, and cried uncontrollably while Nate just held her tightly, himself trembling slightly. She hoped he wouldn’t ask... and he didn’t.
Intrigue (Stories of Suspense) Page 20
