Murdergram, Part 2

by Nisa Santiago

  As she rocked, he pushed deeper into her. And they fucked faster and harder.

  Moments later, they both came into glory.

  Daisy lay nestled in his arms on the wrinkled purple silk sheets, and for the moment, life was good. She had no complaints.

  Four

  The shower was Cristal’s temporary haven. The running water cascaded off her light brown skin as she stood with her head down and eyes closed, her hands palming the Dove soap, wishing she could wash away her pain and her scars. Looking into the bathroom mirror every day served as a constant reminder that her entire family had been slaughtered right in front of her eyes.

  That day was supposed to be a joyous occasion. Cristal had so much to be thankful for— family, love, and the new baby on the way—and within the blink of an eye, that was all snuffed out. The betrayal was heartrending, and the loss was devastating.

  Cristal could never forget. She could never erase the pain and bloodshed from her mind. It had been seared into her memory. She felt empty and cold. She thirsted for revenge, yearning to cut open her enemies’ insides and twist their intestines with her fist and watch them die slowly.

  She tried not to think about that fateful day she lost Hugo, the love of her life, her grandmother Hattie, her mother, cousins, aunts, uncles, and most tragically, her unborn child. The Commission had taken everything away from her because she was cocky enough to break the rules.

  As the water crashed against her naked skin, she methodically circled her wounds while her eyes remained closed. One hole was stitched together right under her rib cage, and the other wound was one inch away from her heart.

  It had been three years since she had taken two body shots from a high-powered firearm and another two shots to her face that disfigured her and changed her entire life. Not only did she lose her family, she lost her beauty too.

  Daisy was right about one thing. Her face, as she saw it now, couldn’t sell much of anything. One bullet had grazed her skull, leaving behind a deep keloid scar, and the second bullet grazed her left cheek and took off a portion of her left earlobe. Tamar’s betrayal had done a number on her.

  The doctors had said that she was lucky to be alive, which she thought was an understatement. The incident left her bitter and angry.

  While she was healing and hidden away from society and the danger, she wrote about her pain, camouflaging her feelings and her anger into a full-length novel, holding nothing back, substituting her tragedy with fictional characters. Writing the book was somewhat therapeutic, but it couldn’t fully heal her from the agony and sadness. But it was a start.

  Seeing blood spill would have been a better start, but Cristal needed time to think and to heal. She also needed time to methodically plot out her revenge.

  Her story was being read by millions of people, and unbeknownst to her readers, the Commission was being exposed. Daisy was the perfect foil to launch her book, to sell her tragedy, but the fame had gone to her head. Daisy believed that she wasn’t expendable, but she was about to learn a hard lesson. Nothing lasts forever.

  Cristal thought really hard about Daisy. She really wanted to have some remorse for the young girl, but the bitch was likely to compromise everything.

  She finished showering and stepped onto the white-tiled floor. She toweled off and then knotted the towel by her breasts. She stepped out of the bathroom and walked around her spacious Boston apartment. The day she became a deadly assassin was the beginning of her end. She had so many names floating around in her head, so many identities in her possession, she was never herself. Not since her “murder.” Most days she didn’t know who she was. One day she was Elizabeth, the next she was Melissa or Lara or Caitlyn, and the list went on and on. If the Commission knew she was still alive, they would hunt her down to the end of the earth.

  After donning a long white T-shirt that draped down to her knees, Cristal went into her bedroom, dropped her knees against the parquet floor, and reached under the bed to grip the leather black handle to a large black suitcase. She pulled it into her view; it was big enough to hide a small body. Next, she went to her closet and grabbed a large wheeled trunk.

  She carried the suitcase and rolled the trunk into the next room. Her apartment was bare like her soul, sparsely furnished, with no pictures or other personal touches to liven the place up. She sank into the folding chair and removed every piece of weaponry, and within a short time, she had her own personal gun show displayed across the table—two black .45 ACPs, a Glock 19, two Smith & Wesson SW99 .9mms, a .38 Special, three .9mm Berettas, and two stainless .45s. It looked like she had broken into a military armory and hit the jackpot.

  She also had in her possession the Mossberg 500 12-gauge and an FN Tactical Police 12-gauge, along with a Heckler & Koch G36C 5.56mm, a Heckler & Koch HK91A3, an SIG SG 552, and two of her most powerful guns, a Remington 700 PSS and a Barrett M82, both of which could dismember limbs and blow holes the size of basketballs in muthafuckas.

  Cristal was a trained markswoman. The Commission had taught her how to kill, and she perfected the art. She knew how and when to be discreet and when to be messy, to send a message.

  It was going to be a long night. She was determined to clean all her guns properly, taking care of her babies like they were her kids. She had everything she needed placed in front of her—cleaning solvent, lubricant, a bore brush, a cleaning rod, and cotton swabs.

  She placed a special CD in the CD drive of her small stereo, and opera music started to play in the background. Luciano Pavarotti’s tenor voice started to blare into the room, the song of choice, “Miss Sarajevo.” Listening to opera was a far cry from the rap lyrics she grew up on. Opera was more soothing to her ears.

  After the attempt on her life, Cristal was now prone to panic attacks, fits of uncontrollable rage, and loud noise sensitivity. She had to take a cocktail of Xanax, Vicodin, and Zoloft to control it.

  One by one, she unloaded her weapons, looked through the barrel from back to front to confirm that there were no rounds in the chamber or stuck in the barrel. Then she dismantled the weapon, removed the firing pin, and went to work on the cold steel like a hospital surgeon, cleaning each gun meticulously and reloading it.

  Three hours later, every weapon was cleaned, shining, and looking brand-new. She was ready to put them to use.

  ...

  Dressed in all black, Cristal sat covertly parked outside the five-story walk-up in SoHo, Manhattan. The area wasn’t busy, being midnight. A few yellow cabs traveled back and forth on the cobblestone street, but the pedestrian traffic was sparse.

  It was the perfect place for a woman like Daisy to reside. Besides its unique architectural style, SoHo was a shopping mecca. In the last two decades, SoHo had evolved from an artists’ village to a commercial paradise. Walking along the streets, one could pass countless clothing retail stores such as Ralph Lauren, J.Crew, Betsey Johnson, and Tory Burch.

  Cristal exited her vehicle without reservation. Her weapon of choice tonight was the .9mm Beretta. She crossed the narrow cobblestone street nestled quietly away from busy Canal and Houston Streets. She moved stealthily toward the building and stood in front of a high storefront window with the fire escape a few feet above her head. She took a deep breath and, using the structure for support, leaped like a cat, her arms outstretched, and grabbed onto the fire escape, using her upper-body strength to pull herself up. She was quiet and fast.

  Once on the fire escape, she pulled out the pistol and slowly twisted the long, deadly silencer onto the barrel of the .9mm. She ascended toward the fifth floor and came to Daisy’s living-room window, which was slightly open. Everything looked copasetic, with no noisy neighbors, no noise coming from within, and the street below her looking tranquil.

  She slid into the apartment, adjusted her eyes to the darkness inside, and made her way from the open window into the apartment, her gun gripped in her hand. She saw a speck of light creeping from the hallway leading toward the bedroom. Cristal walked ahead, her
.9mm stretched out in front of her, leading the charge. Her training had taught her how to move in silence. Almost like a feather blowing in the wind, she didn’t make a noise.

  When she got to the bedroom door, she pressed her ear to the door and listened. Nothing. She crouched closer to the floor and carefully pushed open the door, slightly enough where there was little notice of any movement, and crept into the bedroom, low to the floor.

  Asleep in the bed, butt naked, were Daisy and Domencio after a long night of fucking their brains out.

  The man was unexpected. Damn! Cristal thought. She wanted this killing to be clean.

  How in the hell was she supposed to move him? He was all muscles and mass. It was going to be difficult, and she didn’t have time to deal with difficult. She was pissed. She thought about killing them both and coming back another day to clean it up. She needed Daisy to disappear. There couldn’t be a body. No one could know she was dead.

  She frowned at the dilemma in front of her as she watched the two lovebirds sleep peacefully. It would have been easy, a few shots in critical places and done. But moving the bodies would be a bit complicated. Besides, who was the man lying next to Daisy? He could be missed.

  Cristal stood over them like a shadow. She decided against it. Daisy’s company had caused her life to be spared. She could always come back. Better to return than to complicate an easy thing. So she crept back out of the apartment and waited.

  Five

  Several hours went by, and there were only two hours before dawn would be lighting up the sky. Still, this particular area of SoHo was quiet like a small town in the Midwest. Cristal had come all the way from Boston, so she wasn’t about to fail. She sat patiently behind the wheel of her dark blue Audi. Since the Farm, it had been embedded into her—always take your time, study your mark, know their routine, and become familiar with the surroundings.

  As she sat, she suddenly noticed Daisy’s male friend exiting the building. She read him. Leaving in the middle of the night the way he did, she imagined he had a girlfriend or wife waiting for him at home. She chuckled.

  She watched him climb inside a black BMW 745i and navigate out of the tight parking spot before driving off. Now she could move.

  She slid out the car and repeated the same routine as before, climbing up the fire escape, her .9mm in hand, silencer at the end, bullet already in the chamber, and went for the same open window. This time, she had to be extra careful. Maybe Daisy was awake. Either way, she was going to complete her mission.

  Cristal effortlessly crept through the window. This time she knew the layout of the apartment. She was trained to have a picture-perfect memory.

  This time, she was audacious. No crouching, no moving around in the apartment like a cockroach, knowing Daisy was alone. If confronted, Daisy was no match for her lethal abilities. It would be like a tree going against a hurricane.

  Cristal moved toward the bedroom with an unrelenting attitude, her eyes cold slits, her fist clenched around the silver handle of the Beretta. She was ready to show the little bitch the consequences of being greedy. She could hear some movement inside the master bedroom, and a television now turned on low. She noticed the yellow light under the doorway. Cristal lifted her right leg, knee pointed upwards, and thrust it forward, kicking open the bedroom door with a burst of force that startled Daisy.

  Immediately, Cristal had the gun trained at her head. “Don’t you fuckin’ move.”

  Daisy, still butt naked and seated at the foot of her bed, stared wide-eyed at Cristal clad in black standing in front of her with the barrel of the silencer pointed right between her eyes. Right away, she was overcome with fear. “Please don’t kill me,” she begged loudly.

  “I’m not going to kill you.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

  “Shut the fuck up!”

  Daisy was shaking like a leaf on a windy day. She kept her attention fixed on Cristal and the gun. The tears started to show in her eyes.

  “Get up!”

  Daisy complied, moving slowly, her whole body trembling from fear. “What are you going to do with me? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to act up at the last book signing. I don’t want anything.”

  Cristal shouted, “I said shut up!”

  She made Daisy move around her well-designed bedroom at gunpoint and forced her into the living room. She instructed her to take a seat at the small writing desk that sat cater-corner in the neat living room. Daisy sank her naked ass into the cushioned chair and curved herself over the desk, her whimpering uncontrollable.

  Cristal removed a pen and some paper from the drawer.

  “Please . . . whatever you want, I’ll behave. I’m sorry. Just don’t hurt me,” she said, tears trickling down her face.

  “I want you to write something for me,” Cristal said.

  “Write what?”

  “I’ll tell you.”

  Daisy could barely hold the pen steady in her hand, which shook like it was in a California earthquake.

  Cristal held the gun pointed to the back of her head. Daisy couldn’t help but to nervously glance over her shoulder, wondering what Cristal had planned for her.

  Cristal approached closer, placing the tip of the silencer to the back of Daisy’s head and said, “I need you to write this down.”

  Daisy placed the pen to the paper and started jotting down every word Cristal spoke.

  “I am saddened to inform my fans and the public that I will no longer be able to make any special appearances at book signings, radio interviews, speaking engagements, or interviews. I have decided to leave the country for a long while and go into seclusion. The reasons for this sudden decision I do not care to disclose at the moment, but they are good reasons. I thank everyone for the love and support they’ve shown me and know my work will always carry on.”

  Cristal made Daisy sign it as Melissa Chin.

  Immediately, Daisy started to cry out hysterically knowing the inevitable was about to happen to her.

  With the gun still pointed at the back of Daisy’s head, Cristal said, “Get up!”

  “Please! I’m sorry, so sorry. I’ll just disappear. I swear I won’t be a problem to you. Just let me go. I promise, I’ll go back to the Midwest right now.”

  Keeping Daisy alive was too much of a risk for Cristal. It was inevitable that the Commission would eventually track her down, most likely torture her for information, and kill her.

  “Get dressed.”

  Daisy walked over to her walk-in closet on the opposite side of the bedroom. She slowly opened the narrow double closet doors and walked into what looked like a whirlwind of clothing placed everywhere. She was living the good life, wearing Prada and Gucci, dining in nice restaurants, chilling in VIP in the hottest clubs, and having the best sex with some of the finest men in New York City.

  Daisy stood in the middle of her closet looking befuddled.

  “Hurry up and put something on,” Cristal snapped, becoming impatient with her.

  Daisy looked at the tons of clothing she’d collected since becoming Melissa Chin. Her tears continued to trickle down her brown cheeks.

  Her nakedness was starting to bother Cristal. She stepped into the closet and decided to choose for her, since Daisy was too dumbfounded. With the barrel of the silencer pushing clothing to the side draping of the hangers, she set her eyes on something.

  “I like this,” she said. “Put this on.”

  Daisy didn’t argue with her. She slid into the short, colorful Gucci dress.

  Cristal pulled Daisy out of the closet, and after she put on a pair of shoes, the two were out the front door. Daisy was being kidnapped. The two exited the building with Daisy still begging for her freedom.

  Cristal popped the trunk to her Audi and forced Daisy inside.

  “Please, I’ll just go away,” Daisy begged once again before the trunk slammed shut.

  ...

  It was just over an hour drive to the designated place in Scarsdale, New York
. But with the sprawling sunlight, Cristal didn’t have the cover she needed. She needed to wait until it was dark again, so she gagged Daisy and kept her hidden in the trunk until dusk.

  When night fell over the Scarsdale neighborhood, Cristal drove near a secluded area of a sprawling cemetery, up a hill, overlooking the community. It was dark and away from traffic or wandering pedestrians.

  The grave was already dug. Now it was just a matter of dumping the body and filling it in. There was a crescent moon above, and between the thick shrubberies and tall trees, Cristal had enough cover to kill Daisy.

  She parked close to the grave and forced Daisy out of the trunk at gunpoint. Daisy couldn’t scream due to the cloth wedged into her mouth. Her wrists were bound tightly, her hair disheveled, and her tear-stained face was still searching for some sympathy from Cristal.

  She marched Daisy toward the open grave, and when Daisy saw the gruesome fate that lay ahead of her, she pivoted quickly in her high heels and tried to run.

  Suddenly the butt of the Beretta came crashing down against the back of her skull, and she collapsed onto her hands and knees.

  “Don’t be stupid,” Cristal said.

  Daisy squirmed and groaned, the dirty white rag shoved into her mouth gagging her and making her incoherent. Her tears continued to fall, her eyes wide with fear. She obviously didn’t want to die, but she didn’t have a choice.

  Cristal forced her to the foot of the open grave.

  Daisy was in a full-blown panic. She quivered so much and was so scared, a yellow stream trickled down her inner thigh and made a small puddle where she stood. Her eyes frantically searched for some kind of pardon from her soon-to-be executioner.

  Cristal shook her head in disgust. She stepped forward with the gun angled away from Daisy, and removed the gag, allowing her victim to speak her last words. She didn’t know why. It would be the only empathy from her that night.