A Dead-End Job

by Justin Alcala

After careful deliberation, I had decided to assassinate my mark just before D&D started. I started my day by returning Pulp to the library just hours before it was due. Once the scary Baba Yaga-looking librarian gave me the okay to take out another book, I fished for a lighter subject amongst the rows of brain candy. Andrew Smith would do. Nothing taps into a shattered childhood like kidnapped boys, melting men, and broken hearts. I hurried home with my new literature, ate the last Lunchable in my refrigerator, and then started on the van’s brakes.

  I’d cut my palm in the process and had to waste precious time super gluing the gash across what a fortune teller once told me was my lifeline. I’d picked up the trick in the military. Super glue and tampons were a medics best friend overseas, but that’s another story. The adhesive quickly stopped the bleeding.

  I showered, dressed in my favorite suit, and hurried into my work car. The indistinct sedan was great for keeping a low profile. I drove the sedan across the hot summer town to Denny’s pawn shop. Denny, who was on the most wanted list for diabetics, ate his deep-dish pizza dripping with grease with one hand while navigating his SmartPad with the other. He was reading the latest article from a local conspiracy theory blog known as the Hex Files. The title read, “Missing Nursing Home Patients Part of President’s Mass Alien Abduction Plan.” His store once was an 80’s rug business, and the shag carpet on the floor hadn’t been changed since. He did me the service of picking up his mullet-crowned head as I ambled into his outdated storefront.

  “Buck,” Denny croaked through oily lips. “Is today the day?”

  “Today is the day,” I lamented while bringing the briefcase I’d lugged in onto his dirty glass counter. The neon light above flickered as I clicked the brass hasps and opened the case up. Angels cried as the 1987 Second Series Punisher Issue One comic book waited for Denny inside. I really needed this job to work out. Denny’s eyes lit up as he stared at the illustrated sex before him.

  “You sure about this?”

  “No, but I need that hammer strut pin. Unless you want to give me the pin for free?”

  Denny used his pinkies, which had far less grease on them than the rest of his digits, to lift the plastic covered comic and bring it behind the counter. “Nope. Don’t worry though. I’ll take great care of it.”

  “Just give me the pin.”

  Denny wiped his hands on his standard fat guy t-shirt complete with besmirched mustard stains and stretched neckline. He handed me a Ziplock bag with the tungsten pistol part. “Hey, remember, if it doesn’t sell, you can always come and buy it for market value.”

  “That’s double what you’re trading it for.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re a monster.”

  I left Denny’s cruddy shop and shuffled back into the safety of the sedan. After disassembling, repairing, and reassembling the forty-five-caliber I’d dubbed Thing One from the concealment of my tinted windows, I headed to the job site. I was running about ten minutes late, but my employer informed me that I’d have an hour window to locate and eliminate my target from the given vantage point. I finished one last cigarette in the car before getting to work.

  I followed my employer’s directions and entered the burnt brick building across the street from my mark. Instructions are different from job to job. Most first-timers let the artist apply their craft as they see fit. Repeat clients, control freaks, and sick-in-the-head types are a little different. They’d frequently give step-by-step instructions, and are willing to pay more for you to follow them to the T. I guess it’s the whole going to prison for life if we’re caught thing that stirs concern. My current employer was, without a doubt, the latter.

  I headed up to the recommended stairwell that led to the advised abandoned office given to me by my employer. The door was open. I made myself comfortable at the dusty window directly across the street from my target’s apartment. After locating my target’s unit, I pulled up a leftover office chair and assembled the M40A3 long range rifle I’d smuggled through my satchel.

  I fantasized about what spells my wizard would prepare in today’s D&D session while spinning the sound suppressor to the rifle’s muzzle brake.

  Our party of zany adventurers were in the Mere of Dead Men, a place filled with black dragons, lizard-folk, and undead. You couldn’t just go in using everyday swords and shields.

  Come on, son, that’s basic High Road bandit equipment. Your mindset needed to accommodate the situation at hand. We’d need special potions, magical rings, and holy items to survive this quest. Adapt or die, baby.

  It was about thirty minutes into my daydream that I realized my mark was nowhere to be found. I placed my eye to the scope and took a look into his place. It was getting dark, and I could barely see into the poorly lit apartment supposedly owned by my mark. It struck me as odd that there were no signs of life. There were no bowls in the sink or phone charger plugged into the wall. In fact, as I used the scope to zoom in further, I noticed that the place didn’t seem lived in at all. There was no furniture, wall paintings, or keys on the counter. It was spartan, as if it hadn’t been rented out in months. Something wasn’t right.

  The unexpected clack of the lock snapped behind me. The creak of worn door hinges confirmed my earlier suspicion. I stood stock still. There was shuffling followed by soft shoe steps and then the distinct sound of a cocking handle being drawn from a machine gun. I lowered my rifle, raised my hands in surrender, and spun around. That’s when the gunshots rang. Well, this wasn’t on the schedule.

  2

  Here’s a question for you.

  Have you ever had a bullet drilled into your skull? I just did, and it could best be described as uncomfortable. It wasn’t the first time I’d been shot, but it was definitely the first one to the old noggin.

  My body went numb, and a ringing drowned out the buzz of fluorescent lights, distant car horns, and anything else audible within the north side of Chicago. I could taste copper as if I’d been sucking pennies and my vision blurred. Meanwhile, that tiny little voice that I’d been ignoring my entire life, the same one that told me not to touch myself as a teenager and definitely not to take this job, took center stage.

  At the moment that voice was telling me that I was an idiot. As my body kicked backwards and crashed onto the ground, that voice grew louder, replaying the many choices I could have made throughout my life to keep me out of this predicament. Blood began to seep from my forehead and into my eyes. Before long, I was looking up at the commercial ceiling tiles through a veil of red. I wondered how many people on the business end of my barrel felt this way. Before I could consider, the tiny little voice cut in. Not yet, it seemed to say. Let’s take this from the beginning. I could feel my guts and bladder let go of anything I’d been holding back. I wasn’t going to be buried in these pants. So, with nothing left to do but die, I began to recollect life’s little mistakes. Where did it all go wrong?

  It’s a dime store novel, really. My name Buchanan Palasinski, but people call me Buck. I’m a local hitman, or at least I was, from Chicago. I grew up poor and busted on the Southside and this is the result. My Old Man was a second-generation Polish alcoholic who ditched the family once burning us with cigarettes lost its charm. My Ma was a Mexican immigrant who must have been high when she tied the knot with Pops. Regardless, she tried her best to raise my older brother and I while maintaining a fifty-hour job at a fried chicken joint.

  She was uneducated and spoke very little English, so it was up to my brother and I to take care of ourselves. By sixteen, my brother was in jail for a crime he’s still serving, and I’d already seen juvie several times myself. Shortly after my brother’s sentence, Ma made me swear that I’d pay attention in school. Although I kept my grades up, I hadn’t seen the point. With no money for college, and no idea how to apply for scholarships, I really only had a few options. I could spend the rest of my life at my job in the mall’s cellphone kiosk or try my luck in the stick-em’-up market. Neither had been very appealing.

&
nbsp; Everything truly came to a head during my senior year of high school. The stress of being a poor kid had snowballed for years, but one particular incident set the ball a rolling. A few of the teachers had pressured me into joining an after-school program, and fortunately for me, it was a role-playing club. Every weekday after school at 3:15pm, I met several other kids in the library to play Dungeons and Dragons. The thought by faculty was that I’d let out pent aggression healthily by fighting pretend dragons instead of real street thugs. I met several good kids, and one terrible one. His name was Nick Griffin. He was in the club for the same reason as me. He was so bad in fact, that they had also forced him to join the school newspaper, botanical team, and anything else that would keep him out of trouble. Nick and I became close, getting high together on school nights and stealing from the mall on weekends.

  Anyhow, one day some teachers requested that the chief of the newspaper put a special title under my yearbook photo. They wanted it to say Most Likely to Work a High-End Job. It was a pity title for a poor kid, but I appreciated the sentiment. Unfortunately, Nick caught wind of it, and thought it would be hilarious to shoot down any ambitions I might have. Come yearbook distribution day, I walked into a school filled with kids pointing and laughing at Buchanan Palasinski, Most Likely to Work a Dead-End Job. The jokes wouldn’t quit, and before long, the fragile kid from the Southside hood gave up. I figured I was a failure by design.

  Discouraged, I joined the Army. Cue the American Eagle and fireworks. I was assigned to the 10th Mountain Division based out of Fort Drum, New York. The army life wasn’t fun by any means, but I was damn good at it. Unlike a lot of the guys, I had half a brain and nothing to lose, so the infantry was ideal. We were stationed in Afghanistan shortly after my second year, where according to my peers, I excelled. In my opinion, I’d survived a violent nine months of warfare by killing the bad guy before he killed me. Because of it, I not only became a scout, but was recommended for what fans of Tom Barringer movies know as Sniper School. After studying firearms physics, I reenlisted and became Buck-Sergeant Buchanan Palasinski, hence my nickname. It wasn’t long before shrapnel from a landmine cost me a partner, two fingers, and vision in one eye. I was honorably discharged and returned to Chicago. I lived off checks from the government for God knows how long, drinking in my discount apartment while watching bad day television. Then I met Denise.

  My experience in the military had taken a toll. I was still in my thirties, but my hair greyed to near white fifteen years too early. My right eye appeared milky, and I was missing the pinky and ring finger on my right hand. Luckily, I was a lefty. I hadn’t thought that any woman could ever really be attracted to me.

  Denise was a server at one of the many bars I’d frequented, and she was a drop of water in the Sahara. She’d come over to my table when the place was dead to flirt with me. I always thought that it was just for a better tip, but then one day she asked me out. It had been a while since I’d taken a woman on a date, so I invited her to a higher end joint along Michigan Avenue. That night is frozen in amber for me.

  I was two baskets of bread and three Scotches into my wait. Denise was twenty minutes late, and I thought I’d been stood up. That wasn’t Denise’s style, though. It was her laugh I heard first. My eyes went from my watch to the restaurant entrance. The middle-aged maître d’ flirted with her while he held open the door. Her beauty and curves parted the sea of other waiting patrons while she smile-walked to my table.

  Denise was forged by gods. Her mom was a beauty pageant contender from Ghana who studied at Northwestern University. That’s where she met Denise’s father, a professor who looked more like a lineman for the Bears. The end result was a tall, dark beauty with the confidence and grace of freaking Cleopatra. I was so used to her wearing a t-shirt and jeans that I’d been taken aback by the sapphire dress that clung to her flawless body. The two of us picked up where we left off at the bar. We talked over dinner, joked over sorbet, and walked along Lake Michigan until our feet hurt. By the end, it was clear that we were a thing. We went that way for a good year before it all hit the fan in chunks.

  If there’s one person you can trust when they say that United States has a gun problem, it’s an ex-soldier gone hitman. Due to the collective inability to recognize a growing problem, my relationship with Denise ended before it should have. All Denise wanted was a coffee. Unfortunately, so did some QAnon lunatic. When this gun nut spotted who he thought was a politician getting a latte, the lunatic tried to make a statement with his new high powered assault rifle. Three were killed, including Denise.

  The news hit me hard. I think I stood by my window, smashed cellphone in hand and spilled Cheerios on the floor, from breakfast to midnight. I gave up hope and decided that if the world wanted to live like killers, I’d show them how scary it could be. Before long I was soliciting myself to betrayed housewives and bad business partners. I killed a dozen people before I ended up in this mess. Although I may have left one or two things out for our viewers at home, I’d probably have time to ponder them in the fiery pits of Hell. Okay, fun story. I think I’ll die now.

  My body felt empty, and my hands began to twitch. A darkness suffocated my vision, and just before I faded out of existence, I imagined someone’s silhouette hovering over me. It was a man with slicked back hair. He was wearing a form fitting business suit; his crooked half smirk made me want to reach out my arms, if only I could move them, and strangle him. He shook his head before jolting around to look behind him. Something must have startled him because he darted away at blinding speeds.

  Slowly everything went dark, then I died.

  3

  “Hey, man, get up,” a nasally voice called out. The ringing between my ears went away; my vision returned, blurred but restored. There was a tapping on my foot. “Come on, we don’t have all day.” The tapping thumped harder. My heart began to beat again. Surges of blood palpitated through my arms, legs, toes, and fingers. I tried to move my hand and was surprised to see it wiggle. I wiped a smear of red from my eyes and took a deep breath. It was more of a gasp, and it filled my lungs with fire. I jolted up into a sitting position.

  “He shot me,” was all I could muster before my breaths were stolen from me. A strange steam leaked from my mouth. I must be seeing things. I inspected the room. It was a plain office with peeling wood paneling and floor tile that once could have been described as green, but now fell into the category of “bodily fluid.” The oak desk and swivel chair were riddled with bullet holes. In front of me was a thin guy with a head of dreadlocks piled into a knot sitting in an electric wheelchair. His thick, black-framed glasses complimented the blotches of acne on his dark cheeks. He swam in his long-sleeved shirt buttoned to the collar and tucked into skinny jeans. Resting on his combat boots was the instrument of my awakening—an extension arm with a plastic claw tip. It was the figure behind him that really drew my attention.

  A towering frame, at least seven-feet tall, loomed over the man in the wheelchair. He wore a drab weathered robe stained with salt along its hem. His shadow stretched over the room and rippled like disturbed water. A skeletal hand protruded from his sleeve. This has to be a joke.

  “Let me guess,” I said while removing my leather gloves and feeling around my head for a bullet hole. “I’m either dead or you two are part of an anti-smoking campaign.”

  “Close, dude,” said the guy in the wheelchair. “We’re the guys that stopped you from dying.”

  I dabbed at my forehead. The bullet hole was gone. I grunted. “Why?”

  “Because we need you, man,” said the guy in the wheelchair.

  I was confused. “You—need me?”

  “Oh boy,” the giant man in the robe sighed, “this guy is stupider than I thought. I don’t think he’s going to cut it.”

  “He’s not stupid,” the guy in the wheelchair protested. “He just has bad luck when it comes to thinking.”

  “I’m right here,” I snapped. I tried to squeeze my hands back into my
leather gloves. As I did, the pinky and ring finger I’d lost in the war jammed into their cotton stuffed sleeves. I marveled at my refunded digits. The guy in the wheelchair cut off that thought as he carted his vehicle closer. He extended his claw-stick to me. “Come on. Get to your feet.”

  “Thanks.” I pushed myself off the ground. “But I’m good.” I made note that there wasn’t any of my blood pooled on the floor like there should’ve been. Nor were my pants soiled any longer. Strange.

  “Let’s start with introductions,” said the guy in the wheelchair. “I’m Jumbo—”

  “Cute,” I bit. Ridicule was my defense mechanism when I was nervous.

  Jumbo glared at me before continuing. “Once again, dude,” he said louder, “I’m Jumbo and this here is Death.” I looked to the guy in the robes. He gave a quick wave with his skeleton hand. I needed a smoke. I dug in my front pocket and pulled out my pack of Lucky Aces. I held the pack up to my mouth and culled out a cigarette with my lips. My hand, which had been trained like Pavlov’s dog, intuitively dug in my coat pocket for my lighter. I flipped open the top of the metal fire maker and lit the tip of my smoke. The soothing taste of tobacco sent a wave of calm through my shoulders and spine.

  “Tastes good?” Jumbo asked.

  I took the cigarette out of my mouth and savored the flavor. “Yeah.” I nodded as I exhaled. “Yeah, it does.”

  “Glad to hear, man,” Jumbo crowed as he pointed with his extendable claw hand, “because you can smoke them all you want. You can’t die any longer.”

  “Because you stopped it,” I reiterated, my voice dripping with sarcasm. I took another drag. “I thought Death was supposed to kill people, not let them live.”

  “Aww.” Death pressed his skeleton hands on his heart. “It’s so cute when you try to talk about things you don’t understand.” I couldn’t help but notice that Death sounded a little like Bill Murray.