by Ian Hiatt
I reach him and peer into the room beyond.
He drops to a crouch in the doorway of a room that looks elegant but reserved, the dull lavender of the walls within more regal than feminine. The only reason I question if the room is meant to exude femininity is sprawled on the area rug, eyes staring to the wall.
Thomas is silent, staring down on the girl who looks to be his age, and I have to assume she’s the Donahue’s only daughter. Her body is smeared in blood, streaking down from her neck in such thick rivulets that it’s easy to recognize a jugular strike from so far away. Unlike the other kills in the manor, this one must have been up close, possibly even the first. A throat wound, like most respiratory injuries, is a sure way to inflict maximum damage without being heard. The victim has too much trouble breathing to scream for―
Thomas cries out and doubles over, pounding a fist on the body of his sister. She limply shifts at his touch, her glassy stare still winning the staring contest with the wall. Despite a hand covered in blood, Thomas grips his hair and stifles sobs.
“Why would anyone kill you? You didn’t do anything… Angie, come back. Please.” He reaches out and shakes her as though his quiet pleading would convince the dead to return. But she doesn’t, of course. He shudders in defeat as the tears burn across his cheeks. I leave him to grieve.
Much the same I would leave a bathroom for someone having a particularly difficult time in the stall.
Clutching the pistol, I walk quietly down the hall, checking the rooms as I go, but certain I won’t find anyone alive. Someone as destructive as this assassin would never have gone to the basement first. She was only checking the very last of the house. And when I reach the master bedroom, the double wooden doors ornately carved and swung wide, I confirm the last of her handy work.
The bedroom looks pristine. Minus the corpses.
Directly in front of the threshold, an older woman is sprawled on the floor as though she may have just been taking a nap there. If not for the three gaping exit wounds in the back of her soft robe, I might go on thinking she were just asleep. The blood has begun to run along the hardwood floor like so many rivers, and I have to shift back a few inches to avoid being caught in the flood of the mother’s life. Here and there, footprints mark the floor where the girl must have stepped among her victims.
Beyond the woman, the Old Man lies across an oaken desk, his hand mere inches from the revolver that put the holes in his wife. So fearful of what was coming, he fired on the first person through the door. I step over the mother toward the desk. Sketched across the Old Man’s face is the same tangle of black veins that I’ve come to dread seeing.
Because I know exactly what left them.
y apartment building sways beneath my feet as the wind outside assaults one side and then the other. The storm seems to be matching my anxiety beat for beat as I continue to haul my quarry up once-clean stairs now being soaked in the rainwater and grime from the circle jerk of events that have lead us here. Me, an assassin with an impeccable record that’s now as dead as any of the high-rise brokers I’ve made drink themselves into a coma. And Thomas, the damn reason I’ve got such a shit record now. Because he’s very much alive, as evidenced by his gasping breath. He’s not out of shape for a trust-fund baby, but he’s panicked.
As we vault the last set of stairs, I grip his collar tighter, the long-sleeved polo already stretched out from my forceful assistance of getting him into my apartment building. I slam him against the far wall with a little more aggression than my conscious mind intends, but probably not nearly enough for my subconscious.
I put hands to his shoulders, and even though they tremble with something I’ve never known lying just under my skin, I attempt to instill some confidence in him.
“Thomas, I need you to breathe for me.”
He looks at me, but I can tell his eyes are piercing through me―a feat not many men can achieve. His chest heaves as he blinks once. Twice. He doesn’t speak.
I smack his cheek and the crack of it echoes up and down the hallway as we puddle onto the hardwood floor. His eyes go wide for a moment, and he tests his jaw at the pain.
“Thomas. You’re okay. You’re safe here.”
“They’re dead,” he chokes. His eyes focus on me and then drift just as easily away. “They… all of them.”
I lean into his shoulders, pressing him harder against the wall. “Thomas. Listen to me. Breathe.” I demonstrate breathing like I would try to teach a kid to ride a bike. Something I never got to do.
With a deep inhale, I loudly exhale. “Like this. Come on, breathe.”
He watches me, gasping and trying to mimic my breathing if only because it’s something to do besides losing his mind. I’ve lost my family. They’re all gone. But I never had to watch it. I never saw their bodies contorted. Grotesque and marred for the entire world to see. I never heard their screams as life was torn away.
Black veins. Poisoned beyond repair.
Unmistakable.
Thomas, shaky breath and all, is now staring at me, focusing on my eyes. My hands relax on his shoulders.
“Good. That’s good, Thomas.” I smile and my twitching hands pat his arms. “Keep going. You’re okay. You’re going to be fine.”
I take a half step back, gripping him by the wrist as I pull him toward my apartment. My hand, slick with rain and muck, slips on the doorknob while I fumble the keys into the multiple deadbolts to get inside. Eventually the thick hardwood slides open and I fall inside, my hand dropping―ashamedly as an afterthought―to my ankle where I jerk out my boot knife and wave it around the empty kitchen. Thomas stands in the doorway, a feather’s touch away from having his legs give out beneath him. He’s still imitating my breathing as I survey the empty kitchen, dirty dishes and all. I hold out a hand to Thomas, as though he’s paying any actual attention to me.
Holding out my five-inch blade like Excalibur, I check the rest of the apartment, finding it as empty as it always is. I trudge back out to the kitchen, following the same path of mud I created coming into the apartment, and drop my knife on the kitchen table with a clatter. Thomas is still perched in the doorway like the worst department store mannequin ever seen. He’s stiff, but still buzzing with an undeniable panic attack threatening to bubble over. In spite of my exhaustion, I lead him from the doorway and place him in a nearby chair before closing the door and securing all the locks.
Thomas watches me with all the wonder of a puppy, and I can just about taste all of the questions just hanging on his lips.
What just happened?
Why is my entire family dead?
Who are you?
What are you?
All things I more than know the answer to. Your family is dead. Because you’re not. My name’s Layla. I’m a siren. Now let’s try not to get killed ourselves?
Without letting him ask any of his questions or giving myself the chance to answer them, I walk into the bedroom and slide my safe out from under the bed and hastily put in my combination. After three tries I get in and drop the would-be assassin’s unfamiliar gun in and grab my own pistol with a few extra clips of ammunition. I’m not a perfect shot, but I’m also a pretty terrible assassin based on the fact that my mark is sitting at my kitchen table.
And I just taught him how to breathe even better.
I slide a clip into the gun and chamber a round before slipping it into the waistband of my pants, slam the safe shut, and kick it back under the bed where it rolls on the tracks and clangs on the metal. At the loud bang, Thomas jumps in the kitchen, knocking over a chair. On any normal day, I’d groan at the pesky human, so twitchy and frightened. But it’s very hard to make that condemnation as I lay on the carpet, reacting just as badly as that damnable human by dropping to the floor, certain that my home is about to erupt in gunfire. The only thing that smothers me is the silence that follows, punctuated by the rumbling of thunder high over my third-floor walk-up. Thomas’s shoes squeak on the other side of my wall. My hand grips t
he gun and I consider.
Three shots. Through the wall. You won’t even have to see the look in his eyes. Eyes of your prey. Just do it. Drop the body somewhere. It’ll be done. You’ll be forgiven.
Un-fucking-likely.
I pull myself from the floor with all the pride of a dog that’s just pissed in the house. Adjusting my pants for a moment, letting the cool metal of the gun on my hip attempt to soothe me, I walk back out to find Thomas pacing in the kitchen.
“Okay. So here’s what I’ve pieced together.” He’s waving his jittering hands before he lays it out for me. “You were at my house tonight to do some pretty bad stuff.” His mouth twists at his very blunt way of describing my profession. When I stand silent, he takes that as an affirmative answer and nods. “But based on how I found you, you’re not very good at what you do.”
I shift on my feet. He’s really only making an observation, but I can’t help but feel a little burned by the insult of it. He takes this as an affirmative response, though, and continues on.
“So who… what was… Who did that?”
“I don’t know,” I lie.
I step forward and he moves back, wisely if not unnecessarily. After pulling out the chair he was sitting on, I show my empty hands and sit down.
Thomas leans, his back pressing against the countertop nearest my fridge, and stares at the ceiling. “What I can’t figure out, though, and what I think is probably the most important thing is: why am I alive?”
While he was busy locking eyes on the ceiling, I studied the linoleum of my kitchen. A kitchen that would barely get used if it didn’t lead into the rest of my apartment.
I scoff. “I might not have been so great tonight, Tommy Boy, but the person who ripped up your house was even worse.”
Now it’s his turn to scoff, and he does it through clenched jaws and watered eyes. “My family―my whole family―is dead. I’d say they’re pretty fucking good.”
“They were sloppy.” I scowl. “And you’re standing here. So they didn’t finish the job, now did they?”
pad across the floor of my bedroom, casting a glance over my shoulder at Thomas as he spreads out his borrowed blanket across my couch. I don’t have the heart to tell him that the couch used to belong to a man I helped die. No one knew about his second house where he saw prostitutes on the weekend, so I figured the furniture would be up for grabs.
At least he didn’t die on the couch. Or even in the house.
The bathroom door creaks when I push it open, cutting the silence of my apartment. Trying to ignore the tension, I close the door behind me and don’t even consider hitting the light. I flick the tub’s faucet on. The pouring water, already warming up, sounds soothing in the darkness. A white noise.
The drain gurgles just low enough, just feral enough, to remind me of the giant croc from the night before. While my stomach completes a flip, I clear my throat to erase the rotting scent of Bruce. I know that’s not really what’s got my heart racing. I drop the stopper into the drain, and the water begins to splash from the faucet.
After stripping out of my filthy clothes still caked in blood, and leaving the light off, I step into the tub, my feet getting wet as the water begins to pool around me. I slide down the slick back of the shower, the wet surface gripping as best it can to try to stop me. As I lower into the tub, I slide my legs toward the drain, my feet resting just beneath the faucet. Hot water pours around my legs, and the smell of fresh steam billows around my face. With one of my feet, I reach up and turn the water from hot to cold.
It’s supposed to be cold.
Why is it supposed to be cold?
I’ve never used the tub before. It never crossed my mind to take a bath. In my line of work, rarely does it feel good to wash up after a hard day’s work by steeping in your own washed-away grime. Usually a bit of blood or someone else’s sweat on my body. I’m much more inclined to rinse it away and watch it quickly flow down the drain. Now that I’m lying in the white basin, icy water pouring over me, I can’t connect the dots that my imagination and memories seem inclined to do on their own.
I curl my body as much as I need to so as to feel the rising cold water caress my neck, my cheeks. As the water rises higher, I gasp, a soft wave lapping over my lips. Touching my nose like a kiss.
Don’t fight it.
Let go.
Not my words in my memory. They sound like… my mother?
When the water starts licking at my stray hairs, I take a short breath. I know, somewhere, that I should take a deep breath. Prepare for a plunge. But I don’t. Because I didn’t the last time.
Mommy loves you. You know that, right?
Hands on my shoulders. A loving stroke up my nape, the same as when I was younger and was trying to fall asleep. Affection that any mother would do for her child in distress. A child she loved.
But her palm opened. Her fingers splayed. And the hand became a clawed being, entwining itself in locks of dark brown hair―my long-lost natural color―and pushing down. Guiding my head beneath the water of the tub, the sound of the faucet pouring more warm water into the basin.
I was six. Maybe seven. I thought she was playing a game. A game we had never tried. Maybe some form of training. The first time my chest heaved and I tried to push off from the bottom of the tub to reach the surface, I panicked. But I tried desperately not to show it. I wanted to prove to Mommy I could be strong.
But when I started to feel my lungs burning―organs you never really notice until they’ve gone haywire―I started to feel afraid. I began to wonder if she wasn’t playing. If she really wanted me to―
Hands on my shoulders again. Gripping my arms, yanking me into the cold air of the bathroom set about the stark contrast of the billowing steam from the tub. My skin crawls as it hits the air, tangles of hair sprawling over my face like a beached jellyfish. The hands fumble a bit, slipping beneath my armpits and pulling me over the side of the tub. My eyes are open. I know they are. But I still can’t see. Or it doesn’t matter what I’m seeing. I can’t tell which.
“Layla? Layla! Fuck…” Thomas shouts at me. They’re his hands on me. Pulling me out onto the soaked linoleum of the bathroom. The tub has started to overflow and coat the bathroom floor. His hand positions itself, only hesitating a moment over my naked chest. He’s mumbling, cursing, frantic. The same as a six-year-old me was.
I try to focus on him. I want to, if only to bring myself back to reality. But the stinging thoughts of the past billow around me with the ferocity of so many insects. Every millisecond I regain myself, they burrow into me to bring me back all those years ago, when my lungs burned.
Thomas’s ineptitude shows as he tries to help me without actually looking at me. Laughter fills the small bathroom, and when I don’t see it coming from him, I realize it’s me. I lean my head back on the tub, my hair, soaked through like a ratty mop, drapes over my shoulders and onto my chest. I focus on my own laughter, because it really is funny. Billionaire Boy can’t bring himself to look at a naked girl.
“Layla, what were you doing?” He turns off the tub and reaches into the depths to unplug the drain, the starving gurgle of the water pouring from my pool of memories. With each gulp, I feel myself coming back.
“I have no idea.”
Thomas falls back against the sink and now he’s staring at me. His eyes are wild, fearful even. “Only one of us can be losing it at a time, and while I appreciate you not killing me, I think that person needs to be me right now.”
I drag my legs up and put a hand on either knee to look at the boy I was supposed to be killing just a little over twenty-four hours ago. A grim chuckle escapes me. “We are so incredibly screwed. It doesn’t matter if we both lose our minds, Tommy Boy. We’ll be lucky to live out the week.”
For a brief moment, he looks like he might burst into tears, but it shifts quickly to anger. “Well, why not just end it now then?” He stands up. “Want me to fill the tub back up for you?” He reaches over my head, shoving
me out of the way a bit as he flicks the faucet back on.
Stepping out into my bedroom, he turns back. “I’m just going to grab the toaster for you. It’ll be quicker than drowning. You think three stories will be enough to kill me?”
The return of water pouring into the tub is the only thing keeping my bathroom from boiling over.
“Or maybe.” He grimaces in fake consideration. “Maybe we can get our shit together?”
I stand up. “Get our shit together? If you were dead, I wouldn’t even be involved in your shit.” I shove a hard hand into his sternum.
“What?”
“You. Should. Be. Dead.” I step out into my bedroom and grab a bathrobe from the coat rack beside my dresser and wrap it around myself tightly, knotting it at my waist. I kneel down and fish the manila envelope out from under my bed and throw it on top. “Half a million to make sure you didn’t see the sunrise this morning.” I open it and pour the bills onto my bed.
Thomas stands in the doorway of the bathroom and stares at the money sitting there as though he’d never seen so much in his life, even though his family probably spent this much on breakfast cereal every week just because they could.
But the look is not familiar to me. Not many people get to see a monetary representation of what their life is worth to the outside world. Thomas Donahue was worth a cool half million.
“But I screwed up.” I sweep the stacks off the bed and the bundled bills explode, flitting about the room like the world’s most lavish confetti. I sit down on my rug, Benjamins clinging to my wet skin as I throw my head back against the mattress.
“You… you…” Thomas paces across the room. “Did you kill them?”
“Who?”
“My family?” Now his eyes really are tearing up. “My mom? My sister? Did you kill them?”