Kill Someone

by Luke Smitherd

  I signed up for another twelve months, and began social worker training at the same time. Things continued to get better.

  A new girl, Karen, arrived. She was a teacher as well. I was assigned to show her the ropes. I’d done exactly that and no more. I kept things personable, showing her what she needed to know and having absolutely zero communication outside of that. Hell, I’d stayed away from nearly everyone on the project before then, keeping everything as cordial as possible without ever letting anyone in.

  But then one day Karen made an offhand remark as we fell into step beside each other on the way to the cafeteria.

  “Hey listen,” she said, “thanks for all your help. I know you’ve got enough to do yourself, but you’ve really gone above and beyond to help get me settled in.”

  “Oh, you’re welcome,” I said, giving one of my standard three-word sentence answers to politely end the interaction. Sometimes, in moments like that, I thought about the old Chris. What would he have said?

  “Well, anytime you want dinner, you let me know and it’s on me,” she said. “Least I can do.”

  “Ah, I don’t really eat,” I said, utterly without thinking. I froze as I realized how stupid and rude that sounded. I’d just been in brush-off mode. I wasn’t made of stone, even then. She’d been thanking me, after all.

  “Oh,” she said, and I didn’t look at her as we walked. I didn’t know what to say. There was a long pause as we walked together. Then she said: “So how the hell are you alive?”

  I looked at her, speechless, and then I started laughing. It had been so long since I’d done so that it just felt weird. She started laughing, too. She was tall for a girl, maybe only an inch or two shorter than me, and her smile when she laughed like that… it was infectious. We went to dinner that night.

  I talked more than I had in years. She opened something in me that I’d shut away. Something else I thought The Process had killed.

  I signed on for another twelve months. So did she.

  We were engaged eleven months later.

  I told her everything one month after our engagement.

  You wouldn’t believe I could, would you? But I did. We were actually in England at the time, in between contracts. Maybe that’s a big part of the reason why. My confessing I mean, familiar surroundings triggering memories. Not at home, obviously—I didn’t want to tell them that I was back—but in her home city of Derby. She wanted to introduce me to her parents. I’d told her that mine were away on a cruise, and what a shame, and lousy timing.

  It wasn’t home, but even driving through the Midlands was enough to put me on edge. Road signs to Coventry near Birmingham airport – we couldn’t get flights to East Midlands - the mild to medium accent; all of it meant that I wasn’t myself at all. It reminded me of why I’d left in the first place. When I was away, the pain in England could be thought of as a dream.

  We made it to her parents’ in the suburb of Robinson, a mildly famous pace ever since that crazy guy’s diary got published several years earlier. I’d smiled and ‘yes, indeed’-ed my way through dinner with her Mum and Dad—I’d had enough practice with my own folks to be good at it when I had to be—and Karen seemed pleased… but she only laughed when her parents laughed, only asked questions when her parents did. It wasn’t until later, as I slid in beside her under the twenty-year-old duvet in the house’s spare room, that she finally spoke up. I hadn’t said a word to her since dinner. I couldn’t. I felt like I was vibrating with tension. The effort of feeling normal was killing me.

  “You don’t like them, do you?” she asked with a sigh. She wasn’t angry, I could tell; more as if she thought her parents had failed in their duty to impress. “Look, I know they’re a bit stiff, and Mum can be hard work until she’s had a drink, but it’s only because she doesn’t know—”

  “They’re fine, they’re great,” I said, as kindly as I could. I was torn between feeling bad – I’d actually thought her parents were really nice – and panic. What should I say? “I’m just not feeling very well.” That was the best I could do, and it was as transparent as it could possibly be. Karen propped herself up on one elbow, lit by the half-light from outside. Her straight brown hair falling over her face.

  “It’s okay, but don’t bullshit me,” she said, a slight edge in her voice now. “What was it they said? I won’t be offended or anything, just be honest.”

  My mind went blank, and to my total and utter surprise, I felt my chest begin to constrict so hard that it hurt. My breathing sped up, and I began to feel a sensation of total panic as years of nothing but oppressed thoughts and feelings suddenly added up and my body said fuck it.

  “Chris? Chris, what the hell? Calm down, it’s ok, it’s ok!” She turned on the lamp, which I didn’t like. I winced, and continued struggling to breathe. “Ok, try and tell me, do I need to call an ambulance?” she said urgently, leaning over me. “Can you tell me? Do you know what’s happening? Wait, that’s two questions, shit, do you need an ambulance?” I was already trying to calm my breathing, knowing that this had to be a panic attack, so I shook my head no… but it went on for a while, Karen trying to soothe, me trying to stop her from calling anyone. Once I’d calmed down, she was silent, her head on my chest. I knew she wanted to ask questions but didn’t want to risk setting me off again.

  I’d known when I’d asked her to marry me that I’d probably tell her one day, rules or no rules. I just wanted to marry her first. I could trust her to keep it secret. I wanted us to be together always.

  But tonight had shown me that I could only keep it a secret for so long.

  “I have something I need to tell you,” I said quietly. “It’s going to sound utterly insane, and I don’t know what you’re going to think of me afterwards. If you believe me, you might think I did the right thing, as awful as it was. As… as much as it ruined my life. If you don’t believe me, you’re going to think I’m crazy and you will never want to see me again.”

  “I know you’re not crazy,” she said, her voice resonating in my chest as she stroked at my arm with her fingers. There was silence. I took a deep breath, her head rising as I did so. Her pretty head. Her beautiful face.

  “When I was younger, a man dressed in a white came to my parents’ house.”

  I talked her through the whole thing, from start to finish. She didn’t say a word, apart from freezing against me and drawing in near-silent but sharp intakes of breath at some of the more shocking points. By the time I got to the end, tears were streaming down my face. She still hadn’t spoken.

  But her fingers were still stroking my arm.

  “I’m glad you told me,” she said.

  “Do you believe me?” I asked.

  “Chris,” she said, and sat up. She shifted forward on the bed, and took my face in her hands. “I’ve heard horror stories ever since I landed in Liberia. Ever since I joined the organization. Lunatics, people who have inflicted unbelievable cruelties on women and children just because they can. I’ve seen the results. I’ve seen the victims.” She leaned down and kissed my forehead, then moved back slightly and looked into my eyes. “A lot of people wouldn’t believe what you’ve told me because they can’t believe anyone could be so pointlessly and deliberately… well, evil. I know better.” She leaned down and wrapped her arms around me, and I felt something move through my entire body and leave. A ghost of something; not all of it, but a lot. I felt lighter. I hadn’t been cleansed, but my soul had been given a light once-over. “I believe you,” she said in my ear, and I felt wetness against my cheek. I wrapped my arms around her.

  I’ll never forget that night. Ever. My Karen. Karen.

  A year later, we were married. It was—obviously—a very small ceremony in France. I think Karen was sad about that. She hid it but I knew she would have preferred a big wedding back home. Instead, there were only a few guests; her parents, a few friends, our work colleagues… and my parents. Things changed some between them and myself after I’d told Karen about t
he Process. I’d never tell them the truth, but the ice I’d built to keep my parents at bay had melted once I’d unburdened myself to my other half. I will never forget seeing their faces after Karen and I were pronounced husband and wife, my Dad grabbing me on the way back down the aisle and just laughing and laughing. I grabbed his arm back, laughing myself, amazed that I could not only be happy again, but this happy. At night everyone danced. The honeymoon was bliss, apart from an argument with the hotel staff about a room upgrade we’d been promised not being available. I didn’t care, but Karen had a tendency to go ballistic about that kind of thing.

  To everyone’s surprise, we went back to Liberia. I wasn’t done, and Karen was happy to come with me. In the back of my mind, I wondered about what would happen the day she decided she’d had enough, that she wanted to start a family back home. I wondered how she would react when I told her I didn’t think I’d ever be done. Part of me would wonder, however, if that would always be true; if it wouldn’t fade with time. Then I’d get confused, push it all away, and carry on with whatever I’d been doing. That went on for two years; us in our little shared unit in the compound, friends around us that I was – finally - starting to let in. Life was pretty much wonderful. There were downsides: I got caught in a riot and thought I was going to be crushed to death when I fell down in the middle of it, and one time Karen used my story of the Process against me in an argument. I won’t repeat what she said, but that was so devastating—even though her face was shock and horror when she realized what she’d done—that I nearly walked out the door and never came back. We got through it, got past it, and were very much in love.

  We were happy.

  Then seven days ago, during a lunch break in my empty classroom as I was marking some papers, the Man in White came to see me.

  ***

  Chapter Seven: The Exit Interview

  ***

  I don’t know how he managed it; the security we have at the school is excellent. Cameras, personnel; the former strangely offline and the latter strangely engaged elsewhere, all at the wrong moment. But in he came. Klaus, of course, was with him.

  I heard the door open, and I looked up.

  At first, it just didn’t make any sense. There were no thoughts to go along with the image before me. I had the same feeling about it that you would get looking at an old poster for a movie that you knew. Then I saw the slight movement of their shoulders as they breathed, and the shift in their weight as they came to a stop just inside the doorway. The skin moving around a spreading smile that I recognised all too well.

  Even as I struggled for breath, as I went to push myself away from my desk on instinct and flatten myself against the wall, as I only succeeded in knocking my pencil holder to the floor with a spreading clatter of rolling graphite and wood… I noticed all the things that had changed. They were pretty much impossible to miss. The wheelchair, for a start.

  Klaus was pushing the Man in White before him; the large man’s oak-like frame slightly stooped in order to reach the handles. The thought flashed across my mind, even through my panic: all your resources and you don’t have an electric wheelchair? They aren’t paying you enough swiftly followed by why, why, oh God why can’t you leave me alone, I did everything you asked me to so why can’t you leave me alone.

  And horribly, I realized that last part wasn’t true. It wasn’t true at all.

  The Man in White’s need for his current transport was immediately obvious. I’d never been sure if he’d worn a wig, but either the wig had been removed to reveal his true physical nature, or the thick hair had fallen out due to his current condition. Either way, the majority of it was now gone, and all that was left were a few thin wisps. I didn’t need him to tell me. It was obvious. The pallor of his skin, the cheekbones that stuck out like knuckles on either side of that horrible grin which somehow remained intact while the rest of him fell apart, all of it said only one thing: the Man in White was dying.

  Instead of making me feel better, that thought made me worse. He was crazy before, but a man with nothing left to lose is a man on the edge. I knew this from personal experience. Klaus, of course, hadn’t changed a bit. I felt like this would still be the case if I shot him in the face at point-blank range.

  I continued on my wild backwards trajectory, falling back to let the wall take my weight, but I miscalculated. It was further away than I thought, and I clattered to the ground like my pencils. I landed hard, and was dimly aware of the sound of the classroom door closing. I didn’t want to get back up, as that would mean seeing them again and having to deal with the nightmare that had followed me all the way to Liberia, but I was already springing to my feet and moving around to the far end of my desk. I still couldn’t breathe, despite whooping in huge lungfuls of air that didn’t actually seem to carry any oxygen. My chest was tight, and I realized that—ridiculously—I’d snatched up one of my pencils and was now holding it tightly in my fist, holding it before me in a trembling hand as if to fend them off. The pair of them didn’t move and nobody had spoken yet. We stood like this for a few moments; the only sound was my gasping panic.

  “Hello, Chris,” the Man in White said, and although that used-car salesman tone was still there, his voice was weaker. Thinner. “You’ll have to pardon the indulgence here, but… surprise.” He held up both gloved hands, lifting them upright at the wrists without moving his forearms. He was dressed exactly the same as before, as was Klaus. I almost thought that – judging by the rest of him – that the suit should be worn out too, perhaps turned to a brownish off-white that had slowly stained irretrievably into the fabric over the years. But of course, it was pristine. The money he saved on wheelchairs obviously went into keeping his wardrobe stocked up.

  “Muh,” I said, leaning forward and putting one hand on the desk to steady myself. “Muh. Muh.” The room actually began to spin. I closed my eyes, partly to try to get a grip and partly to try and pointlessly will the moment into oblivion.

  It’s trauma. They aren’t here. This is just a freakout. It’s all finally catching up with you. It’s probably a good thing. There’s no reason for them to be here. You followed all the rul—

  But you didn’t, did you?

  I opened my eyes. They were still standing there, and seemed even more present now that Klaus had let go of the wheelchair and straightened up to his full height. I noticed a fine sheen of sweat on Klaus’ forehead, and realized that they must have been dying outside in the heat wearing those jackets. They obviously hadn’t been inside long; the school’s air conditioning must have been heavenly to them.

  “Take a moment, if you need it,” the Man in White said, each word clearly requiring a little more effort than the one before. “Apologies for startling you. Obviously, we couldn’t exactly phone ahead. However, we won’t be disturbed for a while. We aren’t going to do anything right now Chris, we just want a little chat. So please, relax.” He looked up at Klaus for a moment, and gestured to one of the school desks. Klaus nodded, and walked over to rest his enormous bulk on the desk’s surface. It creaked a little. I turned as he did so, holding the pencil out towards him, its tip wavering spastically in the air. Klaus looked at it for a moment, then to my astonishment—in a gesture so small that I nearly missed it—briefly raised a hand and nodded at me in greeting. I was so surprised that I was immediately disarmed. I slowly lowered the pencil to my side and placed it on top of the desk.

  They know that you—

  I tried to reassure myself. They’d told me that - for that moment at least - they just wanted to talk. And from the little I knew about the Man in White and whoever his employer was, they were at least as good as their word. Fucking insane, but as good as their word.

  “That’s good, Chris,” I heard the Man in White say, and I turned to look at his dying face, hidden behind his bug glasses as always. “Put the weapon down,” he added with a chuckle, and a rage bloomed inside me that I could barely contain. Were it not for Klaus, in that moment, I don’t know what I
would have done. But then, that’s kind of been the point all along, hasn’t it?

  “Get… out… of… my classroom…” I managed, needing both arms now to hold myself up, my fingers clawing into the wood and my voice cracking.

  “We will Chris, we will,” White said, his hands flapping up again, hinging at the wrists like the foils on a passenger plane. “I promise. I’ll say what I have to say, and then what comes later will come later. Okay? I just have a few things to ask you, and then we will have a few things to discuss. And then we’ll leave, one way or the other. Okay?”

  I didn’t know what to say, rage or not. I looked at Klaus, who was as inscrutable as ever. I was still trembling, but now it was with anger.

  “What the fuck is this?” I hissed. “I did your stupid fucking task. I killed—” I caught myself and dropped my voice to a whisper. “I killed her, I killed her, and the deal is all done, so why are you here you sick fuck? Leave me alone!” My hands were off the desk now, balled into fists. My nails were cutting into my skin.

  “I understand your concerns Chris, I genuinely do,” White said, and he’d done the old switcheroo once more; gone was the salesman, here was the father figure. Were I not so angry, I would have been thoroughly impressed. “You must be wondering what the hell is going on, and of course I’m going to tell you. Let me assure you though, we are absolutely not, in any way, going back on our part of the bargain.” The smile crept back now, but only slightly. “On our part of the bargain.” He repeated, quietly. I felt the insect eyes boring into mine, and my anger disappeared like piss in the rain. Rage drained out through my feet, pushed by the terror that filled my veins in an instant.

  He knows he knows he fucking knows he fucking knows

  You don’t know that! He doesn’t know anything! How could he?