WHO DID IT?
- Careless Whisper -
A married couple lived in a house on one side of a river. The wife had a lover who lived on the other side. The only way to get across the river is to walk across the bridge or to pay the boatman.
The husband had to go on an overnight business trip to a faraway town. The wife pleaded with him to take her with him. She told herself, that if he didn't, she would leave the house to see her lover. The husband refused to take her because she will be in the way of his important business. However, he promised her to return as soon as possible. So the husband went alone.
When night fell, the wife went over the bridge and stayed with her lover. The wife woke up early, knowing that she must be back before her husband returned. She bade her lover farewell before leaving the house.
She started walking across the bridge, but she stopped in her tracks, her eyes widened and her face went pale when she saw someone waiting for her in the middle of the bridge. Even though he was standing in plain sight because he knew he doesn't look like one, he is an assassin, and the wife knew this.
She knew if she kept walking, he would kill her. In terror, she ran to the side of the river and asked the boatman to take her across the river.
"Help me, please!" the wife cried out, panicked. "I need to get to the other side. I'll pay you as much money as you want. Just please, take me with you! There's an assassin on the bridge, and I don't want him to kill me!" she pleaded, pointing at the assassin on the bridge, who, upon hearing her voice, slowly spun his ankle to stare at both the wife and the boatman.
The assassin said nothing, and simply took out two guns, aiming one at the wife and the other at the boatman, who went pale when he noticed.
"No, Lady." he said loudly, hoping the assassin will hear him. "No matter how much you plan on paying me, I won't take you. I don't want to die!" he continued, glancing at the assassin when he stopped speaking. The assassin nodded in approval, and lowered the gun he aimed at the boatman.
"I'm sorry." the boatman whispered, tears forming in his eyes. The wife's chest felt tight, knowing that she had almost condemned an innocent man to death. She nodded and dashed away...to her lover's house this time.
She asked her lover to save her, somehow. There was an assassin outside, and she had to avoid him. In response, and in disbelief, the lover opened the window to look. When the assassin saw the window being opened, he aimed at the lover, who went pale. He closed the window, but not the curtains, in his panic.
"It's your own goddamn fault for getting in this situation!" the lover yelled. "Now get ou—"
He was interrupted by a gunshot and the sound of breaking glass. The shot had hit the back of his head, and he fell to the floor, in front of the wife's feet, dead. The wife screamed in horror, and at the realization that the assassin will stop at nothing to kill her. Forcing herself to accept this fate, she ran across the bridge, squeezing her eyes shut as the figure of the assassin grew bigger in her sight. He shot her at point blank, killing her.
My name is Axl, and I was that assassin.
The husband had hired Red Alert, and paid a good sum for the wife's death as well. He promised a bonus if his cheating wife's lover was killed, too. He requested Red Alert's best assassin to take the job. And that assassin did.
However, my heart sank when I received this assignment. It sunk even lower as the hours passed. It hurt seeing the wife being driven to despair, and it hurt even more to realize that I was the one doing it. It hurt seeing how ugly the end of her love story was, whether it was with her husband, or her lover.
I didn't plan to kill her lover. I may be an assassin, but I'm not a money-grubber. The boatman was right that a life is much more precious than money. But when I heard the lover yell loudly at the wife in refusal, my anger burned.
Even though he was right that it was the wife's fault for getting into this kind of trouble, how dare he? I thought he loved her? I thought they loved each other? I won't say that I did the right thing by killing him. I admit that it was an act of personal anger, combined with the fact that it was an optional part of the assignment anyways, that I killed him then and there.
Granted, he was probably only trying to spare his own life like the boatman, but...I can't help but think that he could've been better about it. Maybe he could lock the doors, bar the windows and call the Maverick Hunters. Or he could've tried his best anyways, to protect the one he supposedly loved. Even if he valued his own life more than hers, he could've been more polite about it.
But either way, I was just being a judgemental piece of shit just like everyone else. I killed him because I disapproved of what he did.
Be judge and jury in this short story of love and murder: Who do you think is most responsible for the wife's death? Is it the husband? The boatman? The wife herself? Her lover? Or me, the assassin?
I personally think I'm the most responsible—I directly killed her, after all. Others might think differently. But the right to judge is yours right now.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: On my way to school, the idea for this story came to me. It was inspired by one of the quizzes in personalityquiz . net. I took the title and summary from there as a reference to it. If you've read PMGR chapters 10 and 17, you'll know that PMGR's Axl/Lambda was an assassin for hire in Red Alert. The subtitle was taken from the song I listened to as the "mood song" for this story, "Careless Whisper". If anyone's curious, the exact version of the song I listened to was by Kenny G and Brian McKnight.
Merry Christmas to all my readers, and here's a gift as thanks for your support for all this time.