"Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned." Came a sarcastic, smooth, female voice through the grate.
"Oh, no. Not you again." Father Willams stated, bowing his head as if he had spoken to God, praying that she leave.
"Ouch. That hurts. I thought we were friends, Tim."
"The Devil has no friends."
A shocked gasp rang, "You're calling me the Devil? That's rude. Isn't it in the bible somewhere that the Devil covered a man in herpes or something? I'd never do that."
"Please, leave." Father Willams begged.
"Now, Tim. Don't tell me you're trying to back out of our deal."
He had made a deal with the Devil. At the time, he didn't know that Satan had taken the body of this young woman, a body he had never seen. He thought that it was just a troubled, disturbed person. He was wrong. She came in sporadically, ranging from every other day to every couple of months, depending on the atrocity of the sin she was committing in her every day life. Father Willams had went from feeling the tremble of fear down his spine every time he heard her voice to the violent urge to sob. Around the fourth time she came in, he had wanted to run out of the confessional and see her. To see who this evil woman who tore up his conscience was, but he had been frozen, terrified that she might change her mind if he saw her. "Of course... Of course not. How long since your last confession?"
"Two weeks. You should know, you were there."
Her accent wasn't that of someone from Boston. It sounded mid-western, but every once in a while there would be a southern twang. Father Willams always tried to not think of anything that would make her a real person, but his mind wanders when he's terrified in his home at night. He'd been hugging his wife a bit closer the last year and a half. He didn't answer. He just waited for her to fill his ears with corruption.
She sighed, beginning her confession, "I bear a false tongue, Father. I lied to this nice woman for about a month. I bumped into her at a mall and became her friend. The friendship was the lie. Two days ago, I slit her throat and chopped her into pieces. Burned the head in hands in kerosene."
Father Willams let out a sob, "Oh, God."
"Hey, you're not the one who had to wash that shit out of your hair." She let out a chuckle before continuing, "That whole month of pretending to be her friend really drained me. I'm not saying that it wasn't nice to have someone to talk to about normal things, I'm saying that it was hard trying to keep up with the lies I'd been feeding her. It'd be nice to have a friend that I could tell the absolute truth to. That's why I can't let you alone, Tim. We're not friends, but you're bound by secrecy. So, I'm forcing you to be my friend. I mean, I have feelings, too, y'know? I'm not heartless."
He very much doubted that. "Maybe you'll find someone someday." Like a policeman.
She let out a single, loud, laugh, "Yeah, right. Anyway, the story doesn't end there. There's more to it."
He prayed that she would end it there and leave.
"The person who wanted her dead didn't pay the amount promised. They only paid for the time wasted, not for the actual killing before fleeing the country." She sighed, "I suppose the money's my fault, though. I made her out to sound like a nice woman. She wasn't. She was a huge asshole. So, I offed her sooner than I should have. My client saw that opportunity and took it."
"What are you going to do?" Father Willams regretted that question. He didn't want to know.
"Ah, I'll give them a few months head start. As you know, I'm an expert at finding people."
"Well, peace be with you."
She laughed. One wouldn't think someone like her would have such a light, happy laugh, "Are you trying to get rid of me, Father?"
He didn't answer.
"Hmph. Fine. I'm not oblivious. I may be a bit numb, dumb, and slightly delusional, but I'm not oblivious. I have to go, anyway. See ya."
Father Willams stayed where he was a few minutes after she left, wondering if he had, perhaps, saw her at one time or another. It was a large church. He saw many new faces come and go. He always thought she'd be ugly and huge with a large scar running down her face. Or, maybe she was tragically beautiful with eyes that could dig into the darkest part of someone's soul. More than likely, she had red skin, a tail, and horns. Father Willams has heard many awful confessions in his life, but never had he come across a hitman- or, hitwoman. She always stated the harm she had done to people with such nonchalance that he knew she wasn't sorry at all. She didn't come to the confessional to repent, she came to gossip and brag.
It made him consider retirement.
"Peace be with you." Father Timothy Willams stated to the man who had just confessed. He had been a Priest for the Gates of Heaven Catholic Church for eight years and, although he wasn't supposed to, he always knew when a regular of the church confessed. Priests are not simple minded. Recognizing voices is not a hard thing to do. Robert, the man who had just exited, was having a hard time with his wife. She had cancer and he allowed himself to stray from the marriage. Father Willams didn't judge him. It wasn't his place.
"Forgive me, Father, for someone has put a bounty on your head." A teasing voice came from behind the grate, startling the priest. He didn't hear the door open or close and for a moment he thought he might have been hallucinating.
"What?" He sputtered.
"Someone has paid me a lot of money to kill you."
Father Willams couldn't believe it. He let out a humorless chuckle, "What?"
"Jesus fucking Christ, is that the only word you know?"
He heard the indistinguishable click of a gun cocking and metal scraping against the thin grate between them. He could see the outline of the mouth of the gun. "Please! Please, I have a wife- a family! If you have to do it, please, not in the house of God!" This was the first time he'd ever been close to death.
"Hush, hush, Sweet Charlotte." The woman on the other side took the gun away, "I'm not going to kill you. Well, only if we can strike up a deal."
"Why are you doing this?"
"Uh, I'm not even doing anything, yet. You're very bad at asking questions to save your life. You should be saying, 'Yes, of course! I'll do anything you want!'" She mocked him, raising her own voice to make him sound girlish.
"Fine, fine!"
"Alright!" He could hear the grin in her voice, "The thing is, Father, that I have one hell of a blabber mouth when I keep things in too long, you know what I'm saying? I'm about to burst out of my seams with this murdering business. Thankfully, one of us, swore to Jesus that what happens in the confessional, stays in the confessional. That's something that the person who wants your head on a stick apparently doesn't know." She chuckled, muttering to herself, "Like a fucking idiot."
"Please, what is the deal?"
She clicked her tongue, "Don't get snippy with me, man. The deal is that you do what you do best and, in return for all the pain and suffering that you will no doubt feel, I'll make sure you and your family stay alive."
Father Willams felt like there had to be something else. That couldn't be all she wanted; it didn't make sense. The people that come into the confessional shouldn't ever have to return their services in any way. He wouldn't feel safe with this obviously crazy woman keeping an eye on him all the time, "What's the catch?"
"Oh, trust me. There doesn't need to be a catch."
He shouldn't make a deal with a criminal. He had morals. But, he thought of the faces of his two daughters and his precious wife. If someone wanted him dead, they'd go after them if they were in the way. Maybe... for his family... It would be beneficial for this psychopath to watch over them, "... Okay."
"Great. After while, Crocodile."
With that, she left. Leaving him in a heap of fear and tears.
She had been right. There didn't need to be a catch.
What poor Father Willams didn't know was that the young woman hadn't been watching them. Never even started. To fully protect the preacher and his family, she decided to eliminate the problem area. The man who threatened the Father so long ago went by the name of Jim Tranton. He gave her a false name at first, but every attempt to give a false name had always been and will always be a meager one. It was beneficial to learn just as much about the client as the target, just in case they felt like backing out of the deal after the deed was done. Jim Tranton was afraid that Father Willams would tattle about his little embezzlement problem, not knowing the cardinal rule of the confession box.
Maybe television rotted his brain.
She had set it up as a suicide, which was always a pain in the ass. A tiny, minuscule mistake could end up with the detectives marking it down as a homicide. The chair has to be right, the handwriting on the note has to be right, there has to be their finger prints on the note and pen, always use a belt for a man, a scarf for a woman. It took a long time, which is never a good thing. The family could always come home at any time, even if their schedule says different. It didn't help that hoisting a two-hundred pound man was never easy for a one-hundred and three pound, five-foot-two woman.
She was very unassuming. Bleached blonde hair that always seemed to be in two loose braids, dark, thick eyebrows, freckles sprinkled across her small nose and high cheek bones, dark green eyes that are hidden with mascara covered eyelashes, and red lipstick layered neatly onto medium sized lips. Boston was a cold place, so she wore a light pink coat that had plenty of inside pockets and blue jeans. Very girly, very innocent. It wasn't like she hated looking and dressing like she did. She actually liked the color pink quite well; it was easy on her eyes. When someone looked at her, 'vicious serial killer' wasn't the first thing that crossed their minds. Her name was Scribe Wilson and she was a gun for hire.
Yeah, Scribe was her name. It wasn't an attractive one. Her mother didn't actually know what the word meant when she decided to name her youngest daughter- hell, she still didn't know what it meant- and Scribe's father wasn't there to have a say in it. Scribe's father was neither dead nor absent from her life. He was just too drunk to find the hospital. He hated the name, which was why he, along with with everyone else besides her mother, called her Willy. When she moved to Boston, she never told anyone her nickname. Not that she had anyone to tell it to. Scribe used the embarrassing nickname as the identity of a phantom hitman. If people were searching for a Willy, they weren't searching for a Scribe.
She had been sitting in the alley behind the salon where she actually worked during the day as a manicurist, hair stylist, and make-up artist on her lunch break. Scribe never actually went to school for any of it, but she did have fake documents saying that she had. She sat out there during her lunch break, eating whatever she packed that day and... waited.
Some days Scribe waited for nothing. Today wasn't one of those days.
She heard whispering at the mouth of the alley before multiple footsteps were heard walking hesitantly down. It was the middle of the day, they had nothing to be worried about. It was at night when people had to worry about Dumpster Dave, the serial mugger of 85th street.
The footsteps faltered when Scribe came into their lines of sight. She looked up at them and drank in their expensive appearance. The was four of them, three men and one woman. Two of the men were older, strong, and obviously the body guards. The third man was a couple of years younger than her, chubby, dark hair, and wore a nice suit with a matching coat. The woman was the person who caught a stranger's eye. She looked to be the young man's mother, since their features were similar. However, she was much prettier than her son with her sleek black dress, black high heels, brown fur coat, and lovely pearl accessories. Rich clients were her favorite clients.
"Dovremmo lasciare, madre." The son spoke in a language that Scribe didn't understand. She only knew one language. Like she had told Father Tim earlier, she wasn't very smart. The things that other people called her smart for were just common sense and instincts. Those things don't help someone pass a math test.
"Non possiamo." She nearly hissed like a cat through her wavering voice. She turned to Scribe, finally addressing the blonde person who had been staring at them without blinking, "We're looking for Willy." The woman dug into her tiny purse and took out a folded up piece of paper, handing it to Scribe.
Scribe unfolded it and read the very short flier:
'Willy can help.
555-7638'
She snorted, startling the family. Scribe wrote a bunch of these and stuck them... everywhere. First, the client hears whispers on the street about this Willy character and what 'he's' done for people. Very few actually know that Willy is her. Second, the client finds the fliers and calls the number. It wasn't her own. It was that of a very satisfied customer who thanked her profusely and begged to help her in any way. Scribe told them to answer their phone and to identify whether it was a customer for the type of business she was in, then they were to let the customer know where and when to meet with Scribe. Finally, the customer ended up here, in the alley, at 12:30 p.m.
Scribe sat the flier down on the upturned grate next to her and went back to eating her chicken salad, not looking at them, "I work with Willy. State your names."
"No, we want to meet with him in person." The young man demanded. Spoiled brat.
Scribe looked at him with sympathy on her face, "Is this your first time?"
"I apologize for my son." The woman butted in, giving the boy a stern look, "I am Alessandra Yakavetta, and this is my son, Concezio."
Scribe let out a low whistle, "Yakavetta. It's an honor to meet you." Even though she showed blunt disrespect by hardly acknowledging them, "Who're your dogs?"
"They're not important." Concezio said. He was trying to demand respect from someone who gave none.
Scribe looked at him once more, a dangerous shine in her eye, "You best mind your elders, boy. Everyone's important." She directed her attention to the stiff men, "Names?"
They glanced at each other, feeling hesitation. Everyone did when it came to this. "James Leech." One finally stated, the other following suit, "Marvin Kadinski."
Scribe put her food down next to her flier and stood, reaching into an inside pocket of her pink coat. The guards moved their hands to the guns tucked into their waist bands as a reaction. "Easy, now." She said, "Just getting my handy dandy notebook." Scribe pulled out a small, red book slowly and opened it to an unfilled page near the back, writing the names and the date in a secret code that only she knew, "Targets?"
"The Saints." Mother and son echoed.
Scribe's eyes shot up to stare at them. No bad man has tried to fuck with them, yet. They were good at scaring the bad cats away. "... Good ol' revenge, huh?"
"You bet your ass." Concezio growled at her.
Scribe nodded, a grin spreading across her face as she wrote 'Those Saints fuckers' in her book. "How much a week do you spend on shopping? Please, include groceries."
"What?" Alessandra seemed perplexed over the strange question.
"Just answer the question, please."
"I don't know, about one thousand."
Scribe shook her head. Fucking rich people. "Well, now'll you'll be drawing two thousand from the bank for a little grief shopping. Every week, for six months, you will slide a thousand of it under this crate every Sunday before church."
"Hold on," Scribe was getting tired of the boy's interruptions, "You'll get the money when they're dead."
She rose her eyebrow and dragged out the word slowly, "No. Willy works as you pay. You stop paying, Willy stops working."
"Fair enough." Alessandra stated before her son could make any more of a fool of himself. "It's no problem, Miss..."
"... Missy." Scribe said.
Alessandra narrowed her eyes, "Miss Missy."
"We'll be in touch. Bye bye, now." Scribe waved and watched as the group awkwardly turned and left, afraid to touch the dirt. She called out, "One last thing," They turned to her, "Any particular way you want it, or can Willy have artistic freedom?"
"Just get it done." Alessandra said.
"Tell him to make it bloody." Concezio put his arm around his mother and they left.
Finally, someone has ordered a kill on the Saints. She felt a deep hatred for those two- or was it three?- fuckers. They've killed 1/3 of her clients since they started six months ago. It wasn't a lot, but Scribe saw that 1/3 as lost revenue. She had a family to feed back in Kansas and those men were making it more difficult. She had read almost every story in the newspaper and watched every Sally McBride story about them, including the one and only Yakavetta Trial Incident, mostly while glaring and shoving junk food into her mouth, wishing for their imminent and violent death.
Now Scribe gets to grant her own wish.
The back door to the salon opened and a coworker stuck his head out, "Scribe, your one o'clock's here."
"Alright, alright, I'm coming." She muttered, putting the flier inside her little red book before tucking it into the front waistband of her jeans so she could lose the coat once inside and keep it close.
"Why are you always writing in that thing?" He asked as she walked in.
"I get a lot of ass, Barry."
Later that day, at around four o'clock, there was a parade that was going full-swing in North Boston. Thousands of people lined the street, shouting and whistling from the joy of having beaded necklaces and Hubba Bubba tossed at them. All of this was being viewed through a scope over a mile and a half away that was attached to a No. 3 Barrett American Sniper Rifle. A smaller, four inch version was tattooed onto the owner's flexing shoulder blade as a fifty calibre bullet was loaded into the chamber with a loud click.
"I feel like Lee Harvey Oswald." Scribe muttered in disgust, trying not to even make the smallest twitch. It was hard to find the tiny sliver of sky that was untouched by buildings. She was on the top floor of an unfinished ten story building. The construction had been stopped for the day for the parade. Sniping was one of her favorite things to do, mostly because she was damn good at it. Any moment now, her target was going enter and exit her scope's line of sight and she needed to be ready. The target was Senator Maxwell Stronghold, a man who was picked from the Scum Tree by the mob itself. Scribe's client was concerned for the future of the nation with a man like Maxwell running around and had just made his last payment. That meant that today was the day that Senator Stronghold will meet death.
The front of his overly- Americanized float came into view and she took a breath in, holding it for half of a second before breathing out slowly, the back of that certain someone's head hitting the right spot by the time half of the air left her lungs and she pulled the trigger, the bullet speeding out of the barrel, through the silencer, and straight into Maxwell Stronghold's head. His head seemed to have exploded; brains and blood spraying over his family and onto the street in front of the float. Screams and gasps erupted from the crowds of people as they ducked and tried to scramble away from the streets.
Scribe immediately dismantled her gun and opened the guitar case next to her, taking the actual guitar out, as well as the felt insides to put the sniper rifle into the hidden compartment before putting the felt and guitar back in. She slung it over her shoulder and high tailed it down the stairs. It'd take at least six minutes for the police to get to the building and that was plenty of time for Scribe to get far away from there. She used to be a track star.
Down below, in the crowd of traumatized witnesses, stood two men, who had ducked and covered their heads, just like the rest. However, unlike the rest of the citizens, they were not there to watch a parade. They were there to kill the same man who's brains were now all over the pavement. They were going to follow the float to the end point, wait until he separated from his family, and send him to God.
But, someone beat them to it.
"What the fuck was that?" Murphy asked his brother.
"What the fuck do you think it was? Someone with a grudge. C'mon, let's get the fuck out of here!"
Scribe stopped by her home to put her rifle back where it belonged. She lived in a three story townhouse in a row of five others, each one painted a different color. Three stories sounded big, but it wasn't. By the time the builders put the kitchen, living room, and half bathroom downstairs, they ran out of room and had to start building up. Her house was a chipped robin's egg blue with dirty white trim and a dirty white porch. It had a dark red wooden door with a long, thin, rectangular stained glass window that had a tulip design. She didn't speak to her neighbors, except the elderly black woman who lived next door in the pink house when she decided to knit on her unpainted porch in her dark wood rocking chair. She always seemed worried about Scribe.
"Girl, what you doin', walkin' around by yourself? You're goin' to end up on the news!"
"Don't worry, Nana Mary," Scribe held up a hand in greeting, "I'm goin' to get my protection right now."
"Yeah, you better." The elderly woman muttered to herself as Scribe hopped up the stairs of her white porch, "Crazy white woman."
Scribe stuck her keys into the dead bolt and barely got the door open before multiple heavy footsteps came barreling down the wooden stair case. She sat her guitar case on the ground and shut the door before her two rottweilers, who both individually weighed more than her, could start trying to knock her down from excitement. "Oh my God, ya'll are trying to kill me." Scribe's vocal chords strained as she tried to hold up their combined body weight as they licked her face. One had a red collar that read 'Bowser' and the other had a blue collar that read 'M.C.', which stood for 'Mean Cunt' because that's what he was. They were both trained well and socialized, but M.C. would sometimes pick on strangers or his brother just for the hell of it. They were both completely identical, except that the brown patch around Bowser's mouth was a little larger than M.C.'s.
"Okay, get down, get down."
Besides the two beasts, Scribe lived alone. The third floor was barely touched by her. There were two bedrooms up there that were completely vacant. Every once in a while she would mop up there but, other than that, it was ignored. The second floor had Scribe's bedroom and the bathroom. The downstairs had the living room through an archway to the left, the kitchen straight down the hall through a white swinging door, and the half bath to the right at the end of the stairs. There were spots on the white walls where she had painted a few strips of color to try to find one she liked, but she never did.
Scribe picked up the guitar case and weaseled around the dogs, who followed her down the hallway, their large butts shaking so hard that they were bumping each other. She stopped half-way and turned towards the door under the stair case that lead to the basement. Bowser and M.C. nearly knocked her down while sprinting down the steps so they could wait for her at the bottom. She turned on the light and walked across the cold concrete floor towards the small set of lockers tucked away into the corner and took out the actual case for her sniper and put the gun away. Scribe didn't even know how to play the guitar, so if an officer asked her to play a tune, she'd be fucked.
Scribe went up two flights of stairs into her bedroom, which was the only room fully painted a color. Pale fuchsia. She figured that, since no one would ever go in there except her, she could paint it whatever the hell color she wanted. Scribe's bed was nothing special. It was on a wooden bed frame so that she could hide a shot gun under it and was covered with white sheets and a white blanket. Scribe walked over to her desk that had a mirror propped up on it so she could pretend it was a vanity table and wiped off her make-up before putting on some basketball shorts and a tight long sleeved shirt.
She jogged back down the stairs, where the boys were waiting by the front door with their leashes in their mouths, whining. Scribe grumbled at them to hold their horses as she went into the boring kitchen to fill up her water bottle before hooking the dogs to their leashes and granting them the joys of the outside air.
"Do they got their shots? My nephew was watchin' that one movie- Cujo! I don't know why they make those awful films."
"They're healthy as can be, Nana Mary. There ain't nothing to worry about."
"You don't take them dog fightin', now do you?"
"Absolutely not! I gotta be off now. See you later!"
Scribe was a mean son of a bitch, but she could never find it in herself to be rude to old ladies. It just wasn't right. She started her jog, which was Bowser and M.C.'s favorite time of day. Everyone got out of their way, which was the purpose of them. They have, indeed, torn a man the fuck up before just because Scribe clicked her tongue. Her dogs doubled as cute, happy companions and vicious weapons. That's all she needed in her life.
"Oi, you need to get some saddles for those horses!" An Irish man said to her on the sidewalk as she passed.
"Eat shit, parasite." She said back, trying to get to the library before closing time.
The Irish man's companion started laughing at his expense. Connor narrowed his eyes at Murphy, "Oh, sure, laugh it up."
The two men walked into the diner and sat down, ordering some pie while asking the waitress to turn up the television. Sally McBride was covering the assassination. The conclusion was that they knew absolutely nothing, which wasn't surprising, since it's only been around two hours after the fact.
"What do you think?" Murphy asked.
"I don't know. They got rid of a bad man."
"Yeah, but who's to say this isn't the start of a spree?"
"Let's just wait it out. If the police haven't found anything, then we won't either."
Scribe made frequent trips to the library for personal and professional reasons. This time it was for work. The man who worked there had a crush on her, but he was shy and had never asked her out. She would never say yes. She planned to be an old spinstress if she didn't die in a hail of gun fire first.
Scribe walked up to the counter and put on a shy smile, being the kind of girl that the man would like, "Hi..."
He looked up, startled by her sudden appearance. His face flushed and he didn't say anything, so she continued in a quiet voice, "Um, Can I see all the newspapers from March this year, please?"
"That's... That's thirty one newspapers. You've never asked for that many before."
"Yeah, well..."
He just started at her for a moment before seeming to suddenly remember what she asked as his eyes lit up, "Oh! I'll go get those for you."
When he went into the back, Scribe stepped back a few pace and looked out the front window to check on Bowser and M.C. who were tied to a small pole in front of the library. She had given them some water from her water bottle and told them to stay calm and not try to rip the legs off of pedestrians.
That command was mostly put in place for M.C.
"Here they are." The librarian placed the stack of newspapers onto the counter with a 'thump'.
Scribe gave a small smile, "Could I take these home with me?"
"Uh, I don't know... I'm not supposed to let anyone take these..."
Scribe frowned and put on her puppy dog eyes, "Oh... Alright." She turned and almost made it to the door before he called out to her.
"Wait! I'm sure my boss wouldn't mind. Just as long as you don't damage them."
Scribe smiled in relief, "Thank you so much. You have no idea how much this means to me."
He blushed again, "I'm happy to help. Just bring them back soon, okay?"
Scribe nodded, picking up the newspapers by the strings that kept them together and left with a shy smile, breathing a sigh of relief once outside.
Once home, Scribe put the newspapers on the wooden coffee table before taking a shower, feeding the dogs, cooking herself a hot dog and some french fries, and sat down on the couch. She turned on her television, where there was some news coverage about the job she did on Maxwell. So far, they've identified that a U.S. military weapon was used, but no shell was recovered from any of the surrounding buildings.
"That's because it's in my coat." She muttered to herself.
After she was finished eating, she turned off the television and dug into the newspapers, trying to find anything odd. With killers, there were always one or two murders that the police thought to be irrelevant to the actual serial murders, where the murderers were trying to get their bearings. That's how it was with Scribe, anyway. As she got towards the bottom of the stack, she began noticing something odd. The media coverage was excellent and up to date at the beginning, but towards the end it started repeating already known facts. It was like the police just... gave up. Usually, they didn't give up until at least a year has gone by. Either the police are glad that the Saints are doing their jobs for them, or someone on the inside was slowing down the investigation. It was absolutely possible that one or all of them were on the police force.
Oh, goody. She was already getting somewhere.
As her and her dogs laid down in her bed to go to sleep, she was thinking of all the ways she could rip their heads from their bodies.
And that was a day in the life of Scribe Wilson.