Another Day's Work
by Stephen Mulligan & J. M. McClure
What was going on?
Why had he been called? He never got a call in the middle of a project. Not from this buyer; the man held his privacy too close to ask for meetings that were anything less than handing over the finished product.
He got out of his car, carefully shutting the door behind him. It gave a hollow echo around the deserted parking lot, too loud, making him feel alone and vulnerable. He flinched at the noise, shattering the stillness, making his presence too obvious. Not that the buyer wouldn't know he was here. The man seemed to have unnatural senses; he knew when you were near, he knew when you were skulking your way out of the area. He had eyes you didn't want to look into.
He closed his eyes, taking a deep breath of air, trying to soothe suddenly stressed nerves. The parking lot was poorly lit, his shadow thrown before him, like it was running from him, trying to escape.
Did he know?
He couldn't know. He shook his head angrily, driving the thoughts away. That was just stupid. All he was doing was scaring himself. He'd been careful, oh so fucking careful. There was no way anyone could know. No way.
He walked across the dark parking lot, one flickering, popping, snapping flourescent light their only illumination, listening to his footsteps, hollow and harsh, walking towards him, the man leaning against his car.
"You're late." The buyer lit a cigarette and took a drag, blowing a harsh ring of smoke into the empty air, the end of the cigarette glowing like an ember, almost, but not quite illuminating his face beneath the cocked hat.
He realized then that he'd never seen this man's face, not that he was seeing it now, not with the flickering light and the low brimmed hat down around his forehead. Nothing but valleys and shadows. "Traffic. There was a lot of traffic." He swallowed hard, his mouth suddenly dry, aware that he was babbling.
The buyer smiled, his lips pulling back from his teeth like an animal showing his armor. A smile colder than the parking lot. "Tell me, how much did James Robisinki offer you?"
He knew. Oh fuck. He knew. "It wasn't like that..."
"What was it like?" The predator's smile had disappeared, had slipped off his face like water through fingers.
"He approached me. I swear I knocked him back. I told him no, I told him I worked for you, that you already had a deal set up, that he needed to talk to you."
Two brief flashes of light, two sharp reports... ...and he fell to the floor of the parking lot, blood, black in the moonlight, pooling around his body. The buyer holstered the gun, pulling his coat tightly around his body, trying to keep the cold away. He nudged the body with his boot, making sure the man was dead.
Damn.
Now, he needed another cooker.
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She sat alone in the crowded bar, nursing a drink, letting the sounds and smells wash over her.
Trying to drown her loneliness and her memories beneath the companionship of strangers and damn good Scotch.
"Now, what's a pretty girl like you doing drinking in a place like this by herself?"
She looked around, raising her eyebrows, a half smile twisting on her lips. He was tall, taller than she was, with piercing eyes that caught and held her like an embrace, a fine layer of stubble coating his jaw.
He laughed, shaking his head. "I can't believe I just said that. I'm sorry, that must be the stupidest thing that ever came out of my mouth. I'm sorry. Can I buy you a drink to make up for being such an idiot?"
"Sure." She lifted her drink and downed the last of her Scotch, ice rattling against the side of the glass. "Scotch on the rocks."
"Scotch on the rocks for the lady." He sat down on the vacant stool next to her. "So what's your name?"
"Eva."
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He'd had to leave the apartment, if only for a few minutes, and just for no other reason than to watch the storm building and fuming and fussing in wind and charcoal cloud through slate grey skies. Miles leaned on his apartment's balcony railing enjoying the smell of coming rain, the feel of tufts of wind on his face, the rumbling and grumbling, as the sky prepared to drop its payload down on them.
He loved thunderstorms. Had loved them for as long as he could remember, the cool wind, the wonderful taste to the air, the 'sturm und drang' when nature's light show got going. As if on cue, lightning streaked a lance of gold through the darkened sky and thunder clapped right behind it. The first fat plops of rain started to fall. Time to get back inside, he decided, back behind the safety of glass and measured air and the warmth of his own apartment.
Closing the double glass doors, he left the curtains wide so he could still enjoy the sight of the storm; and it looked like it was going to be a doozy by the original expert in pyrotechnics. Miles figured he'd even take ten or fifteen minutes out of studying medical journals just to sit back and watch.
He hadn't made it back to his chair before he heard the knock on the door.
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She couldn't believe she was doing this.
Maybe it was the memories she was trying to drown,memories of her foster father, of the closet and his belt. Maybe it was the memory of too many nights alone, of too many mornings waking in an anonymous hotel room, of her life slipping through her fingers.
Maybe it was the Scotch.
It was raining heavily now, pouring down around them like a thick curtain, soaking through their clothes, as they ran, laughing, from the bar to the car, his large hand almost swallowing hers. She couldn't remember the last time she'd laughed like that.
Thunder crashed and she jumped, startled. She'd always hated storms, hated the noise and the sudden flashes of light. The sudden flash and release reminded her of her foster father's temper.
His arms slid around her, pulling her back against him. "It's okay, Eva." His breath moved her soaking hair, tickling her skin. He kissed the line of her neck. She trembled in his arms, not from fear, the falling rain, the storm forgotten.
"I got you."
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Miles knew he was supposed to use the peephole on the door.
It was there for a reason and the reasoning was sound. He knew that and he always meant to use it, it was just that it never usually occurred to him. No one came to his door that he didn't either know or who didn't have a reasonable purpose there. So it was normal procedure for him to just open the door when someone knocked or rang the bell. It had never gotten him in trouble before, in spite of the times Frank had ragged on him about it whenever he came over. It was probably Frank anyway with some call to duty on his only day off in six weeks.
But all good things must come to an end.
He hadn't gotten the door all the way open, before it was slammed into him, catching him in the forehead with enough force to throw him backward and send his mind spinning. Thunder roared outside and inside his head.
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Darkness. All around her. Darkness, thick and real and terrifying.
Eva lay, shivering, her soaking clothes cold against her body. Listening to the rain drum against the trunk of the car with impatient fingers. Trying to think, to remember everything he had said.
What was his name?
Trying to keep her mind active. Trying to hold off the memories she felt stalking her, closing in around her, like the panels of the trunk.
Like the walls of a closet.
Her head swimming, Eva tried to control her breathing. Tried to think back through the evening, through the haze of Scotch and...
"Where are you, you little whore?"
A sudden flash of lightning, visible through the crack in the trunk, a roll of thunder, amplified by the closed trunk, a snap like the crack of his belt. She drew breath to scream, stifled by the gag, thrust between her jaws, her silent scream echoing like the thunder inside her head.
Who was he?
The rain fell on, uncaring.
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It started in a flash of a second. It lasted forever.
Miles had never been beaten up before, not even when he was a skinny freshman, several years ahead of his grade. It was nothing like on TV where the hero went "oof" a couple of times and then beat the hell out of his assailant.
Miles never got a punch landed. He didn't even really see the guy who was so methodically beating him. The first blow had happened so fast and knocked the air out of him–he heard a 'crack' in his ribs–so that all he could do was try to find enough air to keep breathing, much less strike back. The man's face was a grey and red-tinged blur through the pain as the man seemed to know where the best points of contact on the human body lay and landed a blow on each of them.
He heard another crack in his chest, felt the skin of his face split under the impact of a tightly knuckled fist, took a couple of more blows to his belly, and went down.
Being down didn't save him either. So much for the bad guy getting his point across and then walking away in a manly huff. Nope. This guy went with his feet next, and Miles wondered if 'that' was where the spleen really was? He couldn't do any more than try to roll into a ball to protect his belly and his groin. He didn't know how many kicks were landed before the room got quiet.
Deathly quiet. Ten seconds can last forever.
Then the roaring of his own lungs trying to bleed air from nothing, his head whirring with strange noises he'd never heard before, and the crack, rumble, boom of the night outside.
"Hey, hey, kid, look at me, look at this."
Rough hands turning his face, patting his cheek, and he managed to open one eye, the other seemingly permanently glued shut.
"This is a message." The words were faintly garbled, burbling in past some shocking sounds rumbling around inside his body. "You are a message. Get it? What I just did... it's nothing to what I can do."
And somehow through all the agony twisting him, he felt something hit his chest and land there, a light clunk that just settled in. He didn't see the man leave or hear the door close. Just that grey-red tinge to everything that made his own living room look like an alien landscape.
His fingers didn't want to obey him, just going off all waggly on their own with his hand trapped by inertia. The phone was only a foot away on the small couch side table that had somehow managed to avoid damage. Just sitting there mocking him.
He tried to sit up but pain stabbed him in his back, was echoed in his rib cage. It felt like something in his chest was broken. He'd hate to have to be the E.R. doc that diagnosed him. It felt like everything in his body was broken. Lying back on the carpet–God, it felt soft, good carpet, he thought as his mind started to wander just out of his reach–he worked at getting some air into his lungs without actually breathing. Didn't work, he had to breathe at least a little just to survive. He was a doctor. He should know that. His thoughts were breaking up like a radio with bad reception and the thunder outside the window was starting to lull him into unconsciousness.
Then he felt it again, resting lightly on his stomach now that he'd tried that abortive effort at rising. His left hand seemed to work better than his right hand, so he reached for it with that one and wrapped his fingers around it, wondering what it was, why it was important.
It felt like a chain but there was a bump on it. With a great effort he pulled his hand forward, opened it enough to see.
It was a watch. No, not a watch. Eva's watch. He'd taken it into the shop for her just last week when the chain broke.
The new chain seemed to be working fine, he thought.
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