Ankle Biter: The Job is The Job

 

I wasn’t really much of a kid person. I don’t hate them, it’s not that. I don’t even really mind screaming babies on airplanes or sugar-addled kids playing human bumper cars in crowded restaurants.

They’re just kids, right? No malice, no bad intentions behind what they did. It’s the responsibility of the grown, functional members of society like us to put ourselves in their shoes.

That said, I’ve never been one for dealing with kids directly. Not great at talking to them, even worse at entertaining them. The odd niece or nephew or cousin I’d had here or there in my younger days, we just never really got on.

Something with me, I guess. By nature I’m just not a very extroverted person.

Ill-equipped as I was to deal with normal children, Arthur was an entirely different story.

The son of Detlev, the man who paid me to kill people.

The hideous, bloated creature that had crawled from the depths of a ruined old well after being down there for decades - malformed and twisted and made wrong by those years laying dead, rotting in the muck and mire. His skin now waxy and covered with bluish veins, his head entirely featureless save for a gaping, black-lipped maw with clacking yellow teeth.

Arthur wasn’t dead anymore, wasn’t human anymore. And He’d come to see his mother. To laugh and play and be a kid again.

Except my partner Kilroy and I, we’d killed the haggard and elderly woman. Put a bullet right between her eyes. And we were supposed to kill Arthur too.

To put it simply, things hadn’t exactly gone that way.

Kilroy and I were supposed to be Detlev’s best. An unstoppable team, two pros. And tonight, of all nights, we’d completely and totally shit the bed.

Or really, I had.

I’d felt off from the beginning, from the moment I learned that we were being sent to kill an old lady and a small child. The job is the job, and you do the job no matter what, but killing a child was some new and heinous territory that even somebody as seasoned as me had no experience with.

Upon arriving, the situation in the house was even more strange and awful than I’d imagined, and the honest fact of the whole thing was that my inability to adapt to the situation had cost Kilroy her life.

One of the last things she’d said to me repeated in my mind. ”This should’ve been such an easy job.”

I surveyed the carnage in the room, eyes darting between the corpses on the floor - Kilroy, my partner, and Arthur’s mother, our target. Both lying in pools of darkened blood, Kilroy’s entire torso reduced to a shredded mass of gore. Arthur had torn her apart with his fat little claws.

I stared at my left hand, bitten nearly in half by the pint-sized ghoul. Arthur had torn my thumb and index finger off with his massive teeth. I thanked any gods that were listening that I was right-handed, and could still fire a gun. I’d fashioned a crude tourniquet out of my ripped glove, but I’d lost some blood and the pain was bordering on unbearable.

I stared at Arthur, my boot firmly planted on the back of his head, holding him down on the floor. The pallid creature wailed softly, an open wound leaking a viscous dark liquid from its awful face. Kilroy had shot the thing twice in its head before she died, the second shot taking a massive chunk out of its alabaster flesh.

Arthur wasn’t dead though. It was going to take more than a few point blank gunshots to kill this thing - but I wasn’t so worried about killing Arthur anymore.

No. Arthur and I were going to be taking a little road trip together.

The thing could speak, and I figured it could probably listen too.

“Arthur.” I said.

The creature continued to quietly sob, not immediately acknowledging me.

“Arthur. Did you hear what I said before? We’re going to go see your dad, Arthur. Do you remember your old man?”

Arthur’s sobs went quiet, and the creature began frantically licking its lips with its thick, wormlike tongue.

“Daddy daddy daddy daddy!” Arthur exclaimed. He tried to push himself up from the floor with his stubby arms, nearly knocking me backwards even with that small physical effort. Arthur was strong, even hurt , bleeding from a massive head wound.

I pressed my foot down harder, applying as much pressure as humanly possible, desperately trying to keep Arthur subdued.

“So you understand.” I said. “Good. Then listen. Arthur, I’m sorry about your mom. Okay? I am. But what you did to my friend over there,” I gestured toward Kilroy’s mangled corpse, “I think that makes us even.”

Arthur went completely silent once again. I hoped he was mulling it over.

“Well Arthur,” I went on, knowing we were short on time. “Some men are coming here. They don’t want you to see your dad, and they sure as hell don’t want me to see him. You understand me Arthur?”

I stared hard at Arthur’s face. The creature seemed to nod. Maybe I wasn’t so bad at getting through to kids after all.

“After we deal with them, it’s a straight shot to go see your pops.”

I’d done all I could. Tried my best to make Arthur listen to reason. We’d have no chance of reaching Detlev if the cleanup crew arrived and found only two corpses at the chaotic scene - there’d be too many questions, too much suspicion. It would make its way back to Detlev before we did.

No, we needed to kill them first.

Maybe I’d completely misread the situation. Wouldn’t be the first time that night. In fact, it would be frighteningly consistent with how things had played out so far. Maybe the second I took my boot off of Arthur’s head, he would lunge at me. Tear my chest apart, just like he’d done to Kilroy.

I was looking at the bigger picture, though. I was looking ahead to Detlev, to making him see the error of his ways. To showing him what can happen when you treat even your best men as a couple of expendable goons. This was partially about Kilroy, partially about my own stupid pride. I’d failed that night, and it felt like I’d been set up to.

But some deeper part of me knew that I couldn’t blame the whole debacle on Detlev - and that made me even angrier. Angry at him, angry at myself, just plain steaming mad.

I needed Arthur to help me set things straight.

Slowly, cautiously, I raised my boot from the back of Arthur’s head.

The child-sized monster stood, rubbing near his head wound with a ragged hand. He turned to face me.

“Hurts.” He said. “Hurts hurts hurts.” I took a defensive step back, clutching my pistol.

Abruptly, Arthur turned and sauntered into the kitchen, muttering as he went. “Hungry. Hungry hungry hungry.”

I heard food clatter from the table, and those massive lips smacking together as he ate. I relaxed a bit. In what felt like the first time things had gone my way this entire night, Arthur appeared to be on board with my plan.

I knew the cleaners would be there soon. Wouldn’t be more than two or three guys at most, I knew that much about the standard crews Detlev typically used for this kind of thing. I grabbed my carrying bag, which had gone flying in the earlier melee, and slung it back around my shoulder as Arthur re-entered the den.

He clutched a rotten, weeping peach in his hand, the orange orb spotted with mild and soft black indents. I heard flies buzzing as he raised it to his mouth and took a bite, reeking juice splattering down his chin and chest. He looked at me, and spoke.

“Daddy.”

I nodded. Suddenly, the living room was brightened by headlights shining through the window. A lone car barreled down the moonlit road, slowing down as it passed the mansion.

I listened as it rumbled past, hearing it come to a stop in front of the house.

There was the sound of car doors opening and slamming shut, and faint murmuring as the men talked among themselves. I seemed to make out three individual voices, exactly as I’d predicted.

As they spoke, it dawned on me that they could likely see my vehicle parked just down the road, next to the old well that had been Arthur’s tomb.

Shit. They’d know something was up.

I heard the men split off from one another. Some of them would enter through the same back door as Kilroy and I.

I looked at Arthur. He stood there , unfazed, munching his fruit. I pointed to him, and then to the front door. I jammed finger at my own chest and nodded my head at the kitchen.

I still had no goddamn idea how this thing was able to see or hear or perceive anything around it, but I guess maybe something that never should’ve existed didn’t have to abide by my own preconceived notions of reality.

Whatever the explanation of how, Arthur understood what I meant. He nonchalantly waddled over to face the front door.

Well, that would have to do. I quickly made my way into the darkened kitchen, setting myself in position next to the door just as it swung open.

Two men, wearing thick winter jackets and jet black gloves not unlike mine, entered the house with their guns drawn. Immediately, I put a bullet in the temple of the man closest to me. A post-death gasp escaped from his mouth as he crumpled to the ground. The other man had barely processed what happened , but his reaction time was damn good. He ducked to the side and rushed forward, head butting me hard, square in the nose.

I stumbled backward, seeing stars. I quickly thrust the palm of my wounded hand into his jaw as he took aim to attempt his killing shot.

He cried out in pain, and in the chaos I heard the front door finally slam open. “What the fuck -” the man’s cry was cut short as Arthur let out a guttural roar, and I heard the thump of a grown man’s body smashing to the floor. Wet ripping sounds were audible even in the kitchen as Arthur did his work.

I had to admit, the kid was damn good. Maybe not born for the job, maybe not a natural. There was nothing natural about this shit. Those years in the well, though, had made Arthur into one hell of a killer.

The man in the kitchen’s eyes widened as he heard the same sounds of carnage. I couldn’t help but smirk, just a little. The cleaner slammed the butt of his gun into the side of my head, and turned to run toward the den, to help his partner.

I clutched my head with my three-fingered hand and fell to one knee, still taking my shot and firing a round at the man’s back. My head was swimming, and my aim was less than true. I clipped his shoulder, and he fell forward howling in pain.

“Dear fucking god…” the man yelled in horror as he stumbled into the den.

“Daddy daddy daddy!!” Arthur growled as he lunged at the last living target.

From my position in the kitchen, I watched Arthur wrap his hands around the man’s head and plunge sharpened digits into his eyes. The man’s eyeballs popped as effortlessly as soap bubbles, rivers of chunky gore flowing from the holes in his face as he screamed in pain, desperately trying to beat Arthur back with his fists.

Arthur scratched at the man’s chest, cleaving through his jacket and shirt and slicing his skin to ribbons. The man sobbed now, as Arthur leaned back, and unhinged his massive jaw. He clamped down on the man’s neck and bit, so hard that those massive yellow teeth slammed together with a crack.

A massive arterial spray painted the already blood-soaked living room, as Arthur jumped off the mangled corpse and ran toward the kitchen, giggling maniacally.

“Daddy daddy daddy daddy daddy!” He stopped next to me and jumped up and down excitedly.

“Yeah.” I said. I stood and began making my way into the living room. Suddenly, Arthur’s arm shot forward, and he tightly gripped my wounded hand. I screamed in pain, and the creature released me and cowered backwards.

I stared at him, incredulous. Arthur began to sob, tongue lolling from his crimson-rimmed mouth. “Mommy mommy mommy…” the creature looked so pathetic in that moment, so lost and scared. I sighed.

I tucked my gun into my waist band and extended my arm toward Arthur, offering him my other, un-injured hand. He accepted it after a few moments of contemplation, and we walked hand in hand out of the kitchen.

As we made for the front door, I heard a few gurgling and rasping breaths to the side of the room. The cleaner who had entered through the front door, the first man who’d met Arthur, was still alive.

Arthur had become distracted when the other man had rushed the room, and moved on to new prey before finishing the job. The kid may have been good, but he still had a few things to learn. Hell though, at this point who was I to teach him.

“Please…” he wheezed, calling out to no one. The man sounded lost and confused, fading from shock and blood loss. “Please, please…”

I turned to Arthur. “Stay put.” I let the creature’s clammy, clawed hand go and stepped over to the wheezing man on the floor.

I drew my pistol and cut the man’s rambling off with three shots. Two in the face, one in the chest. What was left of it anyway.

It was the second time that night that I’d had to end the suffering of one of my “colleagues” after an encounter with Arthur. It wasn’t the first time I’d had to do somebody who was in the shit just like me. At the end of the day, there’s no real allies. No real “team.” There’s just you, and yourself and your survival. Self preservation was the line that we ultimately all drew.

We all knew the risks. We all knew what this line of work was. But there was still something cosmically unfair about the deaths that had occurred in this house. Kilroy’s, the old woman’s, hell maybe even Arthur’s. All those years ago.

I took one last look at Kilroy’s pale, mutilated body as I grabbed Arthur’s hand and exited the front door into the frigid and inky night.

I knew that her wide, blue eyes would stare up into the nothing forever.

---

As we barreled down the highway, not far from our destination, I thought it was kind of funny, in a way. Arthur was one of the most well-behaved kids I’d ever seen in a car.

He sat mostly quiet in the passenger seat, that black fluid still leaking out of his skull and onto the car’s interior, staring out the window. He only muttered to himself occasionally, letting out the odd “Mommy…” or “Daddy…” before falling silent again.

In a funny way, the creature’s newfound reticence reminded me of those long and silent drives with Kilroy.

I had been somewhat wary of what might happen once I finally got the creature into the car and began the drive - Arthur had followed my lead in the house, tearing through Detlev’s other men, but I had to constantly remind myself that I couldn’t really count on a monstrous undead child to behave with any kind of consistency.

Thankfully though, Arthur didn’t leap across the center console and begin ripping my throat out as I sped toward our destination, gripping the steering wheel with my ruined hand.

I was taking a chance and simply assuming where Detlev would be on a night like this - a bitter and freezing winter evening in the middle of the week. Probably no clubs tonight, no games, no girls. More than likely, he was laying his head at his somewhat isolated $1.2 million dollar property, adjacent to the suburbs of the city. Detlev was wealthy enough to isolate himself from even the other isolated rich people.

The not-quite-mansion was only about an hour and a half from the location of the horribly botched job Kilroy and I had been sent on that night, and I knew we’d be cutting it close arriving when we did. Assuming Detlev was there, Arthur and I would be making our entrance right around the time the old man realized that something had gone wrong with his cleanup crew, that latest in that night’s comedy of errors.

I knew the location of the pad, knew a reasonable enough amount of intel to not be too concerned showing up there hoping to storm the place with little planning. When I’d first gotten Detlev’s call nearly a year ago, I’d done a small amount of research into the man.

Gotta know the right amount of information about the men you work for - not enough to get you killed, “Too Much,” just enough to stay alive when your back’s against the wall.

I knew that the property sat behind a reasonably tall but not unscalable fence, and that Detlev only kept one security man on the premises. It was supposed to be Detlev’s home, the place where he was most safe. The last part of this routine would be getting to that guard before he could call for others. After that, Detlev would be an easy target. A sitting duck.

I turned to Arthur, still lost in the glowing city lights visible through the window.

“\Arthur.” I said.

The creature turned to face me, purple tongue hanging from the side of its wide mouth that never seemed to close. Except when he was clamping it down on someone’s throat.

“We’re gonna be at your dad’s soon.”

This excited him, and Arthur began jumping up and down, yelling frantically. “Daddy daddy daddy daddy daddy daddy!!”

“There’s just one thing, one last part. There’s gonna be another man there, with your dad. We’ll have to make sure that he doesn’t stop us from seeing your old man either. Just like the ones at the house.”

Arthur nodded swiftly, giving me the most visible indication yet that he’d understood and absorbed what I was telling him.

The boy really missed his father. I guess the truth was, neither one of us could wait to see Detlev.

I took an exit as Arthur continued maniacally gibbering , clacking his massive teeth together. A few minutes later, we’d arrived in a quiet and wealthy looking neighborhood.

I drove on, past the mansions and high end pads, the places that in another life I’d have broken into with zero hesitation, taking whatever I could get my hands on.

We made a few more times, going deeper into the neighborhood, seeing the now mostly gated homes grow larger and become more spaced out. Furthest away from the rest, furthest down the road, a massive mansion on acres of forested land. Detlev’s.

I brought the car to a stop. “This is it.” I said to Arthur. The tiny creature l went berserk, jumping up and down and frantically pawing at the car door. “Daddy daddy daddy!”

“Calm down,” I commanded. Immediately, Arthur ceased his excited tantrum. The kid really trusted me now, it seemed. “See that gate?” I pointed toward the massive iron fence that enclosed the property. “We’ve gotta get over that, and fast. Then we’ve gotta go there.” I indicated the small guard tower that sat just beyond the fence.

“That’s the last man, Arthur. The last man keeping you from your dad.”

Arthur nodded excitedly.

I figured there was no way both Arthur and I could scale the fence fast enough to reach the tower before we were noticed, but I was developing an idea that would’ve seemed completely implausible even an hour ago.

I exited the car, and made my way around to open Arthur’s door.

“You have to be quiet,” I said as I swung the door open. I raised a finger to my lips.

I took Arthur by the hand. “Here’s what we’re gonna do Arthur. I’m gonna push you over the fence, and you’re gonna run to that little room as fast as you can. You’re gonna get the man inside. Keep him alive, Arthur. And wait for me.”

I figured Arthur had absorbed that about as well as he absorbed everything else I’d told him that night, and so we made our way to the wrought iron fence, and I took the clammy skinned creature under his armpits, boosting him to climb over Detlev’s fence.

Arthur fell into the yard with a thud, and immediately began a rapid, waddling run toward the guard box.

Shit, he was going even faster than I’d expected.

With effort, I leapt and gripped the top of the fence with both hands, ignoring the pain that shot down my left arm.

As I struggled my way over, I heard a man’s scream from the guard box, cut short and followed by the sound of gibbering howls and clacking teeth.

I tried to stick the landing but stumbled a bit, falling to the ground. I sighed, dusted myself off and stood. I withdrew the shotgun from my carrying bag and loaded it. I’d need it soon.

I walked over to the guard box, and peered through the open door. Arthur had listened. The man was alive. Barely. His hands and arms had been pulverized into a gorey mush, massive bite marks in his thighs. The room was painted with blood and stunk like copper.

The man seemed to be going into shock. Tears if anguish streamed down his face. Arthur sat next to the man, dumbly. He picked between his giant teeth with a blackened finger.

I took a quick glance at the surveillance equipment in the room, scanning to see how much of the property the guard had eyes on. In a rare moment of luck, for that evening anyway, I realized that there were cameras in virtually every room.

I looked quickly between the screens, finally landing on Detlev, his image appearing on a monitor that bore the label “Floor 1 - Room B (Lounge)” in the upper right hand corner.

The aging man sat on a massive sofa, silk bathrobe on, whiskey in hand. He was sat up, staring ahead intently. I wondered if he’d heard the commotion.

I looked at the control board, the one for the mansion’s alarm system.

I turned to the mutilated man. “Password.” I said, plainly.

He begged. “Please. Please help me. God what is this thing. God my legs. I can’t feel my hands. I can’t feel anything…”

I leaned down and grabbed the man by the hair, roughly turning him to face me and smacking him in the face.

“Password. To disable the alarms. You want a chance?”

I set the shotgun against the wall and withdrew my cell, dialing 911, showing it to the man with my finger hovering over the button to put the call through. “Password. We’ll do what we need to do and be gone before they arrive. You’ll have a chance, at least. We just want Detlev.”

“Fuck, fuck, god my arms…” the man was beginning to lose consciousness. “87763. 87763.” The man repeated the code twice, with hope in his fading voice.

I nodded, turned and punched the numbers into the keyboard. A message appeared telling me the mansion’s security system had been disabled.

I turned back to the man, seeing that the guard had drifted into unconsciousness as I’d disarmed the security. Well, at least he’d gone thinking he had a shot.

“Come on Arthur.” I took the shotgun and grabbed Arthur’s hand, walking out of the guard room, headed for the front door of the mansion.

I used the butt of the gun to smash open the large bay window, not caring at this point whether or not Detlev heard us. Arthur and I climbed in, entering the den. Detlev’s place was even nice on the inside. Full of art pieces, high end furniture, the stupid crap rich men buy when they’re bored.

“This is it.” I turned to Arthur, who seemed to marvel with his eyeless sight at the million dollar home, a far cry from the rotted hovel where he’d lived with his mother.

“Your dad’s around here somewhere..”

Arthur exploded, a frenzy of joy. A little boy who missed his dad.

“Daddy daddy daddy play play play play!” The creature yelled as he rushed off, speeding through the threshold into one of the many random downstairs rooms.

Shit. Almost on cue as Arthur disappeared, Detlev stepped into the den, gun drawn. Evidently the lounge had been the room in the exact opposite direction to where Arthur had run off.

The old man’s silver hair was slicked down and backward, his matching goatee coming to a point on his chin. Detlev’s eyes were steely and hard. He was a brutal, calculating man, even at his age. I figured he’d have a weapon on the inside in the event of this type of home invasion scenario, but he’d gotten the drop on me quicker than I’d expected.

“Taggert.” He said flatly. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Well…” I replied. “There’s someone I want you to meet.” A puzzled expression crossed Detlev’s face, and his eyes widened. He lowered his weapon in disbelief.

“Arthur!” I cupped my hand around my mouth and yelled in the direction the thing had run. “Dad’s in here!”

The patter of fat clawed feet clattered on hardwood, a maniacal giggling grew progressively louder, with it the sharp sound of clacking teeth.

Arthur bounded into the room and made a beeline for Detlev, who opened his mouth almost as wide as his son’s in a scream of abject horror.

“Daddy!!” Arthur screamed as he tackled his father to the floor. Arthur ran his fat tongue up and down Detlev’s face, smacked his chest with pale hands. “Daddy daddy daddy! Missed you!”

Detlev wailed. “Taggert! Taggert please!”

I stared at him, scowling. “This is why you sent us on the job tonight, huh? How did you know? How?”

“Detlev closed his eyes, not wanting to look his son in the face. Arthur pressed his head to Detlev’s chest as my employer spoke. “I told you, Myra had been calling me, calling the clubs, insisting that Arthur had come back. I figured it was bullshit, she was out of her goddamn mind. But in one of the calls…” Detlev trailed off, opening his eyes and taking a quick look at the hideous thing trapping him in a bear hug, before snapping them shut again, almost like he was checking one last time to make sure this was really happening.

He swallowed hard and continued. “In one of the calls, she… she put him on the phone. I heard him. I just… I didn’t know what to do. Didn’t know what to think. I needed it to end. Taggert, I knew that you and Sasha could do it. I knew you were the ones. But I couldn’t tell you that this was waiting there! You’d have never listened! You’d have never done it!”

I calmly mulled over his words as another thought entered my mind.

“What happened, Detlev. All those years ago. To Arthur.”

Arthur had climbed off of his father now, running in circles and frantically screaming. “Play play play!”

Shakily, Detlev rose to his feet.

“I swear Taggert, it wasn’t me. I swear to whatever you or I believe in. It was Myra. We’d had Arthur in secret, a bastard born from an affair. I did my best to support them, see them when I could. It was never enough. One day, she snapped. She threw him down that well. Told me all about it after it was done.”

Detlev stared at the pale, bloated creature and continued . “I’ll admit, I didn’t handle that the best. I didn’t make her pay. I had other things to worry about. I figured it was just as well. And that was my mistake, my error. Just like tonight. It was a simple, honest mistake. And I loved him. I did, in my own way. I should’ve fought for him, and I should’ve killed that bitch a long time ago.”

I kept silent, still. I wondered if any of that was true. It seemed awful convenient , and there was a desperation in Detlev’s voice. This pathetic, grasping sense of self-preservation. It was familiar, in a way. He was a man who fully understood the level on which he’d fucked up. That made two of us.

But I supposed none of that mattered now. It didn’t really matter exactly how Arthur had died. Nothing could change the circumstances we’d all collectively come to in that exact moment.

Detlev had sent us because he knew we’d do the job no matter what, knew Kilroy and I could stand up to whatever was in that house. His fumble had been thinking we’d be able to do it unscathed. How can you be expected to complete the job when you don’t know the job?

I nodded at Detlev as Arthur, from across the room, seemed to fixate on his father once again. “DADDY!” He roared as he darted in a beeline toward Detlev, clenching fingers and arms outstretched. Massive mouth wrenched as wide as possible , teeth parted so you could almost see down his throat.

Detlev cried out in fear, shutting his eyes tight once again.

I raised the shotgun, and fired.

The blast connected directly with Arthur’s head as he ran excitedly past me, inches from his father.

The creature let out a surprised yelp as it’s head exploded in a mess of jet black gore and reeking fluid, and flew backwards several feet from the impact.

Detlev screamed in shock, or confusion, or something as I walked over to his son.

All that was left of Arthur’s head was the lower half of his jaw, square yellow teeth jutting out of a jagged neck hole. His massive purple tongue flicked and undulated willdy, and the creature emitted a hideous gurgling from deep in its throat. Arthur weakly reached upwards with his stubby arms, almost seeming to silently ask me “why?”

I raised my boot and stomped on what was left of Arthur’s head, again and again and again, reducing it to a mashed paste. I thought of Kilroy, and my hand, and just what a pile of shit this entire night had been.

Once Arthur’s head had been ground to a wet stain in the hardwood, I raised the shotgun once again and fired directly at his chest at close range. Arthur’s entire hideous form blew apart, stinking ebony gore and bits of pale flesh flying in every direction.

I stared at the mound of guts and gristle that used to be a monster, the monster that used to be a little boy who was thrown down a well. After a few moments, what was left of Arthur’s ruined form remained entirely still, and I figured that was the end of it.

I turned to Detlev, who’s jaw hung on the floor.

“Why…” he muttered. “What…?”

I smacked the man in the nose with the butt of the shotgun. Detlev fell backward as blood exploded from his fractured face.

He sat against the wall and clutched his nose as I leaned down to speak to him.

“That’s it,” I said. “The job is done.”

The old man looked at me with eyes wide as dinner plates, a new fear replacing the cold, wet dread of seeing his long dead Arthur.

I thrust a gloved finger in Detlev’s face.

“Next time, from now on, the real details. No matter how crazy they sound. You fucking understand me? You said it yourself. I’m your best man. And the job always gets done. But this -“ I waved a hand, indicating all of the carnage Arthur and I had inflicted.

“This is what happens when you don’t trust your best men to handle any problem that comes your way. Even something that doesn’t seem possible, doesn’t seem real.”

I stood, smoothing out of my jacket.

“You’re gonna need another cleanup crew for that mansion. And I’m getting a fucking bonus. As in, both Kilroy’s and my pay.”

Detlev nodded, the reality of the situation seeming to dawn on him.

A man like Detlev valued loyalty, but above all else he valued that killer instinct. The willingness to do the deed no matter how horrible and awful and wrong.

In a twisted and sick way that appealed to a brutal fuck like him, I’d just shown him that he could trust me above anyone else. I’d shown him the lengths I’d go to make things right, whether that was to fix my own mistake or his. It was important that we understood each other.

It was like Detlev had told me before, I was going to be one of his top men for a long, long time. It just wasn’t so easy to walk away from good, paying work.

I took one last look at the pile of pulp that used to be Arthur as I turned to leave, shaking my head. I’ve always said it’s crucial not to get too hung up about these things, it drives you crazy. Even still, despite myself, goddamn if I didn’t feel bad for the kid.

But then, this was how it was supposed to be. It’s what Kilroy would’ve wanted, and it’s what men like Detlev pay men like me to do. No matter what happens, how you feel, who lives, and who dies.

The job is the job.

---

Credits