Ankle Biter: Kilroy’s Last Job

 

Kilroy was always late. It was a fact I’d become acutely aware of in the brief time I’d known the woman.

Whenever we had a job, she was always, always late. This night was no different.

I rhythmically rapped my fingers against the steering wheel , glancing back and forth between the hotel’s entrance and the dashboard clock.

It was nearly 20 minutes past our scheduled meet time. Any minute now she’d come barreling through the front doors of the swanky five star joint where our employer put her up, black coffee in one hand and black briefcase in the other.

She’d get in the passenger’s seat without a word and fuss with her dirty blond ponytail and huff and puff like it was my fault she wasn’t on time, and god help me if I opened my mouth. It wasn’t worth it.

It was another fact I’d become acutely aware of the very first night we met.

I liked Kilroy though, all things considered. We seemed to work well together. She didn’t give a fuck about my time or what it was worth, and she wasn’t the friendliest, but when it came to the job - the info on the job, the value of the job, doing the job - she was rock solid.

She was certainly a fine piece of ass too, not that I’d ever ruin a fruitful working relationship by taking a shot.

Almost as if on cue, Kilroy finally burst out of the hotel and made her way across the street where I’d been parked with my headlights off. Same black briefcase, same ponytail, but a coffee in each hand this time.

Kilroy juggled the coffees and briefcase and opened the passenger door, sliding into the seat next to me.

Wordlessly, she thrust one of the coffees in my direction.

“Oh, uh, thanks.” I said, surprised. For someone with Kilroy’s personality, this felt like an act of uncharacteristic warmth,

She ignored me, and flipped open the ebony briefcase , sipping her coffee as she thumbed through the papers within. The papers with the info on the job.

The info on the person we were supposed to kill.

I figured that Kilroy probably wasn’t her real last name. I only assumed this because the name I had given her, Taggert, was also a fake. A kind of mask assigned by our employer.

In this line of work, it’s best to know the least amount of information possible about your partners, your employer, even the targets. Hell, especially the targets. Made it easier, for me anyway. No sense getting caught up in who did what, or why.

Deserve’s got nothing to do with it.

I knew fuck all about Kilroy, nearly fuck all about our employer Detlev, and fuck all about most everyone that we killed.

I waited patiently for Kilroy to speak, and hand me the Manila envelope which contained the most information I’d normally get on the target - their picture.

I didn’t really take any pride or enjoyment in this line of work - it’s just something I happened to stumble into years back, when my drinking was at its worst and my debts had run too high, and I found myself in a very literal kill or be killed scenario.

The lengths men go with their backs against the wall. You don’t really know you’ve got it in you until the moment comes. And goddamn, did I have it in me.

Over the years, word of how good I was at the killing part would inevitably make its way to men like Detlev - unscrupulous , rich and connected with an unending stream of unlucky people in their orbit who always needed doing away with.

Kilroy was good too. Didn’t flinch, but didn’t take too much pleasure in the shit either. We made a good team.

I sipped the scorching black coffee, not my preferred way to take it but she wouldn’t hear me complaining, as Kilroy finally opened her mouth and got to the point.

“The job’s about 45 miles outside the city. Right on the outskirts of some podunk, Vernon. Big house, a derelict old Victorian.”

She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose with her middle finger as she passed me the envelope. I nodded.

“Two targets,” Kilroy continued, taking a deep gulp of her drink. “One is an elderly woman. The other…” she trailed off as I took a look at the two black and white photos contained within the folder.

The first was an older, well off looking woman. She wore a garish dress and the kind of valuable-looking pearl necklace that men broke into houses and killed for. The photo depicted her smiling widely at some kind of social function.

She wasn’t quite the most harmless looking person I’d ever killed, but it was close. Like I said though, it’s a waste getting caught up in that. For whatever reason, this was someone Detlev needed done and we were on his dime, so we’d do her.

I moved on to the second photo, nestled behind, and for the first time in years and years and years, I was truly given pause.

In the photo was a little boy. No more than four, maybe five years old. Grinning ear to ear and hugging an old timey tin-toy robot to his chest, a massive Christmas tree making up the photo’s background.

I stared up at Kilroy, who was still nonchalantly sipping her coffee, incredulous.

“This is the job.” She was firm, succinctly answering the million silent questions my face must’ve asked. “Working for someone like Mr. Detlev, the jobs aren’t always easy. It won’t always be gamblers and wiseguys.”

I knew that, and she knew that I knew that. In the first month that I’d been in Detlev’s employ, Kilroy and I had done a middle aged soccer mom while her kids slept in their rooms above us.

And even before I’d entered Detlev’s employ, it’s not like I had some kind of self-deceptive moral code about who I would or wouldn’t kill. I had no misconceptions about who I was, the things I’d done. I wasn’t in the business of lying to myself. I was in the business of killing.

A kid though. An actual, literal child. Maybe this was a line I couldn’t cross. It would’ve been something I’d have wanted to think on, normally. Something I’d like the chance to turn down.

But Kilroy and I both knew it didn’t work that way.

She had worked for Detlev much longer than I had, and it was clear they’d waited a few months to see how solid I really was to spring something like this on me. The thing was, with a boss as ruthless and brutal as Detlev, there was no second guessing.

The second I had pulled up outside that hotel and waited for Kilroy to rush out with her coffee and her briefcase, I had agreed to kill whoever was on the inside of that envelope.

The way Kilroy spoke, it didn’t seem that a job like this was all that uncommon. Not that my blonde compatriot was constantly murdering children, but just the idea that working with these people would push you farther than you thought you could go.

“I think we work well together, Taggert.” Kilroy broke the silence. “And Mr. Detlev likes you. He trusts you. Jobs like this, they only go to the ones he trusts.” She stared ahead as she spoke, not looking at me. “The job is the job. The kid should be in an upstairs bedroom, the old woman watches TV in the den all hours of the night. Let’s go.”

I nodded. She was trying to soften the blow a little, trying to make me feel like there was some upside to this. I’d just have to deal with it my own way, the way I dealt with all the others. It was work. The job is the job.

I took one last look into the boy in the photo’s eyes as I shut the folder, and pulled the car forward to begin our drive.

---

We made pretty good time, an easy drive. A little over an hour had passed and we only had a few minutes to go before we reached our destination - 18 Dawthins Way, just off Culver Road in Vernon. The sparse details Kilroy had given me along with the address were that the property was an isolated and dilapidated Victorian mansion, out in the boonies and surrounded mostly by empty fields.

An easy place to do what needed doing, anyway.

I’d spent most of the drive alone with my thoughts - Kilroy and I didn’t talk much on a normal trip, and I think we both sensed the increased tension of this particular ride.

I know what I said, about not worrying much about the people on these jobs. About not caring who they were.

But again, these felt like special circumstances. A boy and what I assumed was his grandmother.

I kept thinking about the kid’s smiling face, clutching his Christmas present. The more I thought, though, the weirder it seemed. The photos Kilroy provided were always black and white, but I got the distinct aura of this particular photo being from an older time. Maybe even years and years ago. Something about that tin toy the smiling boy held tight to his chest

Kilroy was staring vacantly out the passenger window as I cleared my throat to speak.

“Kilroy.” She turned to face me. “Doesn’t something about this, the photo I mean, of the kid. Doesn’t it seem a little off?”

Kilroy narrowed her eyes. I wasn’t one to question the job. Wasn’t one to make trouble. I did good, solid work. I’m a logical man. A professional. But goddamn if something in my lizard brain wasn’t telling me that if there was ever a time to question the job, it was this moment. I hoped whatever good faith I’d built up with Kilroy over the months would at least implore her to hear me out.

She said nothing, simply raised her eyebrow and stared. I assumed this was an invitation to continue.

“Doesn’t the picture look old to you? Like it’s an old timey photo of a kid. Like whenever we get to where we’re going, is there even gonna be a kid that age at this house?”

A mildly puzzled look crossed Kilroy’s face, and she clicked open her briefcase and withdrew the Manila envelope, opening it look at the photo of the boy.

Thinking I was winning her over, I continued. “And why are a kid and his grandma even staying at some run down mansion anyway?”

She frowned.

“Taggert.” She said, a hint of annoyance in her voice. “It’s probably from some kind of themed Christmas photo shoot, something like that. Mr. Detlev knows that there’s nothing to be gained from misleading his employees about a job.”

She closed the folder and threw it back into the briefcase. “I know this isn’t an easy job. But don’t start saying things that make me question why you’re the one who’s here with me.”

Well, I’d tried. That was that. And truth told, she was probably right. Maybe there was some small screaming voice inside of me that was still human, desperately looking for an out.

The rest of the drive proceeded in silence, down the seemingly endless stretch of country road, past abandoned gas stations and run down barns, until we came upon a towering mansion, barely illuminated in the pale winter midnight . The structure stood so tall and twisted it nearly blocked the moon.

Kilroy glanced at me. I nodded and drove past the mansion, eventually pulling the SUV over in the expanse of tall grass, next to a lone well that bordered our targets’ home.

“We should be able to get in through the back,” Kilroy said as she exited the car.

I followed silently, popping the trunk and withdrawing the carrying bag that held our tools. Two handguns, a few knives, one shotgun. Nothing too fancy. The jobs were never more than one or two mostly defenseless people at a time, and Kilroy and I were good enough to not need excessive firepower.

I slung the bag over my shoulder and handed one of the pistols to Kilroy, who had pulled gloves over her slender hands after exiting the car.

She brushed a strand of blonde hair behind her ear and fussed with her ponytail, her glasses beginning to fog in the chill of the night.

She nodded, and we slowly and silently made our way down the road to the mansion.

Kilroy was right - the back door was locked, but so rotted and warped that it swung open easily enough with little pressure. We tiptoed silently into the house, and the stench hit me immediately.

The place fucking stunk. A stink of garbage and body odor and general uncleanliness. All the lights in the house were off save for a dim glow that probably came from a television set in what I assumed was the living room.

It looked like we’d entered the house through the kitchen, the little moonlight pouring in illuminating a sink of filthy dishes and a table covered in rotting food.

We made our way toward the light, trying not to breathe in the awful smells of the house. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I made out an armchair in the living room, it’s back to the kitchen, blocking the television’s glow.

A faint shape shifted in the seat, seeming to confirm what Kilroy had said earlier about the old woman’s TV habits. She was down here with us. Which meant the boy was upstairs, asleep in his bed.

Kilroy and I shared a look, and as we approached the old woman from behind, the silence was shattered by a frantic pattering of steps above us.

The sound of child sized feet maniacally running on aged and cracking hardwood filled the house, along with a distinctly childlike giggling.

The old woman let out a moan and stood, her back still to us. She began babbling to herself quietly. “No no no no god why won’t he stop, please god. Roger. Roger why.”

Suddenly, the old woman snapped around to face us, her wide bloodshot eyes glowing bright white in the dark. She was rail thin, her hair wild and frizzy. Ghoulish. A far cry from the demure, wealthy woman in the photo.

“God dammit…” Kilroy muttered. As the woman opened her mouth to scream, I lunged forward and grabbed her. I jerked her around roughly by the arm, and wrapped her neck in a chokehold, covering her mouth with my free hand.

She struggled, but she was far too decrepit to really fight back. She stunk like shit and I felt the dampness of her dirty nightgown on my pant leg.

Even with my hand covering her mouth, she continued babbling. “Calm down.” I hissed. “Is that your grandson up there?”

That seemed to make her go berserk. She shook her head violently and fought my grip with all her might.

“Go up and check,” I whispered to Kilroy. The pounding footsteps above us had stopped, but now we had no way of knowing where the kid actually was in the upstairs portion of the mansion. We couldn’t trust that “asleep in his room” intel anymore.

Before Kilroy could respond, the woman bit my hand with all the force her withered jaws could muster. In shock, I released my grip, and the woman stumbled forward, nearly screaming now.

“The boy, the boy, my boy. My sweet sweet Arthur. Arthur came back. He came back after all these years. After everything we did to him. I don’t know. Don’t know don’t know. Arthur shouldn’t be. And I don’t know what he wants. And I call Roger, a boy needs his father, needed him, always needed him. I don’t -”

The woman’s mad rambling was cut short by a single shot from Kilroy’s silenced pistol, aimed expertly between her eyes. She collapsed to the floor in a heap, blood gushing from the hole in her head.

Kilroy looked at me with disappointment. “How the hell could you let her go.” I flexed my hand, trying to work out the pain of the bite. “She fucking bit me…” I mumbled.

This whole scenario had thrown me off. This wasn’t my best work, not by a long shot.

“Guess we have to go up there now.” I said.

Kilroy silently turned and started up the living room stairs to the second floor. The upstairs had stayed silent during the melee. One half of the job was done, in any case. But the woman’s ravings had struck me somehow. Why had she talked as if this kid was her son, not her grandson.

This kid, Arthur. And where had he gone? Where had he come from?

What really piqued my interest, however, was the other name she’d repeated.

I didn’t have much time to ruminate on that though - No sooner had we reached the second floor of the house than one of the doors flung open with a slam, and a cackling and diminutive shape bounded out in a blur.

The child bolted right past us, knocking into us with a force that just felt wrong, somehow.

Kilroy gasped as she lost her grip on the banister and fell backwards into me, the two of us tumbling down the steps as the kid darted into the living room.

The entire time he screamed. “Mommy mommy mommy mommy! Play play play play!” Being closer to it now, I had a chance to really listen to the voice as we rolled backwards and landed in a heap. There was just something off about the way the kid sounded. Like the voice was an octave too deep.

Kilroy groaned as we collected ourselves , now back in the living room only feet from the old woman’s corpse.

The kid was nowhere to be found, and we heard a loud clattering in the kitchen, pots and pans and trash being flung about, that maniacal laughter and rambling never stopping. “Hungry hungry hungry!” It was topped off by the loud, wet sound of smacking lips.

I tapped Kilroy’s arm to get her attention. “Something isn’t right here. Do you hear that kid?”

Kilroy scowled. “The only thing that’s not right is you Taggert. Of all the times to have an off night.” She stood, smoothing out her suit and adjusting her glasses. “This should’ve been such an easy job.”

Before I could respond, that pattering of feet returned as the kid made his way back into the living room.

My back still to the kitchen, I saw a look of abject horror suddenly cross Kilroy’s face as the running behind me came to a dead stop.

Quickly, I scrambled to my feet and whirled around.

Behind me, was Arthur.

Not a kid, not a child. I didn’t know what in the holy the hell this thing was.

It was the same size as a four or five year old, that was clear. It had pallid, pasty white skin, cracked black nails on its pudgy fingers and toes. It clutched a blackened, rotting apple in one hand, the source of the smacking sounds before. It looked bloated, it’s alabaster flesh coated with swollen blue veins.

But it’s face. God it’s face.

Arthur’s head was a nearly perfectly round orb, absent of any visible ears or eyes or a nose. The entirety of its face was covered by a gaping, wide mouth.

Blackened, cracked lips rimmed a drooling and abyssal maw, filled with far, far too many square yellow teeth. A bloated purple tongue hung to the side, dripping viscous saliva to the floor.

Kilroy and I were frozen in place, lost in the wickedness of the sight we were faced with. Though Arthur had no eyes , or any clear way to see or perceive what was right in front of him, I could see what the thing was fixated on, what had stopped it in its tracks.

The woman’s body. His mother’s body.

Arthur dropped the apple, the rotten fruit hitting the ground with a wet thud.

The creature took a few timid steps toward the woman’s corpse. “Mommy…” it said meekly, all signs of the previous rambunctiousness gone.

I guess Kilroy had more of a killer instinct than even someone like me. It hadn’t taken her long to move on from the inherent horror of this situation, and get back to the job. The job is the job, after all.

Unable to take my eyes off the mourning creature, I had a perfect view of its faceless head snapping backward in a spray of dark liquid as Kilroy took her shot.

Arthur went flying backward from the impact, slamming into the living room wall. That snapped me out of it. Whatever that thing was, we weren’t safe here. We had been thrust into something that we weren’t prepared for.

“We have to get out of here.” I said. “Now. We’re going to the car.”

Kilroy scowled at me. “I know that.” “What the fuck did Detlev have us walk into here?” I asked her. “I don’t know.” The angry expression never left her face. “But either way, we did what we were supposed to right? Or at least, I did.”

I wasn’t so sure the thing was dead. My fears were confirmed when a guttural roar erupted from across the room, and Arthur lunged at Kilroy. She tried to get off another shot, but the bleeding thing was undeterred, now fueled by rage and hatred. It tackled Kilroy and set itself upon her, clawing at her chest, easily ripping out wet meaty chunks like a barbecue chef shredding pork. “Mommy mommy mommy mommy mommy!” It screamed as it rended her flesh.

The room filled with the scent of copper as Kilroy wheezed. I rushed forward and grabbed at the thing, desperately trying to do what I could to help my partner. As I pointed my gun at the back of its head, it turned, feeling my grip on its clammy arm.

Lightening fast, it spread open its gaping maw and clamped down with its teeth on my hand as I fired, missing my shot. It bit, hard, rearing it’s head back and taking my thumb and index finger with it in a massive spray of red. I howled in pain and fell backward.

As Arthur turned to continue its assault on Kilroy, it was blasted in its empty face by another point blank shot from her pistol. With her last ounces of strength, body convulsing, Kilroy had made a desperate attempt to do the job.

Arthur slumped forward to the floor, dark black liquid seeping from the chunks Kilroy had taken out of its head.

I was in the process of trying to fashion a makeshift tourniquet out of my torn glove, blood leaking from my mangled hand.

I heard Kilroy gurgling, taking wheezing, shaky breaths. Slowly, I walked over to her. Blood poured from her mouth, her entire chest cavity nearly exposed. Arthur had done a lot of work in a short time. Kilroy’s entire torso had been turned to wet ground meat.

Her blonde hair was stained with blood, glasses thrown asunder. We stared into each other’s eyes for a moment that felt longer than it really was. I nodded, raised my gun and put Kilroy out of her misery. It was the least I could do.

Not thinking Arthur was really dead, I put my boot on the things leaking head , hoping that would be enough to keep it down if it stirred again in its wounded state.

My mind was working now. I reached into Kilroy’s blazer pocket, sopping wet with dark blood, and withdrew the cell phone.

Kilroy always got a call after enough time had passed to ensure the job was done. One like this, one that looked so easy on paper, shouldn’t have taken long.

After a few moments, the phone rang. I answered. An unfamiliar voice on the other end spoke.

“Done?”

My reply was terse. “Detlev.” I said.

Silence.

“Give me Detlev.” I commanded.

The line went dead.

It was a long shot, but I figured it would work. Detlev would need to know if something went wrong with his two best men.

Sure enough, after a few tense minutes passed, minutes in which I never took my eyes off Arthur, the phone rang again.

“Taggert.” A commanding, bassy voice on the other end. Detlev.

“Yeah.”

“What’s the problem? You can imagine my shock when I was told that Kilroy herself didn’t answer the call.”

“Yeah.” I repeated. “What the hell was all this? This job…” I trailed off. “This job wasn’t what it was supposed to be.”

Silence on the other end.

“Taggert,” Detlev finally broke the silence. “There’s just certain things in this world that aren’t fit to discuss. Things men do, mistakes men make. When a crazy old flame you haven’t spoken to in years starts incessantly calling you, your places of business, yelling about seeing an illegitimate child that’s been dead for decades… Well you can’t have that, can you?”

I said nothing.

He continued. “And even if you know this old hag is lying, you know that it’s bullshit, well… you still have to put a stop to it, right? And you put your best men on it, just in case. Just on the small, off chance that the little ankle biter, the bastard son who drowned in a well all those years ago, really did come back.”

I considered his words, still not opening my mouth to answer.

“Now, let me talk to Sasha.”

After a beat, I realized that he meant Kilroy.

“She’s… Kilroy didn’t make it.”

“That truly, truly is unfortunate.” Detlev opined, a seemingly genuine sadness in his voice . “Well, if the job is done, you can go. The clean up crew will be by shortly to do their job. I knew I could trust you with this, Taggert. You’ll be one of my top men for a long, long time.”

Detlev hung up. His story made sense in a twisted way, and the earlier thought I’d had about the other name the old woman had repeated floated back to the front of my mind. Roger.

Roger Detlev.

Like I said, I try my best not to know too much about my targets, my associates, my bosses. But being totally clueless is just as dangerous as knowing too much.

I knew enough, just enough to keep myself aware.

I wasn’t a fan, to put it lightly, of the way things had gone that evening. The job is the job, but that’s only true when you can trust your boss.

A man like Detlev, it was clear, I couldn’t trust. We’d almost been set up to fail that night - our competence making us well armed sacrificial lambs.

I stared into Kilroy’s wide, lifeless eyes, rimmed with blood now from the bullet hole in her head.

We’d been a good team. And Kilroy, Sasha, whatever her name was, whoever she was - I’d liked her in a way.

It wasn’t right, and it wasn’t fair.

As I predicted, Arthur began to stir beneath my feet. The creature let out a pained wail and clacked it’s massive teeth, black fluid leaking from its head.

I knew who Roger Detlev was - knew a few of his prominent haunts, clubs he owned, one of the swanky pads in the city where the old bastard slept. I figured I’d find him at one of them.

I leaned down and talked directly to the thing, figuring that whatever Arthur was now, he’d been human once. Before his dad or mom or whoever Detlev had gotten to do the deed had thrown him down that well.

“Hey Arthur - wanna go see your dad?”

---

Credits