As he sat in a desolate corner of a suburban bar, licking the dripping froth from him beer mug, the events of the past few days began to unfold in front of him. So much had changed in those couple of days, what he had done would shape the rest of his life, he knew that. Although in the last year of his teen hood he looked mature for his age, something that he was proud of. He wondered if it was necessary to take that man’s life wouldn’t it have been alright just to let him go. But, he argued with himself “the man had tried to impose himself on his girl”, no one messes around with his girl he said aloud and took a large sip from the mug.
He remembered the sweet smile she gave him as he squeezed the trigger, a smile that was almost sadistic in nature. He remembered how she had battered the skull of the man with the pistol’s butt long after he was dead. This had surprised him a lot, but he thought not to think about all this. He didn’t want to remember her like this. He just wanted to remember her as the sweet little innocent girl that he loved so much. It had been just three weeks but he knew she was the girl for him, it was only by chance that he stumbled upon her through his junkie friends. His friends had thrown a party at a farm house and like many others she too was drawn by the thought of free booze and drugs.
At first she had appeared to him as another lost soul, but their was something in her eyes that galvanized him. Soon they started talking, firstly just small talk but eventually he realized that she was much deeper that she appeared , their was something mysterious in her that fascinated him. He was pained to see the puncture marks on her arms, where she had happily injected herself with her poison many a times. As to why it hurt him to see her like that he didn’t know, but it was then and there that he decided that he would be the change in her life.
Slowly she began to be sober more often, she liked his company, it was first time in her life that she had someone dedicated to her. She was aware of the control she had over him and this delighted her. But for him she had become everything her thoughts enveloped his mind day and night. Even in his dreams she was present in some form or other. So he wasn’t surprised at himself when one day he told her “I can do anything for you”. She had laughed then, ruffled his hair and called him cute which made him blush and made her laugh more. But he had meant those words.
So when she came to him that night in a distraught state with her clothes torn at places and her face scratched, he just uttered three words who, when, where. He knew where his father kept his pistol, he was only ten when his father had taught him how to use it.
They waited for the man to leave the restaurant where he was dining, this wait though agonizing had its soothing effect, as he decided against killing the man just a few punches here and their would be enough he thought.
At gun point they had taken the man to an isolated corner of a street where he had begged for her forgiveness, but she had only laughed at this. “Kill him “she had shouted, he tried to reason with her but when she said “kill him, if you love me”, he knew he had to do it.
He could still hear the echo of the gunshot ringing in his ear, as he sat there sipping his beer, the glass was almost empty now. The noise of the gun had drawn an emaciated beggar to the scene but he hadn’t given much thought about this until yesterday when he read the newspaper headlines “Brother of local mafia boss slain”, the picture of the man there appeared vaguely familiar to him. It was then that he fully understood the gravity of the situation, the thick muck in which he was. But he was confident that his identity would not be revealed. He drained whatever was left in the mug in one big gulp and decided to head home. As he stepped outside he was greeted by the midnight chill, he rubbed his palms and started walking. It would take him just 15 minutes to reach home 10 if he took the shortcut. A cold gust made him pull up the collar of his overcoat and he decided to take the shortcut.
As he started walking he soon realized there was another person taking the same route as his, he looked back and saw a man in mid forties smoking a cigarette. It didn’t appear to him then that the man was following him and had been given a contract on him. It was only when he neared his home and the man was still behind him did he suspect that something was wrong. He could have dashed and been safe inside his home, but something in his mind stopped him from doing that, he didn’t want the man to know where he lived. So he ran in another direction away from his home, as he ran the man followed. For his age the man was a good runner and the boy found it very hard to get him off his tracks. The cat and dog chase went on for a while until the boy made a wrong decision, one of the many wrong decisions he had taken recently.
He turned into an alley, a mistake he soon realized when he saw the wall at the other end staring back at him. He turned back to get in the open, to make another attempt, to run further but the assailant was standing at the other end with a smirk on his face, he knew the chase was finally over. Physically the man was much weaker than the boy, but the gleaming colt in his hand gave him the advantage. So this is how it is going to end the boy thought. He had seen such things happening in movies, people dying with an unknown bullet to their name, but you just could not believe that it could happen to you too. It is true he thought, when people say that your whole life flashes past you as your about to die , he could see everything clearly now his childhood, his family, his friends, the stupidities of adolescence, the first smoke, his first kill……. His chain of thoughts was broken by hot metal piercing his heart, the “tut” of the silencer came afterwards. The bullet ripped his heart and got lodged in the rib cage. He fell down with a thud on his knees, this would have hurt normally but the numbness had already crept in. As he lay there like a tree whose stump has just been cut, he smiled as everything became lucid to him the girl, the love and the betrayal.
The shooter was a veteran of many kills, he had seen too many people die, most of them he himself put in an early grave, they mostly shout and shriek when they died. There was eeriness in the silence of this boy, the calmness with which he had accepted his fate seemed quite strange. He took a few steps towards his victim with the sound of his boots reverberating in the alley. They both looked at each other, lot of unanswered questions in the boy’s mind; the man was a professional, this was his job.
The silence was finally broken by the executioner “ok kid its time to die” the first words spoken by either one of them in the past half an hour, the line was one of his favorites, he had picked it up from an old western classic. He placed the revolver on the boy’s temple, the gun coughed again and the boy fell sideways with the smile still there and the eyes wide open.
The man bent down and closed the boy’s eyes , open eyes of a body was one thing he didn’t like , bodies ask too many questions why, what, who……the answers to which he never had.
