Kill Whitey

made it through this, I’d have to shave my head for a while, until my hair grew back—if it even grew back at all.

“Sondra? Are you here? It’s okay to come out now. Whitey won’t bother you again. I killed him.”

More silence. If Sondra was hiding somewhere in the gloom, then she was too terrified to answer me.

I hid Whitey’s empty handgun beneath a moldering pile of old, greasy shop rags. They didn’t look like they’d been touched in years. With luck, they’d stay that way. If I’d been thinking clearer, I would have hid the gun better, but in my state of mind, it was the best that I could do.

“Sondra? We’d better talk, don’t you think? Whitey said something…well, something that’s kind of fucked up. A couple things, actually. I need to know if he was telling the truth.”

No response. I started to get angry with her again. Whitey wasn’t lying. Of that I was convinced. I’d seen his expression. Heard his voice. The baby was his, and he’d been trying to stop Sondra from killing it. It would have been almost noble if he hadn’t killed three of my friends in the fucking process. Pro-life. Pro-choice. Didn’t fucking matter because this time, both ended in death. Sondra had lied to me. And then, on top of all that, there was the little matter of some missing money. Was she planning on stringing me along about that, too? Was that what my friends had died for? Was it worth my life being destroyed?

As I reached the far wall, I noticed a gray metal door, concealed in the shadows behind a pile of debris. I approached it slowly. The dust on the floor around it had recently been disturbed. There were footprints and a large mark where the door had opened and then closed again. I tugged on the handle. It wasn’t locked. The hinges creaked loud enough that even I could hear them. Daylight streamed through the open doorway, temporarily blinding me. Shielding my eyes against the glare, I peered outside. The exit led out into a vacant lot behind the warehouse. Tall weeds swayed in the breeze. All around me were more decrepit warehouses and buildings. I didn’t see any cops. There were no police sirens or helicopters, but given my injuries, I wasn’t sure that I trusted my hearing. Stepping out into the sun, I crouched down behind an empty oil drum and took a good look around, checking everywhere. There was no sign of Sondra—or anyone else. I was pretty sure the coast was clear. The question was, for how long?

“Sondra,” I called. “Where are you?”

Still no answer.

Unsure of what to do next, I sat there for a bit, catching my breath and trying not to shake. I was exhausted. My hands kept trembling, and despite the day’s heat, my teeth chattered. My bloodstained clothes were stiff and sticky and chafing my skin in some places. I needed a shower, a whole bottle of Advil, an ice-cold beer, and twenty-four hours of sleep. After that, I needed to cry. And clear things up with the police, if that was even possible. And bury my dead friends. And cry some more. And check on my cat. And try to return to a normal life—a life that seemed to be slipping farther and farther away with each passing moment.

After a few minutes, the ringing in my ears faded to background noise, even though the pain in my head remained. I tried shouting again, hoping I’d be able to hear her this time.

“Sondra? Come on out now. We need to talk. It’s okay! Whitey’s dead. He can’t hurt you anymore.”

My voice echoed back to me. A big crow took flight from a nearby telephone pole, squawking in anger at the disturbance. He sounded as pissed off as I felt. A mosquito buzzed around my face and then landed on my arm. I slapped it, leaving behind a splash of blood. I swept the crushed remains to the ground. One more little death in a day full of them.

“Sondra?” I cupped my hands around my mouth. “Enough of this bullshit! You need to be straight with me. Whitey said something about money. And he said something else, too. He said that—”

Tap-tap-tap…

I glanced around. Something was tapping against glass. I wasn’t sure where the sound had come from. At first, I thought maybe I’d imagined it. But then I heard it again, louder this time.

Tap-tap-tap…

I scanned my surroundings, studying the buildings, trying to find the source. I spotted movement behind a dirty window on the second floor of a nearby building. I stood up and stared harder. There was a figure behind the grime. It was Sondra, and she wasn’t tapping on the window—she was pounding on it with her fists hard enough to shake the glass. Although my hearing was returning, it was far from normal.

I shuffled out from behind the barrel and limped towards her. She beat the window harder.

“What?” I cupped my ear with my hand. “I can’t hear you, Sondra!”

She pointed at me, shouting something. I couldn’t make it out, so I guessed.

“Me? I’m okay. Don’t worry. Whitey’s dead. Wasn’t so hard to kill, after all. Now come on down before the cops get here.”

She shook her head and pointed again. Her movements were frantic.

“I’m telling you, I’m fine, goddamn it! Now get down here.”

She began yanking on the window, trying to open it. I saw her straining, but it must have been nailed shut. Frustrated, Sondra pointed again and screamed. Then two things dawned on me. The first was that Sondra wasn’t pointing at me.

She was pointing behind me.

And the second thing was that I was a fucking idiot.

“Oh shit…”

Slowly, I turned around.

Whitey’s fist smashed into my jaw. My vision blurred. I stumbled backward, my mouth filling with blood again.

“So, Mr. Gibson, shall we try this once more?”

I swore, and then he hit me again.

seventeen

Blood dribbled down my chin. One of my bottom teeth was loose and it wiggled back and forth when my tongue brushed against it. Doing so brought a fresh wave of pain, so I stopped. I curled my hands into fists, spaced my feet apart, and got ready for the next punch.

Whitey was in bad shape. He looked like he’d been dipped in a vat of blood. There wasn’t an inch of his body that wasn’t crusted with gore. The crotch of his pants was a torn and mangled mess. Sunlight shone through the bullet hole in his forehead, and when he started to swing at me again, I caught a glimpse of the back of his head— except that there was no back. His hair and scalp and skull were missing, replaced with a huge, gaping wound. I could see inside of it, and what I saw could only lead to madness because nobody, descendant of Rasputin or not, could survive such an awful wound. His brains were…scattered. Incomplete. And yet here he was, beating the shit out of me.

I dodged the third blow easily enough. His fist swung past me and I felt the air whoosh by the side of my head. What little hair I had left fluttered in the breeze. Whitey staggered, knocked off balance by his own thrust. Taking advantage of his forward momentum, I threw a punch of my own, aiming for his stomach, and connected hard. My fist sank into his abdomen. Whitey gasped and spit flew from his mouth, but instead of collapsing, he grabbed my wrist and yanked on my arm, twisting it behind me. The pain was excruciating. It felt like he was tearing my arm out of its socket. I fell to my knees, unable to do anything except scream.

Laughing, Whitey wrenched my arm further behind my back and shoved me to the ground. My face flattened against the dirt. Stones dug into my cheeks. Dust filled my mouth and nostrils. I couldn’t breath. His foot slammed down on the back of my neck, holding me in place. His grip on my arm tightened. I managed to twist my head an inch to the side, and sucked in air.

“Let go of me, you fucker!”

“Nyet.”

I coughed. He pushed down harder with his foot.

“There is no time to be cruel,” Whitey said. “No time to torture you, as much as I would like to. So, although it is against my wishes, we will have to make this quick. Pity. I would have enjoyed hurting you, Mr. Gibson. You personify everything that I hate about your country.”