Authors: Patrick Logan
Thick men that were here for only one reason.
These men were here to collect.
“Why don’t you sit down?” the man with the short blond hair asked. His thin lips curled into a smirk. “I think it’s about time we had a little chat, Walter.”
Refusing to sit hadn’t
gone over well with the hitman. In the end, the man had forced him onto a wobbly wooden chair and had proceeded to tie up his wrists behind his back with telephone cable so tightly that Walter could barely feel his fingers.
Despite his predicament, he couldn’t help but laugh in response to the man’s most recent demands.
“Look around, you fucking moron—I have no money.”
The man sitting in the chair in front of him bent forward, his expression souring.
He leaned in so far that their foreheads nearly touched.
“Don’t fuck with Sabra,” he hissed. His breath smelled of stale bread. “Sabra wants his money. He gave you the product, and now he wants his money.”
Walter pulled as far away from the thick man with the short blond hair as possible, which, granted, wasn’t even far enough to breathe fresh air, given the telephone cord that dug into his wrists before twisting through the back of the kitchen chair on which he sat.
Sabra
.
An image of the massive, fat man, like a humid pile of uncooked pizza dough, flashed in his mind. Sabra, with a mouth foul enough to rival his own stench. Sabra, who controlled nearly all of the heroin distribution in the Northeast. Sabra, of the infamous torture methods that involved a man’s scrotum.
Fucking Sabra.
The man had stupidly given Walter an 8-ball of heroin to sell, most of which he had promptly injected, and what little remained he had stuffed into his fridge a few moments ago. A part of him knew that he should be frightened, or at the very least concerned. He had heard stories of men who had crossed Sabra, men who—
Walter felt a twinge in his shoulder, as if someone had prodded his flesh with a cattle gun. The sensation fired all the way up to his throat, causing the cords in his neck to stand out.
He gritted his teeth and fought the urge to cry out.
Something told him that he needed to get high again soon, only this time it wouldn’t only be for him, but for the cracker as well. As much as he wanted it out of him, he was fairly certain that having it curl up into a translucent shell like the rest of them on Main Street was likely a worse proposition.
Walter blinked, trying to keep his head relatively clear. The man before him, mistaking his expression as one of fear, smirked.
“What’s a matter? You think—”
Walter didn’t let him finish. Instead, he lunged forward, tilting onto the chair’s front two legs, and drove his forehead into the bridge of the unsuspecting man’s nose.
Blood immediately gushed forth from the gash on the bridge of the man’s nose and from both of Walter’s nostrils at the same time. Hot liquid sprayed Walter’s face, and he rocked backward, teetering before his chair finally settled.
The man made an
ungh
sound and instinctively brought a hand to his face, trying to stem the bleeding. “You motherfucker!” he yelled, his voice coming out thick and nasally.
Now it was Walter’s turn to smile.
There was a commotion behind Walter as the other man, the shorter one with the dark hair, stopped rooting through Walter’s things and started to come over toward them, but the man with the blood seeping out from between his knuckles and dripping onto his chin held out the hand with the gun. Walter noticed that the barrel was longer than expected, and it took him a moment to realize that there was a silencer on the end of it.
“Stay the fuck over there, Sherk. Just keep looking,” he instructed. Then he turned to Walter and stared directly into his eyes. “I’ll take care of this bastard.”
Somewhere behind him, Walter heard one of his cupboards being thrown wide, followed by the tinkling of glass. He couldn’t turn to see what the man was doing, his tightly bound hands so restricted his range of motion, but he hoped to Christ that the man stayed the fuck out of the fridge.
I need to get high.
The bruises from being launched from the car following the explosion at the gas station, the cuts on his cheek and face, his stiff leg—all this pain was coming back now, and he needed something strong to mute these sensations.
When he turned back to the blond man with the bleeding nose, Walter was surprised to see that he was once again smiling.
“So”—his voice sounded strange and muffled what with his hand still trying to stem the bleeding—“you’re a tough guy now, Walter?”
He laughed and then pulled his hand away and spat blood onto the carpet.
“Good, good—tough guys are always the most fun.”
When the man leaned in this time, he made sure to keep enough distance between them that Walter couldn’t reach him.
His smile vanished and a coldness returned to his eyes.
“This is how it’s going to work, Walter—I’m going to get that money for Sabra. I’m going to get whatever product you have left as well, and I’m going to give it to him on your behalf.”
He leaned away, his leather jacket crinkling loudly.
“I’m going to give Sabra both the money and the product as a token of your”—he waved the barrel of the gun in a small circle—“appreciation.”
Walter said nothing and the man shrugged.
“That’s okay, you don’t need to say anything. I am just telling you what is going to happen. Now—”
There was a tapping sound from behind Walter, drawing the blond-haired goon’s attention. His eyes floated above Walter and landed on something behind him.
“I see you have a son,” he said with a smile, his gaze returning to Walter.
Walter’s expression remained flat.
“Ah yes, I can see it in your eyes… you love your son, don’t you, Walter? Who would have thought that a fucked-up junkie could love another person, much less a son? And a woman? How did you get a woman to fuck you?”
The man raised an eyebrow.
“You rape a bitch, Walter?” His voice was a mocking whisper. “Yeah, I bet you raped some bitch.”
Again, Walter resisted the urge to reply.
“And I see that he got your looks, Walter. How unfortunate. So now”—he waved the gun in a circle again—“we have added another element to this equation.”
Walter finally understood; the man with the short black hair and the scar across his throat, the one who didn’t speak, the one called Sherk, had found the picture of Tyler on top of his TV.
Took them long enough. Geniuses, these men ain’t.
“We know about your son, so maybe you can simply tell you where the product is? The money? Unless, of course, we have to search for your son
and
the gear, Walter…”
Walter couldn’t hold it any longer. His cheeks puffed and he suddenly burst out laughing. He laughed so hard that tears started streaming down his cheeks. At some point during his outbreak, he realized that the man in front of him was saying something, but he couldn’t make out any of the words—he was laughing too hard.
The man eventually gave up and leaned back in his chair and waited for Walter’s fit to finish. For a hired gun, a debt collector, he certainly had more patience than Walter had expected. Walter didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
“You fucking moron,” Walter finally managed, still chuckling slightly. He blinked hard, clearing the tears from his vision. “You find my son, and
then
I’ll be able to give you the money.”
A confused expression crossed the blond man’s face.
“You find my boy, and I’ll find the money to pay you,” Walter repeated, still fighting back laughter.
The confusion on the man’s face contorted and into a mask of anger.
And there it was: the anger.
Walter knew that the man wouldn’t be able to keep his cool for much longer. Patient or not, he was still a hired gun with a job to do, and he would only put up with so much shit before he acted out.
End it
, Walter willed sourly.
End this shit
.
As if reading his thoughts, the man reached behind his back and withdrew a pillow from the chair. In one fluid motion, he placed the pillow on top of Walter’s thigh, then brought the gun around and placed the barrel roughly six inches above his knee.
Walter gritted his teeth.
Without so much as a word, the hitman with the military-style haircut smirked and then pulled the trigger.
The shot was nearly
deafening in the small apartment, even with the silencer on the end of the gun and with the pillow as an additional measure to keep the noise down.
The pain, on the other hand, wasn’t all that bad.
Walter felt a burning sensation, as if a lit cigar were being extinguished in his thigh, followed by a dull throb that seemed to flush through the entire muscle.
He had been through a lot in his forty-some-odd years, including being stabbed in the ribs, the result of another drug-fueled spat that had nearly killed him, and he, in turn, had dealt his own damage, including whipping his son until the boy’s back was raw and peeling.
But he had never shot anyone, nor he had ever been shot.
Never too old for new experiences.
He opened his eyes and stared at his assailant, his breaths coming in abbreviated puffs.
“You—” Walter began through gritted teeth.
You piece of shit
, was what he had wanted to say, but something happened before he could finish the sentence.
There was a tightness in his chest, and it was suddenly difficult to draw a breath. At first Walter thought that he was having a heart attack, that all of the years of abusing his rail-thin body were finally coming back to haunt him—that the devil had come to take his one hundred and forty-five pounds of flesh.
But after only a few seconds, he realized that the pain wasn’t
coming
from his chest, at least not directly; the pain was originating from his shoulder.
To Walter, it felt as if metal bands had been wrapped over and around his shoulder muscles, and with every breath, these bands were being tightened. This squeezing and constriction radiated in thick ribbons across his narrow chest.
A heart attack… it
is
a heart attack.
A scream bubbled to his lips as the pain intensified, and he dropped his chin to his chest. With his lower lip curling in horror, Walter took in his own body. Through the open flannel shirt, he could see his pectorals—no more than thin membranes of muscle—clenching so tightly that veins he didn’t even know existed had pushed their way to the surface and jutted out.
He screamed again as the pain was ratcheted up another notch; it felt as if his arm were being torn completely from the socket. And as this pain radiated through him, he turned his head skyward, shut his eyes against the pain, and clenched his entire body, trying to fend off the agony that enveloped his torso.
“Not so tough now, Walter?” the blond man spat through a sneer.
Walter opened his eyes and looked at the man.
The man’s words seemed appropriate, seemed right for a hitman such as this, but his eyes were just a little off, the inner corners lifting ever so slightly. Clearly, Walter’s visceral reaction to being shot, although desired, was overwrought.
He squeezed his eyes closed again as another wave of agony overcame him. Spit dripped from his lower lip and fell to his reddening chest.
What is happening to me?
his mind screamed.
The pain in his shoulder and chest was so intense that the gunshot wound to his upper thigh was but a mere afterthought. And even that was offering it more credit than it probably deserved; it may have occupied a part of his mind, but it was a very small part, an ant inside the whale of his shoulder pain.
Something cold tapped just below his chin. If it weren’t for the fact that his teeth were so clenched that the cords on his neck jutted out, the tapping might have caused his teeth to click together. As it was, the only reason he noticed it was that it was cool—and he was burning up.
He lowered his head, but kept his eyes firmly closed.
What the fuck is happening to me?!
It couldn’t be a heart attack—after all, a heart attack couldn’t hurt this badly, could it?
The tightness was spreading, radiating from his right shoulder across his chest and back, eventually making it to his other arm. Both arms were nearly completely numb now.
“Walter?”
Another wave of pain bubbled and frothed inside him, and he squeezed his eyes so hard that he saw stars. He opened his mouth just wide enough to slide his tongue between his teeth. He had meant to just put his tongue there, for something to bite down on, to focus his pain, but he was overzealous, and a small piece of flesh dislodged from the tip. His mouth immediately filled with the coppery taste of blood.
But this didn’t matter.
What mattered was the pain.
And when it came again, it was unbearable.
A scream wouldn’t cut it this time; instead, Walter’s jaw went slack and a moan veritably fell out of his mouth, a horrible, undulating sound as his head rolled uncontrollably on his neck as if his muscles had suddenly turned to jelly.
“Walter?” the man asked again, far away this time, his voice sounding as if whispered in a tunnel.
Somewhere hidden in the deep recesses of his consciousness, Walter understood that the hitman had pulled the pillow from his leg and was now examining his thigh, prodding the torn flesh with the barrel of his gun.
“Sherk! Get the fuck over here,” he hollered to his partner. “I think he’s having a heart attack or something… this shouldn’t kill him. We can’t let him die, Sherk! Sabra wants him alive!”
A shadow passed over Walter’s face as the man stood and blocked the light from a bare bulb overhead, a sensation that barely registered with his eyes so tightly closed.
“Come take a look at his leg!” the man sounded anxious now.
Clearly, no matter how tough this hitman was, he was obviously terrified of what Sabra might do to him if Walter died.
This shouldn’t kill him…
Walter dead meant no product
and
no money. Walter dead meant Sabra had no more need for a blond, square-headed collector of all things human and illicit.
And this said nothing of his sidekick with the dark hair and thick pink scar across his throat.
Eventually Walter’s pain subsided, blending into the background like an oppressive, yet palatable darkness. Even though he was terrified at the prospect of its inevitable return, for some reason a moment of clarity washed over him.
He knew what was causing the pain, and it most definitely wasn’t the gunshot wound in his thigh.
“Look,” he heard the blond man say.
Walter felt something prodding his thigh, a sensation that registered only as a non-specific pressure. It should have hurt—the man digging about in his bullet wound should have more than hurt; it should have been excruciating.
But this wasn’t.
“See? This shouldn’t kill him… right? It’s a fucking leg wound.”
There was a pause, and even with his eyes closed, he knew that the other man was also inspecting his leg.
“See? Fuck!
Fuck!
What do we do? Lie him down, try to stop the bleeding?
Fuck!
Wake the fuck up, Walter!”
Walter’s breath was coming out in short bursts from between clenched teeth. The pain, like high tide, was building, on the verge of returning; he could feel his shoulder muscles tightening, their fatigued fibers twitching from their previous session.
“No,” he managed at last, eyes still closed. “Not my leg.”
He tried to take a few deeper breaths, but his body was so tense that his diaphragm seemed to have lost its ability to relax.
“What?” the man with the blond hair asked.
“My shoulder,” Walter whispered. “It’s my shoulder.”
The air around Walter got hot and smelled of stale bread again as the man with the broken nose leaned in close. Any recollection of doing this but a few minutes ago, of getting his nose smashed by Walter’s forehead, had clearly been forgotten.
“What?”
“My shoulder,” Walter repeated.
Then the pain exploded again and he screamed.
Moments before he was once again forced into the dark recesses of his mind, Walter felt hands grab either side of his flannel shirt and tear it away.
The sound of ripping fabric was followed by a sharp intake of breath.
“Oh my god—oh my god!”