A man in a brown suit exits a club with a cluster of body guards. He’s short, short enough to hide within the mass of a tall, muscular soldiers that surround him. They were identical suits and black glasses. They move in unison, a perfectly structured ballet that escorts the man safely into the car, where he hides behind a double layer of bulletproof glass.
A shot rings out through the dead city. The glass shutters and caves in. The car bounces lightly from the force. The guards fall out of their perfect routine. The hive mentality breaks. They panic and shout. Their leader is dead, and now they’re lost.
Time passes. Forty miles away, just outside of town, a thin, elderly gentleman breathes in deep. He tenses, for a moment, than softly swings. The golf ball rolls to a stop just before the hole. His protection glances over at it, but quickly loses interest. A friend of the elderly man nods and laughs at a joke. The guard stares off into the distance, a sentinel always on the lookout for signs of danger. A bullet tears through the chest, splitting his armor and torso in half. It passes through instantly and burrows deep into the ground.
The older men panic. They pile into a small white cart parked a few feet away. A second shot brings down the friend. Another quickly follows and finds the last. The cart rolls to a stop at the bottom of a hill. The park is silent once more.
Time passes again, but there’s still no sign of the sun. The sky has turned a darker shade of purple. It’s coming. Soon now.
I travel back into the city. She drives me, follows me blindly. We find a small house just outside of the slums. Not his, of course. It’s a mistress. One of many. We wait for hours in the damp cold. He exits suddenly, holding a bag of trash and carrying on a conversation with the woman inside. We fire as one, me and my girl. Thirty-two silenced bullets tear the monster down and back out of this world. We drive off before even the dead man realizes what has happened.
We exit the car a mile into town and split up. We slowly make our way back through the labyrinth, back toward the city. I find a bike and pedal casually through back alleys and side roads.
I return to my apartment for the first time in weeks. The coffee pot it gone, along with any other trace of Martin and his men. I pull up the blinds, and the sky has faded back to black. But the ash finally stops falling from the sky. I’ve stopped the pain. I severed their control. Maybe, with time, the city would come back to life. Maybe new souls would return. The history of this place has been wiped clean and forgotten. The last of the Spiral would fall to pieces without leaders to bind them. They would scatter into the wind and disappear into the shadows once more.
It was done.
Time passes, a little more slowly now. Where was Jessica? She still hadn’t returned. I look out the windows, down into the streets, but the world’s still empty and the skies get darker with each passing minute, obscuring the landscape. She couldn’t be dead. Not her. Even if the bosses were still alive to order it. She wasn’t a victim. She was a cold, hard killer. Same as myself. No. If she wasn’t here, it was by her choice. The only question was whether or not she’d chose to return. I sit on the kitchen table, watching the door, and wait for her to return.
Time passes.
I awake on my back in the darkness to the sound of a knock. It’s the same as before. The same sound. I think of Martin, but he had run his course. There was no coming back for him now. One of his minions? Maybe. I find my shotgun and cautiously move toward the door.
I grab at the handle as the sound stops. Something slides down at my feet. It’s a yellowed scrap of paper. Three names are written in block letters along the side: The Lieutenant. The Butcher. The Watchman.
I crumble the paper into a ball and pull open the door, but the hall is empty once more. I bolt it closed and look around the place. There’s still no sign of Jessica. I put the gun down and reread the names.
I know them. I can’t quite say who they are, but some part of me knows them. I’ve said the names before, I’ve talked about them –talked to them. They were… not friends, but associates.
The list was identical to Martins, except that it was decorated with a small symbol, a spiral. The message was clear. I was supposed to kill these men, as I had the others. I wasn’t killing Spiral, I was killing for Spiral. Martin had used me. Those were my bosses, not his. That was why I knew the names. He was loyal, even in death. Both sides of him has played me.
But not this time. I tear up the list and drop it into the toilet. I stick a chair under my front door to help block the entrance. They would be coming for me anytime now. They know I wouldn’t help them, not again. They know I’d try and betray them again. They know me better than I know myself. They see too far into the future. They know what I’ll do long before I even see the choice. They’ll manipulate me, use me again. No matter how hard I fight it, they turn my actions against me, again and again. There was no winning. There never was.
I break a hole in my ceiling and wrap my belt around the support beam. Balancing on the back of the couch, I stick my head through the noose. I take my Browning with me, in case they come to stop me, and I grip it a little too tightly as I jump and kick the couch aside. The metal of the buckle cuts into my neck. I try to keep myself steady, so I can get a decent shot if they break in, but they don’t.
The world fades, but the brain clears. Martin, Jessica, the list. I was being played from the start. She wasn’t my wife. She was the femme fatale, the bringer of love and doom. Martin had been evil from the start. He was twisted through and through, I should have seen that. And the list, the new list at least, was never meant to be followed. It was meant to bring me here. It was meant to push my that last final distance over the edge. I was the only thing that tied Spiral to the murders. Now I was just a traitor that butchered his bosses and offed himself in some filthy apartment in the slums. I played into their hands with every moment and every decision, but I find the courage or the patience to stop now.
I look through the window, expecting to see a hint of dawn, to see the world rejoice at the sight of my death. But it doesn’t. The world just fades to black.
