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So, call me insane, or call me an optimist—whatever term you want to label me with, throw it on me. Because in the end, I’d go down fighting.
Now, I just had to wait for the next opportunity.
More time passed, relentless and uneventful.
I lay on my back on the bed, tucked under the quilt to avoid the growing chill in the room. A moth banged and bonked into the lights and I watched, intrigued, as it battered its tiny body against the object, desperate to get even closer with no success.
When my brain began comparing me to the moth, and put Eoin in the place of the light, I viciously threw the thought away.
Just as I was counting an endless number of bottles on the wall in my head, the lock clicked and the door swung open. I braced myself for Sable’s cheery smile, or Eoin’s pompous glower, but instead was greeted by an unfamiliar face. I sat up as he tentatively came into the room.
He moved like a human, and I had a split second of wondering if it was daylight out. If so, Eoin would likely be asleep. My mind raced as I stared at the man, taking him in. He was young, and short—maybe five-five or five-six, with hair a goldenrod yellow and eyes the color of a cloudless sky. He reminded me of warm summer days—full of possibilities and vivid color.
He was dressed in plain clothes, but over those he wore what appeared to be a suit of plastic, with vinyl gloves that reached up to his elbows.
My eyes flicked to the door, which he had left cracked behind him. I could see the sleeve of a second man standing guard. It was impossible to tell if he was also human from just that tiny sliver of view, but was I willing to bet my life that he was?
I uncurled myself from the sheets and stood, but the man held a hand out toward me, as though he were warding me off. “Please, don’t.” His eyes were wide. “I just need to clean this up and then I’ll be gone, I swear. Please—please don’t make this harder than it has to be.” Fear flickered in his eyes as he looked at the numerous bodies.
Definitely human. And so achingly young. He couldn’t be older than his early twenties. What was he doing here? How did he get himself wrapped up into this mess?
I bit my lip before nodding at him. I gave him a small smile. He exhaled sharply, like he had been holding his breath until waiting for my confirmation that I wouldn’t cause any problems.
“Do you need any help?” I asked, voice quiet. I held my hands tucked in front of me, the picture of demure innocence in my sweats as I edged toward him.
“No!” the man almost shouted, then followed up in a quieter tone, “No, thank you. Please just stay where you are.”
“Of course,” I replied, watching as the second man entered the room—also a human and similarly dressed to the first man—and together they pulled the pieces of corpses, one by one, onto a trolley that waited just outside the door. They had it propped open with a door stopper, and always kept their bodies between me and the door itself. As they worked, they kept a wary eye on me but I had situated myself on the foot of the bed, with my knees pulled up to my chest to keep my feet out of the way.
The second man, carrying a head by a fistful of hair, walked out of the room speaking over his shoulder, “I’m taking these down to the incinerator. The mop is right here. Just push the mess out here so we can spray it all off with the hose. I’ll be right back.” After he dropped the head unceremoniously onto the large heap of human body parts, he pushed a rolling bucket full of water and a mop into the room. With a last stinging glance in my direction, he began pushing the trolly down the hallway. It squeaked and clamored the whole way, until I faintly heard the creak of a secondary door open and closing and then—silence.
I listened for a moment, blocking out the sounds of the blond-haired man draining water from the mop and slinging it onto the filthy tile. I watched him silently for a few moments but knew I couldn’t wait long or I’d waste this opportunity. I kept my eyes trained on the man as I slipped my fingers to the waistband of my sweats and began untying the loop of the string that kept them held up.
With a little maneuvering and tugging, I was able to yank the string out from the interior pockets of the sweats. When I stood, they slid down my hips a bit more, causing the fabric to pool at my feet, but I knew I could use the extra fabric to silence the patter my bare skin would’ve made in the congealed blood. The fabric tucked under my toes, I slid my feet across the floor silently, coming up behind the man. Holding my breath, I raised my arms carefully, the cord strung between my hands. Faster than he could have prepared for it, I slipped the rope around his neck and tightened it.
A strangled gasp left his mouth as the mop clattered to the ground. I dropped my weight to my knees, forcing his body to bend backward by the hold I had on his throat to add more pressure to his throat to ensure his trachea was closing. His body leaned across mine, his reddening face turned toward me with a shocked expression. His hands came up to grasp at the cord, but his fingers just jerked animatedly, like the twitching legs of a dying spider. Pinpoints of blood started appearing under his skin from the force I was using to strangle the life out of him.
He had been desperately unprepared for a fight.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered to him, knowing he likely couldn’t hear me over the blood rushing to his head. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
It was agonizing, those handful of minutes watching him die up close. He had passed out quickly, but his death was slow, full of choking noises and gurgled spittle being vomited up past his lips, and undoubtedly painful. At some point, his bowels had expelled and the smell permeated the room. Those cornflower eyes of his, so glaringly blue in the bright lights, stared up at me with a stunned expression until he lost consciousness. Guilt tugged at me, aligning with grief at the useless death of this man, but it was me or him—and I would always choose myself when it came to survival.
Blinking back futile tears, I released the cord from my aching fingers, trying not to stare at the deep indentations it had left on the dead man’s neck. Instead, I focused on patting down his body for a weapon. A gun was holstered on his hip and I snatched it up, checking the chamber to make sure it was loaded. I located a knife sheathed on his thigh and just as I was undoing the straps to the holder, I heard the trolley coming back down the hallway.
“Fuck,” I breathed, heaving the man’s body from mine before standing. My sweats were soaked with water and the remnants of the blood on the floor and I slipped and slid as I scrambled to hide by the side of the door, gun held in both hands at my hip. I clicked the safety off and steadied my breathing.
“Walt?” a deep voice called, and I recognized it as the second man that had been assigned to clean the room. He was close, only a few yards away going by the sound of his voice.
I breathed out slowly and raised my arms, aiming the barrel for an approximate headshot.
“Hey, Walter? You done, bro?” The trolley stopped squeaking when the guard halted, his destination reached. “Hey, did you not—fuck!”
He must’ve seen the body from the hallway. I hadn’t had time to move it before I had to hide.
“Oh fuck, oh shit.” The kid’s voice was shaking. I heard a beep and then he was speaking, likely on a comms device, I decided. “Hey, this is Phillip. We’ve got a problem, man. A huge fucking problem. Walt’s dead. He’s dead!” His voice was shrill with panic and again, I wondered where these guys were coming from. Eoin ran a multi-billion dollar empire, and had been in charge of his sector of New York for thousands of years. You didn’t get to that point by having weak men in your service.
“Dude, I don’t know. I don’t know! Is she—I don’t know if she’s in the room. No, I haven’t gone in. She killed Walt!” I could hear his frantic footsteps as he paced outside the doorway. “I know I have a gun—the boss? He’s coming? Fuck, man, oh fuck. I’m screwed. I’ll find her, let me find her.” Fear was a living thing in his voice, almost tangible in the air.
