Халлгримур Хельгасон - The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning

This could be my moment, I say to myself as I grab the lighter. But no. I hesitate again. Without doing anything, I get up and light the cigarette. It shakes in my mouth like a tractor’s gear-shift. My heart repeats the same beat over and over again, with the sound of a CD stuck on a scratch.

I remove the cigarette from my lips and give it a good look, those 3.5 inches of paper and tobacco. I’m 3.5 inches from the grave. I’ve got 3.5 inches to work from. Now, 3.41, to be exact.

I started smoking in the war. In those crazy days, every cigarette you could get your lips on represented seven minutes of cease-fire, a glimpse of heaven in the midst of hell. After the war it became the opposite: every cigarette brought back seven minutes of shooting and bombing. So I quit. This one here can only bring back my scattered memories: my mother cursing in the kitchen, Hanover fucking Hauptbahnhof, the Winnipeg guy and his bloody wallet, Gunnhildur’s stick-red smile. I smoke it as slowly as possible.

“But why kill me? What’s the purpose?”

“Shut up.”

“I’ve quit. I don’t even travel anymore. I’m just…”

“Shut the fuck up!”

“Sorry. Let me just finish this and then you can…”

As before, we speak in Croatian. You have to picture bright white subtitles flickering across our dark chests.

Once again I inhale, watching the low blue mountains ahead. They must have witnessed a thing like this before. The sky is empty. No cloud, no plain. Somewhere behind me, Reykjavik spreads out in the distance, the fourth city of my life, and further out, at sea, the bright spring sunset must be well underway. Goodbye world. Doviđenja svijete. I exhale and look at the butt. There is about one puff left; less than 1 inch left of my life. My two visiting friends are getting restless. I lift the small cigarette up to my lips and inhale.

Here we go.

I bend forward, pretending to put the cigarette out in the stiff moss with my left hand while reaching into my pocket with my right. Niko immediately shouts and steps forward, pointing his gun downwards, toward my head. Quick as a fox on fire, I dive to my right, rolling on the harsh lava floor, and he shoots. The bullet bouncing off lava rings in our ears. And before he even realizes I’m holding a gun, its bullet is buried in his upper right arm. His scream is muffled. Radovan immediately reaches for his tool, but receives a bullet instead, in his right wrist. He screams out loud. As Niko grabs his gun from the wounded arm with his left one, I’m back on my feet, pointing the pistol at them and screaming:

“DROP IT! DROP THE FUCKING GUN!”

Niko looks at me with bewildered eyes. “What the fucking fuck?” He now has the piece in his left hand.

“I SAID DROP IT!”

Blood drips from their wounded arms. Radovan is still wearing his sunglasses, looking quite ridiculous, like some wannabe mobster in a Russian B movie.

“DROP THE FUCKING GUN!”

For some mystical reason I use the English word “gun” here, instead of the Croatian pistolj. It makes me think of Gunnhildur. The thought distracts me and Naughty Niko sniffs out the weakness expertly. Before I know it, he has raised the gun against me. We strike simultaneously, like the spiritual twins we used to be. My bullet lands in his gun-holding left arm. His scream is less muffled now. I try to swallow mine. A streak of strange warmth shoots down my groin, in the direction of my left thigh. The warmth then turns into fire. It’s like when a match is being lighted. First there is the strike and then there is fire.

It’s a typical left-hander. He aimed for my heart but got the bladder. But mine was on target. He’s as good as armless. As well as Radovan, after another one from the PP9. Suddenly I’m aiming for arms only. I’ve fired fucking four shots and still no one’s dead.

My friends’ faces are tormented by pain, as mine must be too. Their hands hang lifelessly beside them, freshly slaughtered piglets, blood dripping from their hoofs. I have my small gun aimed at their heads now and after some more shouting, Niko drops his big Desert Eagle. I order him to give it a kick and then quickly bow to pick it up. It seems to take me forever to get back up, though. The pain in my groin is of groundbreaking proportions. Holy shit.

I put Niko’s gun in my pocket.

I order Radovan to come closer and open his jacket for me, but he can’t, of course, with his hands. I carefully approach him, my eyes going between him and Niko every two seconds, and open his black Armani jacket with my left hand. His weapon rests in the inner pocket. A silver Smith & Wesson. But as I grab it, the stupid Hulk tries to push me away with his elbow. Niko uses the opportunity for coming at me, head first, like some crazy hornless ram. I put him out with a simple “elblow,” something I perfected in Torture training this winter. With Niko down, Radovan doesn’t risk any more tricks, and soon I have two guns in my pocket and the third one in my hand.

I fish the car key out of Radovan’s pocket and then silently wait for Niko to come back to his senses. I order them both to crawl down into the mini-canyon. This takes some time. Still wearing the sunglasses, Radovan looks more and more ridiculous, heading for a comic death. I tell them to lie down, facedown, biting my lips from the pain. Something is leaking down my left thigh. Feels like I’m peeing with my balls.

This is wartime all over again. Shouting at people in Croatian with a gun in my hand and a leaking leg. The driver’s bulky torso takes up most of the space in the lava coffin. Next to him, Niko looks like a slim virgin wife about to be buried with her husband, eyes screaming: “Please, fuck me instead!”

“FACE THE FUCKING EARTH!” I shout, sounding a bit too nervous.

I lower my gun. I’ve got two asses in sight. Two rectums screaming for lead. There is nothing else to do. Munita’s killers will have to face the fridge. On fucking Fridge Island. I’m about to pull the trigger when there is a sudden breeze in the otherwise still spring night. I swiftly look around but see nothing. Nothing coming, nothing going. There’s just this sudden breeze, blowing across the lunar lava field, pushing up the good moon door…

Amen.

I take a long good look at my former buddies, lying face down in the cleft, like two gentlemen overdressed for a mass grave. I then nod a few times before telling them goodbye with a short little Croatian word:

“ Bok. ”

I turn away and start limping towards the car. My groin cries, my heart shakes, but my soul says hallelujah.

Driving an Audi you think you should be happy. Success has rewarded you with soft leather seats and a pilot’s dashboard. Luckily it’s an automatic, since I’m losing all feeling in my left leg, as well as the lower half of my torso. My pants are soaked in blood, urine, or some other inner liquid that is about to fill my left shoe. I wonder if the bullet is still inside me somewhere. Feels like it’s resting on the bottom of my bladder, working as a plug in a bathtub.

When I had walked some sixty painful feet away from the two idiots, I turned around and looked them in the eye. They were peeking out of their lava-grave with dumbstruck eyes, looking very much like two sheep stuck in a hole. Why didn’t you kill us? I even sensed a touch of disappointment in their eyes. I turned my back on them and continue towards the car. I threw their guns in the trunk, put mine in my pocket, and managed to pack my pain into the driver’s seat.

I’m driving back the same way we came. I can already see the aluminum factory down by the coast. Some cars drive past it, on the Reykjavik-Keflavik highway. The song contest must be over.