Paul Cleave - The Killing Hour

It seems like a good location. Not too many people, but enough so Cyris won’t try anything. He says nothing as he thinks this through. Jo could already be dead and he just wants the money. Or she could be alive and he’s thinking about the location, about how he has to change his plans. He’s thinking that maybe he won’t be getting the chance to kill us tomorrow night after all. So he’s still saying nothing. But now he’s realizing he knows my address, my details. He’s figuring he can kill me later on. In his own time. At his own leisure. He can afford to drive on over one night after mowing his lawn, rip me apart, and pick up dinner on the way back. So the idea of a public place isn’t looking too bad. In a public place I can’t try anything against him. In a public place we all walk away alive.

“Midnight,” he says.

Only he’s wrong. I’m happy to try something in a public place. I have more to lose than him. Everything to gain.

“Ten o’clock,” I counter. “More people.”

I wince as I wait for a reply or for the phone to hang up.

“Don’t forget the money, asshole. I’ll cut her pretty little head off no matter how many people are around.”

“Let me talk to Jo.”

“She’s busy.”

“I need to know she’s okay.”

“She’s okay, asshole.”

“I need proof of life,” I say, which is something I’ve heard people say in movies and documentaries.

“I’m going to give you proof of death instead, partner,” he says, and with that he hangs up.

Agitated. He knows he’s agitated, and the phone call hasn’t helped. His stomach hurts, but so does his head and he wants to lash out, wants to strike out at everything and anything. He grips his stomach and wonders why he ever threw away those painkillers. He contemplates smashing the phone against the edge of the desk, but that would accomplish nothing.

At least he sure as shit feels better today than he did yesterday.

The last few days have been hell. He was taught in the army that there would be days like this. Weeks. Months. He never saw combat, but he was trained for it. He knew how to kill people. His wife knew how to kill people too. It’s where he met her. They trained together. They socialized. They fell in love. That was ten years ago. Then five years ago they got married. Then four and a half years ago there was a training accident and now his wife is a former shell of the person she used to be. It was a helicopter accident. The thing about helicopters is that at the best of times they fly, and at any other time they don’t. They’re not like planes. Planes can get into trouble and they can glide. Planes have a chance of landing. They can stay level enough to jump out of with a chute. Helicopters don’t glide. They fall. They crash. The pilot was killed. Two corporals were killed. Macy, his wife, ended up losing both of her legs, her left one just above the knee, her right one just below.

So she was given a medical discharge. It was going to be a new life. She went through multiple surgeries. She spent weeks where she would just cry. It was three months until he could bring her home. Things got better. They got worse. They got better again. She got counseling. She was going great. Then she tried to kill herself. He had gone to work. She tied a rope around a beam in the garage and tied the other end around her neck. She got out of her wheelchair and sat herself up on a workbench. Then she jumped. The wheelchair fell over. Then Cyris came home. He’d forgotten his sunglasses. He found her in the garage. Her jaw had clamped. She’d bitten off a chunk of her tongue and blood was running down her neck. He cut her down. He called an ambulance. He got her jaw open, but her mouth kept filling with blood from her severed tongue. He tried to resuscitate her, but there was too much blood. The ambulance arrived. They were lucky-there had been a false call two blocks away so there was an ambulance at his house within ninety seconds of him calling. The paramedics took over.

Everybody thought she was going to die. The doctors guessed she must have been hanging between two and three minutes. Her brain had been starved of oxygen. They resuscitated her, but there was brain damage. She would never be functional. That was the word the doctor used. Functional. Like she was the remote control to his TV. There were payments from the army to help with her rehabilitation from her severed legs, but there was nothing extra for the brain damage. Insurance wouldn’t cover the costs. She had tried to kill herself. They weren’t in the business of helping people who had tried to die. She needed full-time care. The army helped for four years because of her legs, then a year ago they stopped paying. It was cutbacks. Everywhere had cutbacks. The economy was in the toilet.

He walks through to his wife. She’s lying in bed watching the TV. She likes cartoons. She’s seen this particular one well over a thousand times. It’s on a DVD and it’s on repeat and he knows every word, every sound effect, and at night he leaves the TV running for her and the volume off. She looks up at him and smiles. “Side Russ,” she says. That’s his name now, thanks to about a quarter of her tongue hitting the garage floor.

“Hey, babe,” he says. Sometimes, when he’s feeling at his worst, he likes to tell her.

“I’m hungry,” she says.

“I’ll get you something in a minute,” he says, knowing that if he doesn’t, she’ll forget that she’s hungry anyway.

“Ooo have a beard,” she says.

He reaches up and tugs on his beard. He’s had it for a few weeks now, and he hates it. When this is all over he’ll shave it off.

“Side Russ,” she says. “Are thoo okay?”

“My stomach hurts,” he tells her. “I was stabbed.” He lifts up his T-shirt and shows her his stomach. There’s duct tape holding the wound closed.

“What ha-hend?”

“A bad man stabbed me,” he says, and then he tells her about it.

She starts to cry. And then she gets distracted by the cartoon on the TV. Then she starts to laugh. And then she looks over at him. “Side Russ,” she says. “Are thoo okay?”

“I’m fine,” he tells her. “Let me get you something to eat.”

He goes through to the bathroom. He soaks his hands in water, then raises them to his face. He wipes at it, wipes and wipes and his skin is sore, yeah, and he’s careful to avoid his broken nose. It’s swollen and raw and there’s bruising around it. Then he wipes those same hands at the mirror. The image remains and he can’t get rid of the pain. From nowhere one of the headaches strikes, and he has to lower himself and sit on the edge of the bath. Christ. When it passes he opens the medicine cabinet, but nothing lives in there except aspirin, so he grabs hold of a few, even though they will do little to help. Clenching his fists, he sits back on the side of the bath and lifts his shirt. He’s going to need to get some more stuff from his buddy, Derek, the guy that fixed him up years ago with the good shit. His buddy is the same guy that fixed him up with this gig. Derek is one of those guys who knows people. He’s one of those guys who introduces people to people who need things done. He’s also Macy’s brother. Derek has hooked him up with other people in the past. Others that needed to die. Not many. Just a few. He’s not proud of what he does, but he needs the money. He needs it to look after Macy.

The duct tape across his stomach is covered in dried blood. He chews the aspirin and the taste makes his head spin, but at least he’s focused now on the job at hand, and from his back pocket he takes out the piece of paper with his instructions, with his goals, and the piece of paper helps to remind him that tonight he’s going to be a wealthy man. A wealthy man. Oh yeah.