A Relaxing Evening

You looked out the window and, not for the first time, thought about how wring the weather forecast had been. All the better, however, as this was the weather you preferred to have in this slow, relaxing evening.

The scent of wet soil filled your coffee-scented room, permeating as the raging droplets barraged your windows. The howling wind attempted to invade your humble abode, but managed only a cool, comfortable breeze in.

You took out a random LP record from one of your abundant antique shelves and proceeded to play it on the equally antique phonograph. The classical music of days long gone deafened the storm outside.

You closed your eyes to allow this tranquility to sink in, though the chaos of the outside was rife. You've had a tiring day, your joints were all sore upon returning to the house with a heavy baggage in tow. You would have to work on said baggage later in the night, but you thought there was little harm in allowing yourself this brief moment of respite.

You slouched down an antique couch, brown in color, which fits the profile of the room. You relaxed your joints. Breathed in. Breathed out.

It wasn't the first time you had to return home with aching pain all over your body. It wasn't the first time you had to handle a heavy baggage all the way from the workplace to your house. It wasn't the first time you were allowed a brief moment of respite.

Yet you could never get used to all of the above.

Your conscience was haunting you as you tried to rest. Time was of the essence. You had to stand up. You had to move. You had to lug the baggage all the way down to the basement to work on them. You had until dawn to finish the job. There was simply no rest for the wicked.

With a complaining groan, you lifted your body to defy the gravity of the couch's comfort. You winced as you could feel the aches in your body with every little motion. Your lean build wasn't built for heavy jobs like this, but you needed the money. That, and disobedience towards the boss only spelled doom. You shouldn't go against his orders. Period.

The boss cared little for age, race, gender, religion, and country of origins. He had a simple code. Obey, or decay. You touched the blue mark on the right side of your scapula, a warning not to go against the boss again. The fear and terror he imposed broke a dam in your mind. The flashbacks of the living nightmare you went through rushed in.

You were a desperate teenager in need of money. A friend you had in college offered you a job you couldn't refuse. Quick, lucrative cash. All you had to do was carry out the orders from the boss, and you could live a comfortable life.

It was sketchy. You had considered even warning your friend about it. He, not for the first time, disregarded your warning. That never ended well for him in his college days, before he was expelled for delinquency. You were going to reject the offer one night when you stared at the stream of rejected applications in your email.

You contacted your friend in hopes of starting out in this job. You needed the money.

For a while, the job seemed easy. You were merely tasked to buy miscellaneous items such as batteries, rolling pins, pliers and other household appliances from obscure stores.

For each purchase you completed, you received payment far more luxurious than the price you had to pay for the items.

The more errands you ran for the boss, the more trust he decided to put in you. You were asked to do heavier jobs such as shooting an incapacitated, defenseless, blindfolded male. His grunts were heavy, his breath sporadic, his body battered, burned and bruised.

You were horrified. The boss was whispering encouraging words to you and the words he said echoes to the present day. "Shoot him... you don't know him and he doesn't know you... Shoot him dead, square in the head, aim well... shoot. Shoot. Shoot."

You aimed with trembling hands. Once the barrel of the gun kissed the man's forehead, still grunting in vain, you steadied the trigger finger.

"You'd be ending his misery, be doing him a favor, yeah?"

You gulped. Looking away with your vision hiding from the murder you would commit, you tightened your grip, steeled your will, and pulled the trigger.

A deafening shot rang. Gunpowder mixed in with the smell of burgundy rust. Your hands weren't pure from then on.

"Excellent."

You were then appointed the sickening position of being executioner to strangers you never knew. Bullets after bullets. Shots after shots. It wasn't your first time, but you never got used to it.

Your eyes were as dead and limp as the bodies that fell by your hands. The bodies that you would have to dispose of for extra pay.

There was but one instance where your eyes flared up in utter shock. You had been shooting teenagers to adults of different race and gender, but you would never imagine to find a young girl, bound in restraints, with wounds all over her frail body, in front of you.

You shook your head in disbelief, muttered to yourself that you couldn't do it, that this crossed the line.

The rest was history recorded in the blue bruises around your body.

That then became the first time you had to kill an innocent child. It wouldn't be your last. Yet, though it wasn't your first time, you could never get used to it.

The chaos the flashback caused contrasted to the dimming music on the first floor. Your ears refocused to the raging rain outside, to your own agonizing screams and pitiful pleas of the past that fell on deaf, merciless ears.

You wondered if your friend felt the same way before he became the baggage you were tasked to dispose of. That was the first time you had to kill someone you knew. Tears and apologies fell with the rain.

That evening wasn't the first time you couldn't complete a task issued by the boss.

Yet, you no longer had time to get used to it.

You've never felt more relaxed in this life of strife.