The Death of Clio Cohen

“Don’t you remember?”

My head hangs, looking down at the bloodied shirt next to my feet. The silence is excruciating, leaving only my consciousness racing throughout my scattered memories.

“No, I don’t,” I finally reply.

Auriel stands up with a frustrated exhale. Her blonde hair glides through the air as she turns around to walk into the kitchen of the grungy studio apartment where a wide array of tools covers the counter tops. The assembly of an LK-549 plasma rifle rattles, Auriel hunched over the kitchen bench with tools in hand.

“Argo’s not gonna be happy,” she states collectedly.

“What do you want me to do about it?”

“What I wanted to do was tell him that it went off without a hitch.”

Cold July air breezes through a gap in the sheet metal of the window next to me, landing gently on my arm and reminding me that I’m still alive.

Auriel continues, “Instead I show up to lasers making swiss cheese out of my car and blood all over the seats in the back. I thought you were the persuasive one?”

I wince at hearing the word ‘laser’, my hand over the bandage covering the cauterized wound on the left side of my abdomen. “I’m sorry. I wish I knew what happened.”

Despite my wound being welded shut, presumably by aforementioned lasers, the shirt I had been wearing is splattered in blood. What did I do? The pain radiates throughout my body, making it difficult to concentrate on anything for too long.

As if Auriel could read minds, she looked up from her tinkering and spoke. “You killed someone didn’t you? Clio Cohen a killer, imagine that.” She lets out a light chuckle and goes back to the cryptic weapon sitting in front of her.

I never imagined I’d be capable of doing something like that, taking a life from another person. I know how it felt to have my father taken away from me, and I vowed I would kill that bastard given the opportunity, but I refuse to live with that sort of hatred. That has no place in my heart and I really didn’t want to lose myself in this line of work. Maybe it’s too late for that, I gave that up the moment I took that first job with Auriel.

While it doesn’t seem fair, part of me wants to blame my mother for forcing me into this life. Who can entirely blame her for falling into the state she did after losing a husband. It all still feels so vivid, a stark reminder of why I can’t go back. I will go back for her one day though, pull her out of the slump she’s fallen into, buy her a nice house and tell her it’s already paid off. That was the idea anyways, perhaps I was naive to imagine I could do that without stepping on the lives of others.

“I have to get out of here,” I confess to Auriel bluntly.

“Where are you going? People are gonna be looking for you.”

“When haven’t I been careful?” I say in irritation, “I’m going to see Benji.”

“Well, hopefully he can shake some of those memories loose for you. We seriously need to think about what we’re going to tell Argo.”

The distraction of the conversation causes Auriel’s tool to slip followed by a curt profanity as she examines her finger.

I throw on my familiar leather jackets with years worth of wear and tear on it and pull over the flimsy baby blue hood of the long sleeve underneath. It’s about a ten minute walk before I show up to the café that Benji and I routinely meet at. He’s always here before me, even when I spur the idea on him last second. I tried to be careful while walking here, as far as I can tell nobody noticed me and nobody has been following me. The ever looming shadow hanging over my shoulder fades to nothing when I turn my head, granting me ephemeral peace.

The waitress greets me with a smile when I tell her I’m meeting a friend. Her expression seems overly typical, off. As if she’s seen something she wasn’t supposed to see. The face of someone who knows your life story with a single glance. She knows, she has to know. How couldn’t she know? It must be so painfully obvious. Is she one of the people looking for me? I have to find a way out-

“Clio, good to see you!”

Benji wraps me in his arms, my face presses into the soft fabric of his scarf. The pin pricks in my abdomen subside, the buffet of wind plaguing my thoughts is grounded, as if the only thing to focus on right now is the warmth of his familial embrace. He escorts me back to a table where we both take a seat, the joyful look in his face hides away in the privacy of conversation to now reveal concern.

“What’s going on?” he asks in his usual therapist tone.

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

I spend the next bit explaining to Benji everything that has occurred, everything that I can remember that is. The look of concern on his face only grows, he warned me that something like this would happen. How ironic that I come crawling to him for help now. Something catches Benji’s eye.

“You’ve been followed,” he says calmly, being careful to maintain eye contact with me.

“Fuck.”

How could I be so reckless when I knew this would happen, this is just embarrassing.

“We can lose them,” he says. Benji has always been good at thinking under pressure, if anyone is going to get me out of this it’s him. We walk out of the café together through the automatic doors and keep a brisk pace. Sure enough the two men we saw before are easily spotted in the crowd behind us about 10 meters back. The crowd thickens and Benji quickly diverts us into an alley I’m unfamiliar with.

“I know a shortcut through a building down here,” he assures me, “we should lose them through there.”

My heart is a sinkhole in my chest, every beat pumping blood through with more and more pressure. I put force into my stride to keep up with Benji’s longer legs. If we slip into a door now before they turn the corner they won’t know which one we vanished into. Finally Benji reaches for one of the handles, I can feel the relief of escape washing over me when that feeling is stopped dead in its tracks.

Benji pulls on the handle and the heavy metal door shakes in place. He pulls it again, this time a little harder and the door doesn’t budge. After shaking the door a few more times he gives up.

“Come on, let’s keep going,” he says with only the slightest bit of fear now shaking his voice. I’m struggling even more to keep up with his pace now but adrenaline pushes me along. The opening on the other end of the alley feels like a light at the end of a tunnel, my animal instincts begging to be freed of this confined alleyway. The light at the end of the tunnel is suddenly stolen by the silhouette of a van. The two men following us have now appeared in the alley behind us.

* * *

That was the moment you realized you were going to die. Time was frozen. The dripping gutters stopped dripping, the rippling puddles stopped rippling. It was all over as quickly as it started. Benji had pulled a knife from his pocket, and in the same moment he was gunned down. You kicked your feet to run, and in the same moment a laser blast had disintegrated a chunk of your calf muscle…

Don’t you remember…?

That was the day you got your revenge. It’s a sour taste, isn’t it?

He sat across from you earlier that morning. You never learned his name but you knew his face. It was the face you saw anytime you imagined your father’s. The face that had corrupted your memories for all these years. You were blind in that moment, and you killed with such admirable passion.

  You can rest now.