Kill the Messenger

"Sweetie, look, this was just delivered. It's from ...," my wife reads the card while unboxing the birthday present, peeling off red gift wrapping, "... your Aunt Salomé."

"That's nice — wait, Aunt Salomé? But — "

The red gift wrapping blooms into an orange fireball.

The shockwave pushes me, shoves me, throws me hard into the wall.

The screams from my wife's birthday-party guests are muffled, as if I'm submerged in water, deep below the surface.

Aunt Salomé.

Only I know that 'she' is not real. 'Aunt Salomé' is the code name for my dispatcher at Zarathustra.

'She' is my sweet old sickly aunt who lives in a nursing home in rural middle-of-nowhere on the other side of the country, who sends cards for Christmas and birthdays, who has a Facebook account filled with photographs of 'her' — an actress hired by Zarathustra — with me, 'her' favorite nephew, and where 'she' writes bot-generated old-lady posts that periodically include a bat-signal code-phrase to activate me.

Zarathustra thinks my marriage is an elaborate cover. They think I'm an unfeeling psychopath who built a facade of respectability by marrying a wholesome suburban everywoman, siring two adorably ordinary children. Zarathustra thinks it's all a front.

And they're right.

I am a psychopath.

That's why I'm an effective tool for Zarathustra. I am unfeeling about my assignments. I'm rational, precise, calculating, manipulative, deceptive, effective. I don't make mistakes. I'm a machine.

But they're wrong.

My marriage is not a facade. It's real. It's the only real thing I have. It's not that I love my wife and my children. Love, like any emotion, is ultimately empty, easy to fake, meaningless. But my family is an extension of me, new limbs I've grown, like a salamander, new heads, like Hydra.

If you hurt them, you hurt me.

If you hurt me, I will hurt you.

***

He's a slight man, narrow shoulders, thinning blond hair, almost bald on top, wearing small round glasses with thick lenses. He's half my height, even in the western boots with three-inch heels.

He walks with a strange gait, as if he is skipping. There's something jaunty about him.

I follow him into the office building, staying far behind him since he knows me by sight.

When he waves the key card to enter his office, I step up behind him and put the silenced gun barrel into the small of his back.

"Hello again," I say.

"You —" His eyes go wide behind the small glasses when I dig the barrel in a little harder. "How did you —"

"Let's go!"

Inside, it's a small office, but with a nice view of the skyline, well-appointed with a large desk, an oversized leather executive chair, and two computer monitors on a credenza facing the windows.

There's a fine layer of dust on the seat cushions of the two visitor chairs in front of the desk — no one comes to visit.

"So," I say, "we meet again. You asked how I knew. Well, I remembered the photographer hired by Zarathustra who took the pictures of me with the elderly actress playing the part of 'Aunt Salomé.' That photographer was you. When I found out that old-lady actress died from 'natural causes' just a week after that photo shoot, but you didn't — two and two make four. You're part of Zarathustra."

"I don't know what you mean. Zarathustra?"

"I assumed you were a flunky, but that you could lead me to the next rung on the ladder to get to my handler. But now that I see this place, clearly, you are more than a flunky. I think you're Aunt Salomé."

"Aunt —"

"You're my handler. Sit down."

He sits down behind the desk. I keep standing, gun pointed at him.

"Why did you kill my wife?"

"I didn't."

"Let me rephrase that. Why did you order the killing of my wife?"

"Please. I didn't."

"It had all the markers of Zarathustra. In fact, it's the way I would have done it."

"Wait, I can explain. Will you allow me?" He points, index finger over his shoulder, to the computer monitors. "I have a message pre-recorded for this specific situation. It's from the Leader of Zarathustra."

"The Leader?"

"Yes. May I?"

I nod. He swivels the office chair, turns his back to me, brings up web page, completely blank, except for a single open field and the text:

'ENTER PASSWORD, Z9***********'

"What's the password?"

"I don't know. But I've been told that you do." He lifts the wireless keyboard from the credenza tray, swivels, and slides the keyboard across the wide expanse of the desk.

I shift the gun to my left hand, still pointing the barrel at him.

Yes, I do know a password that begins with Z9. The thing is, I'm the only one who does.

I keep the gun trained on him as I key in the password.

As soon as I enter the password, a video starts playing, and there he is, The Leader of Zarathustra.

My face.

"Congratulations," says my face in the video. "The sacred game is at an end, the festivals of atonement are over. Since you're watching this video, you're ready for the next step. It's time to take out the middleman. Kill the messenger."

I shift my silenced gun back into my right hand, but I hesitate.

"Go ahead," my face on the video says. "You don't need Aunt Salomé anymore."

A feather-light pressure on the trigger, a sound like a cough, a puff of smoke from the barrel, and there's a hole in the little man's forehead, his head snaps back, and he slumps over in the office chair.

"Aunt Salomé is dead, the middleman is gone, the messenger has been killed," my face says. "Now it's just you. Only you. All you. As it always was. You decide, as you always did, only now you know that it has alway been you, making the choices. What's your next assignment? Who's your next kill?"

The screen goes blank.

Outside the window: the skyline, the tall buildings full of people.

— The End —