27 comments

Fiction Crime

"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.

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 —

April 02, 2023 18:41

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27 comments

Mary Bendickson
20:58 Apr 09, 2023

Normally don't especially like this kind of genre. But because it was short and profound it hit pretty hard.

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Geir Westrul
21:08 Apr 09, 2023

Mary, this actually started as a flash fiction exercise, because it’s hard (for me anyway) to write the suspense/thriller in the ultra-short (less than 1,000 words), and I had to slightly expand it to fall in the 1,000 - 3,000 word range.

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Mary Bendickson
22:00 Apr 09, 2023

You are an excellent writer.

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Geir Westrul
15:37 Apr 13, 2023

Thank you!

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Viga Boland
20:26 Apr 09, 2023

This was a great read. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Mystery, suspense and lots of dialogue, all wrapped up in a minimum of verbiage for maximum impact. You’re my kind of writer! From this day forward, I’ll be following you and looking forward to where you take me next.

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Geir Westrul
15:39 Apr 13, 2023

Thank you, Viga. I did have fun keeping it very short and focused.

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Viga Boland
15:56 Apr 13, 2023

Wish more Reedsy writers did the same. Then I could read more stories without going cross-eyed from reading long narrative paragraphs 🤣

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Martin Ross
18:29 Apr 09, 2023

Wow! What a great blend of intrigue, action, and psychological drama! The climactic revelation is both a stunner and puts a terrific backspin on the John Wick etc. genre where the line between hero and victim increasingly blurs as the audience increasingly accepts the actions and mayhem of the protagonist. This was an honest response to that, and the present tense presentation helped propel the story to that whiplash twist. So well done.

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Geir Westrul
20:55 Apr 09, 2023

Martin, thank you! Yes, it is a bit “John Wick” in tone. I hadn’t seen that myself, I actually wrote a blog article this week on writing thriller short stories. You might enjoy it: “ Cut to the Chase — How To Write a Thriller Short Story” https://www.storybuzz.com/blog/thriller-short-story

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Michał Przywara
01:30 Apr 05, 2023

Great opening! Immediate attention grabber. But it might even be trumped by the reveal. He is his own boss. So what's that mean? Someone's running an elaborate mind job on him? He may be running it on himself. Either way, a good sense of mystery in this short piece. An enigmatic organization, conspiracy, betrayal. And whatever the truth is, an unreliable narrator. A great kind of narrator, for an amoral killer :)

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Geir Westrul
17:48 Apr 05, 2023

Thanks, Michal, yes that's exactly what I was going for, an unreliable narrator with perhaps a little bit of doubt at the end about whether he is his own boss or there is a deeper mind job.

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Kristin Neubauer
12:24 Apr 04, 2023

Oh, I loved this! It's so layered and full of intrigue and suspense. That is not easy to write (I've tried), but you did it really effectively - you kept me wondering what was about to happen next. I agree with Russell that you could turn it into something bigger....great work!

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Geir Westrul
20:24 Apr 04, 2023

Thank you, Kristin, now I really do need to work on making it a longer piece (or the beginning of a series)

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Kristin Neubauer
12:05 Apr 05, 2023

Definitely! I am intrigued!

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Ken Cartisano
04:58 May 29, 2023

This is good writing. Solid. No frills. Great dialogue. Outstanding plot and reveal.

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Geir Westrul
14:48 May 29, 2023

Thanks, Ken! I'm glad you enjoyed the story. This was fun to write, and an interesting challenge, because my natural writing style is not this "spare", but I was happy with it.

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Michelle Oliver
10:17 Apr 11, 2023

Not my kind of story, but I couldn’t stop reading, well done! Also sprach zarathustra, the little tone poem by Strauss was running in my head throughout the read. I loved the hydra metaphor They’re right/they’re wrong Hurt my family you hurt me/ hurt me I will kill you. Very suspenseful. Very cold, clinical and emotionless. Well done!

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Geir Westrul
15:42 Apr 13, 2023

Michelle, I'm glad you picked up on the Also Sprach Zarathustra reference. There's some Nietzsche subtext going on, as you can see in this blog article on the writing process: https://www.storybuzz.com/blog/writing-process-kill-the-messenger Yes, I was definitely going for the cold, clinical, emotionless. A bit weird to be in the head of a psychopath.

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Laurel Hanson
21:30 Apr 09, 2023

A swiftly paced story here that delivers its punch effectively. Love the opening, both descriptive and very catchy. This is a tough genre, not one I have even tried, though I am working up the nerve. What interests me is that it seems like there's a breakthrough, but I am also unsure; if the face is his, has it been him all along? Is he breaking free? I'm not sure why I read it ambiguously, except maybe I really like ambiguity.

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Geir Westrul
15:45 Apr 13, 2023

Laurel, I think there is a breakthrough, but (unfortunately for all the people in the tall buildings he sees outside the window at the end) a destructive one. He has nothing left to "govern" his psychopathic instincts.

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Russell Mickler
16:50 Apr 03, 2023

Hi Geir! Hard-hitting and feels like the intro to something larger. Revenge? I liked the opening para and transition from thinking we're interacting with something ordinary then surprising the reader with the bomb, and the suspense generated when confronting the messenger + the surprise ending. Hopefully, we'll see more in the weeks ahead! :) R

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Geir Westrul
20:45 Apr 03, 2023

Russell, thank you! I actually had not considered that this could grow into a longer story, but now ...

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Stevie B
11:55 Apr 03, 2023

Geir, very forceful and well written. Great job!

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Geir Westrul
14:22 Apr 03, 2023

Thank you, Stevie! I actually have a blog post about the writing process for this story. If you're interested to see how I approached it, check it out here. https://www.storybuzz.com/blog/writing-process-kill-the-messenger I originally wrote it as a flash-fiction exercise and thought it fit perfectly for the Reedsy prompt, so I modified it slightly to get over the 1,000 word count,

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Stevie B
09:19 Apr 04, 2023

Thank you.

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BRUCE MARTIN
02:50 May 07, 2023

Cool story!

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Geir Westrul
02:53 May 07, 2023

Thank you, Bruce, I'm glad you liked the story!

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