Happy New Year

Staring down the barrel of the gun, Darryl only had one thought. This is how it ends. It seemed fitting this would be the end of his story. How many people had he ended their stories in the exact same way? He wondered if they had had the same thought or if they thought of someone. Maybe they asked for forgiveness of all their sins. Some people began to cry. Not Darryl. He wasn’t going to get emotional, he knew there would be nobody to miss him and no one for him to miss. And for damn sure wasn’t going to ask for forgiveness. There was no point. His one way ticket to hell had been stamped and waiting for him to cash it in. The truth is his daughter was probably doing the world a favor. 

“Ten!” Some over primped sorry excuse for a man was counting down to the New Year, while the ball dropped. He probably got manicures and facials or whatever the hell women get. Where had all the real men gone? The ones who could fix an engine, hell even just drive a stick? Now there’s just this prissy boy shit, Darryl thought to himself Sadie had burst through the door.  Her red hair was pulled back, but still somehow going every direction. Her eyes wild and cold. She knew. The only person he ever loved knew the truth of who he was and what he had done. While he studied his targets, and learned their habits, she studied medicine. While he dreamed of causing chaos to make an unnoticed escape after he detonated a bomb, she dreamed of working for doctors without borders helping those affected by chaos not unlike what he created. 

“Nine!” Sadie threw Darryl’s journal at him. It didn’t have to be like this. Darryl could have quit, his wife begged him to quit when Sadie was born. And he did for a while. Life was so boring going into an office everyday. But he did it until his beloved Angela died in that car accident. Without her, there was nothing stopping Darryl anymore. Why should he lose two of his loves. It wasn’t the killing he loved, though that was an art in and of itself. It was the thrill of the chase, like a game. A game he always won. After the funeral he put Sadie in her car seat in the back of his mother’s car and called his old contact. He was so cold, “I knew you’d be back.” was all he said. Somehow Darryl had known he’d be back to. Like a rogue tiger ravaging villages in Indian, once he got a taste for blood, he knew his thirst could never be quenched. 

“Eight!” Darryl watched Sadie pull the gun from behind her. He wasn’t a complete monster, though. His darling Sadie kept him from turning into one. Darryl had a firm line in the sand he would never even consider crossing. He saw men in the same business as him make the turn and lose the last shred of humanity that was left in them. That moment came when they would accept any contract that come their way with the same excitement of a child opening a birthday gift. It didn’t matter what the job was or who would get hurt. Women? Children? Innocent people? It didn’t matter. It was all the same to them. He had taken out a few of these people when he found out there was a contract out on Sadie. It didn’t take long to track down who put the hit out and take him out too. That particular kill was more thrilling than the chase for Darryl. You don’t kill women or children. 

“Seven!” Slowly, Sadie inched forward. He had been close that one time when he received a call about a job in Serbia. The money was good and the challenge would have been even better. When he got there, however, Darryl realized there was no way to carry out the hit, especially with the flare his customer called for, without killing people who had nothing to do with his business. He would have had to set up at least four bombs in separate locations set to off at particular times. The chaos that would have ensued would have given him plenty of time to slip out of the city undetected. It would have been his biggest job, but he couldn’t do it. There was an orphanage on the next block for fuck sake. No way would the have escaped the blasts. An entire block would have been taken out. The shops, the bakery, the apartments, the church, all would be decimated. 

“Six!” Sadie moved closer. He called his client, some higher up diplomat who thought he had more power than he did, and told him he was out. When his client, Viktor, that was his name, had hired him he said Darryl’s target was a conference center. He didn’t say the conference center was in the busiest area of the city. As it turned out, leaders were gathering at the conference center to discuss sanctions against the trade of plutonium or some shit like that. That’s something Viktor couldn’t have. Sanctions would be bad for business. He thought he had used his powers as a diplomat effectively enough to cover his involvement. His exclusion from the conference told him that he hadn’t done a good enough job. So when Darryl called and told him he wouldn’t do the job he was not too happy, let’s put it that way. Viktor told Darryl to do what he was hired to do and collect his three million dollars or become another unidentified casualty of the blast after he hired someone else to carry it out. What choice did Darryl have? He went to Viktor’s hide-out, if you could call a five star hotel with a cement wall surrounding it a hide-out. Like that wall did anything to stop someone. Darryl was over the wall and disarmed the cameras in under a minute. The last thing Viktor had expected to see when he looked in the mirror was Darryl behind him, holding a syringe. Air embolism. 

“Five!” Sadie stopped a few feet away. Darryl didn’t bother with remorse. He knew all of his marks had it coming. That’s the risk with making deals with the devil. Sometimes the devil himself will pay you a visit in the dead of the night. Darryl shook hands and made his deal a long time ago when he was really still just a boy. He was waiting to pick his friend up from work, so he parked in a back alley and cut his lights. Two minutes later, he saw Vlad drag a guy out to the alley and shot him. Vlad didn’t see Darryl’s car at first, but when he did he knock on Darrly’s window with his gun, the same gun he used on that poor son of a bitch moments before. Vlad  gave him two choices: help clean up or join the guy in the city dump. Darryl wasn’t surprised at how easy the choice was to make. What surprised him was how easy it was for him to help clean up. It wasn’t work for those with a weak stomach. It was what some might describe as brutal, but for him it was just like checking items off a checklist. He was good at it and wanted to explore other hidden talents he might have had. From that day on, he and Vlad were partners. That is until Vlad started making some questionable decisions that were going to get them both killed. Darryl knew he wouldn’t make it to old age, but that didn’t mean he had to lay down and wait for the grim reaper to come get him. He had a family to think about now and he was not a fucking idiot. Too bad he couldn’t say the same anymore for Vlad. It took Vlad a few moments to register what was going on when he saw Darryl. When he did, he said “I can’t wait to fucking see you in hell.” And then he never said anything ever again. He’s now a part of the Main Street Bridge. If they ever have to take up the concrete, some poor bastard is going to get on helluva surprise. 

“Four!” Sadie raised the gun. He never thought his daughter would be the one holding the gun, ridding the world of another invisible man. That’s how he was able to operate for so long without being suspected. There was nothing remarkable about Darryl’s appearance, he could blend right in. And the shit he did? Well most people don’t want to believe it. They were too scared to think about it. He figured this out when he was playing pool at the bar one night. He was shooting the shit and had a little too much to drink. He made a joke about taking a son of a bitch outside and taking care of him. They laughed and one drunken bastard offered to help. He would have shit himself if Darryl would have taken him up on his offer. “See everybody has a little bit of the devil in them, but they don’t want to acknowledge it,” Darryl used to say. They’d make jokes about making someone swim with the fishes, but wouldn’t go any further. They’d think about, maybe even joke about it, but they couldn’t bring themselves to act upon it, even though they had it in them. Most people liked to keep that side hidden away from the world, especially from themselves. They were afraid of what would happen if  they embraced it. They were afraid of the power and the hunger. When it peeked out, it scared them so much they turned a blind eye. They were so afraid of what lived within them, they willfully ignored the devil in others. Darryl knew no one wanted to admit they were just like him. 

“Three!” Holding the gun with one hand, Sadie throws a picture on the table. “She knows. She knows it was me. I didn’t have a choice. I had to do what I had to do,” Darryl tells himself. “How?” is all she says, her voice steel. She doesn’t mean how did Darryl do it. The picture makes that quite obvious. She means how could he do it? How could he kill the man she was planning on running away with to marry? Simple. A father protects his child. Her little boyfriend wasn’t who she thought he was. He wasn’t her precious little Alec, he was Vlad’s son and just like Vlad he was always running his mouth to the wrong people. “Did he really think it wouldn’t get back to me?” Darryl wondered, shocked by the arrogance and stupidity of both Vlad and his son. “Did he really think, I’d let him use my daughter to get back at me?” No, Sadie was innocent in all of this. Vlad had it coming and so did Alec. He rid the world of two more parasites. . 

“Two!” Sadie put two hands on the gun and aimed it at Darryl’s chest. His daughter was hurt. She had no idea, but she would. He wrote her a letter. His friend, Ray, would send it to her when he found out Darryl was dead. That was the deal they had made and it was worth every last cent of the hundred thousand dollars, if he followed through with it that is. She was the only good thing he had ever done. She could actually make this world a better place, but not like this. Darryl still had no clue how he, the man many referred to as the Devil Incarnate, had played a role in making something so innocent and sweet. Right now she was more her father’s daughter than her mother’s. Murder was in her eyes and just weeks before she would take an oath to do no harm. He knew she could kill him and she really would be doing no harm, but the police and judge wouldn’t see it that way. She’d be locked up and for what? No, even with revenge on her mind she was still more like her mama. She would never be able to clean up the scene and get away. 

“One!” Sadie released the safety. Before she could pull the trigger Darryl pulled out the gun tucked in the waistband of his jeans. He put it to his head and pulled the trigger. He heard Saddie scream and everything went black. “Happy New Year!” rang out from the television.