I stared down at my blood stained hands, as my hands released the knife. Three bodies, as ordered. Another family caught up with the wrong people, another three beads to the crimson necklace. I looked down at the youngest, and shook my head. He was only a child...
Without flinching, or even reacting, I hacked at his neck; his head would be a message: don't mess with my boss. Placing it in a bag, I slung it over my shoulder, exiting past the dining table covered with winter vegetables and red meat, still warm.
I hadn't always been like this; there was a time when I was normal. I was young, barely celebrating my sixteenth birthday, but I acted as if I owned the world, I was almost an adult, nothing could surprise me. It all happened so quickly. No one understood what it was like to lose a family; but now they would. It had become my trademark.
I was fed up of sympathy, sympathy couldn't make things better. Everywhere I went, I was surrounded with pity, "So young," they'd say, "Poor child," I'd show them that I was bigger than that. I had become an adult now.
My eyes watered as they reacted to the curtain of smoke that smothered me as I entered the room. The bar was not particularly special, a smoky room packed full of old timers drinking to their youth, and grave robbers pushing for pennies, the atmosphere was too cheerful for my liking, but the beer was too cheap to refuse. My mouth caressed the edge of the water stained glass, the smell lingering in my nose, urging me to taste the liquid.
I hadn't drunk for at least a week, probably more. I had become an empty man. My eyes scoured the room, taking in the aged, stained and torn interior. It seemed a strange place for a meeting like this, but the money had already reached my palm, outstretching it to the barman, I whispered the words into his ear, and his eyes instantly bulged out of his head. He rushed to a gap in the bar and guided me quickly to a small back room.
The room was no different from the rest of the bar; that was except for him. His cold eyes glowed out of the shadows and took all the heat from my body, there was no emotion, no compassion. As if his eyes weren't enough to take the breath from my lungs, his voice crept into the air. Although each word was spoken gently, they were coated with a bitter poison, and a tone that almost made my knees crumble.
His glare pierced my heart, "Did you do it?"
I fell to my knees, my cheeks dampening. I nodded, remembering their agonised faces, and their ignored pleas. I remembered the child. My hand grasped my necklace firmly, and ripped it away from my body; the crimson beads rolled across the room to his feet. I was still a child.
