Gotta warn you though, it gets weird towards the end
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The stale air of the room was as still as its owner. The smells of sweat, old cigarette smoke, pizza and grease floated lifelessly in the oppressive atmosphere of the room. A fly clung silently to one of the four walls, each one a sickly yellow colour, its wings hidden away, not yet flying.
Eddie Jones worked away quietly, using a syringe to inject all over the unconscious man’s bare arms. After about fifteen injections Eddie sat back and breathed out, glancing over to check the door that the unconscious informant had let him in through was closed. The man was expecting a meeting from a journalist; it was easy to get inside.
It was easy to cover up the murder too. Eddie checked his target’s arms, seeing how quickly the chemicals caused the symptoms of old scars. Heroin scars. The Company’s chemical lab was good. Finally Eddie reached into the small kit bag he had brought into him and took out another syringe. The lethal overdose of heroin inside seemed to wink at him through the glass.
Eddie breathed in and out slowly. This was only his second job, and the first was much less morally difficult. Killing a drug dealer had made him feel just briefly like a hero, rather than an assassin.
‘Shut up’ he thought to himself ‘you need this money.’ He sighed. He was a Company man now. He stuck the needle in the guy’s arm and pressed the plunger down. He forced himself to look at the heroin flowing down. Get used to it. Kill people for money…no morals.
Eddie stood up and walked over to the ugly desk in one corner of the room. It was an oasis of emptiness in the unkempt room, which was strewn with clothes, magazines and rubbish. However, the desk’s usual squatters - empty pizza boxes, mugs of old abandoned coffee with congealed skins, papers, files and an ashtray full of long-since dead cigarettes - lay scattered around the desk, discarded for something more important. A brand new laptop sat proudly in the centre of the desk, folded out, the screen staring out at him questioningly. It was logged on.
Eddie turned back to the dying man in the middle of the room. His dirty white boxers clung pathetically to him as he breathed in and out, faster and faster. Just who had he killed? He couldn’t really remember the ID sheet he’d been given of the target...Jack someone. He was selling a big story to a national paper that apparently couldn’t be allowed to come out, and so the client had got in touch with the Company; leading to Eddie Jones standing over his dead body in his own apartment.
But what was the story? Company deals did not come cheap, and Eddie had been promised hundreds of thousands for this job. It had to be something big.
“You gotta tell me, Jack” he whispered, more to himself than anyone else, “…what do you have that they’re scared of?”
No. Don’t even think about it. Nothing to do with you. Just do the job and destroy the laptop. Don’t even think about it.
A quick glance at the laptop couldn’t hurt, surely? Nobody would know, and he had to destroy the laptop anyway, so surely…
He sighed. This was him not wanting to be the villain. Did it really matter that much?
Yes.
He gave in and moved the mouse frantically, heading to recent documents. If this Jack was informing on some criminal kingpin, that meant he was very, very close to this criminal, so maybe this was the dealer job all over again. Hero, right? Hero.
He flicked through the recent documents; there was nothing too obviously inflammatory. A large collection of pictures with very suggestive names…Eddie smirked slightly; this Jack wasn’t such a hero after all. Maybe-
There.
His mouse hovered above a document: Martinez_Orphanages.doc
Piercing through the silence of the room came the inane buzzing of the fly, finally airborne. The sound flickered around the room.
He knew that he should go right now. He knew he should dump the laptop in the nearest river, go to the car, drive to his apartment and sleep. He knew that he should forget about all this and head to the company, to the next job-
Coward.
He clicked the mouse. He felt the words stabbing from the screen through his eyes into his head. He didn’t fully read each sentence, but he could not tear himself away as snatches leapt screaming from the document he had opened.
Anthony Martinez…owner of chain of charity orphanages/children’s homes…convicted sex offender…bribery…paedophile…rape…paedophile ring…torture…cover-up…murder…people trafficking.
The room vanished in tunnel vision. All he could see was the words on the screen. Flashes of light cavorted on the edges of his vision with words of the screen. The fly’s buzzing grew so loud. There were so many flies, millions, buzzing around him, all over him, attracted to him, to the stench of evil. The buzzing was like a chainsaw, a chainsaw in his head. Joining the chorus of buzzing, he could swear he could hear a choir. A choir of children like ones he had heard growing up, like ones that Martinez had…
Then, above the cacophony in his ears, his own thoughts mocked him:
A quick glance…couldn’t hurt, surely? Surely…Hero. Coward. Get used to it. No morals. What do you have they’re scared of?
YOU GOTTA TELL ME, JACK
YOU GOTTA TELL ME, JACK
YOU GOTTA TELL ME, JACK
YOU GOTTA TELL ME, JACK.
He collapsed, screaming.
