“Lazarus, you got a job, take Tesla with you.”
“What’s going on?”
“Some maniac is kidnapping teenage girls, and their bodies are being dumped in the river.”
“And who is gonna pay us to take care of this guy?”
“Well all the girls being kidnapped are all women owned by the Ramos Syndicate, so they’re paying anybody who can take this guy in for killing all their whores.”
“Alright, where’s the f*cker hiding?”
“Well, I got a lead on an apartment complex not too far from the Red Light District near EDSA. Go hit it up and see what’s going on, if it’s a dead end come back to me and we’ll see whether or not we can continue with this or not.”
“Why don’t I bring Joshua with me?”
“Huh? This is one guy, and he seems pretty good at defending that place. Ramos sent two squads over there on separate occasions and they were all unsuccessful, so large numbers ain’t gonna help us here.”
“Got it, let’s go Tesla.”
“Right behind you,”
“Oh, and Tesla, I don’t want you to make a scene again like you did down in Cebu, if I see any sort of news coverage of some incident with gunfire in Metro Manila I’ll make you a desk jockey, you get me?”
“Gunfire, make a scene, news coverage. Got you.” Then she left. Mendoza breathed a long sigh and went back to his coffee.
The two hopped into their car and drove off to the location. The apartment complex was crowded with clothes drying on the terraces, dogs barkings at car alarms going off, and kids running around.
“Kind of reminds me of home, you know?” Tesla told Lazarus as they walked up the stairs.
“You grew up in a place like this?” He asked as he took out a cigarette and lit it.
“Yeah, except it was much louder.”
“Louder than this?”
“Gunfire ain’t exactly a soothing lullaby.”
They reached the apartment. It was on the fifth floor at the very end. The door looked faded, but was no different from the others. One thing that stood out was that the windows were all boarded up from the inside, to not let any light in.
“Damn, it looks like a crack house, not a sociopath’s loft.” Tesla remarked. Lazarus was quick to shush her. He was about to reach for the knob when Tesla stopped him and nodded her head. She motioned for Lazarus to get to the side of the door and not stand directly in front of it. She counted down to three as Lazarus loaded his FN P90. Tesla had her Beretta M9 with extended barrel and her Desert Eagle MK XIX Hand Cannon at the ready. She slammed the door open, and as expected a claymore went off. When the smoke cleared the two entered the apartment.
It was dark, with the only light being a ceiling lamp that flickered. There were three rooms. Two of them closed shut and one leading to the kitchen with no door. The furniture was old and forlorn. The floor was dusty and the rest of the walls also. Lazarus began to move toward the first door on the left as Tesla took the opening that lead to the kitchen.
Tesla slowly moved toward the kitchen but was met with a few rounds from a revolver.
“Hey Lazarus, get down!” She yelled and Lazarus followed ducking behind the sofa as Tesla took cover on the side of the door. The man had kicked down the dining table to duck under. He returned fire as soon as Tesla stopped.
“Sh*t, Lazarus, I can’t get the guy!” She yelled as she reloaded her Desert Eagle.
“Wait up,” he told Tesla as he left the apartment.
“What the Hell are you doing Lazarus!!!” She yelled as she fired some shots into the kitchen.
“Just distract him!” He yelled back.
Lazarus went outside the apartment and found the window that led to the kitchen, he then shot it up and kicked it down. Then he saw the man crouched behind the table focused on Tesla, but when Lazarus was about to enter the kitchen he noticed him and fired three shots at near his head which made him duck back out of the window. But just as he was refilling his revolver, Tesla placed the 10 inch barrel of her Beretta on the back of his head.
“Six shots, game over.” But as she said that he knocked her down, disarming her. Then he ran and picked up her gun and pointed it back at her. Just as he was about to fire six quick shots tore into his legs. And as he fell, there stood Lazarus with a FN P90 resting on his shoulder.
“Big Bad hero to save the day.” He said.
“F*ck off I could’ve handled this bastard myself.”
“Didn’t look like it.” Tesla was ticked off by this comment and Lazarus just laughed. “Come on, we can’t just let the man bleed to death, that would be inconsiderate.”
And as Lazarus dressed the man’s wounds, Tesla took a look around. She stared at a closed door. “With what I heard, you butchered those whores to take some organs. You got an organ fetish or something?” The man did not respond. “Hmph. Okay,” She kicked down the door and revealed the blood stained bathroom. Pieces of skin, blood, and a rotting body with her abdomen wide open occupied the man’s main workshop, and an ungodly scent lingered in the air. “Hell, a f*cking slaughterhouse. Damn, I don’t mind you doing this for kicks, but clean up after yourself, alright?”
She then went to the next locked door. Then the man began to scream. “No, don’t! Please don’t!”
“Why, afraid I’ll find your collection. Don’t worry I’ve lived with guys sicker than you.”
“No you don’t understand!”
“Whatever.” And as she was about to knock the door down the man hustled over to stand in front of it.
“Don’t, you’ll wake her.” A confused look fell on both of them. The man opened the door, and inside the room was a little girl lying on a bed. She was attached to various medical equipment and an EKG machine beeped in the corner. Her breathing was stressed. The room was clean, with nice paint, resembling the room of a child. The walls had pictures, drawings, and stickers all over it. There was a bookshelf holding stuffed toys, snow globes, and little knick knacks. The man was tearing up a little as he hobbled into the room. He wiped his tears.
“Those girls were all donors. Involuntary of course. I had a doctor coming in today to perform the transplant but said he couldn’t because the liver I got couldn’t match up well to her body. She doesn’t have much time left.”
“Why didn’t you go to a real hospital?” Tesla asked.
“I did. They charged too much, it wasn’t even a case of me not being able to afford. The doctors were greedy and they were the only ones here that could perform the operation. I contacted a doctor on the Black Market who could perform the operation for less as long as I got him a suitable donor. I still haven’t managed to find a donor that is suitable enough for her to survive.” He began to cry again.
“This your fault. Take out a loan, beg for them to take some off the price, anything so you didn’t have to resort to this. You’re a fool slaughtering all these girls, it could have been avoided.” Lazarus said coldly.
“Shut up! Shut the f*ck up! You don’t understand. I begged, I pleaded, those doctors would hear any of it! They didn’t care that she was dying! They just wanted to take my money! And plus had I still had my job, I would at least have had some insurance to cover some of it! It’s the goddamn system’s fault! They let any old hack get a medical degree so they can feed off people like me and not even allow me to be able to afford it! Damn it all!” He punched the wall and left a large dent. Then the girl woke up.
“Daddy?” she asked in a quiet voice.
“Oh God,” he wiped his tears again and slowly approached the girl. “It’s okay, I’m here. Ssh, baby. Come on, get some rest.” He fixed her blanket.
“Daddy, I’m hungry” she said,
“Well baby, I told you we don’t have any food right now. But I’ll go to the market later and get some, okay?” He said in a nice tone. He was really fighting to hold back the tears.
“Okay. And can you get me that strawberry candy I like?” she asked smiling.
“Of course honey.” He then reached out and hugged her.
“How much time does she have left?” Lazarus asked, concerned.
The man got up and stumbled a bit. “Are you okay daddy?” She asked.
“I’m fine baby.” He whispered into Lazarus’s ears, almost incomprehensible because of him crying, “If the transplant didn’t happen today, she won’t make it tomorrow,”
Lazarus’s eyes opened in disbelief.
“Daddy can you *cough* come here?” She asked, her voice strained. He walked over to her. “Hold me.”
“It’s okay baby, you’ll get better soon. Daddy’s working on getting you all better.” They tightly embraced.
“Daddy?” she asked with her voice lacking any sort of strength.
“Yes honey?” He was close to breaking down now.
“Thanks.”
“For what honey?”
“For trying.” Then her embrace all of a sudden got looser. Then the EKG machine alarmed as a flatline showed on the screen.
“Huh? No! NO! GOD NO! NOT YET!” He began to bawl as he laid his daughter down. “PLEASE NOT YET! LORD!” He looked to the heavens, as if pleading for support. Heaven would have none of it. He was on his knees now. He gripped his pants tightly, as tears fell, running down his cheeks like a river in a storm. Lazars and TEsla stood by at the entrance of the room, in disbelief. They felt no pity nor compassion, rather, they both felt disappointment.
“Give me the gun.” He said quietly.
“What?” Lazarus asked still in shock.
“THE GUN! HAND IT OVER!” He ordered and Lazarus obliged giving back his revolver. The man pushed one bullet into the gun pointed it to his head and then turned to Lazarus and Tesla. His tears had stopped now.
“She was my life you know.” He looked at his daughter. “Anything for daddy’s girl, right?” Then he pulled the triggered. The wall was red now, with two dead bodies lying in the room. The room still looked innocent, with it’s colorful paint, it’s childish drawings and artwork and its various toys. It was very much the room of a daughter beloved by her father.
Lazarus walked over the body and found a picture frame on the mantle. He wiped the blood away from it and stared at it. In the photo was a little girl in her father’s arms, laughing as the lights from a ferris wheel in the background spun around. Lazarus felt something when he was looking at the photo. He felt pity now, feeling sad that such a predicament fell on two people who had no business being the victims. Somehow, he felt that people like this should just be left alone, maybe to avoid others feeling sad when they hear about them. He was interrupted by Tesla telling him that they need to leave. He placed the picture frame back on it’s mantle. He closed the father’s eyes and carried him onto the bed. He wiped his head. As he left he closed the door behind him as the desperate dad laid dead next to his beloved daughter.
“You okay, there?” Tesla asked on the drive home.
“Just, thinking.”
“Thinking about the dad?”
“No, about myself.”
“How so?”
“That if I was in his shoes, I would have done just he did.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, even though his death is quite sad. He at least had one thing going for him.”
“What’s that?”
“Love. Love between a father and his child. That’s something I’d kill for.”
“Hmm, same here.”
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
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125,018 Literary Works • 672,856 Reviews
I have to say this piece has a lot of potential, but there are a lot of things holding it back. For one, there are so many points in this piece that are unbelievable. You and I both know that at the end of the day, it's fiction, so it's not real. But readers want to be able to believe for a little while. Even fantasy books, they don't just let meteors come outta nowhere if it's not in the accepted rules of the world. You set this in what appears to be a world similar to the present, so there are things you gotta work out.
First of all, taking cues from American dramas is good for the overall plot of the thing, I think, but not for the pacing. You got it cutting scenes where a TV show would cut, moving past things that are ACTUALLY valuable for building character and tryin' to cram a pinch of character building in where it feels unnatural. Like here:
and the following paragraph go together in what I call "information planting". Like "oh, yeah, just so you get the sense that I'm a deep character, I'll casually mention I've been in situations like this before, even though we've actually been working together, assumedly, before this moment". Besides the fact that it rings "too convenient", and I assumed these people had worked together before, known things about each other before, otherwise why would they be on a mission together, why is it mentioned? Like, if you came from a bad neighborhood and you didn't already know your partner did, too, wouldn't you be a little more cautious of claiming that without knowing how the other person would react? If this is supposed to be a defining moment of trust for their friendship, it doesn't ring that way without a sense of how they were before. And to be really honest it just sounds like, "I'm cool 'cause I've lived in bad places". I guess I don't like "bad-ass contests". I'd say: Be more tactful. If you lengthened the drive and told us how they even navigate, the gradually worsening neighborhood could cause one character to make a comment that more naturally goes into a short conversation about past neighborhoods.
Next, you have really got to clean up that fight scene. It seems like every other sentence in that section starts with "but then". It's hard to write action, especially opposing sets of action, I know! You have to practice finding different transition words, sometimes just letting one sentence flow after another. You have to also make sure the reader can clearly follow the order of actions! Go through and highlight wherever you've used "but", just so you can see how repetitive it is. When you edit, be aware of your tendency to do that, and don't do the same thing next time through.
The last thing I have to say is that there's almost nothing worse than a mysterious illness playing a main character in a story. You are basing this in reality, there's no reason you can't go and research actual illnesses to give one to this child. You are perfectly welcome to make up the societal situations surrounding her illness. I'll believe no doctors will see her these days (though I would like more explanation behind that -- not from the speaker, but if it were longer, we could see more evidence of it), but I don't buy a "mysterious" illness that needs organ transplants without a cause. Something made that liver fail. And the doctors don't just tell the father "this liver won't work", they say it's because of blood type or whatever else makes bodies reject implanted organs.
I wonder, what's the situation of blood type tests? How do doctors determine that before organ implant? Could the father get hold of similar tests? Why or why not? Think up this world. Build it solid, and then have the action rage through it.
If you have any questions about my review, please let me know through PM or wall post.
Good luck.
Hey there!
I really enjoyed this story, especially the twist at end. It was very emotional from the dialogue, and it was dramatic. I liked the character of the father as the desperate man who would do anything for his daughter, when being pushed to the limit. Lazarus and Tesla seem to be the kind of people that do their job when instructed but have a heart.
I like the concept of this. It's ironic too given that two different parts of the house are very different. The bloody part and the part where the girl sleeps. There's some kind of suspense when the father begs them not to go into the other room, and it gets the reader guessing.
One thing I thought could be improved was the daughters condition. She didn't seem too weak. In fact, she seemed like a normal child who was only slightly sick. Describe her symptoms and how she looked like in her state. Use her childish innocence to bring out the emotional side of the conversation between her and her father.
Also I felt the last part of the conversation between the parent and child too short. It seemed to be over too fast before the reader can fully digest the details. Slow down on that part and let the reader imagine the scene in their heads.
Overall a good read, learn how to pace the story and which parts to keep short and which parts to drag on. Hope my review helped!