text: confusedalarms . The Business You will pay for your lust 
   
   
   I: Waiting Rewarded 
    If anyone had seen the young man that night, standing there, lurking in the shadows in his long dark cloak, hat and pointed shoes, they would've run like hell, for there weren't many sights in this world as terrifying as the one just described. But nobody did, and after a while the young man leaned against the wall, clearly waiting for something. God knows how much time passed, and his position never changed. He just stood there, left foot propped up against the wall, right foot on the ground. By the time anything interesting happened it must've been 5 a.m. It was obvious that dawn was imminent, and even now the first, extremely early workers were walking or driving to their miserable jobs. The young man smiled to himself.  Fools 
   , he thought.  Ignorant fools. 
   Didn't they see there was no point in what they called 'following the righteous path'? They're always talking about getting into heaven, but if they actually thought about it they would see that the whole concept of heaven, even of God himself, was a load of ridiculous bullshit. All that mattered was how much you did with your life. There is no heaven after life, only hell. Plain and simple. Then a sound awoke the young man from his reverie. It was the sound of high-heeled shoes, and it was getting louder. This was what he had been waiting for. The sole reason why he had been standing there all night, with nothing but his anti-establishment thoughts for company. This was important. VERY important. She turned a corner into the alley, her dark hair glistening in the summer sunrise, her exceptioinal beauty adding to the strangeness of the scene. Women this beautiful rarely came to alleys like this, unless, of course, they were freshly caught whores, kept prisoner in the back rooms of a nude bar, used by filthy and possibly old men for money they would never recieve.  Not important, 
   he told himself.  This, right here, right now, could change you life so FOCUS, FOCUS, god damn you! 
    As she walked, he noticed that her eyes were a deep blue, in contrast to what you'd expect when you saw the dark hair and skin of her. But when she came really close you could see that this strange feature of her only added to her exotic, latin-american-like appearance.  'Hello', he said. 'I've been waiting for you.'   'I know,' she said, with an inviting look on her face. There weren't many people who could magic that look onto their face when they saw him, but the woman had been in the business for years, that much was clear.   'Let's walk,' she said, and they walked.   'So how are we going to handle this?' he said. 'I've been thinking and I think it's best we talk to Victor before we go taking this thing higher up. You know the bosses don't like wasting their time.'   'Of course I do, I know it even better than you do. I've seen the bosses. They work day and night to keep things controlled, and if there's anything they hate it's when some smalltime helper like you comes bringing them useless labour. So I agree, it's best we run this through Victor, and work it out a little more before we present the bosses with it.'  'So we have an agreement then?'   'I suppose so, yes.'   She smiled, and he could see that her tongue wasn't normal. Not normal at all. She had the tongue and fangs of a snake. Not that he was taken by surprise. All women let into the business had to undergo that transformation. He'd had to too, but since he was a man it had been different for him. Instead of being given the tongue and senses of a snake he'd been given the face of a snake, which also meant that he had the ability to swallow things twice his size easily . Not the tongue, just the face. That of couse meant that he had to wear a hat overday that rendered his face invisible. Below the hat you could see a pair of yellow eyes with narrow black slits for pupils. Of course women couldn't be transformed the way men were. In the business women were used to take out opponents by luring them into their bed with promises of sex, and then to bite them in the neck so they would die a fast but painful death. He supposed it wasn't an easy life. What if you came to fall in love with one of the men you had been assigned to kill? But it looked like such a thing had never happened to this woman. Her confident stride showed that she was fully aware of what dangers she held for those opponents. Because in the end everything in the world revolves around sex. In the end, things always began because for example someone had seen another man eating his wife's pussy, or the other way around. The person who this had happened to would then come to us and ask us to take out their husband or wife, which we did, but not for free. The one who had asked for our service had to pay a price, of course. This price wasn't just money, but part of it was. $3500 was the standard price, which went up according to the difficulty of the assassination, and could go up to $10000. Obviously they needed the money to keep the business going. The other part was a service, which was always different, but always took great daring and skill. Most of the time (say 7 out of 10) they died doing it, but that was meant to happen. You see, the people in the business were servants of the devil, and the devil was always happy with another soul or two to serve him. And since the person who had to do the task had payed to have someone killed, in other words sinned, badly, they would always end up in hell. You always ended up in hell anyway. The ones who did complete the task set for them were then let into the business, so if you look at it properly, once you went to one of the men like him and asked for your husband/wife killed you were lost. There was no God, there was only the devil.   'Shall we go and meet Victor right now?' he asked.   'Not right now,' she said,'I've got a job tonight. I must prepare.'   'All right then.' They parted company.   Everyone in the business had been cheated on (how else would they have ended up in it?), so the women all had a warped view on sex (relationship-bound sex only, one-night-stands are fine), thinking of it as something that causes trouble, and not as the great thing it actually is. The women saw it more as a profession, something of a duty they had to fulfill to please (or not to anger) the bosses. And the men? Well, they saw it as a nice thing on the side, but certainly not as something deeply emotional and lifechanging. They just screwed the occasional hooker when they felt like it. The young man walked on through the streets of Las Vegas, and watched as Sin City slowly woke up. Hotels and bars opened their doors, the everyday workforce walking, biking or driving to their jobs, usually a large cup of Starbucks in their hands. He smiled. Luckily he didn't need coffee. He hated that bitter stuff. But seeing as he had been 'transformed' he no longer needed coffee. He didn't even need to sleep. You can't imagine how much you can do in those night hours. You have all the time in the world to watch porn, TV, hell, even go screw some hooker he had scared in a back alley by showing his face. It was 8 extra hours everyday. Normal people waste so much time of their precious lives sleeping, it's just sad. He walked on, turned a corner into a dingy back alley, walked up a flight of narrow metal stairs and entered his apartment. 
   
   
   
   II: Early Morning Rituals 
    Dawn came and found the young man sitting in his easy chair reading a book. The book was Pet Sematary by Stephen King. He had started it that night and had now almost finished the 400-page novel. He had read for 7 hours and he was a fast reader. He had read this book maybe 5 times and it was one of his favourites. He liked horror novels, and who better to go to than Stephen King, at least his earlier work. His library was filled with such masterpieces as  Carrie, Salem's Lot, The Shining, Cujo, Christine & Misery 
   . It was 6 am on wednesday the 30th of July 1997, and today was perhaps the most important day of his life in the business. First they would meet Victor, who would hopefully help them deal with this shit. If he didn't they would have to go to the bosses and hopefully they would come out of their 'offices' alive. He got up and went to the bathroom. Sitting down to take a shit he noticed it was more liquid than solid (Eating take-away Chinese food at 3am didn't go well with your stomach), and he didn't like it. He got up, wiped his ass, flushed, washed his hands, brushed his teeth, applied deodorant, in other words performed the ordinary morning rituals of a man living alone. When he was done he went back into the room and to his chair. As he did so he noticed the computer standing on the other side of the room. The computer he nearly only used for...well, for the needs of every man. He felt it. Felt the urge.  But it's just morning, for fuck's sake! 
   Well who cares?  Well reasoned. 
   He walked to the computer, which was still on stand-by, and he awoke it from its night's sleep. How convenient, it was still on his favourite site from last night. He satisfied his needs and cleaned up the results, then left his apartment at 6.30 am and noticed for the first time that it was raining. Not a nice warm summer's rain, like you'd expect on the 30th of July, but a cold rain. It could just as easily have been February, the month when diseased people often suddenly give in to their disease for no reason. nobody knew why but February somehow got you down.  Like it got me down all those years ago 
   , he thought.  Oh great. Am I really going to stroll down my stupid memory lane? 
   He guessed he would. He knew it well. There were some horrifying sights there in that old lane. Sights few men could look upon and stay calm, and those men were mostly criminals, murderers or psychopaths.  No! You're not going to go there again! Think! What's  
   the point? You'll just get yourself crying again!  Of all the days in  
   
   your life this is the one where you need to stay ALERT and FOCUSED!  
   
   Alright wise-speaking voice, you win. He realised he was still standing just outside his door. It could have been 10 seconds, could've been 10 minutes since he had opened it. He didn't know, he didn't heve a watch. Watches were for people who followed the rules. The business wasn't so strict. His night's waiting in an alley had proved that. They had eternal life, so what did it matter if they wasted a day or two doing nothing? What did it matter if they showed up late for meetings? They didn't need sleep, so it was never too late. He descended the narrow metal staircase leading up to his apartment and walked out onto the main street and through Las Vegas. As he walked he passed by a motel distastefully called Last Resort.  No! 
   , he thought. NOOOO!! You are NOT going to walk down your stupid... 
   
   
   
   III: Memory Lane 
    July 1992. He was Mark Anderson, a normal young man in his late teens, who had rushed into a marriage with his high school love Tina Lee. It was the first night of their marriage. They had just entered their hotel suite with the words 'Just Married' handwritten in his mother's neat, curvy handwriting on a cardboard sign taped to the door. They could hear the afterparty going on downstairs, but paid no attention to it. They only had attention for each other.   'Well, that was painless', Tina said in her high voice that was like butter to his ears. They had been a little anxious about Tina's parents' reaction at the wedding, as they hadn't been exactly delighted with Mark and weren't really supporters of early marriage (just four moths after they had met each other at the diner where she was a waitress). But the crucial moment, when the master of ceremonies says 'Speak now or forever hold your tongue', they had both remained silent, though it has seemed like they had had trouble stopping themselves from shouting out.   'You can say that again,' he said.   'Well, that was painless,' she obeyed. That was just Tina, silly jokes like that, that was one of the reasons why he loved her so much. That and the ass, of course. Because it was the ass that had caught his attention at that diner, not her jokes, because you don't tell jokes when you're waiting tables at 3 am. He watched as she began unzipping the somewhat more compact dress she had put on after the ceremony to be able to walk around. He watched as she revealed her young body. They had both been raised Catholic and had agreed not to have sex until they were married. It was their first time, and there aren't many things in your life that are more exciting than your first time. This was what they had been thinking about since they had officially been pronounced husband and wife. If he was honest to himself it was what he had been thinking about since he had turned 13 and had borrowed a sex tape from one of his friends, discovering for the first time the wonders of masturbation. He watched as she began unhooking her bra to reveal a pair of young, round, as of yet uncaressed breasts. Already he could feel the excitement bubbling inside him, already he could feel his dick getting hard.  This is going to be short but awesome 
   , he thought.  February 1993. As it turned out he was right. Their happiness as a couple had been short but awesome. They had gone on honeymoon to a luxurious resort in Florida for two weeks, something they both had been saving up for since they had first decided to get married. There they had had sex exactly 32 times, and as time went by he was getting better at controlling himself. That first time in the hotel room had lasted 3 minutes at best, if you only counted the actual deed. Now he could control himself enough to keep from coming about 20 minutes after they had really taken off, which was good for her and for him, too. She hadn't come yet, but they had read in some advice books from the library that most women had to wait years for their first orgasm and that it was extremely rare to have an orgasm the very first time, so they weren't worried. 'I'll just have to be patient, she had said, 'After all, we have years to come, don't we?' 'We sure do, my love.' But they couldn't have been more wrong. In fact it had alreay started when they had come back from the honeymoon to find that Tina's mother had died in a car accident. Their marriage's first test came too soon, and too soon they were fighting every night over stupid things, fights that usually ended with Mark making Tina cry, Mark melting immediately and trying to comfort her, and then Tina going to spend the night at her father's. But one day, after one of many such fights, Mark had been thinking.  What if she doesn't go to her father's at  
   
   all? 
   
   This thought had been so believeable that he had taken his bike (they didn't have a car yet) and rode it to Tina's father's house two miles away. When he had rung the doorbell there had been no answer and all the lights had been off.  She's not here. 
   This couldn't be true.  Oh yes it can.  
   He had then cruised every motel within a 10-mile radius of his house. There had been 12 motels, he still knew that number. After he had been to the 11th empty motel, he was finally beginning to feel a little relieved.  Maybe they were asleep 
   , he kept thinking. But he was going to check that last one,  Last Resort 
   , too, just to be sure. It was only a quarter mile away, he could be home by 2.30. He had arrived there and walked into the somewhat dirty lobby.  'Are there any guests right now?' he had asked the sullen-looking receptionist.   'Yea,' she had said, chewing pink bubblegum,   'Room 7. But I wouldn't disturb 'em if I was you. They sound like they're havin' a good go at it. Can ya hear?'  He could. They were in one of the rooms closest to the lobby. He ran up the stairs, ignoring the 'What the hell d'you think you're doing?' form a cleaning lady that was sweeping the floor, saw a door with the number 7 painted in peeling black paint across it, and threw it open. And there she was, lying on the bed, getting her ass pounded by some black guy. Her  ASS 
   , for fuck's sake! During the honeymoon he had asked maybe 10 times if they could at least try, but she was the stricter catholic and had said that it was against the Lord to have anal sex. And now here she was, with some random nigger, doing the very thing she had refused to do for her husband, who had always been very loving and considerate toward her.   'Mark! Oh shit!', she cried.   'Who the fuck is that?!', he screamed.   'How DARE you, Tina!'   'Wowowow, you married babe?', the nigger asked. So he didn't know.   'You stay outta this, asshole, or you're gonna get your dick cut off!'   'Chill, dawg!'   'Mark, please calm down. We can.. '   'CALM DOWN! YOU WERE GONNA TELL ME TO CALM DOWN WHEN YOU'RE THE ONE GETTING ASSFUCKED BY SOMEGUY AT A MOTEL?!!'   ' Mark..'   'No Tina! We're done! If there was anything left between us it's gone now. Goodbye.'  He walked out the door.   'Mark, please, I'm sorry! Wait! Mark..'   But he was gone.  January 1994. He now lived in the center of Las Vegas instead of in the suburbs. He had stayed at a motel after leaving  Last Resort 
   , and the next day he had rented a small place above a Starbucks shop for $150 a week. He had gotten a job as an order-accepter/coffeeserver at the Starbucks he lived above and earned a salary of $1250 a month. The Starbucks didn't have long hours and he didn't have to stand in traffic jams every morning. All he had to do was go down the stairs and into the shop through the back door. He was happy for now, but knew he couldn't work in a Starbucks forever. He had to get a job that payed better. The problem however was that he wasn't a very bright person. In fact he had dropped out of high school in his last year, so he didn't have any qualifications, which worked against him at every job interview he went to. So for now he was stuck in Sin City. He had begun to hate the nickname of the city. It reminded him too much of Tina, and her reluctance to sin with him during the honeymoon, the memory of which was now starting to fade as if it had happened 10 years ago instead of 2.   Friday the 13th of January started in perfectly normal fashion. 6:00am wake up, 6:30am get out of bed, 6:45am breakfast, 7:00am Go to work, 7:01am arrive at work, 12:00am lunch. But after lunch, around 2:00pm, something happened that changed the course of his life. The Starbucks wasn't really crowded, there were about 5 people in, so it was hard to miss them walking through the door. But he didn't see them because he was taking a piss. He flushed and went through the door to the bar he stood behind 8 and a half hours a day, and there they stood. Tina and some guy.   'Mark! Oh!'', she said.   'Who is this, darling?', the guy said.   'This is my former husband.'   'Oh...oh shit.'   'Let's go, Dave,' she said and they quickly started walking.   'Wait a minute!' They turned around.'How long has this been going on?', he asked.   '8 months. In fact, we're engaged. Why?,'she said.  'Oh, I just...' he turned around and walked into the back of the shop, where he sat down on a box of whatever and held his head in his arms. He didn't know how long he sat there. Thoughts, terrible thoughts, went trough his head.  8 months...wait a minute. That means she got it on with him only 3 months after. I was deeply depressed and suicidal for 6 goddamn months! She didn't love me. She lied to me. She sinned. She must pay...pay for her sins...but how? 
    Febrary 1994. He had been walking after work everyday since then. Just walking to ease his stress. Stress?  That would be an understatement, wouldn't it? You've gone completely  
   
   insane, mate! 
   
   Yes, that was true, and he knew it. It was almost a month ago now that he had seen Tina in the Starbucks, and he had gone over those few seconds countless times. It was etched into his mind forever just because he had retrieved it from the database of his long-term memory. Two weeks after those lifechanging seconds he had spotted an envelope on his bed when he was getting ready to go to sleep, an envelope made of paper of a strangely thick texture, almost like parchment, and with a purple seal on the back of it. On the front it said  To the cheated one. Open only when  
   
   alone 
   
   . The seal had the letters TB on it in curly handwriting. 'What the fuck is this?', he asked the room. He tore off the seal and took out a letter written indeed on parchment.  Dear Mr. Anderson,  We know what you've been thinking. If you want it to happen, come to the alley behind Target on Jefferson Street at 11 pm sharp tomorrow. Bring all the money you have.  Yours,  Sir Edward, Vice-president of The Business. 
   
   
   
   IV: Interlude 
    A sharp pain in his forehead awoke him from his reverie. Lost in thought he had walked headfirst into a flashlight-pole. And maybe it was for the best. He'd rather have a headache for the rest of the day than re-experience what had happened after the letter. Now he had to focus. He noticed that in his half-hypnotic state his feet hadn't carried him closer to his destination at all. They had carried him straight to the Target 5 miles from his apartment. The one on Jefferson street.  Jesus, I'm gonna be late! 
   That was the last thought that had anything to do with the present for a while. 
   
   
   
   V: Continuation 
    He couldn't believe he was seriously considering it, but he was. Oh yes. The first hour after he had found the letter he had just sat on the bed trying to think clearly. Then he had started arguing with himself. If you wanted to picture it in a cliché way, I guess the minature angel and devil were talking in his ear. At first the angel seemed to be winning, preaching forgiveness and saying she had been under great stress from the accident, that it wasn't her fault she was driven to commit such a heinous crime. But, of course, the minature devil always wins.  Think of how she decieved you, 
   it said.  She has  
   
   betrayed God by breaking the bond that ties you to marriage, and therefore she  
   
   
   must recieve the highest punishment: execution. 
   
   But really, it wasn't the bad part of his mind talking anymore. He knew he could never put it that way, all chic and classy. It was Sir Edward. The vice-president of The Business, whatever that was. And Sir Edward was right. She had to pay. But how?  By going in the alley  
   
   behind Target on Jefferson street at 11pm sharp, stupid! 
   
   Yes, he would go. He would bring all the money he had. And hopefully, she would pay. 
   
   
   
   VI: Angry Thoughts 
    He was on his way to meet his unknown destiny, and he found it scary, but in some morbid way also exhilarating. He didn't know what was going to happen in the alley, but somehow he knew it would would change his life forever. The only downside seemed to be that it was cold. Very cold. And it was the kind of dry, freezing cold you would expect from the middle of December or January, but not at the end of February. At the end of February you would expect it to be cold, but a moist kind of cold, with the occasional rainfall here and there. But what did it matter if it was cold or warm? The adrenaline building inside him warmed him up as he walked along, and after ten minutes or so it didn't even bother him anymore. He had time to think about the letter, and the way he had encountered it. How had The Business gotten into his apartment without a key and without forcing locks or breaking windows?  Maybe they can do  
   
   magic 
   
   . No. Don't be silly. That happens in the books and the movies, but not in real life. He found he had lost all belief in the supernatural, including God, at some point during his period of lonely depression. He could not remember it, he probably hadn't even noticed it, preoccupied as he was with thoughts of Tina and the black guy, how she had been screaming 'Oh God, fuck me Dwayne, fuck me right in the ASS!' right before he had kicked the door open, of how she had seemed surprised, but not concerned about her marriage at all. In fact, she had even seemed glad that he had found out, as if she had been waiting for it to happen so she could end her marriage and go be a slut. All this infuriated him, and when he went into the alley he was still filled with rage and ready for anything. But what he saw still scared the shit out of him. 
   
   
   
   VII: A Meeting With Edward 
    At first he didn't see anyone, and he had a feeling of anticlimax, of all that anxiety and anger leading up to nothing.  It was probably just a practical joke to get me to walk 15  
   
   minutes in the cold, 
   
   he thought. But then a figure emerged from the shadows, smootly and with grace, like a lynx or any type of cat for that matter. And immediately he knew this was the real deal. There was something emmanating from him, something he couldn't really label. It was like a mix of despair and desire, two feelings that are normally never mixed. The figure came closer now, but he still couldn't see his face, it was still hidden by the extra pool of darkness his hat cast onto his features. But then he did come close enough, and Mark was nailed to the ground. His instict was to run, but the something radiating from the man (Thing, he thought, it's a thing) seemed to be able to overpower even the basic instinct of flight.  'Hello Mark,' he said. His voice was deep and seemed to be everywhere, filling his head like the physics formulas he had stamped into his head for his finals in high school.  'H....hello,' he said, 'Are you...'   'Edward? Why yes, I am.' His pronunciation of the s sounded oddly....snakelike.   'You should be honored that I'm meeting you in person. I usuall send servants, but your case intrigued me so much I thought I would stop by myself.'   Mark didn't know what to say. He was stammering like a nervous freshman giving his first ever presentation in High School. Edward noticed he wasn't going to say anything, so he said:   'Tell me Mark: Are you angry at her?'   'Yes.' No hesitation. 'I'm very angry and I want to make her pay. So are you going to help me or not?'   Edward smiled. 'But why make haste? We are having such a pleasant conversation, don't you think? Tell me, what did Tina do again?'   'Cheated on me with a black dude five weeks after we got married. I found her at a sleazy motel, getting fucked in the ass. The  ASS 
   ! God damn slut! Oh, sorry sir, please excuse my language.'  'Oh, I'm used to strong language and I don't have any problems with it. As a matter of fact I also think she's a little slut and that she should be taken care of. Don't you agree?'   'Yes.' Again, no hesitation, none at all. He was breathing heavily, his rage at Tina was like a fire in his mind that could only be put out by....'Blood,' he heard himself say. 'I want to see her blood.'   'Oh you will,' Edward said,' But first we will need some money. How much do you have with you?'   'Three grand. It's all I have. I took all my money out of my savings yesterday. I hope it's enough.'   'I'm afraid the standard price is $3500, but I think I'm willing to make an exception for you, in light of the tragedies you've experienced recently.'   'Thank you for the favor. When will she be killed? I want to know so I can be there to watch it happen.'   'Not so fast there, young man. Money isn't everything. You must also provide a service for me. It not until after you have done so that you can watch the blood flow from Tina's neck.'   'Ok....what do I have to do?' ' I want you to kill a person. Anyone will do, you just have to kill them, and bring the body here within one week. I will be waiting.' He handed Mike a .45 handgun.   'Good luck,' Edward said. 
   
   
   
   VIII: Consideration 
    Could he do it? That was was he had been thinking about ever since the meeting, and that was 5 hours ago. He was lying in a motel bed and trying to sleep, but thoughts of the meeting and the task that lay ahead of him had kept him awake the whole time.  Am I really considering it?  
   he thought, as he stared at the spot on the ceiling above his head where the paint had worn off.  Am I really? 
   He supposed he was. The meeting had been like gasoline poured onto the fire in his mind, until it was so big it seemed to cause him physical pain rather than just rage. He looked at the gun on the nightstand next to him. He had already checked: it was loaded. Ten shells. He had held it in shooting position before he went to bed, aiming it as if he was going to shoot the wall, and it had been cool to the touch. Strange that something so cold could generate a fiery explosion in the blink of an eye if you just pulled the trigger. He hadn't pulled it yet though. He had to save the bullets he had.  Save the bullets you have? But you don't even know  
   if you're going to do it! But a part of his mind had known all along, had known from the moment he was handed the .45 that he would do it. But he needed a plan. 
   
   
   
   IX: Water On The Fire 
    Mark woke up, and for a few seconds he did not know where he was and he didn't remember anything that had happend the night before. But then it all came back to him, and he let his head fall back onto the pillow, tired as hell. He realized he was staring at the same spot on the ceiling he'd been staring at for hours before he had finally fallen asleep, and he quickly turned away. He never wanted to see that again. He associated it with bad thoughts, dark thoughts. He sat up in bed.  Shit, I don't have a plan yet, 
   he thought. After he had made his decision he'd fallen asleep almost immediately, because really the douth had been what kept him awake until 4 am.  Calm down, no need to  
   
   panic. You have a whole week, remember? 
   
   Yes, that was right. And the first step toward coming up with a good plan was getting the fuck out of this room and getting another one for a while, because he couldn't stand looking at that goddamn spot on the ceiling any longer.  Best get started then, 
   he thought, and that's what he did. He took a shit, showered, dressed, combed his hair neatly, and then walked out of the room into bright sunlight. The light blinded his eyes, and he had to narrow them almost to slits. He stood there for a minute, blinking dumbly in front of his door, and then walked toward the reception desk.   'I want to change rooms,' he said. The reception lady looked at him questioningly.   'Why?' she said, sounding a little suspicious.   'There's a weird smell in the one I'm in right now,' he said.   'It comes from the sink. I figure, if it doesn't cost anything extra, why not change rooms and not be bothered by it anymore?'   'Oh,' she said, trying not to sound surprised. 'Well, I can arrange that, of course. Which one would you like?'   'The cheapest one, if there's a difference in pricing. Otherwise, pick one for me.'   'Well, our rooms don't differ in price at all, so I guess I'll put you in room 5. It's over there to your right.' She pointed and he looked. There was a wooden door with a brass number 5 on it on the upper floor, probably the room furthest away from the reception desk.  Now why would she do that? Do I look like some kind of creep or something? 
   'I'll take that one then. Thank you very much. I'm just going to get my clothes from my old room.'   'You do that.'   He walked back to his room. Halfway there he looked around and caught her hastily looking away.  There it is again. What's so weird about me? 
   He went into his room, walked into the bathroom, and then realized he didn't even have any other clothes in there.  Well this is embarrassing. Now I have to walk past her again and say 'I forgot I didn't have any clothes with me,' ans she'll say 'Oh,' and get back to doing nothing, but 
   
    she'll think 
   
   what a creep!  I just know it! 
   Then he thought  Jesus, I'm getting paranoid. I should stop that. 
   So instead of walking by the reception lady he turned right, exited the motel that way and walked through the busy streets of morning Las Vegas. Cars drove by, people walked by, none of them paying attention to him, him not paying attention to any of them. Just the way it was supposed to go.  See? I don't look weird, that reception lady's just  
   
   crazy or something. 
   
   He walked until he reached a quiet park with a pond. Ducks were quacking happily as they were given bread by a happy-looking old couple. It was a scene of utter peace, and he found it calmed him down, like the hugs of his mother when he was a child and he thought there was a monster in his room. He walked over to a bench and sat down to think. 
   
   
   
   X: Arguing With Myself 
    He sat on that bench for a long time. How long he didn't know, but he could tell it was a while because he had seen the sun rise and start descending again. He had devoted only a small part of that time to thinking of a plan. The largest part he had thought about Tina, their wedding, their honeymoon...in short, the time they had been happy together. And he had cried. A lot. He hadn't even cared if people saw him crying, he had been in way too deep of sorrow to. But the crying had ended after a while, and after pulling himself together he had started thinking about the plan. It hadn't really taken that long either. In fact, it had taken almost no time at all. His mind had been clear, and everything had seemed simple, overseeable. His plan was to simply go to the very same alley he had met Edward in after dark every night. and the first person who walked into or even passed close by the alley he would seize and shoot. Then he would hide his or her body in the dumpster from behind which Edward had emerged the night before. In his head this all seemed very simple, but he supposed it would be a lot harder in practice. He wasn't a very violent person. Sure he had gotten into some fights in school, who hadn't? But he had never harmed anyone for no reason at all. And that was precisely what he had to do.  Well, not precisely 
   , a voice in his head said.  You have to kill someone, not just harm them. You have to kill someone who probably doesn't deserve to be killed. Can you do that old boy? Can you stand to have that on  
   
   your conscience for the rest of your life? 
   
   He didn't know. He guessed the only way to know was to just try it. 
   
   
   
   XI: Trying It 
    It was raining. It was cold. It was dark. It was his second time in the alley. The first time he'd waited four hours for someone to pass by and he hadn't been able to do it. He'd gone back to the motel depressed and thinking he couldn't do it. But the next morning he'd felt refreshed and ready to go again. He'd gone back to the park to calm himself down, and had ended up sitting there until dark. Then he'd walked over to the alley about one mile away with his raincoat on. And here he was now, lurking behind the shadows, invisible to anyone who walked by, because his entire outfit was black. The gun he held between his legs as he sat, his back resting against the wet wall, pointing down at the ground. He didn't want to accidentally castrate himself. He had to pay attention because there might only be one person passing by all night, but he couldn’t help but let his mind wander off, thinking about all that had happened these past years, how he had found happiness, how it had been smashed to bits almost immediately after he had. The period of near suicidal depression that had followed, and now this. This mysterious business he was rapidly becoming more and more involved with. Though he knew very little about it he felt like was connected to it in some strange way, like it had him in a stranglehold of obsession and would never let him go. These thoughts frightened him, and he suddenly started thinking about just bailing on the whole thing. Just walking out of Vegas and going on a hitchhiking trip for a few years to meet new people and find himself. But somehow he knew Edward wouldn’t let him. Somehow he knew his fate had been sealed the moment he first laid eyes on that letter on his bed a week ago. He would have to do it. So he had to focus,  FOCUS! This, right here, right now, could change your life so FOCUS, FOCUS, god damn you! 
   That wasn’t his mind-voice speaking anymore. It was Edward’s, The same one he had heard when he was thinking about whether or not he would go to the alley, and it jerked him out of the deep, almost meditative state he had been in for some time, and into the present world. Suddenly he felt as though all his senses had sharpened somehow, as if he suddenly had the nose of a bloodhound, the eyes of a tiger, and the ears of a grisly bear. He could smell decay coming from the garbage containers 30 feet away, he could see rats and mice scuttling about way in the back of the alley, and he could hear….footsteps. Footsteps coming his way. Quickly. He had to act now, because somehow he knew this would be his only chance that night. He looked around, saw the entire street was deserted, and jumped around the corner. A woman in a tight black skirt, wearing high heels, jumped and screamed.   ‘What the-‘ That was the last thing she would ever say. 
   
   
   
   XII: Disgust, Despair & Disposal 
    Two quick, clean shots burst from the .45 he held firmly in his hand. He had never fired a gun before, but something, some weird kind of guiding force seemed to keep his hand steady so he could aim perfectly. Both bullets ended up exactly where he had wanted them to be, one in the chest, one in the forehead. Blood, dark red blood, spurted from her, and she fell to the ground, uttering a gurgling scream that was incredibly high pitched. It was a sound of mixed surprise, fear and pain, and it pierced the air, and also Mark’s heart. He looked at the writhing woman on the ground, bleeding from two places, and felt a mixture of disgust and pity for her. She looked at him, and the look in her eyes said Why? Why did you do this? He looked her right in the eyes and said ‘Sorry! I had to! I’m so fucking  SORRY! 
   Oh god!’ She just kept looking at him, despair and pain in her eyes. It went on for what seemed like an hour, but at last Mark saw the light of life leave her eyes and she breathed no more. It was done. He grasped her by the back and carried her into the alley over his shoulder, looking around to check no-one was looking, very aware of her blood besmirching his jacket, of how warm it still was. He had checked: the garbage disposal containers had been emptied the day before, so they wouldn’t come and uncover the body before he and Edward would meet again. He dumped her in one of the garbage containers, pushed her down as deep as he could and hid her by covering her in more garbage he had saved from his stay in the motel. When she was hidden well enough he walked over to the wall of the alley, slumped against it and cried.  
   
   
   
   XIII: Three Voices 
    He stayed there for a while, and eventually the crying stopped and he began the process of getting up. It was a painful process, because he’d been sitting in the cold February rain for about six hours, and he suspected he’d have to endure the agony of a continually aching body for a couple of days. But frankly he didn’t care. He didn’t even notice the pain, at least not for the rest of the night. His mind was too occupied with the atrocity he’d committed to process the signals his nerves were sending it. First though, he had to get back to the motel, but it looked like that would be easy. The shots had been deafening to him because of his weirdly heightened senses, and he suspected people with normal ears would have heard them from a great distance, but in Sin City it seemed like the police either didn’t care or were too busy with some other case. But he ran anyway, ran like the wind. Running it only took him about five minutes to get back to the motel, and in the park he got rid of his .45 by throwing it into the pond where the ducks were strangely absent that night. He thought that would do, and in any case he was glad to have gotten rid of it. The coolness of its metal only reminded him of two miserable nights and a monstrous deed. When he got to the motel he slowed to a walk, and went up to his room, the one furthest away from the reception desk. Inside he dove straight onto the bed, even though he knew that sleep would be pretty much impossible. For hours he lay on that bed, not sleeping, and he thought miserable thoughts. Mostly he thought about the woman he’d killed. He didn’t know anything about her, only that she was probably a whore. The cold part of his mind told him  she was just some whore, no-one will miss her. She probably hasn’t seen her parents for years, and they won’t be any the wiser. Just let it go and go to sleep. 
   But it was losing the battle to the part that screamed  YOU KILLED HER! A YOUNG WOMAN WITH HER WHOLE LIFE AHEAD OF HER! AND FOR WHAT? TO GET REVENGE ON TINA?! WHAT KIND OF MONSTER ARE YOU, TO BE THAT SELFISH? 
   So it went on, and a few hours later, when the sun came up, the screaming in his head had made him feel sick with himself, made him feel like he didn’t deserve to live. He’d even considered suicide, but only briefly. Because by the end of the night, another voice had started up in his mind. The voice of curiosity. Today was the day he would meet Edward again, and that meeting had begun to feel like the last certainty that was left in his life. After it there was only an endless stretch of…what, exactly? It seemed to him he could only find out by going out and meeting that mystery man once again. So he got up, feeling for the first time the aching in his entire body, and made a grisly discovery. His entire shirt was covered in dried-up blood.  Her 
   blood. That was enough for the mental sickness to become physical as well. He ran for the toilet, but before he could get there he fell to the floor, retching and producing only a vial liquid that left a terrible aftertaste in his mouth.  God 
   , he thought,  how long has it been since I’ve eaten? 
     
   
   
   
   XIV: Second Meeting 
     
   Two days. He hadn’t eaten for  two straight days!  It seemed that the mental battle he’d been fighting over whether or not to do the murder and the misery after he’d actually done it had completely drowned out his hunger instincts. But they were back now, and he was experiencing hunger like he’d never known before.  This is what people in Africa must feel like all the time , he thought, and made a mental note to give money to charities from now on. Before he could eat though, he had another problem. In the night it hadn’t been that bad, but he didn’t think walking around in a shirt covered in blood was the best idea when you wanted to be inconspicuous. But he didn’t have another shirt. They were all in his apartment above the Starbucks, where he hadn’t showed up for work for almost a week. Getting there didn’t seem so hard, it was summer after all, a beautiful 90-degree day, and a man walking around bare-chested wasn’t exactly going to draw a crowd, but getting to his apartment involved walking right past the entrance to the Starbucks, and he had to make sure he wasn’t seen by any of his colleagues, or his boss, for that matter. The best solution, it seemed was to go right now, when the Starbucks wouldn’t be open yet. Some employees would be there, but they would be shuffling boxes around in the back, so they wouldn’t see him. At least he hoped they wouldn’t, and hoping was the best he could do.  Best get on with it then. No time to waste . He stuffed the bloodied shirt into the spacious left pocket of his shorts and exited the motel. He would come back and pay for his room later that morning, when he had some clothes. He had a feeling he wouldn’t be coming back to that room any more. Something told him that in the next chapter of his life, the one that started with his meeting with Leland, he would have a new permanent residence somewhere else. 
     
   It was a two-mile walk to his old apartment, but a combination of starvation and aching muscles made it feel a lot longer. On the way he passed the  Last Resort  motel, and stared at it in disgust. The fading paint and the gloomy look of the place really did make it feel like a last resort, where people who were at the end of their ropes could always find a cheap roof over their heads. He looked up at room number 7, then looked away again. He never wanted to see the place again, and he made a note to avoid it on his route back to the motel. But he walked on, and noticed that he wasn’t really getting stared at. Good. 
     
   The Starbucks was just around the corner. He stood and gathered his courage for a while, and then, trying not to be noticed, turned right and, at a brisk pace, walked by the front window of the coffee house. He stared straight ahead, he did not look. Then he walked around the building and opened the door on the side, which led to his apartment building. Everything seemed fine, so he entered his room. Although it had felt more or less like home just a few days ago (less than a week, in fact), as he stood there now he could not imagine ever having lived here. The moment when he’d found the letter from Leland on his bed everything had changed. Everything he’d done since then had felt somehow predestined in retrospect. When he walked into the Target back alley, and when he did the murder that was result of the meeting he had there, he felt some invisible guiding force invade him, talk through his mouth and take over his hands to do horrible things.  Should I really get involved with this ‘Business’? I mean, Tina should get what she deserves, but is that death? This Leland… I…  he felt the force again, he felt it take action and derail his train of thought. And no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t seem to fix the tracks. Whenever he tried, thoughts like  I should pack my stuff  and  I should hurry up and get to the Target  interrupted him. Finally he couldn’t take it any longer. He laid down on his bed and fell asleep almost immediately, though he still hadn’t eaten. 
     
   5:00 pm. Hunger woke him up. It was all he could think of. He put on a shirt and went out immediately. He found the nearest McDonald’s and ordered two quarter pounders, two large fries and a milkshake. He gobbled the fries, consumed the burgers in large chunks, and washed it all down with the milkshake.  Now, finally I can think. 
   Great. 
     
   7:00 pm. After his hasty meal he had stayed in the Mac and stared blankly ahead for a while, like a moron. Then he had found that, although his initial appetite had died down, he could still fit a little more.  Why not? Fill up on food now, you might have to go without it for a while after tonight, who knows.  So for the next hour he had ordered small portions, like a box of McNuggets, eaten them and then come back for more. And now here he sat, body satisfied, mind occupied. He looked out of the window and saw that it was already getting dark outside. He would still have to wait for a while, however. The Target didn’t close until nine, and even then he’d have to wait for all of the personnel to leave, and for everything to be quiet.  I will be waiting , Leland had said just before their meeting ended. And Mark had a feeling he would be, whether he went today or let it wait until tomorrow. Leland would be there whenever he was there. Leland would wait one week and not a second longer. 
     
   10:00 pm. He was still in the Mac, though he hadn’t ordered anything for hours. He kept getting glances from the people behind the counter.  What a weird man , he imagined they were thinking,  first he spends two straight hours eating and now he just sits there alone for hours, mumbling to himself. 
   Well, let them think what they will, he thought. I can sit here until closing time if I so desire. But he didn’t. He decided it was time to go. He went back to his apartment, grabbed his clothes, shoved them in a duffel bag and left, not taking one look back at the crummy two-room accommodation he would never set foot in again. 
     
   As he walked the two miles to the Target, duffel bag slung around his shoulders, the same feeling of fear from before the first meeting began to invade him again. But this time, rather than thinking it was some kind of joke, he felt that weird, driving force, this time in his legs, taking control of them and carrying him the remaining distance. He, or rather his legs, turned a corner and then he was in full view of the Target again. It looked deserted. He walked across the gloomy, unlit parking lot and went round to the back alley. ‘Hello? He said. His voice sounded frightened to him. 
   ‘Ah, Mark!’ a voice spoke from the darkness. ‘There you are. Finally! Let’s get cracking then.’ 
   
   
   Publication Date: January 9th 2014 https://www.bookrix.com/-jaccovaneijk