Blue Eyes, Red Hands

Blue Eyes, Red Hands

         Marcus turned and surveyed the room for a final time. One, two, three, four, five bodies, the last wearing the white, two-piece suit he had been told to look for. He shoved his hand into his pocket, counting through touch the spent shells that rested inside. Five. Good. He was done here.
         Letting out a short sigh as he went, Marcus turned again and made his way toward the door. He was painfully tired. His thoughts were already drifting towards his apartment, and his bed. Payment could wait, he decided; his body and his mind both needed to rest. It's not like the proof of his work was going anywhere, he supposed. His right hand on the silver doorknob, he peered out of the small window set into the door, just in case. All clear outside. Time to-
*click, click*
         Marcus froze. He looked down at the hand around the knob. It hadn't turned. The sound had not been him. His free hand crept slowly up to Aequitas's holster, as his muscles tightened in preparation for a quick draw. And it was just as his fingers began to reach the pearl grip that he heard it.
A door in another room slowly creaked open. Tiny, infrequent footsteps followed.
         "Nonno? Stai...stai bene?"
A voice. Small. Terrified.
         "Oh no." Marcus's heart began to race. Panic had locked every part of him in place. Even the hand that had been reaching for his gun seconds earlier lay suspended in time at his chest. "No no no no. Please God, don't let this be happening. Not that."
         The steps were steadier now. Closer.
         "I was told five. He said there would only be the five. That stupid son of a whore."
         The footsteps had stopped, and Marcus knew why. The little girl let out a distraught and sorrowful gasp that would have shattered the hearts of men even more morally broken than Marcus. She had seen. This realization finally broke Marcus from his panicked trance, and he slowly turned once again to face the scene of his crime. There she was. Slumped onto the man in the white suit, tiny hands desperately placed over the spot where the hollow-point had done its work, silent tears streaming down her face and onto the lapel of her 'nonno'; she was the most pitiful thing Marcus had ever seen.
         "Jesus..."
         Marcus managed to sigh out only the single word. But it was enough. The girl brought her head up from the man's chest, and her big, frightened eyes gazed straight into Marcus's. They were nearly the same shade of blue as his own, he noticed. And they were desperately beautiful. As he silently returned the little girl's gaze, two thoughts repeated themselves endlessly inside his head. The first was one he had had many times throughout this 'career':
         "You did this, Marc. You."
         And the second, even more painful, was the instruction. The most important instruction. The one given to him since his first job, that would be given to him until his last.
         "No witnesses. None."
         Marcus knew what he had to do.
         His eyes never leaving hers, Marcus slowly moved his right hand across to his left holster. He slid Exitium out, pulled the hammer back, and lined up his shot, all in one fluid motion. A single tear moved down his face.
         "...I'm sorry, love. I'm so, so sorry."
         His finger squeezed back on the trigger, and the shot-
         "Oy! Marc. Wakey wakey."
         Marcus was jolted from sleep by the sound of his partner's voice. His heart was pounding, and he could feel a cold sweat across his body.
         "Fucking hell. Past is past, mate. You're not gonna help anything by pissing yourself about it every time you take a nap."
         Marcus told himself this every time he had this nightmare, which was becoming more frequent recently. Ever since he had shot that little girl, his mind had been tortured by it. He didn't sleep much these days.
         Marcus raised his head and, somewhat groggily, readjusted his mind to his surroundings. The van. Right. Resting his head back against his seat, he turned to look at the driver's side. Tav looked back at him.
         "There he is. Rise an' shine an' lock an' load, ya dozy motherfucker. That was quite a fuckin' nap, that one. Coffee machine's busted, m'afraid, so just slap yourself a few times if you gotta. We're about there."
         "Yeah," Marcus replied, with a slight smirk. Tav was a good partner. Had been for six years now. Marcus always wondered how Tav kept so enthusiastic, given their line of work, but he would never dare ask, for fear that Tav didn't know either. "Eyes on the road, dumbass."
         "Yes, mum. Sorry, mum. Don' hit me again, please. I'll do better."
         This made Marcus laugh. That was a rare occasion in recent times.
         Minutes passed, silence enveloping the van once again. Marcus gazed out the passenger window, his mind unfocused on anything but the passing lights and the drone of the engine. This time, the calm before the storm, was the only part of the job that Marcus liked anymore. His relaxation was broken, however, when Tav spoke again.
         "You, uh...ya dreamed abou' it again, yeah?"
         Marcus slowly tore his gaze from the window, turning to find a concerned look on the face of his partner. Marcus was well aware that he talked in his sleep. He sighed quietly, then leaned his head back onto the cold glass of the window. An echo began to resonate within his head: "Nonno? Nonno? Nonno? Nonno?"
         "Aye."
         Tav let out a sigh of his own. He remembered the look his friend had had on his face when he had returned to the van the evening of the 'incident', almost 4 months ago now. Something inside Marcus had broken as he pulled the trigger on that little girl. But as much as it pained Tav, he knew at this point that advising his friend to 'just forgive yourself and let it go' would be useless. He returned his attention to the road.

         Ten silent minutes passed before the two finally reached their destination. Both men straightened themselves in their seats as the van pulled onto the side of the street. To its right lay the target building; three stories, Spanish style. A younger Marcus would have found it beautiful. The one sitting in the passenger seat on that January evening, however, saw it only as an obstacle.
         "Christ," he thought aloud, "Forrester said it was big, but...there's gonna be a lot'a rooms in there. Way t'many hiding places for my taste."
         "You'll be fine, ya paranoid bitch," Tav replied, as he reached behind his seat to pull out his laptop, which he quickly began tapping away on. His steady and sure tone was more reassuring to Marcus than Marcus would have expected. "Alright. Ready up, Marc. Let's ge'tis over with."
         Marcus nodded. He extracted his other partners from their hostlers and laid them out on his lap, barrels out. He did a total once-over of both guns before every job; they had never once failed him in any respect, but the process helped calmed him before the hard work started. He picked up Aequitas first. Aequitas was always first.
         Tav moved his eyes from the screen for a second to observe the weapons, and a small grin came to his face.
         "I'll ne'er understand why the hell you use those things, mate. Don't revolvers seem a little...I dunno, outdated to ya? Don't leave much room for error, neither."
         Marcus looked at him, an eyebrow raised. He flicked his wrist, swinging Aequitas's cylinder back into place, placed it back on his lap, and moved on to Exitium.
         "Tha's why I don't make errors."
         Tav laughed.
         "Atta boy. Ya clever little shit," he remarked, still typing and observing the screen of his computer. Finally, he looked up again.          "Alright, I'm in. You ready?"
         "Do it."
         Tav typed one final command, entered it, and Marcus saw several points in and around the diagram on-screen go dark. All the automated security protecting the house was now offline.
         "How he does this shit, I'll never understand," he thought to himself. "Wave of the fucking future."
         Marcus holstered his guns, took a deep breath, and opened the passenger door. Without taking his eyes off the house, he spoke once more to Tav.
         "Remember, mate. Thirty-five minutes..."
         "And I scarper. Cheese it. Fuck righ' off. I know. Good luck, kiddo."
         "Aye."


         Marcus readied himself outside the large double doors at the front of the house. He drew Aequitas and Exitium from his sides, pearl and onyx handles glistening slightly in the sparse moonlight. And just as he brought his leg up to kick the right-side door open and begin his work (he started almost all jobs with this violent entry style; even Tav thought it was a bit more theatrical than necessary), something went wrong. His head began to swim, and suddenly the door in front of him was very different. Small, silver doorknob. Rectangular window set into the center, near the top.
         "What...this..."
         "Nonno? Stai...stai bene?"
         "No. No no no. This isn't..."
         Marcus shut his eyes hard, keeping them that way for several seconds. He opened them again, slowly, to see that the double doors had returned to their original state. The only sound he could hear was a faint whisper of wind, and crickets in the distance. No voices.
         "Did I just...hell. You don't have time for hallucinations or visions or whateverthefuck, Marcus. Pull yourself together for Christ sake."
         Whatever it was, it was over.
         It was time to do this.
         With a swift but powerful kick, Marcus smashed in the door and entered the home, his mind and perception slowing time to a near-crawl, as it always had. Three guards in the room ahead. Exitium took the two to his right, as Aequitas downed the one of his left. A fourth, who had been leaning against a wall out of Marcus's sight, now stumbled, shocked and cursing, into his view, fumbling with his own weapon. Exitium took him as well.
         Two more busted into the room from the left side, from what appeared to be a dining area. Their guns were already out and ready, and had their eyes not been immediately drawn to the bodies of their former comrades, they might have had a fighting chance. Aequitas put them down. This floor was cleared.
         Marcus took advantage of these few precious seconds of reprieve to flip open the cylinders of his weapons for another check. One, two, three, one, two, three. Good. He closed them back with another flick of his wrists, and proceeded to the spiraling staircase to take on the second floor. Mounting the first step, he turned to take another look at the rooms he was leaving. What he saw nearly made his heart stop.
         The area had completely transformed. No more expensive leather couches, surround sound and fake exotic plants. Now he was looking at a much more modest, homey, albeit still luxurious den lit by a small electric chandelier. Five bodies lay sprawled around the room. One of them, dressed in a white, two-piece suit.
         Marcus felt his throat go dry.
         "No. No. That's not...that's not real."
         Marcus clamped his eyes shut once again, and rubbed at them furiously with his forearm. After almost ten seconds like this, he eased them open.
         Six bodies. Leather couches. Giant subwoofer. Garish, shitty fake plants.
         Marcus shook his head and continued up the stairs.

         Two more were waiting for him inside a room on the second floor, whispering frantically to each other. They clearly thought they couldn't be heard through the closed door. A shot through the wall from each gun, to the right and left of the door frame, taught them differently. Marcus heard the thuds of his would-be ambushers sliding to the floor. Marcus heard a desperate curse from the far end of the hall, and another emerged from the door there, ready to fire. Exitium didn't give him the chance. Another floor cleared.
         Marcus checked his guns for a second time. One, one, two. Enough. He mounted the last stretch of stairs to the third floor.
         Marcus heard more hurried and frantic whispering as he ascended the last step. Another door blocked his path, and another kick removed it, and revealed the source of the noise. Another guard, dressed identically to the rest, and a young, frightened woman in black lingerie, both frozen in place, eyes locked helplessly on their attacker. A younger Marcus might have found the woman beautiful. The Marcus standing in the doorway on that January evening, however, saw her as nothing but an obstacle. A shot from Exitium removed that obstacle. One from Aequitas took the guard.
         They had been heading toward the door across the room from the entrance. That must be where his target was. Marcus made his way over to it, taking care to step around the bodies.
         "Just one more. Just one more and we're done. Keep it together."
         Exitium was spent. He slid it back into it's holster, and switched Aequitas to his right hand. He took a deep, lasting breath, and let it out slowly. Then, in one quick motion, he coiled back his leg and shot it forward into the door, smashing it wide open, gun pointed ahead and ready to finally bring down the man he had come for.
         There was no mistaking the little girl who stood there, just inside the door, staring, sadly, straight into Marcus's eyes. Her lower lip quivering pitifully, her blood-covered hands shaking, silent tears streaming down her face from her big, beautiful blue eyes. The sight of her brought Marcus, body and mind, to a complete halt. His own blue eyes widened in shock and fear.
         "...no. This...no. You're not...ya can't be. This is all in-"
         Marcus never completed the thought.

         Bishop Lawson knew he had enemies. So when he had heard the gunfire resonating from the first floor of his home that January evening, he was not caught unprepared. Holing himself up in his third-floor office with his wife and the head of his personal group of bodyguards, he felt secure behind the bolted door and the protection of the nine other guards downstairs. He was even confident enough in his safety to allow his wife to leave the office; she had pleaded Bishop to allow her a quick trip to their bedroom to retrieve a necklace her grandmother had given her, for fear of it being stolen by whoever had so violently interrupted their evening. He knew that necklace meant a lot to her. He let her go. She didn't make it back.
         So as Bishop stood there behind his desk, pistol in hand and eyes fixed on the door his wife had cautiously passed through no more than a minute ago, he was filled with a whirling mix of sadness and fury that overpowered any fear for his own mortality attempting to creep into his mind. He braced himself, steadied his aim, and waited.
         The door crashed open, and Bishop finally saw the face of the man sent to kill him.
         Bishop would never understand why the man didn't fire. As he looked back on that night later, he recalled that, while the man's gun had definitely been aimed in Bishop's direction, he didn't seem to be looking at Bishop at all. The man, for all Bishop saw, had been staring at the ground a few feet from the desk, muttering to himself with a shocked look on his face. Bishop knew he owed his life to whatever strange circumstance had caused the man to pause they way he did, so he didn't try to question it too much while looking back. But the curiosity never fully died.
         The Bishop that stood facing his attacker on that January evening, however, did not have time for thoughts as complex as those. He saw a man with a gun who had killed his wife, and that's all he needed. He fired.


         The .45 caliber round tore into Marcus with a force that knocked him off his feet and onto his back. Aequitas flew from his hand, sliding and spinning across the floor until it came to a halt a few feet away, barrel pointed towards its former owner. Marcus lay on the cold, hard floor, vision slowly darkening. He could faintly hear a man's voice - exasperated, distraught - from what seemed like miles away.
         Marcus felt painfully tired. He could feel the warmth of his own blood spreading across his chest, and breathing was becoming all but impossible. He had just begun to let his eyes close for good when he spotted, out of the corner of his eye, a small figure moving towards him. Marcus weakly swiveled his head to get a better look.
         The little girl was kneeling beside him.
         As Marcus watched through his fading vision, she placed her small, delicate hand over the bloody circle in Marcus's shirt. Her beautiful blue eyes met his for a final time, and as she lowered her head onto his chest, Marcus knew it was time to let go.

         Tav waited forty-eight minutes for his friend. Even after the law had arrived, he waited. He waited until it was abundantly clear that there was no one left to wait for. As he started up the van, and shifted into drive, a single tear made its way down his face.