Word Weld

My fingers felt like I had been handling fish. The combination of sweat, the humid weather, and the heat from the air conditioners was telling on me. The flashlight was clenched firmly between my teeth, but even my head was shaking, making the light bounce side to side on the door, occasionally illuminating my oily hands struggling to find the right key.

“Aaaah!” I made a quiet and frustrated noise as I dropped the keys in my haste. Kneeling to retrieve them, I got another glimpse of the man I had taken them from.  He was face-down on the ground, dead. He was part of the reason I was so nervous. I had never killed a man before, but I had to, I just had to. There had been no choice. And with that realization, I also determined there was no turning back now.

A click roused me as my next attempted key turned in the lock! I was both elated and horrified. Part of me had believed I would not find the right key, and now that the door was open, I stared in disbelief at the maw that was the descent into the building. I sneaked down the steep steps. A horizontal sliver of pale light cut across the bottom of the door, the unlocked door, that led into the apartment building. Even at this point, I could not believe what I was doing.

After listening for several minutes, I could hear nothing beyond the door. I eased the door open and found myself at the worse end of a shabby corridor. It was dark, but a few tubes of fluorescent light, some flickering, strove against the gloom. I inched down the corridor, my skin crawling. A pair of cockroaches fled at my approach, skittering underneath doors of apartments whose tenants had long-since gone. Their stories were forgotten, but mine was just being told. I could barely hold the flashlight in my trembling fingers. I could tell volumes of the horrors I imagined as I made my way down to the second floor. I knew what awaited me on the second floor. I would try to find her, and when I did… Then what? How could I do this?

I couldn’t do it. Even as my foot lighted on the second floor, I determined I had to go back. Whatever the consequence, I couldn’t do this. Then I heard her muffled voice, a voice not far, perhaps in just the second room on the left. I had come this far. In my pocket was my revolver. It was a Colt King Cobra, firing a .357 Magnum round. It was not for this work. It was too loud, but I had nothing else. I told him that, but there were no real obstacles to him. It was unreasonable to me. How could he expect me to do this? I had no experience. I didn’t know this girl; she meant nothing to me. Why should I be made to do this? Worse yet, I had to get out without the police knowing I was there. He had said he would handle everything else if I handled the girl.

My feet carried me forward, my will vacillating between continuing and flight. My heart was beating itself apart already when I heard the gunshots. There were shouts and screams, all coming from below, and I heard the faint wailing of sirens approaching. There was no time. Either leave my debt and my word, or else risk my very life.

As life would have it, my decision was made for me. A door opened just ahead and a man exited abruptly, locking the door behind him. He had a walkie-talkie in his hand and spoke into it something I could not hear for the beating of my heart. I did not want to shoot him, but some sixth sense alerted him to my presence, even though he had been looking down the other way. I saw the muzzle of his gun and a flash. Quick as the flash I was on the ground, my gun in both my greasy hands, and my finger dragging the trigger back.  I fired twice, my first shot wide, my second striking the man in the chest. He fell backward and his gun dropped to the ground at his feet.

I rose after about two minutes, and with gun still leveled on the man, made my way toward him. Despite my fear, he did not move. Now with a little more nerve, I came up faster and found him alive, but unconscious, having struck his head hard on the floor. I turned to the apartment he had emerged from. Already the sirens were louder, the gunshots outside and the shouts fewer. I had but a few minutes left at this point.  Locating the key on the unconscious guardian, I opened the door and shone my flashlight inside.

It was a tiny apartment with a single bedroom off to the side. Everything else was directly before me. It was also perfectly dark and only by scanning the room with my flashlight was I able to locate the girl. Again the trembling in my hands returned. I was afraid I would drop either the flashlight or the gun, or both. There she was. At only about seventeen, she was kind of thin, with dull blond hair currently quite messy. She was wearing a somewhat battered cheerleading outfit. Her terrified face was also sweaty and red, as well as generally dirty and grimy. There was a thick strip of tape across her mouth. She sat on the floor against the wall, her hands handcuffed above her head, to a large nail driven into the wall, driven into a decayed but still sturdy exposed stud.

As the sirens rose to a crescendo outside, I leveled my gun and tried to steady my hand. The girl’s lovely, trembling gray eyes, which at first strained against the light, now stared into my flashlight wide and unblinking, as if hypnotized. But it was not my flashlight that hypnotized her—it was my revolver. I wanted to make this quick—to just be done with it! But I found myself hesitating. As shadows danced across the room from my unsteady flashlight, I pulled the trigger. It was done. The girl slumped down onto the floor.

I quickly made my way over to her and putting the gun in my pocket, examined her. My aim was true: the chain between her hands was broken, but she had fainted. I did not cherish the prospect of carrying her away from what I knew was coming, but I knew I had to. As I carried her down the hallway, I heard a door slam. My heart stopped and my trembling muscles stiffened. This was what I had dreaded all along. I had taken too long. I knew somehow that it would come to this. I turned and stared into the face of a man of medium build.

He wore a black muscle shirt and fatigues, and had on a dark jacket. On his head he wore a beanie, while in his hands was a pair of smoking pistols, of what kind I could not say. He stared at me as if omnipotent, as if holding the keys of life and death in his hands. To my own surprise I scowled at him, but with the girl in my arms I had no chance of getting to my gun in time. I knew he had come to kill her. Obviously his goons had been overcome by the police. Now he had come to finish it and make his escape.

Without a word he lifted his left gun and I stared down the black shaft. Then I heard the shot. I turned and covered the girl with my body, sending both of us to the floor. I clutched her unconscious form and lay still, hoping he would think he had shot me. Had he?

Then I heard it. It was a chilling laugh, a laugh I had heard before. Everything that had happened to me since that fateful day I first heard it came rushing back to my burdened mind. My debt, the letter, the mission I had been given. Me, a simple man, just a simple man…

The laugh swelled and I heard gunshots and screaming. I rose and turned, and I saw him again. He stood over the body of the villain, whose guns lay by his open hands. The man was clad in black and it seemed that light itself could not touch him. He seemed to stand, not as a physical being, but as a black thing, a darkness, like a silhouette against the rising moon. Even though I had seen him before, I was still awed by him, humbled by him. It was then, too, that I realized for the first time that part of the reason for his surreal nature was the fact that, though standing under a light, he cast no shadow. Again he laughed. His appearance was like a man in a long cloak and wide-brimmed hat, wearing leather gloves, but as he was only dark I could make out no texture to his clothes. He was like a living shadow.

“Don’t worry, Shade,” said the man, “you did much better than I’d hoped. But remember, your debt is never fully repaid. Neither is mine.”

“Who are you?”

“Just a shadow,” he replied, laughing. “Now come!”

Leaving the girl behind to the police, he took me back up to the roof, where a helicopter was circling. When the spotlight was off for a moment we raced to the edge. Though he was still totally black even at this close proximity, he felt very real indeed.

“Shay,” he said, “…do you trust me?”

I hesitated for but a moment.

“Yes,” I said.

With that he grabbed me and literally threw me across the alley behind the apartment and onto a neighboring roof. I landed hard, but only my feet hurt, and when I dusted myself off, he was standing right there in front of me!

“Thank you, Shay,” he told me. “It was hard for you, but I knew you would do what I asked.”

“How did you know?” I demanded.

“I know you.”

And with that he leapt over the parapet! I followed, but when I looked over the edge, I found only the shadows playing across the bottom of the alley. As the air filled with sirens, I retreated to a nearby fire escape to hide my presence. Soon, I, too, had disappeared into the shadows.