Tuesday, September 29, 2020

Short Story: The Kid and the Killer

        

         The violent world kept on speeding by outside of the Angel’s Diner windows, and you could probably feel the owner’s perverse pleasure in keeping everything inside a vacuum-sealed time capsule. The decor suggested an atmosphere of optimistic prosperity that no one else could really feel, and 1950s teenybopper music jammed through the jukebox, adding to the ambience. The poppy music also blocked out any of the noises in the city, and all of the customers knew that was by design. For most of the customers, sunken into their red leather booths, this diner was a bubble, a sanctuary, of good times past and away from the troubles going on in the more modern world. Add a menu with wonderful pies and undercooked burgers into the mix, and you had the physical manifestation of the American Dream. That’s the way these people like it, visiting every now and then to marinate in the vibes after having to survive Zio City for a few days.

            However, for David, this would be his twenty-seventh day straight of having to sit in this diner, waiting for any orders, and he was one more bad cup of coffee away from rampaging to the kitchen and demanding some fresh cream and a decent amount of sugar for once. The waitress on duty immediately defused the situation when she brought the cup with ten packets of sugar and five French vanilla creamers on the small plate holding it all. David liked his drinks sweet, never bitter, but his gut twisted, and he shuffled in his seat. He was not used to having his kind of needs so graciously attended to. 

            What was even more surprising was the waitress dropping down onto the opposite chair, unbothered and inattentive toward everyone else except the well-dressed mystery man in front of her. 

            “So, what’s your story, guy,” she asked, leaning in with beaming curiosity. The white diner uniform she wore stood out from the red chairs but seemed droopy and stained, betraying the happy-go-lucky attitude servers were meant to portray. 

            David carefully pulled the coffee towards him. He made sure to avoid the girl’s line of sight, but she did not look in the mood to be ignored, especially when she threw her uniform hat onto the table. This must have been how she wanted to spend her break.

            “I’m sorry, miss, but I’m not sure what you mean by that. Thanks for the coffee and all the sugar,” he said. He then started tearing the packs and pouring them into the cup like a machine. Any sensible server would see his distaste for the waitress’s presence and go back to the counter. 

            She laughed at this poor attempt of deflection right off. 

            “Nice try, but my break goes on for the next half hour, so you got to deal with me until then,” she said. 

            “And why should I have to deal with you,” he said with a degree of annoyance. 

            “Because I see you every day in the same booth with the same coffee and additives. No one here notices things like that but I do, and when I do, I get curious and even sit with them. Like now.”

            David shifted uncomfortably in his seat. 

            “Besides, you looked real pissed coming in today and real pissed sitting down. It looked like you were going to blow up and yell at the coffee guy.”

            He took another deep, bitter sip.

            “Might as well tell me about yourself.”

            He sighed and shook his mug, a whirlpool of caffeine, milk and sugar helping him contemplate on how to go forward. He was usually a nice guy outside of the motel, so he would be a nice guy. 

            “I may have been a bit upset this morning and a little disgruntled when I came in,” he gracefully explained. “I apologize for disturbing you.”

            Another sip. The girl pursed her lips. 

            “Nope. Frustrated would be the better word for it.”

            “Oh, so you can see the nuance of a guy ‘looking pretty pissed’ huh?”

            “It’s a gift,” she sarcastically flourished, “Like I said, I notice the things other people don’t. If I had your look during a morning shift, my boss would fire me on the spot.”

            “That bad, huh?”

            “Very bad.”

            The waitress started playing with her dress’s collar, a knowing expression traveled across the table into the man’s ego. 

            “Have you ever thought of minding your own business?” David asked.

            “Absolutely not,” the waitress replied. He couldn’t help but chuckle a little at that. “Hey, there you are, smiling and feeling better. So why the whole sourpuss routine from before? Is it all the poor businesses leaving town? The garbage man strike? The subway strikes? All of the violence going on out there in the bad kind of streets? Newspapers this morning talked about this warehouse massacre with bodies stacked up and everything. No suspects, no leads. It’s crazy out there and if I had to deal with any of that, which I assume you do, I’d be angry when I’d come in for bad coffee too. So, what is it? You part of the night life? A police officer?”

            With each word the waitress said, David slowly brought his eyes downward until he was just staring down at his black pants and his sugary coffee. 

            “How close am I to any of that? Got an answer? A reply?” she droned on with the questions. 

            To be anywhere else, or to be facing anything other than this, even if it meant to die young, would be more pleasant than talking to her, he thought to himself. 

            “Come on now, my break time is vanishing by the second, and I want to make some more conversation. Don’t let me get in trouble with my boss.”

            She was right. He was frustrated, but not with anything she mentioned. He liked sitting in at the diner, but it was the lack of activity that gnawed at him. He had just been waiting, and he felt like the waiting had gone on for far too long. He couldn’t complain about it, though, or else he would be worse than fired by his boss. 

            David could see that this one waitress would talk back to her boss regularly, probably how she was able to get a half hour break this early. Guys like him, he thought to himself, did not have that kind of luxury, and even if he did, he would never go against his own boss, his leader, in anger or even speak to him in any rude manner. 

            Unlike this diner, where the boss gave this girl a job to fill out a staff, David’s boss took him in because he wanted to save his life. He just hadn’t gotten to work for him yet, and he knew he was ready for it. However, nothing had come yet. He was on the cusp of manhood in a city that still wanted to treat him like a boy. It had become painfully infuriating. 

            “I’m just waiting for a chance to prove myself,” he said. “The problem is that I’m beginning to think that it’s too late for that.” As he answered, his voice started to reveal a great sense of regret, a mixture of sadness and disappointment that he did not quite know how to digest. Truly a turmoil to tell a random retro diner waitress. 

            “Well if you’re feeling like that, then today is your lucky day,” a voice happily boomed from behind. The waitress immediately stiffened up to look at the tall man casually eavesdropping on the conversation. He was dressed in a black suit, exactly like David, but had a messy long mop of a haircut in contrast to David’s own short wash-and-wear hairstyle.

            “Eli?” David said wide-eyed, almost in disbelief.

            “Been awhile, right Davey?” 

            In an instant, the young man rose from his seat and embraced the gentleman. As they held onto each other, the waitress came to the conclusion that this regular customer is at his most comfortable and his most flagrantly dismissive when he’s with someone he knows. A minute later, David remembered the waitress was still sitting there 

            “Sorry, miss,” David apologized with a new happy pep in his voice. “This is my brother, Eli.” He gestured toward the tall, lanky man, who he still disturbingly dressed exactly like. The waitress still thought that was strange.

            However, unlike David, Eli had a much more rugged appearance. He didn’t have the soft features that made David so approachable. Everything about his face was messy and worn out, with an abundance of acne scars being the most distracting thing on his face. The two of them even had different skin tones. He looked like he’d been through a lot, and based on what David told her, it sounded like he wanted to go through the same kind of thing. Why? For him? Besides their clothes, they looked nothing alike. 

            “You’re brothers?” The waitress held an apprehensive distance toward the two men. 

            “By a common upbringing,” Eli playfully answered. “I know it doesn’t look like it, with me being more handsome and all, but I like to think family is more than blood and appearances.”

            “That’s…” she paused to find an appropriate descriptive. “Very true. I believe the same thing, honestly.” 

            “Look at that bro, she gets it. I like you!”

            “Sure, she does.” His attention quickly turned back to Eli. “What are you doing here, bro?”

            “I’m here for you, Davey. I know you’ve been waiting, and it’s time that patience was rewarded. Come out with me. We need to take a walk.”

            “Of course,” David downed the rest of his drink in one go and threw down a generous wad of cash from his pocket. Turning back to the waitress, he offered a short goodbye. “Thank you again for your time, miss.” 

            “Wait.” She put out her hand. “My name is Beth. Nice talking to you.”

            Out of politeness, he grasped her hand. “David. Nice to meet you.”

            “Think I’ll be seeing you again?”

            When David had to wait for this moment, for the call, he planned to never see this diner again. But when it came to where he was going, what he was going to become, it would be useful to have connections with someone so talkative, informed, and snoopy in the city. He'd remember the name and see how she could help him. 

            “After this, I hope so,” he slyly replied, “Let’s pray the job doesn’t take up too much of my time.” 

            The two of them laughed and then shook on it. David went out the door with Eli, leaving everything in that diner behind. 

            “I’m disappointed in you, bro,” Eli commented in a cruel tone of voice. “That had to be the least smooth operating I had to ever see. You know our brothers expect more than that from you. How do you expect to be like one of us if you are just so bad with the ladies?” 

            There was the Eli that David knew and loved. “Sorry for caring more about getting the call than getting it on with a relationship that’ll probably go nowhere. Besides, she’s a six at best. She’s nosy, talks too much, and is stuck at a dead-end job. Also, when have you ever known me to hook up with blondes? Being with her wouldn’t be any fun.”

            “I agree on that. There are definitely better girls out here.” 

            The both of them walked around the street corner to a curb where a large black car, something close to a limousine, sat. The engine still rumbled. It was the kind of car anyone could be intimidated by, but the way Eli smirked at David showed that whatever, or whoever, sat in that car was very good news for him. 

            David squinted, and managed to see the silhouette of a large, heavy-sat man through the car windows. Once he made out the shadow’s shape, he stopped, grabbing Eli by the sleeve. He wasn’t intimidated; he was fearful, but at the same time strangely hopeful. Shaking, David mawkishly gestured towards the car, about a few feet away. 

            “Oh god... Eli, is that really him?” David stuttered. 

            “You know it. Asked for you personally,” Eli put his hand on David’s shoulder, tightening his grip. “I need you to know that this is an important job, David. Really important. I need to know if you are ready.”

            “I’ve been ready since he made me a part of the family. Let me in.”

            Eli grinned toward David like a teacher would a precocious toddler about to do something stupid. Then the older brother walked up and opened the black limo door, leading his younger brother into a shadowed room with black seats. Now it was time to be a mobster. 

……………….

            Boss Saul was a weathered man with enough power and prestige to have one side of this luxurious limousine too himself. He boasted a small mustache and an air of tantalizing confidence. Even with his weight, Saul looked elegant. 

He wore a fancy black suit and a white shirt underneath. What made him different was an ancient family crest pinned to his lapel. On this pin, a golden jackal head stared forward, strong and unshakeable. This is uniform for everyone in his family and these pins a symbol of status for the heirs, the commanders, and those who rose to the ranks. They grew into these suits and would eventually be buried in them. The pins went to those they trusted most in life. Trust went to the most responsible or the most brutal. 

Both Eli and David faced him. David looked straight into the boss’s sunken eyes. He leaned forward, intense. Eli just laid back and spread his arms out. A deeply disrespectful display, David thought. He should be at the ready to hear whatever words or orders Saul will give. That was how David always understood it. 

            He tried to think back to when he last laid eyes on the boss, the man who saved his life, but could not recall anything significant enough from the recent past. Their last meeting definitely happened during his early teenage years. He was twenty-four now, so Boss Saul must not completely recognize him, despite being the one he wanted to share a car ride with. 

David figured he should reintroduce himself.

            “Mr. Saul,” David began, struggling to keep his voice from stuttering. “It is an honor to see you again. I am…”

            “I know who you are, boy,” Saul raised his hand dismissively. “I know everyone in this family, from veterans to rookies. And you’re all my brothers and my sons. Don’t feel the need to get all formal. You are with your father, and your brother.” He beckoned towards Eli. 

            “Of course, sir,” David apologized. The boss remembered him. He felt blessed.

            “I am sure that, as any good son of ours would, you keep up with the goings on in the Jakkal Family’s business. Even when we don’t make headlines.”

            “Yes. I pore over the Zio Gazette every morning sir. I read the story about the warehouse and the violence that occurred. I hope I can be a part of mourning those brothers in the near future.”

             “Good. Good. It is because of that unfortunate event that we brought you here.”

            Here comes the job. How would he prove himself? How could he go above and beyond the expectations about to be set for him? 

            “Tell him, Eli,” Saul nodded to the relaxed enforcer. “Tell your brother his… mission.”

            A mission. This must have been a task of even greater importance than he first thought. 

            “Yes, father.” Eli dutifully bowed his head and faced his younger brother, noting the shine in his eyes. He wondered how much of that light would be left by the time David knew what had to be done. 

            “The Jakkals have been the dominant family in this city ever since it was a port town, and while you’d think that would warrant respect from anyone who lives or visits in this city, the latest thorn in our side disagrees. This thorn was annoying at first, but now, they’ve become a bigger pain than we’ve thought possible.”

            “The Gaths.” David made sure to heighten the venom in his voice speaking the name. 

            “Yep. Those useless gangster layabouts that apparently can be a force to be reckoned with. Recently, they’ve stumbled into the favor of a few local businessmen, tired of the way this family has been running things.” 

            “Selfish bastards.” He heard rumors of people like a small-time hotelier acting flippant towards his brother, as well as talk of bashing that hotelier’s knees in. 

            “Right. We thought it would be no problem for us, we’re the Jakkals. We’ve crushed worse. We’ve faced worse. Turns out, Gaths outnumber us fifteen to one. Their strength in numbers turned the tide against us. Even worse, thanks to their new resources, they have an ace. A goddamn mercenary.”

            “Just one?”

            “Not just anyone. They call him the Goliath. Huge dude from Eastern Europe. Worked as a soldier, a bounty hunter, and now a gun-for-hire. He was the one responsible for that warehouse massacre.”

            “By himself?”

            “Would I ever lie to you?”

            “No.” David carefully chose his next words. “Am I being brought on in the war against the Gaths? Against this Goliath? I’m well connected throughout the entire city. I know Gath hangouts and with a team I can find their hiding holes and burn ‘em out like the rats they are. Whatever it is, I’m ready.”

            “You won’t need a team for this,” Boss Saul intoned. “This is something only one man can do, and based on your record, your commitment to this family, you are that man.”

            Eli put a hand on David’s shoulder, gripping it to communicate the seriousness of his position. 

            “We’re sending you to kill the Goliath himself.”

            “My agents have been able to track his movements,” said Saul. “His patterns while he is living in the city. We don’t want to kill him out in the open where there’s a chance of anyone in the family getting caught.”

            “He also travels with a Gath entourage when he’s out and about,” Eli continued. “So there normally wouldn’t be a safe place for a hit, but there is one time he’s alone and one time he’s vulnerable. An old apartment building on Hale Street.”

            David knew the street. It’s part of Zio City’s abandoned slum. Decades ago, it was home to immigrants and refugees, but poor living conditions and better work outside the city drove everyone out, until the place was only known for bums, bum fights, and crumbling buildings. 

            His brother went on. “When he’s there, he brings no weapons and no company. Completely defenseless. A bullet to the head should take him out. Use two to be safe.”

            With that, Eli handed a pistol to his younger brother, fully loaded. It would be difficult to hide, but with what he heard about Goliath, hiding wasn’t what David needed. All he needed was a few seconds to make a quick shot to the head. He began considering the best way to hold it, the best way to aim it. He’s practiced with a gun plenty of times before, and depending on how tall this Goliath was, probably just above six feet, he’d be able to finish him in one smooth quickdraw. However, he’d never taken a life or aimed any sort of weapon at another person. That sounded like something one meditates and prepares for. 

            “Will you take this mission, brother?” Eli asked, the weight of expectations in his voice. 

            “Of course. I want to kill the Goliath. I want to help the family,” David answered. 

            “Good,” said the boss. “Because we are here now.”

            The black car stopped at the curb of a tall brick building, with walls chipped away and various windows broken and smashed. Not a place someone dressed in a nice black suit would or should find himself in, if they had no sinister intentions at play. Eli opened the door, and, with gun in hand, David emerged with a swell of pride in his mission. This would not only prove himself but bring him closer to Boss Saul’s inner circle than any grunt work ever could. The longer he stood, the lighter the pistol felt.

            “May you have God’s aim, David,” said Saul. 

David was sure he could hear the compassion and worry in his voice, even if his face could not show it. He was certain. 

Saul invoked a holy phrase. “For the glory of the family.”

            “For the glory of the family,” David repeated, a dutiful son. He faced the building, this dungeon, this eventual battlefield, and walked through its rusted doors. 

……………….

            Not only was the building dilapidated, it was abandoned too, unless you could count whatever was hiding under a collection of makeshift tents and blankets as proper residents or even people, which David definitely didn’t. 

            There was nothing in the lobby. A wooden desk, probably belonging to the long-gone manager of this building was smashed to pieces. The mailboxes in the walls were open and probably looted. The lights flickered on and off. The leather furniture that once looked regal and comfortable in the building’s heyday were strewn about the lobby, despoiled and peeled away. The walls were splattered with gaudy graffiti in barely legible phrases. This building once held royalty from lands far away. Future titans of industry stayed here with their families, hoping to create a better life in a new city, a new country. Now, through abandonment and ignorance, only the worst of the vagrants were to be found. A hotbed for the undesirable. 

David found the stairs. He checked to make sure they weren’t rotten like everything around him. They were still stable, so he started to climb. 

            He couldn’t find anything on the second floor. He kept on climbing.

            The third and fourth floors were similarly empty. 

            He heard a couple screaming at each other on the fifth floor. It sounded like it was about to get violent. Nothing about it was important. It was unrelated to his mission. If he was off the clock, maybe he would make the effort to stop a domestic dispute. Then again, those were strangers. So, why bother?

David kept on climbing. 

            A group of vagrants was gathered at the sixth floor. There was a corpse on the seventh floor. A fresh one, but it had its face caved in to be unrecognizable. Looked to have died from a drug overdose, based on the bent cooking spoon on the floor and the needle still in its arm. Whoever bashed his face in must have taken the lighter. Whoever the dope fiend was, David doubted it was someone a mercenary would kill. 

The target must’ve still been higher up. 

            Then David reached the eighth floor. He found who he was looking for. At the first sight of him, he had the first instinct to hide and cower.

            The Goliath stood in front of a shut green door, arms to his side, unmoving. The top of his head almost touched the ceiling. Bundles of facial hair and heavy locs obscured his face. His mane reached down to his waist. The giant cloaked himself in a tattered green wool coat. The baggy denim pants he wore were torn apart at the cuffs. The flickering light of the hallway revealed dried stains of dark red scattered about his poor outfit. 

If David didn’t know any better, he would’ve mistaken him for an abnormally large homeless man, similar to the people he found in the lobby. One who was overgrown and ate too much probably but a dirty vagrant, nonetheless. Despite appearances though, this was the mercenary that murdered rows of his brothers, the one who made Boss Saul himself call upon him. His boss, his family, relied on his skills and his resolve to kill this giant. This was the man he was tasked to kill in order to rise through the family ranks. If he just remembered how great that future would be, he would see this through. He resolved to pass this test with flying colors. 

            David put his hand on the pistol, formulating a way to sneak around the mercenary and shoot him point blank. All the giant did was stare at the door, seemingly unaware of the world around him. The Goliath would probably never expect his assassin to appear in this building, his apparent sanctuary. 

The fate of the family rested on David’s shoulders. He stepped forward and the creaking floorboards betrayed his position. However, the giant stood still. Silence blanketed the scene. Then he spoke.  

            “You’re from the Jakkals,” said the Goliath, still staring at the door. That deep sullen voice suddenly brought a heavy sense of darkness down into the hall.

            Shocked, David immediately pulled out the pistol. His arm straightened, and his grip tightened. He managed to aim the barrel directly at the giant’s right cheek, the only part of skin not covered by all that massive hair. He prepared to pull the trigger, but then the Goliath spoke again, paralyzing his digits in place. Something about his voice stilled him. It made him want to hear him out. The giant’s voice brought about the same kind of feeling Boss Saul gave him, but he held no respect for this man. He was ordered to kill him, without hesitation or mercy. So, why couldn’t he pull the trigger?

            “Before you shoot me, before we have to fight, will you listen to a story of mine?”

           David felt no respect. There was only a sense of fear. How could a violent mercenary sound so eloquent? The Goliath sounded more like a philosopher than some meathead or hired gun. 

            “Go ahead,” David answered, stuttering. “Freak.”

            Still staring at the door, the giant huffed. 

“A long time ago, back home in my country, I had the chance to leave and come to this city with my mother. We did not have the best life in the motherland, but for me and my father, it was enough. While my father and I could only know peace with what little we had, it was my mother who was unrelentingly restless. She believed there was more meant for us in this world. She always looked for any opportunity that would bring us up from the filth and poverty. Finally, she secured a voyage for the three of us to the promised land of America. She had plotted out every course and every conflict it would take to get there. My mother was a brilliant woman.”

            The giant sighed. David never knew his parents or tried to find them. The orphanage was his only home as a child. It was a broken home he hated, until the Boss Saul saved him. After that he had his own family, one with no mothers and fathers. Only one unquestionable leader and a band of brothers. He bonded with those who were similarly rescued by Saul. Eli was among his group. 

            “The journey would be a new, better life for the both of us,” the Goliath continued. “We would live in a city where we could change our names, learn the language, and fit in. We would not need to toil and struggle under an oppressive rule. We could have chosen our own destiny instead of having it thrust upon us. In this country and in this city, we would have started a legacy of invention and industry. The thought of this new world brought me excitement as a wee child.”

            Why have I not launched a bullet into this tall, hairy freak’s neck yet, David thought to himself. Why am I still listening? This is the Goliath. My brother and my boss, my father, told me to kill this man, this beast. I’m on a mission. Pull the trigger, damn you. 

            “However, my father disagreed. He wanted no part of this journey. He thought we were already on the brink of success. Traveling was just a show of impatience and faithlessness toward the motherland. My mother believed the motherland to be a lost cause. She put forward that my father was just stubborn. That she was the better parent to bring a better life for her child. Then, the two of them fought. They violently throughout the year and through the turning of the seasons. One night, I was abruptly awoken. It turned out my mother decided that she was taking me to America with her. Just me. My father would never know or hear where we had gone. I realized that us leaving would mean abandoning my father in the mining town we called home. I loved both of them, so I could not stand to see us separated. My mother could though. Even after all the tears left her eyes, she pushed through the raging blizzard, leaving my father and I behind. We believed her to be dead and frozen, but last I heard, she lived here. Alone…”

            David, hands slowly shaking, pulls the trigger. The gun barrel roars and the bullet screams through the air. He misses.

            “I never get to finish the story,” Goliath wistfully sighs. “Poor child. He was abandoned and found by jackals. Then they raised him to be like them. But now, the jackals leave him abandoned yet again in this Zio City ruin.” 

            He turns to the poor David, now shaking down to his knees. “I still come here to respect my mother, yet your sorry excuse of a family only seeks my destruction. Poor, poor child. They actually made you think you stood a chance. You’re the seventh man they’ve sent.”

            The Goliath charged, and David fought back against every instinct to turn and run. He foolishly began to dwell on what the giant just said. He is the seventh man? The seventh brother to be sent here against a monster? 

He almost felt relieved when his opponent’s first punch connected, straight into his abdomen. The giant’s fist managed to graze a bottom rib. Like a cannonball blast to the body, David almost thought the Goliath’s fist would go right through his stomach and burst out through his back. As it is now, it felt like some asteroid left a crater impact deep into his flesh. He spewed vomit. There went his morning coffee. 

            Staggering from the force of the punch, David tried to stand back up. He tried to raise his arm back up so he could aim again. The Goliath, moving faster than a man his size would suggest, brought his fist hard against his attacker’s skull with a strong right. A subsequent downward blow threw him to the floor, loosening the pistol from his grip and sending it flying across the hall. The giant then picked up his scrawny attacker, light as a feather, and crushed him against the wall, over and over again. Like a hammer against a nail. 

            David never felt so much pain. A masochist would find it extraordinary. His ears bled. His vision blurring and he began to feel his reality slip away. The shadows started closing in.  Over and over again, the strength of an Eastern European juggernaut left impact upon impact on David’s body. Plaster and foundation cracked and trembled. If he could still hear, after so much pummeling, he would have heard the Goliath curse under his breath. 

            “To hell with this. No longer.”

            Unbeknownst to David, the giant slung the boy over his shoulder, and he started running toward the end of the hall. He ran towards a window that led to the outside, where a building, crumbling through abandonment and old age, would be the weakest.   

            Through the walls, the two men crashed. 

            From the eighth floor, the two men fell

……………….

            From darkness, the kid called David awoke. It hurt to open his eyes. 

            Pain seared across his back from the impact of the fall. He swore he could have felt his spine, or hopefully just his coccyx, cracked a little. He tried to arch his back, regain his footing. He wanted to stand up, but every nerve flared against him. The pain kept him down. His senses came back, but they were blurred and sluggish. Despite that, he could clearly hear groaning from his right. Through the pain, he turned to face the giant. 

And lo, there was the Goliath, flat on his back. Bleeding but still alive. 

            The big man had fallen onto a rebar. It pierced his hide and sprouted from his gut. While the wound in his torso kept leaking, blood burst from the giant’s mouth with every breath. He breathed in a staccato rhythm. One would assume the blood spurts could be substituted for cursing. He refused to die, and based on his reputation, he would keep on fighting to live. 

            David could see how it would end. The Goliath would find the strength to pull himself out of this, the strength to pull the iron rod out of his side. The Goliath would get up and pulverize him, the crippled goon sent to kill him. David would die, knowing he was the seventh failed assassin to face the giant. The man would then go to a hospital, or one of the Gath hideouts David knew for sure existed and tend to his wounds. The Goliath would heal in an hour, like the superhuman he was, before continuing his onslaught against the Jakkals. The family that saw a broken child and left him to the cruelty of a beast. 

            His family would die, the Gaths will take over the city, 

            In the face of such an unavoidably obvious conclusion, what was the point in trying to get up?

            Then he remembered. He said he would see Beth again, didn’t he? 

            Through deathly pain, through memories of hardship and violence, David fought to stand. If accomplishing this mission couldn’t be for the glory of the Jakkal Family, it could at least be for the fulfillment of a promise he himself made. Eventually, that was enough for him to stand. He found more strength to pick up a rock, a large chunk of the building, uneven and jagged.

            David stood over the Goliath, the Jakkal killer, stone in hand. It was obvious to both of them what he was going to do with it. 

            David, weakened and broken, stood over him in some manner of triumph. 

            The Goliath smiled. “I hope this will be worth it, for both of us.”

            For the blows the giant dealt against David, David replied in kind. 

            As the giant’s skull caved in, as each strike led deeper and deeper, his hands grew sore and raw. David slowly came to a special realization. It is difficult to kill a man like this, like some savage. Like he was some kind of Cain and this giant was something of an Abel. Even if future opponents were weaker, he would still need to fight, still need to put his finger on the trigger. He would still need to feel the blood on his with each bullet and each punch. Inflicting death on others did not come easy. This was where the path of a mobster leads, and it appeared long and winding. 

The Goliath’s blood would only be enough for the first of many cups he’ll need to fill. This, and more, would be necessary to continue in this family business.

 Before, David would not have had it any other way. He waited for an opportunity like this, and now he had it. It was just now that he realized the cost it would bring to his body and soul. He’d need to clean up before he could see Beth again.  

The Goliath lay limp after the hundredth blow. Mission accomplished. The monster was dead. David rose from the carnage he inflicted and headed back toward the black car where Boss Saul and Eli waited. Now, it was time to report his deeds and then ask what violence needed to be done next. 

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