“Hiya, Zeke. How you doin’?”
He tried to fake it, but I saw that fear in his eyes. He knew what I wanted for him. He knew I’d have no qualms about it. He didn’t know, however, that I wasn’t actually allowed to do it quite yet.
“You’re the one who sent them, didn’t you? Those SWAT guys, back at my apartment?”
He gulped, nodded apprehensively.
“You tried to kill us didn’t you? And even worse… you totally fucked up my house. And starting a nuclear war?” I laughed a little here. “What the hell kind of a whackjob are you.” I pressed my pistol against his head. “What’s your damage, douchebag? Why you so fucked up? Why you wanna kill everyone?”
Somehow, he figured it out. He realized that if I were going to shoot him, I would have by now. The fear in his eyes became diluted. It didn’t disappear, but it weakened. He leaned back a little in his padded office chair, and a smirk formed on his clean-shaven face.
“Are you sure you really want to know?” his smirk doubled. The fear was gone. He had done the worst possible thing a man in his situation could do. He got cocky.
I couldn’t kill him, but I could still shoot him, right?
I decided yes. Bye-bye, kneecap! He fell out of the chair, writhing in pain on the ground. “You think I’m fucking kidding? You think I’m not dead serious? Well, guess what, ‘Zeke!’ You got another twelve things fucking coming!”
He moaned out two words.
Get.
Him.
The door to his office slammed open, and in walked at least a dozen of the strangest things I had ever seen. And that’s saying something, cause the Messenger was some pretty weird shit. For starters, they were pure white. Some were a shade of off-white, but it was barely noticeable, and they had three fingered hands, with fingernails long, hard and black, like shovels. I couldn’t tell which finger was the thumb, if there was one. They each held a strange glowing thing. I couldn’t tell for sure what it was, but it was in the shape of a gun. And it sure worked like one too.
One shot and I was down, out like a light.
* * * * *
“Jake, wake up. C’mon wake up, we’re fine.”
I opened my caked eyes. He was kneeling over, his face above mine. “What?” I managed to moan.
“It was the weirdest thing. It was like I knew they were supposed to make me fall asleep, but for some reason it didn’t do anything to me. It was like I was invincible. I just killed them all. But then, when I finished, I fell asleep. Isn’t it weird?”
I sat up and looked around. Littered all over the floor were shattered and cracked corpses, their limbs bent in unnatural directions and soaked with blood. It was sickening. I nearly turned over and threw up, right there.
I got up and went over to Perrenian, who had been tied up. “I just had time to tie him up before I blacked out.”
Before I could go over and shoot the other kneecap, he managed to get a few words out.
“They paid very well, I’ll have you know.”