Page 8 of Clean Hack
-4-
The Reasons Why
Clean
There were times I’d have a week to myself. A week of sitting around and waiting. Because that was pretty much how the job worked. There really wasn’t the setting up appointments situation in my line of work. It happened, and then I was called in. I didn’t often turn down jobs, being that I knew who I was working for and knowing that I was going in to take out the trash. The scum. The people that no one would miss. The evils that walked the earth. I had some unsavory clients but I knew how they were, I knew that deep down they weren’t all that bad.
Killing always came at a cost. That cost was me. Well, yeah, there was the stain that it left on their soul, but that wasn’t my problem. I’d never taken a life. Had no intentions of it, either. What was so different from tearing a body down to pieces and limbs and actually taking that life? I could answer that simply, it was a not only just a job, but the damaged had already been done by the time I got there. I hadn’t there to stop it, not that I would have in most cases anyway. I wasn’t there to talk some sense into the one holding the gun, or the knife, or wielding a pummeling fist. My part came in after and that was alright with me. That was how I kept my balance and, I believed, my karma neutral. Strange way of thinking about it, but it worked for me.
Oh, and by the way, that price they paid was pretty steep. I may not have looked or acted like I had a nice safety net to fall back on, but I did. Most of it was tied up in savings in various accounts around the world. Some of it even bagged up and stuffed in random locations around the country. I didn’t often travel outside of the States, so there was no need to keep my stash that far out of sight. Airline tickets would have made it seem more suspicious and since I liked keeping as far under any kind of radar as possible, I limited myself to things that wouldn’t make me appear on paper.
So, my fees were simple enough. One body cost ya a good amount. Two over twice as much. Three and you about nearly owed me your first born. After that, I started charging by the number of teeth I had to deal with. I didn’t like to do big jobs. Big jobs meant big headaches and a lot of back and forth. Big jobs meant messy, and not just in the way of more blood and guts to clean up. It was the fact that I’d have to find multiple places to put shit and in a limited amount of time. I wasn’t one for sloppy work. I never rushed a job. And that was why I was so good. Why a body I handled never resurfaced. Why their deaths never led anywhere. So I had the damn right to do my business the way I saw fit and one of those ways was making sure to keep those massacre job numbers low. They could call in someone else for all I cared. It wasn’t about the money. Not now anyway. I was so set I could have bought my own private island and sat my ass out on the beach sipping those fucking drinks with the fruit hanging off the side until the day I died from skin cancer. Hell, I could have afforded to hire someone to serve me those drinks twenty-four fucking seven.
But that wasn’t the life I wanted. I liked the simple and enjoyed the quiet times between the chaos of driving here and there.
I mostly dealt with people on the East Coast from the tip of Florida all the way up to the Canadian border. And as far over as Louisiana. The more west you went, the more sporadic my client list became. I tried to keep it to areas where one or more organizations that fell under my restrictions resided.
The next job was always a waiting game. And there was no telling where the wind might take me. It made it hard to make any real plans, but then again, it wasn’t like I had people to make those plans with. I was mostly a loner. Hell, there wasn’t amostlyabout it. It was just that once you step into this line of work, there wasn’t really room for friends. It wasn’t like I could tell people what I did. Not many would be alright with that. And that left one limited to the people that circulated in the underground world. Those were always a slippery slope. Finding the good in the bad and then trying to make friends…no, that was not something that was really done. The only time these people made friends outside of their groups was to get something or get somewhere. It was a smart move. You couldn’t have insiders all up in your business when you were trying to keep it on the down low.
I didn’t feel sorry for myself that I didn’t have anyone in my life. In fact, most of my existence had been that way.
As a kid, I was ‘too soft’ as my father would tell me. I ended up being that weird kid that sat alone at lunch. The one that took home stray puppies that I’d picked up running around in the back of alleyways and found them good homes. The one that nursed baby squirrels that had lost their mommas back to health and then did my best to set them free. When I was younger, my weekends were spent hanging out at the park, bringing the old senile Mrs. Gretta an extra loaf of bread that I’d manage to sneak from my house. We’d feed those weird, almost ugly pigeons together and she’d ramble on about how the sky was falling. She didn’t make fun of me for sitting there with her while all the other kids my age were playing on the other side of the park. And I wouldn’t tell her she was fucking nuts for thinking the world was going to end at any second.
I was always soft spoken. I rarely got mad. I even cried from time to time. Though it usually took something big. Like the time that I saved three baby kittens and forgot to latch the barn door. I woke up to a mess of torn kitten parts because the wolves that inhabited the woods around the property had I guessed heard their cries.
It was my fault. I should have done better.
So I cried there on the dirt of the floor in the barn as I did my best to put all their pieces together, until I had something that resembled three different kittens. Then I wrapped each one in some old towels that were in the mudroom, thinking my parents would never miss them anyway. After the tears had stopped, I dug a hole big enough for the three of them and deep enough so they wouldn’t be disturbed. Then I gave them back to the earth and prayed that their little souls would be free to float to heaven. I was only eight at the time. I really didn’t know if there was a Heaven. Or Hell.
Now I did, though. At least I was sure of the Hell part.
Maybe that was where it had all started, back in that barn crying over those poor kittens.
I couldn’t be sure.
But I never had a problem with being ‘too soft’ or ‘a pussy boy’ because I believed that one day being me would lead me to great things.
Couldn’t have been so far off on that one.
I was good at my job, at least I had that to hold on to.
And while I wasn’t as soft as I once had been, I wasn’t a complete hardened asshole like some of the men I knew. I didn’t cry now, but mostly because I hadn’t had anything to really cry over. I didn’t really have many emotions and I was silent more than not.
So much for the quiet, I thought as my phone started buzzing in my pocket.
There was only one person that actually rang through my phone. That one person was still a mystery. I had a good idea that it was a she. Just a hunch, really, because every time they called they used some kind of voice disguise, so I had no idea what they sounded like.
“Yeah,” I answered the same as I always did. It wasn’t gruff or rude. I knew mystery person was going to rattle out an address or a direction in a semi-soft way.
I’d started to refer to the magical person asmy psychic. I didn’t really believe in things such as psychics, but it just sort of became a joke in my head that stuck. Not that the said person would know any of this. She—yeah, I was going to go withshebecause I was sure enough about it that I would have put money on it.
Anyway, she wasn’t one for talking. There was that weird thing a few weeks ago where she let out some kind of strangled squeak when I tried to engage her. With the distortion, the noise came out a little creepy sounding, almost like a crow in the background of a horror movie. I actually found myself laughing in a vacant room after the line cut out.
“Moon Hill,” she muttered and for some reason, I sensed a shakiness beneath the fake voice.
That set my hairs on end. I couldn’t explain it and I didn’t want to try to. I wanted to ask her what was wrong. But I stopped myself because that would have been weird.
We didn’t know each other.
