Functionality
“I’m sorry I don’t know any lullabies. I’m not one for singing either, just ask your mother.” I lay him down in the crib. “Did mommy give you some coffee in your bottle? You’re just wide awake aren’t you? Maybe I’ve got a story for you.” He looks back at me. Not fascinated by his father, but most likely the symmetry of my face. “Do you like how I look? Are you trying to study what you’re going to look like at my age? Hopefully you get your mother’s looks.”
“How bout we make a deal, I tell you a story, and you go to sleep? If this is a deal, just stare back at me and don’t say a word. Perfect, a deal it is.”
“I wish I knew some pleasant stories, and I most likely do, somewhere in my head, but what’s been bothering me recently is a file I was given. KEEP AN EYE OPEN, was all that was written on it. Sounds like nothing of importance, I know, but after reading this file, you would be bothered too. Did you ever meet someone you just couldn’t figure out? That’s a misnomer, I understand what he’s doing, but I just don’t get where he is going with it. I know, you’re laughing at me now, thinking, ‘daddy, you do this everyday,’ but mine are contracts, his are something else. Once upon a time…
A man stands in the dessert, the sun behind him, rifle in hands. The sand blows, and he thinks to himself “it’s not a bad life here.” And just as he thinks he’s okay, a waved in truck is coming in from the front gate explodes, catching him, and charring his flesh. He does the smart thing and screams, or else his lungs would have inhaled the smoke and he would be no more. At least this is one theory on how our boy got started.
Stepping through the dessert, on patrol, he steps on a mortar, it delays and blows up behind him. This wouldn’t explain the scarring though. The whole of his body is covered in burned flesh, head to toe. Driving through the dessert he gets hit with an RPG and the truck immolates with him and a few other soldiers inside, yet he is the only one to walk out of the make shift oven, as if chosen, like the three young men being guarded when Nebuchadnezzar threw them in the fire. Whatever his story, what’s important is that you know, son, that it starts in war. A war that seems to never end. And out of one never ending war, he has chosen to start his own war that will always sustain: A war on life.
The soldier walks across the street to buy a cup of coffee, the morning paper, and a donut. It’s not what he wants to do, it’s just the only thing that makes sense. Thinking one constant thought the whole time: why did I join? Was it the sign on bonus? Did I really need to go to college that bad? Was there a mother who just couldn’t make ends meet, who was becoming to sick to work from a life time of over work because of a father who was never there. Did he need to support her? Was there a wife with child, or girlfriend?
“A maple bar, cup of coffee, and this paper.” His voice grates against the cashier’s fragile ears, I don’t get paid enough to deal with customer’s like this, the young girl thinks to herself. She won’t look him in the eyes, partly because he hides his face with a hat, and pulled up collar from a jacket. All she knows is that if she were to look directly at him she would lose her lunch.
“2.25 please.” She looks down at his gloved hand taking out a wallet, pulls out the cash, and places it on the counter. Thank god, I don’t want to have contact with him.
“Keep the change.” He walks away, coffee, paper, donut in his hands and finds an empty table next to the window.
“What daddy begins to wonder to himself, son, is what set’s him off that morning? What could it be? Too much pain, an overload of violence, a numbing to the self that he wants to spread across the world? Does he even know? I mean, I kill people, but this man wants to exterminate people. But, I get ahead of myself, he’s not there yet in his character, so let’s continue with the beginnings…
He sits, reading the paper, drinking his coffee, hearing the television in the background. “A couple was shot dead last night next to the Q-mart, on 4th and Chester, at approximately 3:00 in the morning last night. No witnesses have come forward, but it’s rumored that the deaths are drug related.” In my neighborhood, more death. I thought leaving the dessert would remove me from the killing fields.
FIVE YEAR OLD BOY SHOT DEAD WHILE SLEEPING. Being held in his mother’s arms, the boy was asleep in a corner bedroom, and a stray shot fires off, misses it’s target, and hits the boy through the head, stopping at the back of his skull, the wall must have taken some of the velocity from the bullet.
“…third time he has been convicted of rape, but has been released after 15 years due to good behavior.”
Does he begin to wish? Does he ask for the strength to begin something he will never stop? He drinks his coffee, donut finished, he throws away the napkin and leaves the shop, the cashier silently thanking god that the man did not talk to her or ask for anything else.
“Is it all too cliché? The bad news adding up, a good man pushed to far? Was there something else going on inside his head? Sorry, I know I was supposed to be telling you a story…
He walks home, hearing it all “take away that pain man. GOT that WMD here. Niggas got garbage down the way. Two for fives over here baby.” Walking death, screaming death, so what if you help it along. No one will miss them. “Get them east side niggas off our corner.” Hate brewing, death on the mind, what sets him off?
Upstairs to his apartment. Nothing there, just a bed, a refrigerator, no television, nothing in the cupboards, telephones don’t exist in his world. In the closet is his therapy, his own salvation. Lead in the body, transubstantiating flesh into holes. He’s seen it from afar, up close, against defenders and defenseless. No one there to stop him, mother eventually worked herself to death while she was trying to take care of him when he came home, pink, a newborn all over again. Afterbirth. The girlfriend walking out with the child after she see’s that her once beautiful boy is now a monster, unrecognizable, what was he before that war, she thinks to herself? No one there to save him, but himself, so what does he choose to do? The only thing that makes sense to him anymore: spread the death that he know this world deserves. He’s seen death out in the dessert, but the people here deserve it just as much as anyone out there. Everyone in his old unit donated some guns, of all sorts of varieties, knowing how much he loved to shoot, and how good he was at it. They didn’t want their friend to have nothing, they wanted him to be okay. Buy him a beer, or hooker was maybe the old way to help a war comrade out, not anymore.
“Open the file and you see dead body after dead body. It’s like looking through a photo album in reverse. You have these older men, and eventually they begin to get younger and younger. He murdered an 8 year old the other day. Granted, the 8 year had killed a young woman three days prior to that…
It all starts with a 23 year old, a 19 year old, and a 14 year old. Good job, college student, and a high school boy. Maybe in another life that’s what they became. It starts on a Friday night. He opens his window, and puts the barrel out of the window. He’s modified a suppresser onto the front, puts his eye into the sights and waits. From his upstairs apartment he can see them walking around, peddling there death to the dead. They’re like zombies, dead already, maybe they’re next in his mind, once he’s done with the real killers. One shot, one kill. The older of the trio falls down, the youngsters look around, who shot? wha happened? FUCK MAN, RUN! He had pulled himself back into his apartment, unknown, a, somewhat, silent killer.
The next day on the way to coffee, paper, donut, he’s the talk of the corner, “nigga just fell over,” “some stray shot,” “heard he fucked Marlo’s girl, so they hit him.” Nothing but rumors and conjecture. He walks amongst them, unknown, who was going to be next, he thought to himself, but these boys not knowing the plague that had been unleashed upon them. The cashier still looks away, but this time his head is held a littler higher, to see the discomfort on her face. Does it bother him? It can’t, or else he would have let himself die after the burning. He’s been through hell fire, this disdain does not matter to him. He orders the same thing as the day before, change is given back to him, he takes a seat.
“A strange death last night. A stray bullet hits a man as he sits on the corner…” a smile must creep across his face, something the girl does not notice, because she cannot look upon him “…possibly drug related.” He downs his coffee, inhales the donut, and tosses the paper in the trash can. He walks, head held higher.
“Fool just got shot, who knows?”
“Look at this nigga. What happened to you fool?” He’s never been noticed before. He continues walking. “Fuck you too.” They continue about their business, and he continues to think about what he’s going to do next. Isolate and destroy. These cockroaches hold together they could be a problem, individually they are not a threat.
Night rolls around once more on the city, he digs through his closet for what he needs. A smaller firearm, concealable, but still using a suppressor. He grabs his other tool as well. He walks down the street, seeing them right in front of him, he steps in a doorway unseen. Ting, ting, ting, is all the boys hear.
“The fuck was that?” BOOM. None of them die, they are not caught in the blast, it’s merely used as a distraction. They scatter, the light has turned on and they have been caught. “Run.” Fleet footed, one of them heads down an alley. He decides upon this one. He starts running behind the boy, stalking. The boy looks back, and in that instant, trips, sealing his outcome. He looks back and sees a brief flash. The bullet arrives before he can hear anything. Oblivion.
An infinite war has been delivered to him. He has accepted the challenge. One final threshold to cross, see the enemy eye to eye, spill his blood face to face. No hiding, no far away shots, no easy time with this.
“Do I sound excited? I don’t think so, it’s more of a mutual respect. The man is good at what he does. What he does though, that’s an entirely different thing altogether…
What separates him from these other people, other people in general? Do they not understand what he has been through, could they understand? After seeing death day in and day out, you begin to see what is of value, and what is not. You begin making decisions about what worth something has, and whether or not it can be dispensed with, because it serves you no purpose.
He skips the coffee and donut today, too much planning to be done. The police have been all around alley, the corner, the neighborhood. Too much going on. Does he think hesitate for a moment, or has his mission been delivered to him, and he must complete it.
The boy walks past the scene, ignoring, as if he’s never seen the corner before, he doesn’t know what happened the night before. He continues walking, our man watches from the rooftop, to see where his target is heading. Walks into the apartment building at the opposite end of the block.
The sun hides itself from the upcoming horror beneath the horizon. Our man has walked into the building. Head, with hat on, jacket lapels pulled up, walks through the hallways, looking for the boy.
A door opens, he peeks through as he walks past. No sign. He continues to walk up and down the hallways, all three floors, waiting patiently. He finally hears what he needs to, “get me some cigarette’s while you’re out.”
“All right ma.” He looks quickly around the corner to make sure.
The boy slams the door shut and begins to walk out of the building. Our man silently walks up behind him, juts an arm forward, and collapses that arm around the boys body, the hand enclosed over the mouth, to prevent any sort of scream. He pulls him into a janitor’s closet, slices the boys throat, making sure that he can’t make a sound ever again. The boy looks puzzled, all he can think to himself is “what did I do?”
The man stares at him. He’s pinned the boy’s arms and feet down, making sure he can’t squirm and cause a further ruckus. The life exits the tiny room, and the man soon follows.
“That was all that was heard from our Man for a few months. All of a sudden bodies began springing up here and there. Drug dealers, gangsters, killers, rapists. I’ve heard he’s even got a fan club, people who give him patronage. People finally got what they wanted: someone who wasn’t going to sit back and take it anymore. It’s typical, we’ve built our monster, but how are we going to stop him. Do people even want him stopped? I will assume someone will want him stopped one day, or else they wouldn’t have notified my employers. A lawyer was shot, then thrown out of his office window. Is it our boy? The lawyer was a high profile defendant for many known drug dealers. He’s stopped just scraping the shit off the bottom of the shoe. He’s going bigger. When will the monster turn? It’s only inevitable. If you look at life from a certain angle, all of it is dispensable.” He fell asleep a while ago.
Lights are out, I walk to the bedroom, hoping she’s asleep. She’s had a rough day, and I hope I made it a bit easier by putting him down to sleep. “Eddie…” Shit.
“Sorry, I thought I was being quiet.”
“You were, I just can’t sleep that well when you’re not here.” I lay down, she pulls closer to me, I warm her, and she warms me. I can help her sleep, it’s a wonderful function I fulfill.
