Quiet Pills

1: Hitman’s Alphabet

Words

––––––––

A is for Assassin, standing at your door.

B is for your Blood, pooling on the floor.

C is for Cadaver, that doesn't make a sound,

and D is for Decomposing, rotting in the ground.

––––––––

E is for Eviscerate; your organs, one by one.

F is for Full-rigor; now we're having fun!

G is for Garrote, I wrapped about your neck.

H is for Homicide; they haven't caught me yet!

––––––––

I is for the Ice-pick, the one that’s in your eye.

J is for your Jugular, I slit to make you die.

K is for the Killer; this one, now you know,

and L is for the Life-sentence, I've surely come to sow.

––––––––

M is for Manslaughter; this one I know well!

N is for the Nightmare, come straight from Hell.

O is for the Opening, I made in your chest,

P is for Pulmonary-respirations, 

now

at

rest.

––––––––

Q is the Quintessential blood-lust, to which I must confess,

while R is for the putrid Rotting of your flesh,

and S is for the Stink of your decaying mess.

––––––––

T is for the Torture I had put you through.

and U is for the absolute Uselessness, that I felt for you.

––––––––

V is for Vivisection; now look what I've done!

W is for the Waste of humanity; my advice, you'd better run!

X is the 'unknown quantity' by which my head is ruled;

and Y is for Yesterday, when I was sane and schooled.

––––––––

But Z... 

Z is for the Zealot in the freezer 

that I keep

well-cooled.

2: The Man In The Kabuki Mask

Fairy Tale

––––––––

He came to the party dressed as Death, with scythe that glittered and gleamed in the light, it even looked sharp. Don’t touch, it just may bite! said the man in the Kabuki mask. It didn’t match, but somehow, he made it all work out. His robes were black and tattered and sparse, but no one noticed there in the dark, that these, only hung down to his knees. Freedom of movement was what he would need, but no one noticed, or so it seemed.

Everyone who was anyone had come to the masquerade, everyone on the list was in the parade of masks and gowns and promenade drowns of chit-chat and gossip and knitters-pick. The man in the Kabuki mask did not much care, who was who, nor why they were there. He was on the job, hide in plain sight, with his scythe and dim light, it was easy enough to move and dance, and plan and flit, from one to the next, he never a step missed.

This, it was, the worst part of his job, in tedium he mingled amongst in the throng. As surely he was capable of holding each girl in thrall, and some of the lads too, if he’d bothered at all, but it was base and droll, as they coaxed and cajoled, to discover just who was behind the mask, but instead, he had smiled at last: Oh I’ll never tell. Perhaps I should have come as Pirate Capt’.

An intrigue amidst the guests, Is it such a secret? Are you some hideous mess?

He tapped the death-mask on his visage at last, Dead men tell no tales, dear lass.

They giggled and laughed, and tipped their glasses, fleeting and dizzy and Avast! Me hearties, they wouldn’t last, for the punch, you see, had been tainted to each and every last.

The man in the Kabuki mask sighed and deigned another dance, as he surmised he should have come as Old Father Time! Images of old Druids and Father Christmas danced through his head, if only they had known what sort of dread, ticked away in the night, then surely this ball would have been in a fright. He smiled again, the man in the Kabuki mask, dressed as Death, and waiting for the last drunkard to have drunk their last. Bacchus, he thought, would have been proud, to the glut that scattered around.

At long last he heard the chime from Old Father Time, the grandfather clock on the landing announced, that the servers at last were allowed to bow-out. He had arranged for them to leave, or collateral-damage ere they be, but it mattered not to the man in the Kabuki mask, this was that, and tit for tat, it was all the same, in the name of this game: work, it seemed, was at hand at last.

He grinned behind the mask, though no one even thought to glance, as he shifted through the crowd and to the parlor door, a flip of the latch and he whispered: Never more. The lights rapidly flicked out, set by set, and now the scythe was whet, and swept from this one to the next, and painted a splash across the walls in red but fast. Jynx was in his element at last, killing each and all to the very, very last, an assassin behind the Kabuki mask.

3: Jynx

Introduction

––––––––

I am a certifiable psychopath. I don’t have feelings in the classical sense. I only ever learned to fake them long enough to get what I want, to feed my inner beast. Girls? Certainly that. Of women, I’ve only ever met a few. But the girls are easy. I learned to flirt at an early age. Relentlessly, but only because it was a game I could play. My looks helped; I think. ‘Tall, dark, and handsome,’ is how they’d describe, in blushing giggles behind schoolbooks when I’d pass by. But it’s the smile, the grin that draws them in, a flash of teeth and sidewise glance. Confidence, it’s what they lack, so they’re drawn to it like proverbial moths to my flame. And a bad-boy reputation is the sugar-coated top to their cake. The thrill of danger, it would make me shudder on their behalf, to know, in no time, they’d come, and I’d go. Once the predator’s won, they couldn’t hope to hold my attention long, sad but true, for them, once I was ‘through.’ I never could bear the blubbering and the tears, so I’d hand them over to someone else’s ears. Harsh, I know, but... I’ll take a moment to shrug... no one could ever hold this predator down. 

So, what do you want to know...? Some wretched and broken childhood home? Who hasn’t had that these days? My mother died when I was six. Cancer, ‘Daddy’ said, but to this day I wonder if he was more like me. The whole congregation came that day. My father’s pulpit was never the same. Fire and damnation were always his theme, but I never ‘bought’ the scheme. He fleeced his sheep as easily as I ate mine. And Do as I say, not as I do, was the message he screamed with the lashing I got for imitating his deeds. Caught in the act with the altar boy behind the scenes, he beat us both within the inch. What’s the big deal, I wondered, having seen what I’d seen him do to the boy with the shy laugh. We’d talked about it, the boy and I, later that year, drinking in the backwoods behind the barn. I held him as he cried, it didn’t mean anything to me at the time, only later, when he had me kick out the stool as he swung from the barn’s rafter beam. It took a long time, a long time for him to die. And I watched him claw at the strap around his neck, his face feral and eyes bulging. I’ve never seen that shade of blue on pallor since. My only regret is that the cops didn’t make my father cut him down, but they did instead. ‘Evidence,’ they said. The heat had bloated his corpse to an obscene state. 

I hate the South. I hate my father. But that’s about the extent of what I ‘feel.’ I liked the girls for a time, the boys were easier to deal. I have one I use now, a Japanese lad with a tight ass. But we’re hardly a ‘thing,’ he merely serves my need. A masochistic nature, he can tolerate my tastes, and I give it to him well enough. I pay him for his trouble, not out of guilt on my part, mind you, merely because I think he’s earned the reprieve. 

What else? What else would you know? I like the fire of whiskey and the .38. Hardly the first choice for a hitman, I know, but I like the weight of the grip. I like the kick-back in hand. I like the look of fear in someone’s eyes when they stare wide-eyed down the size of the barrel at point-blank. No sniper’s rifle, please, I live by the teeth. Even when on a paid mark, half the time I cut the deck and take the luck. Hell, half the time I don’t even bother with the gun. I like the rush. Adrenaline and blood, both are thick on my tongue. I take the risk. Especially with today’s camera-on-every-corner. But they don’t see me, not really, any good predator knows how to blend. A hat and some shades. Body language is what will give you away, so I keep my hands in my pockets, close to the .38 in my waistband. I keep my eyes moving. One wrong move from you, and bang. I like the risk, but I don’t push chance, she’s an evil bitch. 

I’ll spark the match and take a drag, just like my father always said: I’m the Devil’s own spawn, hell-bent on the end. But nah... I’m just a psychopathic killer with a .38 and a grin. Roll the dice, my friend, I’m all in.  

4: First Love

Love

––––––––

I fell in love when I was ten. Daddy’s gun on top of the worn Bible in his dresser drawer with his dingy underwear. It was the moment I learned what ‘irony’ meant. 

I took the weapon from the drawer and caressed it before running out to the barn. It was cool and slick and shiny, felt huge in my too-small-for-my-age hand. I’ll never forget the way the feathers exploded when I shot the chicken. It was the moment I fell in love for the first time. 

I’d snuck up on the carcass, as if I were getting away with something wicked. Its wings akimbo, legs stiff and straight out as it lay on its back, breast shattered. It’s the smell I remember most, raw meat and blood with that singed-hair smell. I can’t say it made me sick, well, not to my stomach anyway. But I am sick. I remember my finger probing the wound, warm, wet, sticky, like lips that sucked against my finger, only ragged and torn. 

I didn’t stop there. My bare child’s hands pulled the corpse open from the center, my thumbs jammed into the hole and my hands prying it apart. I had to see inside; had to see what the bullet had done. 

The blood was a nuisance. It was everywhere by then, on my shoes even. I remember the wait for it to drain, it seemed to take forever with my heart pounding in my frail chest and my mouth watering with the desire to see inside. 

I remember picking through its last meal even. Worms and grain, it fascinated me on a visceral level despite the smell of the dung it had picked through. I recall holding the heart in the palm of my hand. I knew that Native Americans ate the heart of their prey raw, and I recall how I debated, but even I, sick as I am, couldn’t bring that pink marble of firm but squishy flesh to my lips. 

It’s a hurdle I’ve gotten past since then, though. I love sushi. And the iron-rich tang of ‘blue’ meat, though I still order it ‘blood-rare,’ generally with a grin, because I like to watch the server flinch. 

So, is it cliché to say that I shot anything that moved behind the barn that summer? I’d taken to pocketing bullets every time we went into town, and yes, the child-psychopath in me wanted to stop all that movement in the bushes. I didn’t always take them apart, only when I had the time, and no one was around. The pocket knife I’d gotten for Christmas was put to good use that summer. And I had a whole graveyard of victims: rabbit and squirrel and raven, yes, even the neighbor’s barn cat. I was never one to discriminate. I still don’t. Though I didn’t start killing human prey until I was fifteen, but that’s a story for another time. 

I fell in love with Daddy’s .38 the summer I turned ten. It was loud, but efficient. It shook my too-small-for-my-age frame more thoroughly than my father had ever done, and he shook me a lot in those days. My inherent insensitivity was a perfect foil for his wrath, and he was never one to spare the rod and spoil the child. What he didn’t know was how I’d come to enjoy it. Physical pain was something I could feel, but emotions continued to elude me. I imagine they always will. Honestly, I’m quite fine without them. I’ve only ever seen them cause more problems than good anyway. Baggage I don’t need. Friendships best kept to surface tensions. Lovers best kept to a good fuck. They tell me everybody needs somebody, but I doubt that applies to the mentally insane and emotionally incapacitated. 

I don’t need anybody. I have the .38 and I partner I can tolerate, or perhaps, he tolerates me; sometimes I’m not sure which. Well, and the Japanese lad with the tight ass, mmm... He’s not a bad kid, just damaged. So, he’s perfectly safe with me. Well, most of the time. I do have my moods. Even without classical emotion, I’m still prone to outbursts, everyone is. I just don’t mind when it gets the better of me. And that’s the real difference. 

So yes, I still favor the .38. Not Daddy’s old revolver, I abandoned that as soon as I was old enough to buy my own. Sleek, sexy, and oh-so-dastardly. Never fails to get a rise out of someone facing the barrel. I like to watch the blood drain from their face as they practically soil themselves and their eyes dilate. It’s primal. That moment. The only thing that feels real. Knowing I stand as the axe between existence and annihilation. That single instance is everything. In that moment, I am no longer the Devil’s spawn, but God himself. Angel of Death. The beginning and end of all things. It is raw and unadulterated power. 

And then they are merely... gone. Blown away with a muzzle flash and a bang. And I remain. Whole. Unmolested. Satiated. For another moment. Eternity yawns in the space of my step as I leave. It’s not my job to clean up after myself. But what can I say? Gods play by unfair rules. I no longer need to see what lies inside. It’s just filth. If I’m lucky enough to escape without the stink of vaporized blood clogging my nose, I’ll head to a bar, shuffle the cards, cut the deck. Any sleight-of-hand tricks will pass the time. And that’s the real test, isn’t it? Time. Everyone runs against the clock. One day, this beat too will stop. But unlike the average person, the thought doesn’t ‘bother’ me. Maybe some med student will take a gander inside, but never know why, why being a hitman never actually bothered me. 

It’s just meat, my friend. 

Keep moving. 

5: Chest Pain

Foreign

––––––––

Jynx lay his small hand on the coffin in his father’s parish. It was cold to the touch. He had to stand on his toes to see his mother’s face as she lay in state. She didn’t look the same. 

He felt a sinking in his chest, a sensation he had never encountered before. He tried to concentrate on the feeling, but his mind kept wandering back to the idea that she looked different. He cocked his head and squinted his eyes at her.

She might have been sleeping, lying there so motionless, but he knew she was... gone... 

His light-blue eyes flicked momentarily up to his father at the pulpit, but he was frantically flipping through his Bible and taking meaningless notes. 

Jynx turned back to his mother’s corpse. He had no idea why she didn’t look as he remembered her, but there was something, something that was simply no longer her. He pushed himself up on his toes and reached his fingers as far as he could to touch her face. She was nearly as cold as the coffin, and her skin did not give back any resistance. Like a toad.

Jynx’s heart leapt in his chest as he fumbled frantically for her hands. Momma! he hissed sharply as his small hands gripped her cold, stiff, unresponsive fingers. 

Hey! Monster! Jynx flinched at the sound of his father’s sharp bark. What the Hell’re you doing, boy?  Git away from there!

Jynx scrabbled for one last hold of his mother’s hands even as his father dragged him away from the coffin. And only then did he understand she was really gone. Truly and irrevocably lost. 

Your momma’s gone, boy, and there ain’t no comin’ back from death. Better git used to the idea, his father bellowed as he cuffed him repeatedly upside the head. Now I gots plenty to do, so you keep yer hands outta trouble and don’t go playin’ with no dead things and let me be, hear?

Jynx thought about lashing out at his father, windmilling his arms and kicking at shins, but he knew it wouldn’t do him any good, and likely get his behind welted with a greenswitch. He rubbed his wrist across his nose and glared up at his father with his cold-glass eyes. 

Go on now, git! his father snapped and waved the boy off. 

Jynx ran out to the barn and began rifling through the cupboards and drawers. If he could find one of the old traps, he could catch a rat and see, see if it looked different after it died too. 

He hid in the barn all day, but no rats came to his trap.

It wasn’t until suppertime that Jynx stood beside the place where the backhoe waited to fill in the dirt. He watched as the adults shuffled up and tossed a handful of grime on top of his mother’s coffin, and he didn’t understand. He felt a pang in his chest, and that too he did not understand. He reached up and itched his cheek, and it was wet. He put both hands to his face, and both came away wet with tears. He panicked. 

No! he screeched in his six-year-old tantrum voice and threw his tiny body at his father’s fistful of dirt. He grabbed his father’s fist in both of his tiny hands and held fast. He would not let another person desecrate his mother this way. He wrestled and kicked and screamed.

Fortunately for the boy everyone referred to as Jynx, the womenfolk stepped in, and took his tantrum as an outburst of grief and they peeled him away from his fuming father and cried and hugged him tight. But Jynx continued to let his dead-eye gaze burn into his father’s back. He would probably get the greenswitch later. But it was worth it. 

6: Famous Last Words

Fortitude

––––––––

Do it.

As it turned out, this was not the last time Jynx would hear that statement as someone’s last words.

It was, however, the first. 

Jynx stood a moment in ponderance, in the span of a breath, wondering if he had the balls to actually comply to his friend’s request. 

Of course he did. 

He’d killed plenty, but this was his first human prey and the kid he considered his ‘best friend.’ In the name of ‘friendship’ he would see it through. 

Jynx kicked hard at the ratty old stool they’d brought to the barn. He stared up at the boy’s face as his legs spasmed in reflex to the rope around his neck taking the full weight of his body. His hands groped at the thick twine Jynx had learned to tie into a noose and looped over the main rafter in the old barn. His face went swollen and red almost immediately. 

Jynx took a step back from his kicking legs. In the movies, it was the drop that killed you, not the rope. He sucked against his teeth. And watched. And waited. 

Danny’s lips pulled back in a grimace as his need for air fought against the full weight of his body against the grip of the twine. His tongue came out his mouth as desperation took over and his hands clawed at his own throat. His eyes bulged out horribly.

Jynx watched. And waited. 

Normally, Jynx was on a pretty even keel, but this brought a new sensation to bear. Was it empathy? They’d had quite the discussion in class about empathy toward fellow human beings, to which Jynx had argued vehemently, but only to be Devil’s advocate at the teacher and be a general ass in front of the class. 

He could stop this. He could step in and lift his friend enough to ease the rope sufficiently to let him remove it from his head and they could both fall to the filthy floor of the barn and laugh about it. Or not. 

He could take the small lock-blade from his pocket and cut Danny down, let him catch his breath and celebrate life in a tangle of limbs and sweat. Or not.

He could merely put the stool back in place...

Or not...

But Danny had made him promise. Promise to see it through to the end. And the end, it seemed, was none too keen to get here in a timely fashion. 

Danny’s face had gone from red to purple, the vein standing out on the side of his neck pulsing rapidly to the insistence of his heartbeat. But oxygen wasn’t coming. Not even as the boy begged silently, trying to open his throat to scream and take in that drink of O-2 that would save him. 

Jynx wasn’t sure if this were empathy, or simply boredom. As Danny’s eyes rolled up and back into his skull, Jynx glanced down at his watch. Time yawned at him like the gaping maw of Hell itself. 

Danny’s legs began to slow from their earlier kicking to a mild form of peddling. It reminded Jynx of birds falling from nests too soon, beaks wide as they experienced terminal velocity. Tongue extended. Terrified. Free.

His father’s gun would have been a quicker answer, more ‘humane,’ but Danny had insisted: No. He wouldn’t let Jynx take the fall for him. Jynx would have insisted it was a ‘dumb accident,’ would have coughed up some tears even, but Danny made him promise, so he would see it through. To the end. 

Jynx looked up at his friend. His body hung limp at last, arms dangling at his sides, and his bloated face drooping over the rope. A thin stain began at his crotch and spread down his left leg. Jynx sighed out loud. They would find the boy as he had intended: completely undignified. Utterly broken in the old barn where no horses were kept, the chickens rarely tread, and even the rats had become infrequent. Solitary. Wretched. Ruined. Decaying with the old hay.

Was that empathy? 

Jynx had listened to the boy tell him through his tears how Jynx’s father had regularly bent him over the pew and used his body for his perverse pleasure. Had done it so frequently that he’d actually got to like it. Had gotten to the point that he didn’t even think about girls anymore, just where he could get more cock. The town preacher-man had turned him into a constantly-horny faggot, and he couldn’t—wouldn’t—live that way. 

Jynx had not exactly understood why it was such a ‘big deal’ to Danny. Sex, even with his best friend, was just an act to stem a momentary desire. 

Jynx looked up at his friend that was no longer Danny. Something had changed, and it wasn’t just the shape of his face. He had promised to see this through, though it seemed so entirely pointless. He tentatively reached out his hand and pushed against the boy’s leg.

Danny’s eyes flashed open for a millisecond before rolling back and closing again. 

It made Jynx flinch, but he stood his ground. He scratched his chin and looked again at his watch. He would have sworn that ten minutes had stretched out to infinity there in the musty barn. 

He sat down and lit a cigarette. He had promised, after all, to see this through. 

To the end. 

7: Hellspawn

Mother

––––––––

Do you remember your mother? The therapist tried a new tactic with a direct question. She waited, but the dark-haired boy neither responded nor acknowledged her question at all. Johnny?

Don’t call me that, the boy spat, but otherwise did not move his stare from out the window. 

Why not?

No one calls me that. Except his mother, and she was underground.

The therapist was thrilled he had finally decided to use his voice after their long silent matches. She decided to harness the breech. What should I call you?

Jynx. Everyone calls me Jynx.

Oh? Why’s that?

The boy finally turned his head and fixed her with the ice-blue stare that chilled her bones. The grin was even more unsettling on his otherwise cherubic face. Daddy says I’m a curse.

Do you believe that, John—Jinx? That you’re a curse?

The boy shrugged. Sure. Why not?

Well, sometimes adults say things that they don’t really mean to be taken as the full truth... She realized too late that she had lost the thread as the boy turned back to staring out the window. Jinx, honey, why don’t you tell me what you remember about your mother—

Don’t talk about Mamma.

I know you don’t, that’s why—

"No! You don’t talk about Momma."

Okay, I won’t, Jinx. I won’t.

No. You won’t.

There was something chilling about the tone of his voice, something ‘off’ about his character, something ‘wrong’ with the child who sat across from her with dead eyes. 

Jynx ran his tongue over his teeth as he looked down on the wrecked body of the therapist with which he’d barely ever spoken to all those years ago. He rubbed his chin as he waited for the barrel to cool off enough to put the .38 back in his waistband.

His father had been right, after all; he was a curse, a plague, filth. Hellspawn. The only problem was that he enjoyed it. Well... as much as a ‘clinical psychopath,’ as she had put it in her notes all those years ago, could enjoy anything. 

She had hounded him relentlessly, prodding and prying at thoughts he’d already sworn were his, and his alone. He never mentioned the gun. He never mentioned the animal-graveyard he’d single-handedly wrought. Never mentioned how he catalogued the body parts and organs alphabetically in his head. How he knew it was ‘wrong,’ he just never understood why. 

And he had warned her, after all, to never talk about his mother. Ever. 

She had never known his mother, she had no bearing on which to stand and accuse that his mother had been anything other than the perfect angel he had built in his mind, the only memories of her he bore. His mother had never called him ‘Jynx’ or ‘curse’ or ‘hellspawn,’ as his father so often had. No. She had only ever called him ‘Johnny,’ and ‘Johnny’ had died on her tongue when she died of... supposed cancer. 

Jynx put the gun away. He suspected his father had helped his mother along her journey to the void, but he lacked any such proof. He might, one day, kill his father... when he had the proof he needed. But for now, he would amuse himself with the body of the woman who had irked him just as judiciously as his father ever had. 

He took the lock-blade from his pocket and flicked it open with one hand. He could gut her like a hog, like he’d done a hundred times already, a boy’s gotta eat after all, and Daddy spent his parishioners’ money on hookers and booze when it suited him. But at least, Jynx had learned enough to arrange her organs neatly in alphabetical order for the eventual coroner. 

He licked his lips and leaned over the prone figure and the blade started the fabric of her shirt to opening up for him. 

The first cut of flesh was always the best. Even if her heart was no longer pumping her blood through her veins, there would be enough for a taste or two. He was a monster, after all. 

It wasn’t until much later, when Jynx’s hands were covered in blood and he had a small blob of flesh between his fingers that he tried willfully to identify that he eventually realized what it was he was actually looking at. He cracked a grin to himself. Of course.

He looked at the piles of organs and body parts on the red-soaked carpet. He cleared a small space between her eyeballs and her heart and nestled the lumpy bit of cartilaginous and fatty material between them. There, he thought:

Ears, eyeballs, fetus, heart... 

He went to the kitchen to wash his hands. It was getting close to dinner time after all, and he’d worked up quite an appetite.

8: Under The Overpass

When It Rains

––––––––

Jynx had liked that blonde back in High School. She’d always been the ice to his fire, but he’d finally managed to whittle down her resolve and took her virginity on a pile of hay in the old barn. It’d rained all summer. Seemed incessant—hell, how long, Jynx couldn’t have said, but seemed like forty nights over at his place as she shook in his arms and he never really could figure out the why...

She was the only one he’d ever actually felt ‘bad’ about, and the adorable way her