A Hazel Haven

Interlude VII

Interlude vii

The cold made her shiver. Yahimba awoke to a starless evening sky and someone standing over her, watching as she groaned from the pain trapped in her head and blinked drowsily.

The last thing she remembered was water pelting her upturned face. She'd packed and confined herself indoors until her supposed departure under the cover of the welcoming party for that little meddling bitch and her roommate. They would be distracted, offering her a chance to escape unnoticed but she had been drugged and abducted yet again and locked away.

Everyday she had been fed absent torture. Suddenly they'd drugged her and as the effects muddled her senses, she had felt herself being hoisted and her hands dangling lifelessly down a big back.

As her vision cleared, her eyes widened when she recognized Anthony who had a gun aimed at her, an inscrutable expression on his face. She attempted running and realized her hands and feet were bound too tightly to work or twist free. Then she resorted to pleading but the words were muffled, made gibberish by the cloth that gagged her mouth shut. Naked, terrified, cold, helpless, she stared at death, a shot away.

Meanwhile, Anthony watched Yahimba plummet deeper into despair. Death was a scary thing. Although he had since consigned himself to an inevitable gruesome end at someone else's hands-one expected nothing less in this line of work where it was killed or be killed, where your life becomes the property of another-he often imagined how he would face his demise.

Would he be afraid? He had looked into many eyes before he pulled the trigger, witnessed them fall apart, beg, weep, bargain, entreated his conscience. All except one. She had defiled everything, had closed hers, depriving him of the fear he had seen in the lot, condemning him. Oh, how he despised her. Who did she think she was, acting as though she were any different from them?

Anthony did nothing as Yahimba, grunting, made efforts to creep away, propelling her body forward using bent knees. He couldn't say he didn't try. People took one look at him and thought he was this monstrous, hardened man who would probably enjoy inflicting pain on others; even as a child, he was often told that he had the face of a killer. They were right. Born to useless parents, he'd been bigger than most kids his age at fourteen, and a thug for hire for politicians during elections.

His first kill had been a policeman on duty, securing the polling units to which his gang had been dispatched to snatch ballot boxes. The thought that the man had a family who'd be thrown into destitution by his actions hadn't crossed his mind. He had simply remembered his useless, pathetic father and fired, feeling nothing after. There had been no nightmares, no regret, and he'd realized his use, his purpose, the only thing he could do: killing.

But they were wrong about relishing the act; rather he was repulsed, because a man's true self was revealed at the other side of the gun, and what a pathetic sight it was. Politicians, businessmen, force man, however high or low were made powerless, reduced to groveling. They had killed, stolen, betrayed, oppressed, and another, seeking retribution, had sought his skill. And this was the never ending vicious, bloody cycle. Soon, he'd realized that the world festered with evil and corruption, obliterating whatever good existed.

Recently, however, he'd gotten tired for reasons beyond him. Letting Yahimba go free had not been out of the goodness of his heart-or so he would like to believe. She was a young girl with her whole life ahead of her. Like him, she was a victim of the system, and perhaps, he had thought she'd choose differently if given another chance. Maybe he'd also considered her friendship with his girlfriend. But the girl had been foolish. Now they would both pay the price.

I'm spending far too much time with that guy, he thought, walking to hunker down in front of Yahimba. She flinched as he yanked off the gag.