Charade

Four Weeks Before

Vic

Somewhere deep in the underbelly of the city, I heard the drunken cackle of Dr Chris Evans slip under the door of a brothel and straight into my ears.

I cocked the gun, switching the safety off. Tonight would go one of two ways: Dr Evans would find my daughter's name in the long, long list of cancerous patients awaiting a bone marrow transplant, and he would put her name up the top. If he didn't, I would put a bullet between his eyes.

The thought circled in my brain as I leaned against the cool brick wall, long since tagged with various colours and profanity. I looked down at the silhouettes of my calloused hands, one holding the gun, loaded, and heavy on my palm. Darkness engulfed everything in this filthy, narrow alleyway. Where there wasn't darkness, there was the smell – the overwhelming stench of rotting meat, infested with maggots and their larvae, eating away at the bottom of the rusted dumpsters. I didn't mind it much. The longer I breathed it in, the easier it became.

From the unlicensed whorehouse, Dr Evans stumbled into view, still erupting in waves of drunken laughter. I straightened myself, gripping the gun in my right hand.

"Chris," I said calmly.

He paused, looking down into the darkness. In the street, yellow lamplight poured over his figure. In the alley, I was invisible.

"Hello?" He ventured.

I stepped out into view. He squinted his eyes at me.

"Victor?"

Dr Evans shifted his weight uncomfortably, backing away.

"What are you doing here?"

"Finding you." I said simply. "We need to talk."

"Hey, look, if this is about Lily, I told you I can't do any – "

"Of course this is about Lily," I interrupted. "I need you to move her up the list to first. Immediately."

"Vic, you know I can't."

"I know you won't. Which is why I brought this."

I pointed my nine millimetre at his head. Chris froze as the colour drained from his face.

"Now Victor, let's think about this."

"I've done enough thinking. This is how it's going to be. You move Lily up the list, or you die. There is no option three. We both know cops tend to take their time getting to this part of town, maybe enough time for me to erase myself from this situation completely. They will find a pool of blood that tests A positive and missing persons report filed by your lovely fiancé. And everybody will wonder about young Dr Evans, who had so much potential and so little time to fulfil it. And nobody will even look twice at me. I'll only be another face in the crowd. So your choice, Evans. Obey or die. I suggest you choose wisely."

Chris narrowed his eyes at me and shoved his hands deep in his pockets. With a cocky sway, he strolled up to me, a look of pure arrogance replacing the fear I'd seen not a minute before.

"You won't shoot, Vic." He said with the barrel of my gun pressed into his Ed Hardy T shirt. "Wanna know why?"

I gulped, but said nothing. He wasn't supposed to react like this.

"Because if I die, Lily will surely follow. Because, Vic, if I'm gone, who will save your precious daughter? Who else will put her name to the front of that list?" Chris leaned in and I pressed the gun deeper into his flesh. He didn't care. "Nobody." he whispered.

I stood wordlessly, shock running through my veins like the red blood cells ran through Lily's. I opened my mouth, but Chris swung around, back to my barrel, walking a walk so smug I wanted to pull the trigger out of pure spite.

"However," he said happily, "I do have a proposition to make. I would be more than happy to move Lily's name up the list under one condition: I want two million dollars deposited into my bank account by the end of October."

I stood with my mouth agape, unable to get the words out.

"It seems fitting, really," Chris said, "because we both know Lily won't make it past October. And you'll be left here, all by yourself. A lonely old man who will die in a nursing home somewhere, with no one to say goodbye to."

At this, I snapped out of my shock state and clenched my jaw.

"I will shoot you where you stand," I warned, but we both knew the threat was empty.

Chris cracked a smile and swayed over to me again, laughing, mocking me.

"Two million, Vic. Two million by October 31st. You just try not to spend too much on Halloween costumes, yeah?"

Chris turned away from me and strolled along the deserted street, stepping through the beginnings of cold July rain, as I stood frozen in the alley, breathing in the stench of rotten flesh, and debating whether I put a bullet in his back, or if I just go home.

In the end, I went home.

  © A.G. Travers 2015