Enter Apathy

To Err Is Human (16.)

              "I messed up," Kalaraja admits to Lilliana.

She stares at the two unconscious brothers in the padlocked room. They both have brown hair and broad shoulders, but the features of their faces differ slightly. One man has a mole on his temple, and the other has a slightly thinner upper lip. The one with the mole is wearing a brown leather jacket and blue jeans, while the brother with the thinner lip dons a white tee and black cargo pants. They lay sprawled out on the concrete floor where Kalaraja laid them down.

Lilliana tries to find the words to say to him. He messed up again, and apparently, at a larger scale. She almost doesn't want to ask what happened because she isn't sure if she wants to know. If he tells her that he hesitated or that he got overwhelmed, she'll laugh at him. What kind of hitman can't finish the job?

       The same kind of hitman that still hasn't killed you, after telling you that he would. The thought floats into her head.

       She sighs, then asks, "What happened?" She closes her eyes and waits for the excuse.

Kalaraja stands and stares at the brothers on the floor. His fists clench and unclench repeatedly. Sweat drips from his brow as he looks to Lilliana.

       "They... reminded me of someone. Well, two someones"

       Lilliana rests her face against her index finger and her thumb, "Edgar and David, right?"

       "How do you know their names?" He snaps. His mouth curls down as the words exit his mouth.

Lilliana's mind flashes back to her snoop session. The picture of the three of them, Edgar, Theo, and David, stays behind her eyes as she looks to him.

       "The same way I know that your name is Theo," she states. "I snooped a little."

       Kalaraja's face twists as he breathlessly asks, "Why... the hell... did you do that?"

       She shrugs, "I was bored, honestly. I got tired of sitting around, and I decided to explore."

       "You decided to explore into my floorboard?" His eyebrow raises.

       "Well, it was sticking out like a sore thumb," she lightly says.

Kalaraja stares at her, and takes in her appearance. The sweatpants she wears are his, the grey tee came from his drawer. The expression on her face is one of indifference. Nonchalance. She doesn't care that the picture was his private property, and she doesn't care that it was hidden for a reason. Her posture seems agitated. She shouldn't be, it isn't her privacy that was invaded.

       "So that's what you were doing in my room?"

       "Yep. So how did you mess up this time?" Lilliana asks as she crouches by one of the unconscious men, peering at the knock-out wound Kalaraja planted on his head.

       This time.

Kalaraja feels his patience start to wear thin with her, he's not the only one that messes up. She goes through his shit and acts like this apartment is her own. Frustration bubbles inside his skull.

       "I was supposed to kill them at the spot I stalked them to. But I couldn't. They reminded me of... well, you know who already-" he rubs his neck as he talks- "And I flaked. Instead of killing them, I just knocked them out. And then brought them here, because I didn't know what to do."

       "You didn't know what to do? You're a hitman. You kill people. So kill them." She points to the men on the dirty concrete floor while she talks to him.

       "It's not that easy, I can't this time. It's just-"

      "Just what? Too hard? If you don't kill them, you let them go, and you get caught. If you don't kill them, the person that paid you will either want their money back, or maybe hire someone to kill you, and then them. You have to do this." Lilliana steps closer to Kalaraja as her voice raises.

Kalaraja raises his chin and glances at the brothers on the floor. They are someone else's David and Edgar. He would be ripping them from their family. He would be ruining someone's world, the same way that had been done to him. But what makes these men so different? Every other person he's killed had family, they had people to miss them. And he didn't care. He did the job he was paid for, and he moved on to the next one without a care. These men shouldn't be any different, except that he feels something tug at his heart when he looks at them. They're helpless right now. They're unable to protect themselves, the way the Edgar and David had been. He watches the brothers breathe, unconscious, on the cold floor of his torture room.

       Don't think like that, it's just a job. He urges himself.

       Lilliana moves across the dimly lit room to grab two bundles of rope. She moves to the first man and ties his wrists behind his back, and then the other. She drags them to the center of the room, one by one, about five feet apart from each other, and then walks to stand in front of Kalaraja. A few strands of hair lie in the middle of her face, untamed and out of place from moving the brothers.

       "You can do this," she tells him.

She grabs the silenced pistol from his waistband, then paces it in his palms. She wraps her fingers around his as she makes him raise the gun and point it at one of the brothers. Uncertainty dances across Kalaraja's face.

       "Do it. Finish the job. Prove to yourself that you are who you thought you were. Prove to yourself that nothing's changed, that you're still in control of your actions and your personality."

       Kalaraja glances at Lilliana, the gun, and then the man he points it at. Killing is what he's good at. He's done it for most of his life. He's always felt good or indifferent when he's done it. Doubt creeps into his mind as his finger tightens on the trigger. He rolls his shoulders back to relax them and exhales.

       "This is who you are," he whispers to himself.

He pulls the trigger. The bullet flies from the gun and lodges into the unconscious man's skull. Blood pools out onto the floor beneath him. A sudden wave of regret racks Kalaraja's entire body. His face contorts into an uncomfortable frown and he drops the gun. It clatters on the floor beside his feet as he crouches down to hug his knees.

The same thing had been done to Edgar, to David. And now he's done it to someone else's brother. He rocks back and forth slightly. His breaths come out uneven and shaky. He'd ended the life of someone that was loved, someone that had family, someone that had friends and  opportunities. The regret ebbs through his body in vicious, forceful waves. He shuts his eyes tightly and tries to let go of the feeling, this isn't something he's used to experiencing. The dirty concrete room now traps him, the way that he's trapped all of the people he's killed. The pain of the fact that he'd done this to every one of his victims floods his brain and he lets out a wail of pain before sobs shake his body. Saliva drips from his mouth with every hard breath that he lets out as he cries.

Lilliana stares at him, face full of disgust.

       "Are you fucking kidding me?" She snaps at him.

He turns his face and his tears away from her. She reaches for the gun beside him and picks it up.

Kalaraja's arms tighten around his knees as he sees Lilliana walk toward the remaining brother, still unconscious, and raise the gun to his head. Another wail escapes him when she cocks it.

       "Stop whining!" She shouts at him. Her eyes are wide and angry, full of contempt for the weeping version of him. Her lips are shut in a straight line. She looks back to the brother.

Her steely gaze roams over the man on the floor. He breathes evenly, like a person in a deep sleep. He'll be in a deeper, permanent sleep, soon.

Her finger squeezes the trigger quickly, and as the bullet lodges into his head, the gun recoils in her hand. She's never fired a gun before, and she doesn't expect the kick back. It catches her off guard slightly. She lets out a shocked chuckle, then turns the gun over in her hand as she examines it.

       She sneers at Kalaraja, "I don't know what you think is so fucking hard about this. Lately you've become weak."