The Hitman: Dirty Rotters

  I felt nothing.

  I was empty. Void of emotions. Drained of feelings. Dried of tears. Deserted by hope. Failed by desire. I pleaded with Death. I urged it to come.

  Come claim me!

  But Death was just as absent as the closure I needed to move on.

  The cops said they had searched everywhere. Fliers were put out. Rewards were offered. Pamela’s story was on the evening news. But there were no reports of her whereabouts. No leads. No sightings. Not even false ones. The city had nothing to offer. It kept its secrets. It was a dark and sinister mistress, with only loyalties to those Rotters serving her vices.

  In the weeks following Pamela’s disappearance I had changed. Something in me had died and something else had been born. Risen from the depths of bitterness and anger, to grow like a seed, each day taking a little more of who I was and gently replacing it with a darker side, I changed. Each hour that came and went with no word of Pamela’s discovery I slipped further into something unpleasant.

  I felt like a ship at sea taking on water, drifting aimlessly through thick fog.

  I walked the streets, searching on my own, door to door, day and night, sun and rain, wind and snow. I hadn’t abandoned her. I wouldn’t. I pressed on alone, feeling as if everyone I saw was laughing at me, as if they were all in on the joke. As if they all knew, but no one dared speak. I began to harass people then. I began to knock on doors, trying to do a house to house search. Nothing worked though. Panic owned me. Nightmares of what Pamela might be going through haunted me. I began to get physical. I put innocent people in the hospital because they didn’t have the answers I needed. But in my head they did. In my head they knew.

  I was failing. I was helpless. I was desperate.

  And every day I could hear Pamela’s voice crying out to me for help.

  Weeks slipped into months. One year into two.

  “It will kill you,” Little B said, twenty-five months into the search.

  She was old. Everything had taken a toll on her as well. And she had less of a fight to give. As I had fought to find someone I loved, who surely was written off to be dead, Little B’s life was coming to an end right before my eyes and I failed to see it.

  “What would you have me do?” I said. “Give up, like everyone else? You preach to me about faith, but mine says she’s out there, waiting for me to find her.”

  I was sitting on the porch in the middle of the day and she was heading out to confession. She had her long blue coat on. It was early October. In my youth, this would have been my favorite time of the year. The air would have smelled better. Trees would have had such a color to them. The full moon rising would have seemed larger and dreams would have had the chance to come true.

  Not any longer. Not here.

  “I’ve seen you do nothing but feel sorry for yourself for over a year now. You cannot change what happened. But you can change what is happening now. You’re missing out on life! You’re losing yourself. If you don’t change soon and pull yourself together, then you’ll end up like the rest of them! You were raised better than that!” She was hurt and angry. A tear fell. Then another. “I am not going to sit here every day and watch you throw your life away! I love you!”

  “I don’t care!”

  I had regretted the words as soon as I let them slip out. I hurt her. I didn’t mean to. I just couldn’t help myself. She stormed away before I could say anything else.

  I was still locked in the same position when Little B came back. She had been gone a full thirty minutes. To me it had been a few seconds. She shuffled up the steps past me and went inside. I heard her purse hit the floor next to her chair. I heard her chair squeak from the new added weight, then begin to rock gently. I heard her humming too.

  But I sat for a bit longer. I was drained of the will to move. I heard a train in the distance, approaching blocks away. I considered walking the street to the tracks and lying down on them, taking a nap. It seemed inevitable.

  Life had little meaning.

  Then I heard Little B yelp.

  The suicidal flirtations disappeared and before I knew it I was off the step, through the door, and cradling Little B’s body as she was slumped over the arm of her chair. Her left hand clutched the cushion, while her right hand covered her chest. Her heart.

  Our eyes met and locked. A pleading gasp was all she could muster. Her face was red. Her eyes were bulging. Time was slipping fast.

  “Hang on!”

  I raced to the phone and called 911. I went back to Little B and held her hand. She squeezed it tighter than I thought could be possible. There was nothing I could do. She would die right there in front of me.

  But the paramedics arrived and began to work on her in the house, then transferred her into the back of the ambulance. I rode along. Before we reached the hospital, Little B was breathing normally and talking. I was beside her, holding her hand. The clean-cut paramedic guy was younger than I was. He said she had suffered a mild heart attack. The hospital would keep her overnight. I slept in the chair beside her bed. Everything had happened so fast.

  It was early in the morning when Little B called to me. I had been sleeping uncomfortably in the chair. “Michael, can you hear me?”

  I was awake instantly. My eyes stung. I rubbed them fast. I was so tired. “I’m here. It’s okay.”

  “Listen to me,” she began, her voice frail and serious, “I was given a choice. I have decided to stay.”

  Choice? What choice?

  “What are you talking about?” I yawned. Stretched my arms over my head. “Who gave you a choice, grandma?”

  “God did.”

  “Did what?”

  “Asked me.”

  “English, grandma.”

  “If I wanted to come back. It was so beautiful that I didn’t. But I knew I had to. I had to come back for you.” She had tears forming.

  “What do you mean?”

  She took my hand in her own. Her eyes wouldn’t stay open for long periods. Her breathing was peaceful. She began to smile, drifting back into slumber.

  “I saw angels. Thousands, Michael. Everywhere. They were magnificent.”

  “Where, grandma?”

  Her eyes closed tight. “You can be one of them. You can be someone’s angel, Michael.”

  Then she was asleep.

  I stood over her in absolute confusion. I had wondered if she even knew she had been up, speaking to me about the dream she was having. I sat back down in my chair and tried to get back to sleep. Sleep didn’t come though. My mind wouldn’t relax enough. It was too busy trying to decipher what Little B had just told me.

  The next day they released her. We went home and sat in the heat. It was sweltering and humid. The carpet and couch felt sticky. I turned the fan on and put it in front of her as she rested in her chair. I even turned her favorite programs on the tube. I made her eat fruits, gave her plenty of water. I was worried. She looked like she was living on borrowed time.

  “Anything else?” I asked her.

  “I’m fine.” She took a sip of water. The glass left a wet ring on her glass stand. “Question is, how are you?”

  She took the remote control and turned the television volume down. She looked over to me with concern. She meant business. I knew then that we were going to talk. We were going to open wounds that were trying to heal.

  “I’m finer than frog’s hair.”

  “Oh no you’re not.” She gave me a stern look. “What’s going on with you?”

  “Really, I’m fine. Look at me. I’m young and fit and every woman on the planet is lined up outside just to get a glance. I can’t be better.” I looked away. When I looked back, she was still staring me down.

  “I cheated a death that I longed for to be here for you a little while longer. Don’t you dare get sassy with me. You won’t have this moment back, so start talking.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “I want to know that you’re going to be alright, that’s what I w
ant to know. You’re not the same person. You act differently now.” She held up her hand quickly to stop me from responding. “No, just listen. I understand full well what it means to lose somebody you love. I know heartache, let me tell you. But you cannot let it control you. You have a life. You cannot simply toss aside everything and let the hate own you. Because it will, Michael! It will grow and fester and you’ll lose yourself to it!”

  Her shrubbery patches of eyebrows furrowed low and angrily. Behind the mad look in her eyes was love. Genuine concern. But what could I even say at that point? She was right. I knew it. The problem was I didn’t care.

  “I’m fine, grandma.”

  “No you’re not. Don’t you lie to me! When you lost Pamela, you lost yourself. All you can do is pray, Michael. Let God do what only God can do.”

  I shrugged off the bitterness. I felt the sting in my eyes, tears forming. “I don’t know how anymore. I don’t know what to believe.” The words hurt. I had buried my emotions from her and myself for months. “None of it should have happened.”

  “But it did! You have to accept it!”

  “I can’t accept it! Can’t you see that?! How can I just let it alone and say that it was all meant to happen? How?!” I cried into my hands. Tears and snot fell between my feet. “I don’t even know what happened to her! I hate God for this!”

  Little B’s frail hand was on my shoulder, rubbing ever so gently. Her voice was soft, barely a whisper. “I’m sorry, Michael. But you cannot blame God.”

  “He didn’t do anything to find her!”

  “He works in mysterious ways, Michael.”

  “I don’t!” I stood, towering over her. “I don’t know what to trust anymore. I just know everyday hurts so bad that I wish I was dead. I feel dead. And I want every one of them dead too!”

  I stormed away. I went to the bathroom and washed my face, cried hard into the porcelain sink, then finished cursing God in short whispers, and finished feeling sorry for myself for the moment. I looked in the mirror. I was red-faced and pathetic.

  When I went back into the living room, she was in her chair reading her bible. I sat on the couch again. Little B said without looking at me, “Don’t ever give up on God and He will never give up on you.”

  Nothing more was said that night.

  The next couple of days Little B spent giving me words of wisdom, read me passages from the book of Job, trying to have me relate, trying to give me some hope, trying to comfort me without setting me off again. It worked slowly. She talked to me about angels too. She told me that she saw them in the hospital that night. She said there were some in the room with us. She said they were powerful. They fought against the evilest of things. For some reason it took root in me. It comforted me. She told me I could be like an angel to someone in this world.

  “They’re all around, Michael. Fighting off demons we can’t see.” She said with a smile. “I saw them. Unafraid. Powerful. Beautiful.”

  I believed her. The look in her eyes forced me too. She was wise. I listened and said nothing. I was going to miss her someday soon.

  I didn’t realize how soon though.

  She had been sleeping more of the day and all of the night. She ate less and less each day. On borrowed time, I knew.

  Our talks made us bond and our growing closeness opened my heart and allowed me to feel alive once more. I sobered up and even went to church again.

  It was a Friday morning when I stepped into Little B’s bedroom to check on her. I found her up, awake and packing a suitcase. She wore a pretty yellow dress with a string of pearls around her neck, her hair was dolled-up in curls, and she wore makeup. Bright red lipstick. I stood to the side and watched her put clothes and certain items into her black suitcase. She zipped it up and set it by the bed.

  I was baffled.

  “Grandma?” I didn’t want to startle her. “What are you doing?”

  “Packing.”

  I have heard of sleeping disorders like sleepwalking and sleep-eating. But sleep-packing?

  “Packing?”

  “I’m going home, Michael.” She looked at me and smiled. I swore that she looked right through me. “I’m going dancing with my husband tonight.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  “I’m tired. Who on Earth gets up this early?”

  She kept her dancing shoes on and carefully got back into bed, lied on her back, moving so her outfit and hair would not become a mess, pulled the blankets up to her waist and placed her hands over them wearily, then sighed with vindication.

  I almost cried for her. She needed a doctor, I knew. She was losing her marbles. Maybe she had dementia. Maybe she could get treatment before it was too late. I didn’t know. But I hated to see her like that.

  “Should I wake you for lunch?”

  She gave me a sympathetic smile, like I missed what she was saying. “Not this time, Michael.”

  Her eyes closed. She lied still.

  I walked out and shut her door softly.

  I had never seen her up that early before.

  I never saw her up again.

  Chapter 6