Contract Iller Stirs the Pot

Life comes cheap.

A couple of thrusts, a grunt, an exchange of bodily fluids, and the mystery of life begins anew.

Life can also leave just as cheap. I like to make sure that in a few instances, it doesn't.

This is by no means my philosophy on life and how things are. I do what I do because I am good at it, and it pays. I'm a contract killer. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I kill for money. I hope you don't hold this against me. After all, we've all got to make a living.

Killing's not such a hard thing. Not when it and death have been a part of your life since you can remember. Similarly to how you can't remember much before you could walk and talk, I can't remember a life where death wasn't prevalent, as much of a routine as brushing after every meal.

Well, maybe not every meal. Let's be honest. Who really brushes after every single meal (other than dentists and Matthew McConaughey)? We'll say at least twice a day.

The first corpse I have an actual recollection of, a memory of some substance, I stumbled upon in the basement before Dad had really hit the big time. In case you're unfamiliar with my situation, my dad is a big-timer player in New York's underground criminal world. I am not tooting Pop's horn or anything but giving you an idea of the kind of environment in which I grew up. Pops is currently the man who gives me most of my contracts.

Anyway, back to the flashback. My first corpse, I think his name might have been Tony. It's a relatively good guess since half the guys I grew up with seemed to be named some variation of this whether Anthony, Antonio or even the Tonester. They brought this guy into the basement and splayed him out on a hard wood table down there, his blood everywhere, dripping like red sweat, splattering and forming star-shaped splashes on the cement floor. No one noticed me in their desperation to save the guy. I remember him lurching and coughing and then flopping back on the table, stone dead.

Sharky Fontana- my dad's right-hand man at the time- gave "Tony" a single-worded eulogy: "Fuck!"

I don't have the appreciation for life that others do. I don't cherish it. No one showed me how...

The hell! What is this? The Dr. Phil show? That kind of self-analysis sounds hammy even coming from me. More reasons to never go see a shrink. Trust me, "The Sopranos" is full of shit.

These are the kinds of thoughts that ran through my head as I watched my current target's guard run his half-assed patrol. The guard wasn't too big, but usually these turn out to be the worst kind, the type of guys who think they have something to prove. I observed the guard as he checked in on his walkie-talkie. If my intelligence was good (and it always was), I had a good fifteen minutes before the guard would check back in again.

I slid out of the darkness and crept behind the guard. Even in the dark, I got close enough to see the short hairs on the back of the guy's head bristle as he finally sensed me. Silencer at the back of his skull. A muffled blast. A sharp recoil in my hand. Quick, painless, and it shreds the bottom of his brain stem ensuring that the job is done.

He fell into the grass. I helped him a little to conceal the sound. I had fifteen good minutes to get in, do the job, and leave without a trace.

There had been worse jobs. Hell, I could be flipping burgers. Now THERE is a job you should reserve your judgments for; a country with a system of free, public education and kids cannot manage to find something better than McDonalds for the rest of their lives? It's a crying shame.

An unlocked window led me into the house, a spacious four story affair that made my bank account cringe at the thought of its cost. I couldn't understand how countless unused rooms, empty spaces, and doors that will never be opened except to flaunt the excess contained behind them equated one's symbolic status.

I was sure a perceptive metaphor lay in that thought somewhere, but I was on the job and metaphors were a job better left to lit professors.

Voices filtered down the corridor, and I slipped into a side room before the owners of the voices caught up with their words. I kept the door cracked, allowing a sliver of vision along the hallway. My target sidled up, his alligator shoes gleaming in the lamplight. He shadowed a buxom blonde decked out in a French maid get-up: frilly apron, short black skirt. She even had one of those little feather dusters in her hands. The maid stopped, stood on her toes and dusted the ornate gold frame around some gaudy portrait of a pregnant angel drifting on clouds. Maybe I don't get art, but the angel appeared half-retarded.

"Mister S---, I am trying to do my work," the maid was saying. She seemed to have a slight European accent, but I couldn't place it.

"Jesus, Greta, you just don't know what you do to me. Drive me crazy," the target said, unable to keep his wide eyes off the lift of the maid's skirt as she leaned up to dust the retarded angel's frame. I couldn't blame the guy, but it seemed somewhat sleazy to be ogling the help, considering he was married and a proclaimed "devout" Catholic. The press would have had a field day with what I was witnessing.

But I'm not one to pass judgments. I merely carry them out.

"Mister S---!" the maid squealed as my target's roving hands reached up into the folds of her skirt. She twisted around and at slapped his hands with her feather duster. Somehow, I got the feeling that Greta had played this game more than once.

"C'mon, I need you so bad. You don't know how bad I need you. I promise I won't be long," the target begged. Ironic how he was pleading with his own employee like a child begging his mother for permission to stay up past his bed time, but the maid seemed to mull his words over, waving her feather duster thoughtfully to one side.

"Well," she said and gave a slight pause, "I have been letting your candlestick get dusty."

I checked my watch in the thin light from the door. I didn't have much time, and if these two started getting naughty, things might get complicated for me. I didn't want to have to ice the maid if it could be helped.

"Let me get it out for you, so you can take care of that," the target said, and he unzipped his fly. Greta sucked in a surprised gasp of air as the target revealed his swollen member through the opening of his pants. The target's penis pointed at the maid like a chubby and accusing finger.

"I forgot how big it was," Greta said and gave the cock a light sweep with her feather duster. My target shivered with pleasure in response. With gleaming eyes, the maid slid to her knees.

"I think I will have to polish you in the old fashioned way. With a spit shine," she said. Then she slipped her lips over the target's "candlestick," and I thought the lucky bastard might fold in half at the knees.

In my darkened doorway, behind the door, I checked my watch. Probably a lot of people would have gotten a voyeuristic thrill from the demonstration of debauchery in the hallway, but I was on a strict timetable. Still, Greta was a hot slice of knock out pie, and at any other time, I would have enjoyed watching her work her magic. As it was, I hoped she'd finish off my target quickly and get the hell out of sight.

"Oh, god!" my target groaned, and I thought for a moment that my wish had been granted. But Greta voided him from her mouth and gave the target's balls a hard flick with her finger. The target smarted and squealed, "Jesus!"

"No cumming yet," the maid said like a schoolteacher scolding a naughty child. She went so much as to wag a discerning finger at the target, the same finger she had used to flick him away from orgasm. I cursed her in my head: Dammit, Greta!

"First, you must bend me over and fuck me," she demanded and leaned over a short shelf of leather-bound books. The shelf was directly under the picture of the retarded angel, and I wondered how the target would manage keeping it up while looking at that particular travesty of paint and parchment.

The target maneuvered behind his luscious employee and stabbed her insides with his flesh spear. Greta bit her lower lip and gave a deep, lusty moan. Her round bottom rippled as the target began to work up a hard pounding rhythm. The target plowed into the maid, teeth grinding, and reached one hand out to grasp a handful of straight, slick blonde hair.

"Take it, you whore!" he grunted.

I didn't have time for this. I slipped out of the shadows, pushing the door open as quietly as I could manage, my target and his maid too distracted to hear anything but their own sounds of lust. I raised the gun, sighted it and approached the target with long but stealthy steps. The wet slaps of their frenzied sex masked any sound I might have made.

And yet, the target sensed me before I could send him to hell. His head moved in a slight turn, and his eyes widened. He froze, and I saw Greta begin to look back and see what had happened to her thrusting Romeo. If she saw me, she was dead.

"Keep your head down, stay quiet!" I barked, and Greta did so, a thin squeal escaping from her lips. I didn't know why I was going out of my way for her; I knew better than to leave any kind of witness alive. But something, some little flag from my conscience refused to kill her unless it proved absolutely necessary.

"Who are you?" the target managed, backing out of the maid with a syrupy slurp of fluids.

The gun came to life in my hands as the target came to death, his brains and chunks of his skull adding a more human element to the artwork of the retarded angel on the wall behind him. The maid squealed again, and I kicked her in the stomach. She went to the floor with an airy gasp, collapsing next to the now lifeless body of her former employer/lover.

"Stay down, stay alive," I ordered as I slipped back into darkness, into the room behind me.

As I dropped from the window and back into the warm night air outside, I heard the staccato-ripping sound of automatic gunfire erupt from within the house. I crouched in the shadows, feeling the brush of grass under my hands and listened.

A voice called out, "She killed 'em! Fuck her up!" Then more gunfire.

It sounded as if Greta might not be so lucky, after all. I shrugged it off. I had done all I could for her. I turned to make my way through the yard when a shower of glass exploded behind me just as a half-naked woman in a torn maid's uniform thudded to the ground. I thought she must be dead. Then she groaned, alerting me that this was not the case, and I was in over my head.

A head and an arm appeared in the window after poor Greta's fall, and the hand attached to this revealed arm through yonder window breaks carried a nasty-looking machine gun, one certainly not legal in this state. I had a split-second decision to make. A) I could make my own self disappear and leave Greta to the fates or B) I could attempt an even more difficult trick and spirit her away with me, perhaps saving or destroying us both.

My gun solved this difficult question for me by greeting the head at the window with a kiss of lead to the eye socket. My finger had moved on its own as if by instinct. Or so I tried to tell myself.

A second voice cried from within the room, "Holy shit, she's armed!"

A spray of wild bullets tore through the broken window and kicked up soil and grass around us as I helped Greta to her feet.

"This way," I said into her ear and yanked her arm. She managed a weak nod, enough to know that she was with me. Greta seemed shell-shocked, perhaps too much to realize she was now escaping with the very man who had killed her boss.

A second head began to rise on the horizon of the window ledge, but I halted its ascent with a bullet into the slope of its skull. Then I turned and ran, Greta at my side, her hands over her ears and her teeth gnashed, lips pulled back as if in a panicked grin. I tried not to notice her bouncing breasts, but even in our present situation, I found it easier said than done.

At least one of the guards must have given up on the window and come from the front door. His shadow led him around the corner of the house to our left. Security here couldn't have been the highest quality. An idiot knows better to come around a corner when you're backlit so your shadow gives you away. When the guard's shape caught up with said shadow, I was already firing and sent both to an early grave.

We made it to the hole in the fence, one I had cut earlier when entering the grounds, and slipped through it. Hidden by an array of hedges shaped like giant beavers, I heard one of the guards proclaim, "Damn, that bitch is good!"

***

I stopped at a 24 hour retailer and found Greta some suitable clothes. She couldn't afford to be picky, considering she was only dressed in the remnants of her maid uniform. Then I brought her to the bus station.

"Disappear," I told her, inhaling more gas fumes than I found desirable. The farting Greyhounds around me rumbled like impatient lions. "Never come back. Forget who you are, where you came, and most importantly, forget everything about me."

"I will never forget you," Greta said, raising her hands to touch my face. In reality, I knew she would not be able to pick me out of a line up. I have no distinguishable features, and my hair was hidden under a baseball cap. Contacts disguised the color of my eyes, and I had these under a pair of dark glasses as further protection. I look like the hundred thousand other people you see every day of your life. Still, one can never take chances, and I wanted her to understand how dire her situation really was.

"If I see or hear of you again, I will kill you," I replied, masking my voice in a low, raspy baritone. If I had been in a better or more amusing mood, maybe I would have tried out my Marlon Brando.

"You can't kill me," Greta replied in her indistinguishable accent. "You saved me."

Then she pulled me into a kiss, her lips sweeping over mine, her tongue lashing out and brushing my own. I didn't stop her. She was a beautiful woman. I let her sweep me into a waterfall of passion for a moment, but the ride was short. I felt the press of her breasts, the flowery smell of her hair, and then a twinge of guilt kept me from enjoying it more. Maybe sensing this, Greta pulled away.

I had killed a man who had been inside of Greta on more than one occasion (or so I could only assume after I having watched them so cordially interact), but this didn't seem to bother her. Either there was more to that story, or Greta was a dangerous kind of woman.

"Goodbye," she said and disappeared from my life and into another.?After a moment, I checked my watch. It was almost two in the morning. My girlfriend was going to kill me.

***

Since my encounter with The Black Ghost, I'd been visited by her nightly in my dreams. I wouldn't have minded, considering the Ghosty babe was one hell of a looker, but these dreams often morphed into nightmares.

Tonight:

A rooftop, surrounded by stars and a large red moon. I recognize it as the same roof where the Ghost and I dueled and fucked. And then, there she is in all of her glory, jet-black hair whipping around her head, a bazooka on her shoulder. She sees me and smiles.

"Kill me or fuck me," she says. Then she fires the bazooka. I dodge the rocket, and when it strikes the roof, the world lights up with flame. I find myself within this dancing circle of orange and red fire, and The Black Ghost is with me, nude and shimmering with a coat of sweat.

"Kill me or fuck me," she repeats. It's not a hard choice, seeing her there with her statuesque body, an eloquent song of curves. After all, it's just a dream.

I am suddenly naked and about to arch into her when I look down to see that the Ghost's vagina has turned into a gaping mouth with bullets for teeth and a tongue of lashing flame. I attempt to get away, but the Ghost's arms are snakes, boas to be exact, and they wrap around my shoulders and constrict.

The Black Ghost laughs, and then the mouth of her cunt devours me.

***

I woke up with my heart leaping its way up my throat like an excited frog. I had kicked the sheets and blanket to the end of the bed; they sat bundled up around my feet in a mountain of fabric. I wiped away the beads of sweat clinging to my forehead and then stared at the smeared moisture it created on my wrist with something akin to disbelief. This used to never happen to me, control of my senses and body was one of the main reasons I made such an effective killer. These dreams disrupted my control, and that was disturbing.

"Another dream?" Sheila asked from the doorway to the bathroom, her slim body lit by the warm glow of the florescent lights above the sink. She ran a towel through her wet hair.

I couldn't tell my girlfriend about The Black Ghost without revealing more about my life and line of work than I was ready. How to explain the presence of a mysterious female rival with which I had engaged in rabid monkey-like intercourse? How to construct an argument in which I wouldn't be accused of being a cold-blooded murderer when telling her about my occupation as a contract killer? Instead- like any red-blooded man who hopes to continue getting laid, I changed the subject.

"You've already showered?" I said and chanced a glance at the alarm clock on the nightstand. The green numbers on the digital readout were not in my favor. It was after nine. Kross would be expecting me at the bar, and Sheila would be off to the small grocery store her family owned to work as a cashier. I had tried to get her to quit and take a job at The Deep End (the bar I had "inherited" from Sharky Fontana) where I could keep a close eye on her, but she felt obligated to stay at her family's store.

"Yeah, I did. But I'm willing to hop back in if you're up to it," Sheila said and let the towel wrapped around her athletic figure drop to the tile floor. Seeing her there, wet blonde hair plastered to her head, her creamy white skin glistening, I was definitely up for it.

Typically, shower sex proves clumsy at best, but the one time in ten where everything goes right makes the other nine more than worth it. Thankfully, this was one of those times in ten: perfect. Our soapy, slippery bodies slid against one another's, our hands roving wet caresses and rubs. Our lips met, exchanging cool moist kisses, our tongues meeting and entwining and flicking tingles of electric pleasure into each other's nerve endings.

Sheila was an aggressive lover, and that was part of the reason I desired her so much. She was originally from California and moved out to the East Coast to stay with her aunt and uncle after having lost both of her parents in a devastating mud slide while she attended USC. She used to surf, and she attacked me as she used to attack her waves: with fierce determination and will. She still maintained her surfer girl physique and sun-drenched blonde hair (though the hair was getting a lot darker after a few months in the weak New York sun- which was often hidden by the shadows of skyscrapers). By the time I had met her, she'd already lost most of her southern California tan.

I spent some time on my knees, her hands clenched in my hair and her knees slightly bent and legs spread to allow me better access to her most private area. I drank the water that streamed down her body, from her neck and between her breasts, rivulets of water that leaked past her toned stomach and through the nest of curls between her thighs and into my waiting mouth. My tongue darted out and lapped the sweetness hidden within Sheila's vaginal lips. Mixed with the clean smooth taste of the water running along her skin, it was like the finest wine imaginable. My fingers spread her open; my tongue worked deeper, feeling the hot warmth of her lust.