Chapter Text
It was colder than nightfall on the desert in the bush she was crouched in. Hunched over, ensuring she was covered head to toe by the deep green leaves. Many of the bushes around her were devoid of their foliage, spring had only just started after all, so she had been careful to pick one that stayed green year round.
For the last hour she had been sitting there, watching the house in front of her. Bathed in the light from the half moon above them, only visible due to the clear sky. Bugs and creepy crawlies climbed on her legs, she didn’t pay them any attention. Only the ones that dared venture up to her arms were given a flick into the grass, left to fend for themselves.
10 minutes ago she had taken the old whetstone from her bag and was using it to the slowly sharpen the knife that she had brought. One of the larger ones she had, the size making it look all the more threatening. She dragged the whetstone along the sharp end of the blade, five times on one side, before flipping the knife over and doing five more on the other.
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Stop, flip, continue.
She did this monotonous task, over and over, finding the smallest amount of entertainment from the sharp sound of stone on metal.
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Stop, flip, continue.
The house she was staring at was quite large. Two floors with an attic presumably. A large garden with a fence stretching along the tree line, and a garage big enough to fit two cars.
Family man are we Terry?
From the angle she was looking at she could see the trellis climbing the back wall of the house, vines entangled along the wooden lattice. The smallest buds of flowers getting ready to bloom in the spring could be seen. The sign of a garden that was taken care of.
Must have time to spare to have a garden like this.
There was a balcony on the second floor, with large, glass double doors leading into what she presumed was the master bedroom. The patterned blinds blocking her view.
The only room she could see was the kitchen. Big, glass sliding doors adorned the back of the house, giving her a clear view into the room. Someone had left the light above the cooker on, illuminating the area.
What a waste of energy.
The kitchen was decorated with fake plants hanging from every spare inch of the ceiling. Signs that read “Live, Laugh, Love”, “Bless this Mess” and other pointless jargon hung from the walls. She could just about make out bottles scattered across the floor, half of them in pieces.
Not bothered to clean while the wife’s away?
Looking at the house infuriated her. She wanted to tear the plants from their roots, throw stones through the windows, douse the place in petrol and relish in the warmth as it went up in flames. Anything for the slightest feeling of revenge. But, she had a mission here, and she couldn’t afford to mess this up.
Soon. Good things come to those who wait.
She focused back on her task, the whetstone beginning to feel hot between her gloved fingers from how long she had been clutching it.
And then it started.
One
The car rounded the corner onto the isolated country road and pulled into the driveway.
Two
The driver exited the car alone, and began walking towards the front door.
Three
The door creaked open, and shut with a “BANG”. He wasn’t happy to be home.
Four
The sounds of cursing and bumbling could be heard as he made his way to the kitchen.
Five
He stood before the large glass door, finally bathed in light she could see his scruffy clothes and greasy, greying hair.
Terry Donnelly
Stop, stand, run.
She left the whetstone in the grass beside her bag, pulled her black cloth face mask up from her chin and sprinted from her spot in the bush. Terry had turned around by now and was making his way to the sitting room, she imagined.
Sleeping on the couch even when your wife’s not around? Bit desperate if you ask me.
She crossed the garden quickly and quietly, keeping low to the ground. Dodging around the swing set and flowerbeds. She reached the back of the house and jumped, grabbing the wooden trellis and using it as a ladder. She climbed along the back wall until she reached the railings of the balcony. She placed both of her hands on the cold metal and hoisted herself over, carefully planting her feet on the other side. She approached the doors of the master bedroom, and jiggled the handle. It opened without a moments hesitation.
Can’t even remember to lock the door. Damn fool.
She slipped inside the bedroom. It was meticulously clean. The bed was made, without so much as a wrinkle on the surface of the duvet. She counted six pillows sitting in stacks of three and a throw placed on the end of the bed.
She walked over to the bedside table and picked up the photo frame, looking at the picture perfect family smiling back at her. A woman, nearly thirty, visibly pregnant stood with one hand on the shoulder of a young preteen girl with a gap toothed grin. Behind the girl was a man, same age as the woman. His face was clean shaven, and his now greasy hair was washed and styled, without a speck of grey in it. The picture was old, 20 years she estimated. The jolly family that stared at her were long gone, leaving only an empty, depressing shadow of a house that was once filled with laughter.
She threw the frame into the air and watched as it fell to the ground, landing with a loud “THUD”. The glass shattered and spilled all over the hardwood floor. She strolled over to the door of the master bedroom and stood on the hinged side, waiting.
Hurried thumps were heard crashing onto each step of the staircase. Lacking any sort of elegance and poise. The door flung open, and she caught the handle to prevent it from crashing into her. She watched as Terry looked around the room, searching for signs of an intruder. When all he could find was the broken picture frame he got on one knee and seperated the photo from its warped prison. She could hear him sigh as she approached him, quiet as a field mouse. She picked a trophy from the shelf, large, wooden and heavy.
The last thing Terry heard before he was knocked unconscious was probably the chuckle she had let out looking at this man. This man who once ruined lives, tore mothers from their children, burned the houses of those who dared oppose him, was sobbing at a picture of the one family he wanted to keep together. The children he drove away with his angry words and a short temper and the wife who has to take regular “gal pal holidays” just to get away from him.
Couldn’t keep your head on your neck if it wasn’t bolted down.
She dragged his limp body to the desk chair sitting at the vanity table, and placed him in it with great effort. It was like carrying around a huge sack of potatoes, and she couldn’t even take a few out to lessen the load. She went to the wardrobe and took three long sleeved tops that were hanging from the bar.
This’ll do I suppose.
I really should have brought some rope.
Tying him to the chair was the easy part. A knot around both of his hands at the back, one around his legs at the bottom and one final one around his torso to keep him from moving. The hard part was waking him up. The copious amount of water she slplashed on his face had little to no effect, and shaking his shoulders just made his head flop around like a bobble head. So she resigned herself to sit on the bed and wait.
You always hit too hard. What if he wakes up with a concussion? What if he doesn’t wake up at all?
“Fucks sake…” The sounds of groaning filled the room, pained, whiney groaning.
“What just-“ he looked up and spotted her, “Who the fuck are you?” His words were slightly slurred, a possible concussion, she thought. Although probably just disorientation.
“Hello Terry.” She didn’t move a muscle as she spoke, just stared as his pathetic face. Watching the drool run from the corner of his mouth to the bottom of his chin.
“How- Who are you? What are you doing here? This is breaking and entering you know, I’ll have you done in for this!” His groans quickly turned to shrieks, absolutely furious at the idea that he could be attacked in his own home.
She smiled behind the mask. “Technically, the only thing I broke was the picture frame, and I doubt the guards will care too much about that. Not when there’s bigger issues at hand.” She stood up and walked to the trophy that now lay on the ground, a small bit of blood staining its base.
“Yeah like the huge lump in the side of me head! You could’ve killed me!” He complained, as if she was a worker at a fast food restaurant, instead of a viable threat.
“No if I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead. I tend not to leave my victims alive, it’s bad practice.” She brought the trophy into the en suite bathroom and began washing the blood off of the wooden base. She read the inscription. “BEST HOME GROWN GARDEN 2018”.
Hm. Congrats to the wife.
It was at this moment that Terry realised he was, in fact, tied to the chair as opposed to just sitting on it. “Hey, if you want the valuables you’d be better off looking in the spare room. My wife uses it as a “beauty room” it’s chock full of jewellery. Real stuff too! 24 carat!” He sputtered out. The panic was starting to set in as he realised the disadvantage he was at.
“I’m not concerned with jewellery.” She wiped the trophy off with a towel, before bringing it back to the main room and placing it in its spot on the shelf. “No, I’m here looking for information.”
“Information? Yeah I can do info! Any info, all the info you want!” He was smiling now, a scared “I’ve just shit my pants” smile.
“Hm, well if you’re so willing, I was hoping you could tell me about a family you killed 20 years ago.” She reached for the box of baby wipes on the vanity and used them to wipe the small puddle of blood on the floor. She only had to use 2 before the spill was cleared, and the once white sheets were now a deep crimson red. She pocketed them before turning back to him.
“A family? Well could you be a bit more specific? I mean no offence but I killed quite a few families back then, it’s kinda hard to remember them all.” He spoke as if they were chums now, as if this experience had magically brought them into some weird fucked up friendship.
Would this be a greater friendship than the ones you already have, or a worse one?
“Well maybe this will jog your memory.” She took a photo out from her left pocket and held it up for him to see. She didn’t need to look to know what was on the picture, she had seen it a million times before.
A happy couple, with their pre teen daughter, sitting on a stoney beach during a warm summers day. Their hair was wet, they had been swimming just before, and they had ice cream from the local shop. Cookies and cream, raspberry ripple and rocky road. The perfect day for the perfect family.
“20 years ago, you and your friends were hired to take out this family, the Ní Mhurchús. You broke into their house in the middle of the night, snuck into the parents bedroom and stabbed the father in the neck, when the mother ran two of your friends held her down, while the other went and got the girl. You gutted that woman in front of her daughter, and forced her to watch as her own mother bled out in front of her. When she was dead, you slit the girls wrists and left her there to bleed. Ring a bell?”
He was silent.
She folded the picture and placed it back in her pocket. “I said,” she grasped the hair on the side of his head around the place she had hit him, “Does that ring a bell?”
“YES!” She let go. “Yes it does. I remember, I do! I remember everything!”
She took a step back, staring him down all the while. “Well, lucky for me you happen to be a complete idiot. The cut you made on what you thought was my wrist was actually my lower palm. I survived with minimal injuries.” She scoffed, “Hard to believe you killed people for a living, since you’re so bloody bad at it.”
Tears welled up in his eyes, giving him the overall appearance of a kicked puppy. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. Please don’t kill me, I’m sorry! I have a wife! She can’t live without me! I would have never done it if I hadn’t been payed, I couldn’t refuse the money! It was my buddies! Yeah, it was their idea! I was poor and-“ she had heard enough.
“I don’t care for your apologies, and your “buddies” are already dead. What I want to know is who hired you to kill my family.” She stated in a cold, calculated voice.
Talk to me you piece of shit.
“I don’t know! I never knew their name! They hired us occasionally to take out random families. Richer ones usually. But we were never asked to steal anything! Just kill!”
“How did they contact you?” She was getting tired of this.
“A man! He would find us in pubs and give us jobs. He was their messenger. He said his name was ‘Gibbs’. Had this huge scar across his mouth, ugly thing it was.”
“What pubs?”
“Ones all over the place! But usually Dublin. He would always talk to us in Dublin. We only went to one pub there, McGettigans, on Temple Bar! He would come to us once a month before the jobs stopped.”
“Why did the jobs stop?”
“I don’t know! One day he came to us and told us our “services was no longer required.” We never did a job for them again after that. We would still see him though, always in McGettigans, he was a regular. We’d have a pint or two together whenever we saw him.” He smiled to himself, remembering times when his friends were around and his life was good. Times that had long since passed.
“I see. Is he still alive?”
“I think so, saw him in there last month when I was in the city. Didn’t look like he wanted to be bothered though so I let him be!” His tears had long since stopped, but the panic still seeped out of him. “So we’re good now right? I gave you the info and now you’ll let me go, right?”
She smiled and put a hand on the back of the desk chair. She wheeled it and its struggling inmate over to the balcony, stopping on the way to pick up the largest shard she could from the mangled picture frame.
“Come on you don’t want to do this! It was a mistake! We all make mistakes in our youth, it’s a part of being human! That’s all we are right? Flawed humans? I won’t tell a soul you were here, promise!”
She pushed his chair up against the railing as he struggled and wiggled in his bonds, like a fish under a butchers knife.
“Anya right? Anastasia? I remember that, oh what a cute kid! The cutest! You don’t want to kill me Anya do you?” He smiled up at her in a last ditch effort to save himself.
She leaned in close to him, her lips right beside his ear, her clouded breath moving his hair like a breeze. She whispered.
“Oh I do Terry. I really, really do.”
She cut the ties on his wrist and kept back as he tried to grab her, his arms outstretched. She clasped his right arm in her hand and made an incision across his wrist with the glass shard, a deep and gagged cut.
He cried out and reached for his right hand with his left, but it barely got halfway there before Anya caught it and made another, identical incision on his left wrist. She watched him struggle and bleed for a few minutes, hearing sharp curses and sobs under his breath. When she decided he was weak enough, she cut the knot across his torso, causing him to fall forward from the force. She reached down and cut his leg ties too.
He stood up on shaky feet, almost falling as he rose. He took a step and lunged toward her which she easily stopped by placing a hand on his chest and pushing him. He knocked the chair out of the way and hit the balcony with a sharp metallic “BWONG”. Placing his hand on the railing to catch himself. She walked up behind him and grabbed his legs, he started to panic again.
“No, NO!”
She lifted him up and over the balcony’s railing. Watching him fall face first, screaming all the way to the ground below and hitting it with a “THUD”, his neck snapping on impact.
The countryside filled with silence, not even the birds dared sing for fear of being targeted next. She watched the blood pool out from his body. Oh, she could imagine what the guards will say about this.
Man in his 50s found dead after slitting his own wrists and jumping off his balcony in an act of alcohol fuelled suicide.
She picked up the torn clothes she had used as ropes and threw them on the bed, ensuring everything else was put back to where it was besides the chair and the broken frame.
Terry Donnelley had a psychiatric meltdown in his house after a night of drinking. His clear contempt with his marriage led him to tear up his wife’s clothes, break a family picture frame and ultimately, end his own life.
She picked up her knife from where she had placed it on the vanity and turned it in her hands. Pity, she would have liked to use it. She opened her jacket and placed the knife into the holster she had hand-sewn into the lining.
We give our condolences to Terry’s wife Kristine and their 2 children Mark aged 20 and Jennifer aged 32 at this time. He will be missed by nobody that knew him.
She climbed back down the trellis and retrieved her bag from the bush, before walking down the road to where she had parked her motorcycle. She checked the time on her watch, 2AM. Placing the helmet on her head she took off, leaving the last man who had been there the night of her parent’s murder behind.
Gibbs. McGettigans. Scar.
Next week was sure to be interesting.