.Click

.Click by Kiefer Sandoval
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The gun hit a dry. It hit a dry. What where the odds of that, a .45 misfiring, he should be dead. He wanted to be laying with a head like a hole, in a bloody mess on the bed. He dropped the gun on the floor, and fell on the bed. Running his fingers through his hair. This had to have meant something. A misfire. There must be a reason for him to live. He sat up, grabbed the gun and removed the bullet. Damn. This could have been in his head. Gulp. Looking like death personified, he put the gun on the nightstand and grabbed the bottle of Jack Daniels, after he had made sure he wouldn’t dream via intoxication, he passed out.
The night was calm and dreamless. The morning hit like a late six a.m. train. A cop car siren stirred him. The ability to differentiate the cop siren from the fire truck or ambulance siren came with the location. He had lived in the ‘bad’ side of New York for a little over four years and had hated the past three and a half. The city had been his dream, had had grown up in Jersey and wanted to live here forever. Just the thought, the dream, of the city exited him as a kid.
The first four minutes had been the dream, perfect day, perfect city. Then he looked toward the place he had finally been able to afford. The dream had been crushed. He was then in a metaphorical rude awakening, drenched in mud, and what ever else could have been in that puddle, by a passing car.
The dream had lasted all of four seconds.
His house further brought distraught to the dream, the place sucked. The outside of the building looked worthy of condemning solely on that factor. The assorted balconies where crumbling and growing weird plants; one of which he still swore was marijuana. The bricks had been full on assaulted with graffiti. Where the building wasn’t painted the bricks were falling out. They were crumbling and every other form of deterioration you can think of and some you can’t.
The building had suited its residents like a glove. They were of varying race: Black, Hispanic, Chinese, and one Russian; all of whom where of the lowest class. There had been four murders in his building, three on the street, and two in the neighboring ally. There were gang-fights, there were rapes and there where just normal fights. This wasn’t the place to raise a family as the add in the paper had said.
Hell, it wasn’t even the address the add in the paper had said. The man selling the place had ‘accidentally’ made a four and a half line typo, completely changing the half of the city it was on. But he had looked at the much better, advertised, apartment, and pre-paid. So now he was stuck here for a while. But right before he had got himself out of the hole, he was laid off, he had no choice but to stay.
The room had been just as nasty as the building. Most of the walls had unidentified stains, several of which resembled blood. The ceiling had cracks; the carpet was covered in all sorts of stains and things that stung when you stepped on them with anything less than a shoe. The door was old and dirty but the lock worked well, this had been tested several times. The bathroom was covered in lime stains and rust; the water was a brown similar to mud but is smelled worse. He had made a slight attempt at restoration but it had cost too much and he had just left it.
The living room set he had was put in to storage, and he bought one to match the theme of the place, crappy. The TV sat on a crate and the sofa consisted of more spring than material now. He had slowly fallen to the level of disgust that the neighborhood had been at for years. He then slowly began to match his apartment; as did his meals and hygiene. A shower seemed like a treatment for the rich and McDonald’s, a first class meal. He was a dump.
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She had lived here all her life, and had hated most of it. Her family was in poverty. Period. Moving to her current building had been an extensive upgrade. Her father had been through several hundred occupations and ten careers; her mother had also been through several hundred. Her brother spent time with his gang. Her sister was wooed her brother’s ‘friends’. Her whole life sucked.
Her dad having nothing to do began to drink heavily. He would come home at night raging. He would scream, yell, and curse. He was not a nice man in his stupors. Her mom locked him from the house and he sat and pounded on the door until four in the morning. She remembered hiding under her bed, weeping in fear of him getting inside.
She had moved out at sixteen. Where she lived it was not hard to get false identification papers and they came at thrift. Her father had been intoxicated when she left, her mother crying on the couch, in one of her ‘I don’t deserve to live’ fits. Her brother had been unloading a firearm at someone in a near by ally and her sisters sleeping with one of her brothers ‘friends’ in the adorning room. The day had sucked and she took a good over view at what her life was like and would proceed to be. Living with a drunk, a no one, a gang member, and a slut. She decided rather easily that it would be best for her to leave.
She searched for an apartment in the slightly better side of town. The one she came across, looked as it was condemned. It was cheap, so she tried it. She had needed a job desperately, and the only place that would hire her that was in the vicinity, for she had no car, was the store. It was a liquor store, run by a tall mouse like man, and owned by a smaller tougher than nails man. They hired her quickly.
The job was just working the counter and stocking shelves. They purchased a gun and stowed it under the counter, so that she could protect her self. They already had bars on the window, so nothing, like a brick, could get through. The store was right by her apartment, just a few blocks away and she felt safe walking there in the day, kind of.
She kept the beer cold and the mixes fresh. She kept the drunks out and the other customers coming in. She was making fair money. She’d worked there for a lengthy seven years when a man came in to buy some whiskey. He had lived in her apartment for a year and had some bad times. This she could tell by a brief comparison of his looks and hygiene from then and his currant ones. He had been hoodwinked into buying the place. She felt bad for him. It helped that he was attractive.
She got to know him. Running into him on the streets and seeing him buy whiskey. She began to like him. She began to like him a little more every time they conversed with one an other. She didn’t have the nerve to ask him out, and he never did the deed.
One night he had gotten intoxicated, and insisted on buying more whiskey, she locked him from the store. He had screamed and yelled and tried to enter. The door stood shut. It had scared her; she sunk down behind the counter and cried, she had cried a lengthy bit of time. Even after he had fled to his apartment. He had yelled like her father, he had hit the door, like her father. That wasn’t good.
She never saw him like that again. He unlike her father had apologized. He didn’t drink for a long time after that. He took her out to dinner, to make up and she had loved it. He had been there more as a friend though. She thought he liked her a little more that that. Just a little.
Her next main encounter with him was when her boss assaulted her. She was nearing close up time, when her boss bolted in the room from the back office, slamming the door as he came. The man accused her of stealing. His red face suggested alcohol was involved, he smelled of vodka and corn nuts. He screamed and saliva flew in vast dobs from his mouth. She tried to defend her self, but he was stronger than he seemed, he hit her. Not a slap, not a push. He punched her, right above the left eye.
By luck he just happen to be walking in to the store at the time. He tackled the man and beat him to a pulp. His face had been beaten so severely that part of his skull seemed to be missing. His head was like a hole. He broke the mans knees in the tackle and the man reported it as a motorcycle accident and was in the hospital for two months. He never accused her of stealing again, nor did the man hit her. The man was scared of him.
The owner had fired the man for the abuse toward her and promoted her to manager; the owner had talked her into staying though several under the table paychecks. She took him out to dinner to thank him, she was sure this one was a date, he suspected the fact.
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The man was odd. He was extremely odd. He was tall lanky and strong, he looked like an extended mouse. He had lived in New York for as long as he could remember. He had, however been born in Chicago. His parents had moved here. He lived with them until he reached, what he considered manhood. 14. He left them on his birthday. He faked his age and moved into a small apartment and got a job as fast food chef.
He lived for 10 years then got a job as a liquor store manager. He moved to a better apartment thirty minuets away and rode the subway there. He worked the counter alone for a long period of five years. The owner decided to hirer the girl. The girl was young, she was attractively young and she would work with him. She seemed to represent everything he had wanted as a child.
At thirteen he had been in favor of a girl very similar to her. She had known of him and of his attraction to her. She had offered him a kiss and other physical actions if he would kill her boyfriend. He had accepted and ambushed her boyfriend the next day. He was reported missing and never recovered. The girl said that she would never kiss a mouse and humiliated him; she humiliated him in the eye of the whole school. She deserved to be murdered.
She deserved to be rid from the earth in a violent act, so she could not poison the world with her offspring. She he never saw again. He wished for her demise and her death. He had prayed to a god he didn’t believe in, just for a chance to bring her pain he wanted her to be drenched in suffering and misery.
The girl had moved the very next day. She had planed this, she had knew he would kill her boyfriend for that kiss; she had known all of this. She was the last girl he had really spoken to in a non-formal manor. Now they where just people, no chance for love existed for him there or anywhere.
The man was a nut. No other way to say it. He would sit and stare at people who walked by. He would just sit and stare. He would breath heavy, just thinking. He would torture small animals and bugs like a kid. He had few friends. Okay. No friends. But he knew people. People he watched, he knew them. He knew their lies, their hardships, and their successes. It was better than reality TV.
The girl who came to work for him could not be her. She could and was but a jest from a greater power. He helped her bring things to her apartment and placed cameras in her living room, bedroom and shower. He watched her; he had watched her in her horrible invalid innocence. He had watched her clean her self, he had watched her eat, he had watched her sleep, he had watched her bring home two men, and he had watched her live. She was but his little ant, her house being the ant farm.
He had wanted her, he wanted to bed her, and destroy her innocence in the process. He wanted her to be defiled and he wanted her to die. She had to represent that one girl, that one girl who he killed for. She was her in so many ways that she had to be; If she was not, she deserved to die on the sole likeness in her personality. She deserved to be killed and much more. She deserved to have the worst things that a woman could have done to them done to her. She deserved it all. He would do it to her, that he deserved
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The dead bolt hit the inside of the door. His day, as the last hundred, had been wasted. He fell on his bed in his living/bedroom set up. He grabbed the empty bottle of Jack Daniels and observed the missing whiskey. He tossed the bottle to, what he had deemed, the trash corner; for he was too lazy too remove the uprising trash. He stood, grabbed his wallet from the floor. The gun sat just to the right of the wallet. It drew him to it, unlike the night be for it wanted something other than his head. He just needed it with him for this.
The bullet, on the nightstand, had the same ora. He put the wallet in his back pocket and the gun on the bed. The bullet seemed to be the only bit of color in his room. The gold-ish copper shined, the copper nearly red and the gold a richly polished rings. The bullet sat radiantly against the bleak gray of the room. The color of the shining bullet against the achromatic blur of the engulfing room. He picked it up, loaded the bullet into the gun, spun it and held it to his temple. The cold tarnished steel, as if magnetic, pushed it self away.
He left his apartment with what he wore, his wallet, the gun, and the bullet, and a quest for life. The entire apartment was a stone gray, he being the only bit of fleeing color there. He left killing what was left in the apartment. He left the unfeeling room, trance like, unfeeling to the deed.
The hall to was bleak. The world seemed to be in black and white. His quest for liquor was an ambitious one. He walked through the hall and down the stairs, that where marked only by the fading handrail. He was out of the apartment, and walking down the street. The store was just two buildings down. He drew nearer, trance like, he was just there to buy his whiskey. The moment passed, color was restored and the slow, gloomy movements where quickened. He shook it off and entered the store, expecting the same counter girl and the same set up of alcoholic drinks and mixes.
The counter girl was just a bit older than he. She had lived here all her life unlike him; she had wanted to leave the city. Having seen him at his worst, in several drunken glazes attempting to purchase more whiskey, and having seen him at his best, helping her out when the owner had hit her, hard. They had developed a relationship, she had wanted to progress to something. The times he wasn’t hammered she had felt almost in love with him.
He had seen her at her best and worst. Her best had been at his worst. She saved him from him. Her worst was at his best, her boss had assaulted her, and he had made sure he wouldn’t do it again, by ways the mob favored. She was his unknown other. He had nearly loved her.
Things go wrong in every day life. People get hurt and die. Most of the time it is for no apparent reason. People say every thing has meaning, that every little thing you do means something. Well this means a lot.
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The door the store was closed. He pushed again, the door stood shut. He checked his watch, it was only 9:00, and they should still be open. He checked the sign. Open. Damn. He kicked the glass shattering the door. The inside was empty, the desk and the store, empty. The back room door was shut. He ran to the door, not checking the lock, he kicked the door, and it flew open.
The girl was there as was the man. She was tied to the desk, him standing, with his back to the door, with a knife. Her shirt had been cut open and her skirt pulled down to her feet. Her breasts where exposed, and she was bleeding and cut. The man spun and stared with a look of disbelief. He had been caught.
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His plan had been perfect. He was to catch her before she closed the store and he was to lock her in the office. No more no less. He was going to kill again to see the terror in her eyes as she realized she needed this. The man was going to and had proceeded in committing terrible things to her. Her eyes where dilated on him and sweat run in near steady streams down her four head. He had yet to kill her when he barged in. The man blinked and started to attack with the knife.
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He felt the gun in his hand, cold and hot at the same time, the gun moved dragging his arm with it, the trigger pulled, his finger going with it. The hammer hit, and the bullet that could have killed him, killed his love’s assailant. This time there had been no click, though there had been a bang.
The night moved fast as did the years that followed. He had cared the girl, who was too weak to walk, on his back to the hospital. He had explained what happened, the man had been killed, and there was no trial. The girl he loved was rehabilitated and the man she loved was with her. They moved from the ‘bad’ part of New York to the ‘good’ part of upper Main. The man never liked city life, and the woman loved suburbia life. They where happy. They where really happy.
The other man, the odd man was arrested and was tried for rape and attempted murder, kidnapping and forcing an entrée, and several other charges. He committed suicide the day before the sentencing.
.click -Kiefer Sandoval,