Lead Emotion

The door creaked as Carlisle pressed his fingers against the frame, making an attempt at complete silence. The noise wasn’t nearly loud enough to wake the inhabitants upstairs, but Carlisle did see two green, beady eyes watching him in silence, studying his every move. The eyes stayed afloat in midair, above the kitchen counter, about one foot off of the ground. At first, he thought it was the monster coming to claim his soul, but that demon was already too many lives too late. He gathered his thoughts and remembered something in the briefing about a household pet.
         Inhaling deeply to lower his heart rate and eradicate the prevalent beating in his chest, Carlisle finally settled himself and peered into the house whose borders he had just trespassed. Surrounding the door were walls of white paint with black borders around the top and meeting at the ceiling. In the far right corner of the square room, there was a wooden staircase that followed the border of black as it rounded the corner to the upstairs rooms. It was a relatively large room, fitting a black leather couch, two white LA-Z-BOY chairs flanking either side. A 50-inch flat screen faced the furniture, almost a stare down of the inanimate objects. Opposite the West Side Story-esque furniture was a kitchen with all the necessary additions and an island where Carlisle first encountered the glowing green eyes.          
         While making his way towards the stairs at the opposite end, he noticed an Xbox 360 console lying in front of the television. Do grown men who terrorize the world have some sort of fetish with child’s games? Due to his peculiar profession, Carlisle did not rule this out.
         Swiftly, in his black-ops suit, Carlisle made his way up the stairs, a ghost in the pitch black of night. The floor plans were correct, there were three rooms in the upper section of the house. One to his target, one to his right hand man, and one to adhere to both of their bodily needs.
         After making his way down the dark hallway, Carlisle stopped at the end, where his objective was located. He was about to bring out his set of lock picks when he thought it best to give a shot and test his luck, and he was lucky, the knob twisted smoothly in a circular motion and he eased the door open ever so slowly to avoid a commotion.
         There were two bodies in the target’s bed, slight problem, his weapon of choice was a knife, now if there was the possibility of a thrashing, and it would surely wake up the other inhabitant of the bed.  He would have to use his SIG-228 with a built in sound suppressor.
         Carlisle carefully, but professionally pulled the pistol from his belt and took aim at the two lumps under the bed sheets. He pulled off three rounds on each body, pfffft, pfffft, pfffft. “Two in the chest. One in the head,” was his motto. The carpeted floor absorbed the noise of the falling shells, except when one landed on a poorly placed cabinet and made a quiet bang loud enough for a light sleeper to notice.
         Carlisle froze as he felt steps coming down the hallway. He quickly turned around and saw a short man with something in his hand pointed directly at his chest. Carlisle squeezed the trigger three more times. After a reassuring thud, Carlisle went over to the bedside to check on his primary targets, sure enough, both were lacking a pulse. But there was something strange about the second person in the bed, it appeared as though it was an elderly woman, about the same age as the target, early to late fifties. The briefing said nothing about female figures in the house. Confused, Carlisle went over to check the other body.
         His neck stiffened, it went throughout his body, Carlisle was not even able to move his fingers. A chill ran down his spine while his head began to overheat. Overwhelming thoughts of sorrow and remorse, and anger and helplessness, collided in his mind, he was emotionally paralyzed.
         He had just slaughtered an entire family. It did not matter what the target, the father, did, because the act that he had just committed was far worse.
         A boy who looked to be around the age of twelve was lying in his own pool of blood, hands gripped around a flashlight. The pool of blood had swallowed the floor of the doorway and ran damp around the boy’s corpse. His mouth was propped open, his face held a blank stare of confusion and fright. His pale arms complimented the scarlet nature of the excretion. The bullet that went through the boy’s head was thorough and had no regrets, the two in the chest weren’t as disciplined and made a mess of the boy’s corpse.
         Carlisle couldn’t get past the red, it was everywhere, the whole house was red, and it was blaring in his ears. He couldn’t focus, his mind went blank and his vision began to blur. Then he realized that it wasn’t his mind, but an alarm, he had to get out.
         Swallowing all thoughts of doubt in his ability, Carlisle ran to the bedroom window and lifted it. The cool night air of a warm June night trickled over his body as he opened the window. He lifted his legs over the windowsill and lowered his body down, holding on to the sill with his hands. He then turned at a one hundred and eighty degree angle so he was hanging from the bedroom to the outside. Carlisle let go and dropped the 2 stories, which seemed like a bunny hop compared to other falls he had taken.
         Sprinting through backyards in this small excuse for a Russian version of suburbia, Carlisle made it to his BMW parked on the street three blocks behind the target house. Sirens and flashing lights passed him, the Russian police were late.
         Once in the vehicle’s confines, what Carlisle had done finally hit him.
         He sat frozen in the leather, hands at his side, a petrified glare across his face. Slowly, Carlisle picked his hand up and began moving it towards his pistol. He unlatched the Velcro strip and gripped the pistol. He brought the SIG up to his temple and fingered the trigger.