the hit

The Hit

“          -p-p-please”, cried the kneeling, thin man. The Butcher pulled out his small automatic and shot the victim square between the eyes. He wiped the splatter of blood off his face, then poured acid on the dead body to get rid of it. As the body sizzled out of existence, his mobile phone rang.

“Yes?” he answered calmly. He smiled slightly as the voice on the other end told him that the Mr. Rossini required his presence for an important job. Henry loved the hits that Mr. Rossini gave him because the victims were always trying to bribe him. Of course he’d take the money, then do the hit.

Henry the Butcher pulled into the heavily secured compound where MR. Rossini lived with close Mafia Family members. He entered the study where the old man was relaxing with two of members of the Rossini mob.

“Ah, here he is now!” Mr. Rossini sat in his wheelchair, coughing, an I. V. drip giving him his daily vitamins. He handed the Butcher a brown envelope containing his new mark. The Butcher opened the envelope and looked at the picture. Staring at it, he thought of his own son. The picture was of a normal-looking boy around twelve to fourteen years old. He wore black baggy jeans and a black hoody.  The Butcher looked at Mr. Rossini, disbelief on his face.

“I’ll give you half my empire if you can pull this off,” the old geezer told him. The Butcher looked up from the photo and stared into the old man’s eyes. He was surprised to see concern in them.

“This hit is most important to me, but it occurs to me that you might have doubts. Is that true?”

“No, I will do it. No problem.” the Butcher spoke with more certainty than he actually felt. Mr. Rossini watched very closely as the Butcher put the photo back in the envelope, and left.

The near invalid sighed as he thought of how it had all started two weeks ago. He was having a nice meal at a café on 45th Street. enjoying classic Italian homemade lasagna. when the kid in the hoody passed by, tripping on his own shoes. He balanced himself by grabbing Mr. Rossini’s table, but he must have hit something because a fork flew off and hit the old man in the chest, just missing his heart by - an inch. The men gathered around him in panic, then realized that the kid had caused the incident. When they looked for the kid, he had already gone. That day cost Mr. Rossini his health. From then on he had always been connected to an I. V.

After a couple days, he finally calmed down To the dismay to his doctors and nurses, he became upset again when two of his men described the very same kid passing by one of his business locations. Apparently this kid scared off the men just by being there; for some reason he spooked them. The money the family would have made in abundance was lost. Only two days ago his only son, one of his best men, was in an accident involving the same kid. He chased the kid into heavy traffic and was killed, right there.

The Butcher slapped the brown envelope down on a side table  in his apartment. Closing his eyes, he wondered why the kid’s photo bothered him; an eerie déjà vu feeling? Why was that kid so familiar, yet before today he had never laid eyes on the kid? He picked up the envelope again and took out the photos. Flinching, he dropped the photos. It can’t be, photos don’t wink! When he picked up the photos from the ground he was relieved to find them normal.



Later that day, the Butcher sat in his car watching the kid from a distance. He was hanging with three other kids, most likely his friends. The mark wore a black hoody and jeans, and was laughing and joking with the other three. The kid nearest to him wore a cap, sunglasses, and wrapped his face in a scarf, mysteriously. The next kid was thin and pale; and wore a surgical mask and thick glasses. The final kid of the quartette was built like a junior football star. Sheesh, what a mug on that one! He decided he needed to think things over.

While sitting on a stool nursing a beer at Reno’s, the local bar for made men of his sort an elderly man in an Armani suit came in, sat next to him and also ordered a beer. “So, Andrew,” The Gentleman asked, “what is the reason I am here?”

“Mr. Rossini offered me a hit.” Henry the butcher eyes shifted uncomfortably.

“Hmm. Why so uncomfortable?”

“Mr. Rossini is offering half his empire for this hit.”

The gentleman smiled, crookedly. “Must be an important mark.”

“It’s a kid.”

The gentleman’s eyebrows rose in shock for a second.

“Whoa, I see.”

“That’s my dilemma.”

The gentleman nodded, thoughtfully. The Butcher recognized the look right away.

“So?! Do it.” The Butcher sighed, and nodded in agreement.

The next day he stalked the mark from a safe distance, recording his daily routine down to the second. He memorized everything he needed to do an efficient hit even though the mark only a kid. He was always prepared.

He followed the kid into a dark alley and pulled out his gun; its silencer attached. Suddenly, he stopped.

Unafraid, the kid faced him. “You will die if you try, or you can go home,” he told the Butcher, laughing ominously. It brought a cold shiver to the butcher’s spine as the kid ran off. The butcher growled his annoyance as he chased him, and he fired a shot, but the kid moved to left faster than he expected. Every time he got a clear shot, the kid would move, right at the last second. He jumped to the left, and then to the right. The chase came to a high metal fence the kid began to climb. The Butcher tried another shot but the bullet ricocheted off the fence and back at him. Shocked, he felt the bullet pierce his lung. The kid jumped to the other side of the fence.

“Told you!” the kid spoke cheerfully and he watched the butcher die as if it were perfectly normal.

Mr. Rossini sat in his wheel chair, reading the papers. The bedroom door opened and one of his men came in and kneeled in front of him.

“Sir, the Butcher is dead.”

Mr. Rossini eyes widened in shock as he took a whiff of oxygen from the tank.

“How?” he wheezed

“An accident. His own bullet pierced his own lung.”

“Any other body found?”

“No, Sir.”

“Leave me. “

The man left and closed the double doors behind him. Mr. Rossini rolled to the window and he stared, into the night. His head fell into his wrinkled hands and he cried like a baby, for the first time.

“Your son’s time was up.” The young voice came from somewhere in the darkness. Mr. Rossini wheeled around, a cocktail of emotions filling him to the brim. He looked for his gun, but he had left it on his side table. The kid walked out of a dark corner, as the rest of the lights began to flicker, violently. “You, on the other hand, have tried to escape me. Nobody does that.” Mr. Rossini’s face changed from fury to complete fear as the hooded youth loomed over him, partially hidden by the flickering lights. The kid smiled his pearly whites. He took a Swiss army knife from his pocket, flipped it open to form a large scythe. “You tried to escape too long; consider this THE HIT!” He raised the scythe and brought it down as Mr. Rossini’s scream filled the air.