Short Story

Hell Is Empty

October 30th

   I knew in that moment I would never be the same man again. I would never again wake up in the morning without a purpose. I knew know there was only one thing I could do. And I knew that I would never rest until I had done it.

   As I stood over her I could see nothing but those sparkling green eyes, once so full of life, now extinguished entirely. They were still open, wide as ever, but I no longer saw that sparkle that made me love her instantly. It was gone, and I knew in that moment that I would never see into her beautiful soul again.

   Not even the pain I had inflicted on the two cowards who had done this to her made it any better.  I had not just killed them for what they had done. And I had made sure it had hurt too.

   But it had not changed anything. There was nothing which could bring her back now, and there was nothing left now but my heartache.

   Anger grabbed hold. I began to breathe heavily through my nose and my entire body became tensed. It was too much to take; there was simply not enough room in my body to contain it. I turned suddenly and punched the concrete wall twice and the power of my anger was such that bits of plaster burst out.

   Blood poured from the knuckles on my right hand, but there was no pain. Physical pain was nothing compared to the heartache in the centre of my chest. I looked down at her lifeless body once more, and that pain exploded. Emotion like I had never felt before washed over me, and I feel to my knees. I held my head in my bloody hands and let out a scream.

   It was a scream like my soul had never known before. But I almost didn’t even hear it. I could only feel the pain within; all my other senses had gone numb. There was nothing but the searing pain. Tears burst from my eyes, and I could do nothing to stop them. I wanted so much to hold them back; crying was something I could never allow.

   But even I could not prevent it. I took her head in my hands and I kissed her forehead. She was still warm to the touch. It was almost as if she was not gone forever, that she might at that moment suddenly look up into my eyes, that she would tell me it was going to be alright. But that did not happen.

   I picked her lifeless body from the blood-soaked ground and got to my feet again. I held her in my arms as I took the first step to my fateful future. Tears continued to run down my face, mixing with the blood, giving me the look of a maniac walking from a massacre.

   What was funny was that, in that moment, I knew that I was in fact taking the first steps into a massacre, not walking away from one. But it would be me who brought the massacre to their doorstep, right up to the feet of his family. He had taken my family from me, and he would suffer the same fate at my hands. I would make bloody sure of it.

    You don’t fuck with family; that had always been the rule. But now he had broken it, and he was going to pay for it with more than his life; because that was what I had paid this night.

   The scumbag must have known what was going to happen when he did this. He would be ready for a battle. But he would get far more than a fucking battle. This would be World War 3 all over his front doorstep.

   I got to the bottom of the alley and came out onto the road. It was late, 2 am, and it was quiet. A couple of drunks were babbling outside Cooper’s pub across the road, but they were so engrossed in their drunken attempt at a conversation that they didn’t even notice the 6’ 3” man covered in blood carrying a dead woman in his arms. And I didn’t make a scene out of it.

   I turned the corner and then there was no avoiding a scene. Caldwell Street was not as quiet as Capers Lane had been. There were punters scattered around all the way down the street, which was not surprising considering its reputation for classy nightclubs which were actually dives.

   It was a young woman who saw us first. She looked round and it took a few seconds for her brain to comprehend what she was seeing. I walked right past without even looking at her, and for a moment she just let it be.

   But then she screamed an almighty screech. I kept walking, but now several people had turned to see what had caused the scream, and they had begun to line up in rows on either side of us.

   I walked along unflinchingly; these people staring did not bother me. It meant nothing in the scale of things now. I had one path before my feet, and there was no deviating from it. So I kept walking.

   I got to the bottom of Caldwell Street and turned onto Martin Street. The hospital was just down to the left. I crossed over the road without even a glance to check for traffic. I heard rather than saw a car screech to a halt.

   There was a man yelling; I turned and looked him straight in the eyes. He must have seen the death in my eyes, because he stopped dead as if he had been struck by instant paralysis.

   I got to the hospital entrance, walked up the ramp and through the automatic doors. I walked over to the counter and placed the body of my dead daughter on it. The nurse jumped back in horror, gasped and then ran, presumably for help.

   But I knew she was beyond help. I looked into those sparkly green eyes one more time, only now they were no longer sparkly but pale. They were unrecognisable to the ones I had fallen in love with instantly the day she was born. How long ago that felt now.

   I brushed the blood-soaked hair back and cupped her face in my swollen right hand. I kissed her forehead once more, and in that moment I never wanted to stop. But after a second I took my lips from her head, and I muttered the last words I would ever speak to my daughter.

   “I love you, darling. And I will have vengeance, for you.” 

  

  

  

October 31st

  

   Tommy had raised me from a pup in the organised crime game. From the day my father had been murdered while working for him, Tommy saw it as his responsibility to look after me. He raised me to be that son he had never had, and that only meant one thing to Tommy; turning me into a cold-hearted killer.

   I remembered then the first time I had ever killed a man. March, 1988. Tommy had rang me up and told me to get down to the bar. Immediately.

   ‘No fucking taking hours now Jimmy, get down here,’ he had said.

    I got to the bar and found Tommy at his usual spot; a bar stool, alone. Tommy wasn’t one of these lads who sat in the booth of his own bar surrounded by half-naked women or leeches pretending to be his mates. He was more old-school than that. He was always going on about the new breed of gangster in the city fucking up the game.

   ‘These little pups, thinking this is fucking New York or something. This isn’t no fucking flashing lights, drugs and hookers shit. This is real shit. The fucking games gone sour, Jimmy.’

   For him, it was all about the game. Selling the shit, taking your profit, looking after yourself just enough to be a little more than comfortable then putting the rest away somewhere safe, or else spreading it out amongst your family.

   Of course, to a guy like Tommy his family was anyone who was loyal to him; in other words anybody who did dirty work for him. So he spread his wealth out pretty fucking wide.

    I owed everything to Tommy at this point, and there was nothing I wouldn’t do if he asked me. He knew this all too well, and it was for this reason that he said what he said next.

   ‘Jimmy, I’ve been good to you right?’

   He looked at me with those dark eyes; those eyes that would have scared the fuck out of the hardest crime boss.

    ‘The best Tommy, you know that,’ I said, ‘would probably be dead in a gutter with nothing but a load of bullet holes in me if it wasn’t for you, boss.’ And I meant it; I definitely would have been, with my hot-headed temper.

   ‘I’m glad we agree, Jimmy. I have a job for you; a promotion, in fact.’

   I knew straight away what “promotion” meant. There was only one step up from what I had been doing up to this. And I was ready for it.

   ‘You know what I am going to ask you to do?’ he asked, almost as if he had been able to read my mind.

   I simply nodded my head. Not a word in response; just a nod. That was all that was needed.

   ‘Good lad. I knew I could count on you, son. Joe will fill you in on the details, Jimmy. You want a drink? You want anything, you just ask Joe, you know that right? From now on, you don’t pay here. It’s tough at the top Jimmy, enjoy it while it lasts.’

   I remember the smile on his face when he said this to me as if it was yesterday. That smile said it all. Crime pays; always has, always will. You just got to keep yourself alive long enough to enjoy it.

   Ten minutes later I was out the door, the target in my mind. All the information I needed on one little piece of paper in my left jacket pocket. A 9mm in my right one.

    My hands were shaking; I was trying so damn hard to stop them from doing it, but it was no use. I was fucking nervous as hell.

    I turned onto Faulkner Street and as I did my hand automatically slipped into my right jacket pocket, my index finger fitted itself onto the trigger like it had been waiting to get there forever. My heart slowed suddenly, and my hands stopped shaking. My blood cooled, and I swear it actually turned icy in my veins.

   He didn’t see me coming until it was far too late; standing outside that bar, puffing on a cigarette with an air of cocky importance that showed everybody around that he was somebody important. His problem now was that he wasn’t important enough.

    I got to within ten feet of the kid before he saw me. He didn’t even try to run. He simply stared down the cold steel of the barrel of my 9mm, right into my eyes. And I looked right into his.

   I knew at that moment that this was what I was meant to do. This was what I was meant to be; a cold-blooded killer.

   I barely waited before I squeezed the trigger and watched him drop to the pavement. I still remember the crack of his skull against the ground, but I knew he never felt it. He was dead long before he reached the ground, his skull shattered by the close range power of my bullet which was now lodged in his useless brain.

    I stood over him, looked straight into his lifeless eyes and raised my gun once more. I popped one more into his head, right between his eyes, and I watched the blood spray all around. I knew he was already dead, but that didn’t really matter to me. All that mattered in that moment was the power. It was mine, and I fucking loved it.

   Power, it all came down to power. He wanted it, and I wanted it, and that is how we had got to this point. That was the reason we turned from best friends to mortal enemies. That was the reason why he had killed my only daughter, and the reason I was now going to kill him.

   I had gone straight to my apartment, picked up two 9mm Berettas and left without another thought in my mind except emptying both clips in his brain. The night would soon be ablaze with the flare and flash of gunfire, and awash with the blood of a devil.

   For at this moment I realised that the hell people like Tommy and I were supposed to be heading to was empty; all the devils were here. God had left the world to the wrath of demons, and the demons were battling each other for power.

   I turned the corner onto Carlton Street and looked across to the bar I had so often sat in, a whiskey in hand and a father-figure to talk to, and look up to. Now that father-figure was about to meet the same gruesome end as my real father; a gangster’s death at the hands of another gangster.

   I looked up to the heavens and thought of my father; thought about what he would make of his son if he could see him now. In my heart I knew exactly what he would make of me, and it hurt like fuck. A tear ran down my face as I stood there, thinking about destiny, about the paths we choose and the paths that are chosen for us. I allowed just one tear to fall, wiped it from my cheek and readied myself for what must happen next.

   I took one final deep breath, exhaled purposefully and stepped off the kerb to cross Carlton Street, towards my defining moment. And then crack. The unmistakeable sound of a bullet leaving the chamber of a Colt .45 filled the air. That had always been his weapon of choice.

   How had I not seen it coming? The bullet sliced through my knee like a knife through butter, and I hit the pavement as if I had been suddenly anchored to it. I turned and looked up at those dark eyes, and there was such hate in them, such malice.

   ‘You always were too predictable, Jimmy, blazing over here with your anger clouding your senses. Did you really think I was going to sit and wait for you to come and finish me? There’s no finishing me, your father found out the hard way, and now so have you.’

   He smiled sadistically, and the penny dropped. Tommy had said my father had been killed by a despicable enemy. But that enemy had been Tommy all along, and now, once again, he was going to take out the biggest threat to his power.

   There was nothing left to say, we both knew it. There was a deafening silence. I closed my eyes and waited for this silence to be pierced by one more, unmistakeable crack. All that mattered in that moment was power. It was his, and I fucking hated it.

   ‘Say hello to your father for me Jimmy.’