NaNo: the third chapter

[smeddley]

Chapter Three
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again

I didn’t sleep well that night. I’d like to think it might have been that my conscience was bothering me over the fact that I might have killed a man, but to be honest, I think I was more worried that I hadn’t. If I hadn’t killed him, and he told Mark what happened… would they assume I would have run by now, or would they be back? I’d love to run and hide, if I had anywhere to go. Where was the batty old uncle who died and left me a deserted cabin in the woods when I needed him? Why didn’t I have any crackpot survivalist no-ties-to-the-outside-world relatives I could stay with? Where was that wardrobe that led to Narnia?

By the time I dragged myself out of my hidey-hole I was hungry, cranky, and stiff. I was too old to sleep on the floor, no matter how many blankets I piled under me. Stretching and groaning, I made my way down to the kitchen and set about making myself some breakfast. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a clean pan anywhere. With a sigh, I set about cleaning up the pit that was my kitchen. As I worked, I found my tension easing somewhat. I resisted the urge to turn on the television and see if there was any news about the car crash. There wasn’t anything I could do about it, and concentrating on the small, trivial tasks at hand managed to distract my mind from the bigger problems. I washed all of the dishes, made myself breakfast, washed dishes again, wiped down the counter, and ran a load of kitchen towels and rags in the washer. I sorted through a stack of mail, throwing away ninety percent of it and setting the rest into two piles: pay and file. Then I decided to tackle the dreaded junk drawer. Why not? I was on a roll. I pulled it out and upended it on the countertop. A mishmash of pens, coins, paper, and weird plastic bits rolled and bounced around the counter. I started by sorting the like objects and trying to weed out as much as I could to toss. Ancient superglue tube? Toss. Cash receipt from Clucker’s Chicken dated five years ago? Toss. Twenty-five pens that no longer write? Toss. Weird piece of plastic that looks like it might be important but I don’t have the faintest clue what it is? Set it on the counter and stare at it, willing it to tell me what it is.

An hour later I had a mostly empty, neatly organized junk drawer, if I could even call it that now. I was feeling proud of myself, but also somewhat weird. Neat was just not me. Maybe I should stick to things that even I think should be clean, like laundry, bathrooms, and… oh, the refrigerator. I eased over to it and opened the door. Piles of half-filed plastic storage containers stared back at me. I cringed as I tried to remember what might be in each one. I mentally weighed the option of just tossing them and buying new, remembered that I may no longer have a job, and filled the sink with hot, soapy bleach water. I double-bagged the kitchen garbage can and set to work emptying the contents of the refrigerator. Something that looked like moldy brains was surprisingly pleasant smelling, though I had no idea what it had been. The lumps I thought had once been cantaloupe, on the other hand, made my eyes water. And so on. It was pretty much what I expected, until I came to the vegetable drawer. The liquefied cucumber was less of a surprise than the pair of knitting needles I found there.

I started at them, trying to conjure up any circumstance or reason I would have had to set that short, pink pair of size 11 needles in the vegetable drawer. I’ve been accused of being a little scatter-brained at times, but this went beyond that. This was truly bizarre. With a shrug, I twisted my hair up into a bun and shoved the knitting needles through it to hold it in place. I dragged myself over to the pile of foul-smelling and stained plastic containers and set to work. By the time I’d scrubbed, bleached, washed, dried and put away all of the containers my fingers had gone all pruney. And they had that weird slippery feeling you get when you work with bleach for a long time. I should wear gloves, I know, but I never feel like I have a good grip on the dishes when I wear rubber gloves. And while dropping and breaking plastic containers isn’t an issue, you can’t really feel how squeaky clean they are through rubber gloves. I sighed over the state of my poor nails, then went back to scrubbing out the inside of the refrigerator, including all of the drawers and shelves, and in an hour I had a sparking, fresh, and almost completely empty fridge. Once I’d gotten rid of all the moldy leftovers and things past their expiration date, there wasn’t much left. It looked like a bachelor’s refrigerator, only I didn’t have any beer. I was still standing by the open door of the fridge when the back door flew open.

I jumped and cursed myself for not paying attention. Why hadn’t I heard the car pull up outside? I tried to run but a burly man dressed all in black managed to snag my arm and yank me back. He pulled me away from the kitchen knives, I noticed, and then for some reason my brain fixated on the fact that he was wearing all black, and yet it was the middle of the day. It wasn’t like he’d blend in. What would you wear to creep around in broad daylight? Floral prints? Grass-colored clothing? Yellow? My mind spun on that absurd fact before it settled into the rationalization that all bad guys wear black, and that was that. If it wasn’t to creep around in the dark ninja-style, it must be for the intimidation factor. And, I had to admit, it worked. I was intimidated as all hell, and there wasn’t a frying pan in sight. That’s what I get for cleaning, I told myself.

He pulled me towards the back door, which I noticed had not been forced. So they had keys to my place. Time to change the locks, if I got out of this alive. I grabbed onto the doorframe in the kitchen and a frantic game of tug-of-war commenced. He, trying to drag me through the back room and out the door, and me, clinging to the doorframe for dear life. This went on for several moments, and I could feel the ends of my fingers starting to go numb. My arms started to shake with the strain. Suddenly, he let go, and I overcompensated and flung myself into the kitchen. I stumbled, and went down. He was on me in a flash, straddling me and pinning me to the floor. I did the only thing I could – I went limp.

He grinned down at me. “There’s a good girl, it’s no use struggling. You’ll only make it more painful.”

I looked at him closely. He was completely non-descript. Not ugly, not good-looking, just… completely bland. The kind of face you could pass a million times and never notice. The perfect face for an assassin. My stomach flipped and I had to quickly reason with myself. If they wanted me dead, they’d have killed me already. They wanted something else, but what? There was only one way to find out, and I might as well go for it. “What the hell do you guys want?”

The minute the words were out of my mouth I realized I’d made a mistake. I’d just as much admitted knowing about the other guy. The guy who was never supposed to have gotten to my house. I could only hope he wasn’t bright enough to pick up on my faux pas. But it seems I got sent the bright assassin, because I saw the shift behind his eyes as he realized what I’d unwittingly said. I tried not to, but I started squirming uncomfortably. His hand closed about my throat and he squeezed gently. Not enough pressure to choke me, but hard enough that it was clear he could hurt me if he really wanted to.

“I told them it was too coincidental that Frank was conveniently killed in a car accident. You’re good. Did you work on the assassin team and just use the brainless office bimbo role as a cover? Is that why Mark is so eager to talk to you?” His eyes were cold, emotionless, but there was a slight tremor in his voice. Was he afraid I was being brought in to take his job? Seriously?

“No! No! Nothing like that. I’ve never killed anyone,” I protested.

“Except Frank,” he said coldly. Well, that answered that question. At least I didn’t have to worry about him blabbing. “How did you manage to make him wreck and escape unscathed?”

Ah, so mister know-it-all hadn’t figured out everything. And if he didn’t, with his suspicions, maybe the police would just chalk it up to an accident. Maybe I’d gotten away with murder after all. I wasn’t sure if I should be horrified or pleased, but I was pretty sure both emotions should take a back seat to the panic that was rising as I realized the pressure on my throat was increasing ever so slightly.

“Professional secret.” It was out of my mouth before I could stop myself. What kind of an idiot eggs on a professional killer? Me, apparently. Every time I think I can’t get more stupid, I manage to surprise myself.

“You bitch,” he snarled. Any pretense at a cool demeanor was long gone. I’m guessing Frank was a friend of his, or at least the closest thing that passes for a friend when you work in that business. “I don’t care what Mark wants, this ends now. Put up a bit of a struggle, would you, so it looks like I didn’t have a choice.”

Suddenly his hands were crushing my throat, and I couldn’t breathe. I tried to pry his hands away from my neck, but it was a futile effort. In my flailing, one hand hit the floor next to my head and I felt something poke me. The knitting needles. In a swift motion I yanked one out of my hair, flipped it around in my hand, and stabbed it into his left eye. Under normal circumstances, there probably would have been a moment in there where I steadied myself and took a deep breath, but current circumstances prevented that. He howled and lurched back, releasing my neck. I gulped in sweet, sweet air. I kicked at him, and he flopped about, grabbing for the needle still sticking out of his eye. I kicked again, and he rose to his knees, pivoted and crashed into the wall. Then he crumpled and was still.

Shaking, I crawled over to him and poked his shoulder. He didn’t move. I heaved him over and saw that the needle was now buried all the way into his head, with just the wide metal disk at the bottom showing in his eye socket. He must have driven it all the way through his brain when he hit the wall. I checked for a pulse, but there was none. The angle of the needle probably meant it went right into his brain stem, killing him instantly. And yet, again, there was surprisingly little mess. Well, other than a body that needed to be disposed of. And there was no way to make this look like an accident. You don’t find that ‘knitting needle fatalities’ have their own section in the morbidity and mortality report by the CDC. I’m guessing they are fairly uncommon.

That left me with hiding the body. Thanks to my eavesdropping skills, I knew of quite a few ways. Unfortunately, most of them required specialized equipment or an open construction site. I have neither of those. This would take some creativity. I rolled the corpse onto his back and placed a plastic garbage bag under his head to catch any leakage. I gingerly tugged the knitting needle out of his eye socket and carried it over to the sink. I rinsed off the debris – I refused to think about what it was – and then filled the sink with more hot, soapy bleach water. I dropped the knitting needle in to soak, thankful it was an aluminum one and not a bamboo set. Then I went to the front of the house and peered out at the driveway. There was a motorcycle up near my garage. He must have cut the motor further down the street and wheeled it up to the house, and that’s why I didn’t hear him. I went out, opened the garage, and stowed the motorcycle. Then I went back into the house to think of a way out of this.

By mid-afternoon I was still clueless as to the disposal of the body, but all of my laundry was clean and folded, and the bathroom counter was spotless. People trying to kill you might be stressful, but it was at least getting me a clean house. Still, I needed to stop ignoring the body in the kitchen and come up with a plan. And, being exactly the kind of stereotypical girl that people hate, this meant I needed to go shopping. Just walking into a craft or book story and breathing in the atmosphere would inspire me, I was sure. I dragged the body out to the trunk of my car (I didn’t want to risk another hit man being sent and find him there!) and drove off to my local craft center. Since I’d spent several days knitting I was low on yarn, anyway.

The parking lot was packed, and by the time I found a parking space my nerves were shot. Well, more than they already were with the whole death hanging over my head deal. I pushed my way through a crowd on the sidewalk to try to reach the front door, but a voice called out to me to stop. I turned, and there stood a short, disheveled man with a clipboard waving wildly at me.

“You! You in the purple shirt! With the long red hair! Yes, you!” He waved his hands in the universal ‘come here’ motion, so with a sigh I gave up trying to push my way through the throng and walked over to him.

“Yes?” I said frostily. All I wanted was to surround myself in yarn, glorious, yarn, right now. I could feel it calling to me from inside the store.

“Look, how would you like to make a few hundred bucks this evening?” He looked at me earnestly, but without leering, so I made a guess this wasn’t about being an ‘escort’.

“Doing…?” I let the question trail off and raised an eyebrow. My fingers began to itch, and the tug of the nearby yarn grew stronger.

He frowned. “Movie shoot,” he said, as if it was so perfectly obvious. He waved a hand at the crowd, and for the first time I looked past them and saw the lighting, cameras, and actors. No wonder people were sneaking up on me left and right. Observant am I.

“And I would…?” Again I let the question trail off. It seemed too much of an effort to finish a sentence. I needed retail therapy, and I needed it now. I think two kills entitles me to a few skeins of yarn – and not jus the bargain-bin stuff, but the luxurious expensive stuff that I can never justify buying.

“Sorry, sorry, I’m so frazzled right now. We just had a minor character quit, and you look just like her – at least from the back. We just need to shoot one more quick scene, and it’s not even a close-up, so you’d be perfect. It’s…” Here he paused for a moment, considering. “Do you like horror movies?”

I shrugged. “They’re okay. Probably not my favorite genre, but some of them are pretty good.”

“Well, we’re shooting an action-horror-spy-thriller, and the part we need you to play… well, it won’t be pretty. I just need to know if you’d object to some blood-and-guts.”

I thought back over the last two day. “No, can’t say I would.”

“Great. Look, this is the scene in a nutshell. You’ll be a pizza delivery person who’s disposing of a body. We’ve dug a whopping great bit ‘mine shaft’ out in the field, and you’ll drag the body from the trunk of your car and toss it over the edge. Then you toss in a bomb – not a real one – and we detonate some minor explosives as you’re walking away. There’s a chance you’ll get sprayed with some blood and guts, because we’re using some animal carcasses to make it more realistic.” He looked hopeful. “Since we’re just filming from a distance, I don’t think the audience will be able to tell you from the girl we filmed in the close-up kill scenes. And I won’t lose my job for losing her and making us re-film all those parts with a new actress. What do you say? A thousand bucks, two, maybe three hours of work tops.”

I considered, my heart pounding hard. If I could pull this off… “Cash, and my name is nowhere on the movie, and you have a deal.”

He grinned, obviously very relieved. “Deal.” He stuck out his hand, we shook, and he gave me the time and directions to the shoot that evening. I went into the yarn store and spent $100 on the most luxurious yarn they had.