*15. The hitman in the shack

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He bent over, scratching his skin that wouldn’t let him be. His body was trying to save itself by causing pain, hoping it would result in change. But this man hasn’t changed in, well I guess he has never really changed. He didn’t feel he had to. Not even now, as he looks into his own distressed face in the reflection of the microwave door.

“These fucking itchy legs” he says as he digs his nails into his thighs and lower calves.

Water is boiling in a pot for the black coffee. The cigarette will be lit soon when the contracting skin allows a free moment. Maybe it will fix him, but as aforementioned the man wouldn’t change, so what is there to fix?

Darryl Peterson lived in a shack just off the highway. He always thought he was different and that’s what made him the same. Yet with a little more conviction to a lifestyle of not bending to fit in and if you don’t bend to the world then it’s definitely not going to bend to you.

He pours the bubbling water into a mug. Sits it on the bench beside the open window.

“Fuck off pigeon” he says to a pigeon.

He used to let them sit there, thinking it would be nice to be kind to nature. Poor dumb pigeons. They don’t know any better. But they got too comfortable and if he ever walked away from the window when it was open, they would walk in and shit everywhere. Let that be a metaphor, I guess.

Darryl was a drunk. Not a romantic one, drunks aren’t romantic in reality. Just in the stupid stories the drunks write to make themselves feel better. To distract them from itchy legs.

Sitting now, with his coffee and decaying body, Darryl lights a cigarette and looks at the morning sun sit in the green of the leaves. Checks the clock, realises its 12:27. The midday sun then. Thinking of Albert Camus; he could kill himself, but instead enjoys the coffee.

Rubber shifts the dirt and Darryl’s head slowly turns to the window to see a car parking next to his shack. A red car. It was his ex-wife, Judith.

Darryl and Judith were young lovers but she couldn’t handle everything that came with the love. Darryl taught Judith a lot in their marriage and she taught him a lot in their divorce. She left him as if she was out at sea and realised the only way to the shore was to swim back alone. Darryl laid there, too buoyant to drown, cutting himself hoping the blood would attract a shark to finally finish it for him. I guess the lifestyle made even the blood sour and the sharks would show their fins but never took that fatal bite.

Darryl put the cigarette out. Knowing Judith quit and now hates it. He has not seen her for five years. He knew the exact date. It annoyed him that he knew it and has told himself plenty of times to forget it. But as much as a dirty old drunk he was, he was very sentimental. Judith was remarried. Properly this time. A project manager, a good bloke I'm sure but everything Darryl isn’t. They have 2 or 3 investment properties. Big nice white house with green grass. Golden retriever that gets washed every second Tuesday and three kids. The kids are what allowed Darryl from wanting Judith back. Did he really want her back? Or just the way he used to feel when he was with her, not knowing what he knows now. And as we have already mentioned, Darryl can’t forget things he wants to. Having a last scratch of the thighs he stands up. There is a row of long neck beer bottles that have been building up for the last few nights. It was too late to chuck them out now and hide the evidence of his habits as Judith’s car sat beside the recycling bin. He watched her walk along the path to the front door. Opened it as she got there.

“Come to try and get me back?” he joked, but quickly saw the distress of her face.

Judith was beautiful, she really was, which led Darryl to believe the love was only ever physical and his young optimism filled in the rest. Convincing his soul it was more. But either way, he has not found someone else like Judith, as much as he tries to tell himself she’s just the same as the rest.

Judith walked into the shack, she had never been there before and Darryl didn’t know how she found him.

She walked past the bottles and didn’t even look at them. Sat at the kitchen table, saw the cigarettes on the bench. A pigeon sitting beside them, about to take a shit. She walked over, the pigeon didn’t move until she reached for the cigarette packet and then it flew away. Darryl was still by the front door. Making his way over. Twitching to not scratch his legs. His belly. Judith lit a cigarette, grabbed a dirty mug from the sink and sat back down.

Darryl did the same, without grabbing a mug. Sat on the opposite side of the table and didn’t talk. He thought about asking her about quitting cigarettes. He thought about saying a lot of things but didn’t. So he sat there and watched as her hands that seemed to tremble. He thought about standing up. Putting his hand on her shoulders and trying to calm her. But maybe that thought had different motives and he wanted to fuck her. To fuck her in a time of crisis is not what you do to a soul you used to love, off the basis of lies or not, and old Darryl waited for her to talk as he watched her suck the life out of the cigarette. No make-up on, wearing blue jeans and time had gotten to that body he used to caress, plus the sheer brutality of birthing three children, yet the money from the boring husband kept that figure which God took time to carve in good condition. She was beautiful and Darryl had given up on trying to deny it.

“I'm so sorry to come here I don’t know what else to do” she said,

“Don’t be sorry, are you okay?”

“I don’t know”.

“Ok”

She tapped the ashes from the dart into the mug,

“Do you want a coffee?”

“No thanks, I won’t stay long”.

“Ok”

Darryl stood up and as he did, pushing his hands onto his quads he gave them a sly rub to try and silence the temptations to scratch.

“You don’t look well” she said,

“I'm doing alright” he lied, getting his coffee that had now gone cold and drinking it in one gulp. Sitting back down.

“It’s Lucy” she said.

Lucy was her eldest. Darryl knew she would be in the later years of her teens. He had seen the whole family at a carnival five years ago. Darryl was walking with a girl he had long since forgotten; during a drinking session at the pub he agreed to take her. When Darryl saw Judith again it didn’t make him feel better, in fact it made him feel and the fact a relationship from so long ago still triggered a response within frustrated Darryl, and that day he stopped telling himself he was over it. No matter how many drinks, books, fucks and poems have come and gone in between.

“Is she okay?”

“No, she is on the drugs”.

“Which one?”

“I don’t even know it’s so hard to keep up these days. Every little fucking shit is on things I can’t even pronounce. Or they have these stupid names. Like molly and then mdma and there's ecstasy and then you find out they’re all the same thing or at least I think it is”.

“How old is she?”

“Seventeen”

“You were no angel at seventeen Jude”.

“I know, but it’s not so much the drugs I'm worried about. It’s her boyfriend”,

“What's wrong with him?”

“He is a pure scumbag. He is the one getting her into drugs and I reckon he deals drugs too. He doesn’t have a job but takes her on holidays and gets her stupid brand name fucking materialistic shit!”

“What am I supposed to do?”

“I want you to kill him for me”.

“Kill him?” Darryl burst into laughter, then he realised she was serious.

“Yes, please, it’s the only way I can get my daughter back. She doesn’t listen to me; her father doesn’t have a connection with her. Not enough to, to… he just doesn’t have a connection”.

“Listen Jude, only person I am gonna kill is myself. What you think I do in here? Sit on the couch and polish my pistol?”

She made eye contact and both smirked at the sexual euphemism.

“Looks like you just drink”.

“I do a bit of that. It aint the drugs or the drinking or whatever you wanna do Jude, it’s the shame you add to it. Let her go and she will see through it. You did”

“Exactly, I did, but how long did it take me? A marriage, ten of the best years of my life. Lucy is going to do that, and its different now, we weren’t doing all these drugs or… it’s just different. Or it’s the exact same, and I was lucky you know, I was lucky”.

“Then watch Lucy be lucky”.

“Please Darryl, you don’t know this kid. He isn’t even a kid he is 26 years old. He picks her up from school. If she even goes. We pay twenty grand a term and she doesn’t even go to school”.

“Ok, I’ll kill him, what's in it for me?”

“I can pay you”.

“I don’t want your project managers boring money, what am I going to do with that?”

“You could rent somewhere nicer”.

“Murder aint worth a nicer shack, you have been reading too many novels written by housewives. Shit like this don’t happen in the real world you know, not mine anyway”.

“I will fuck you”.

Darryl laughed, then took a deep outbreath. The itch in his legs were gone now.

“You used to give me that thing for free, now I've gotta take a man’s life?”

Judith stood up, moved towards Darryl, put her hand on his shoulder and looked at him. You could see skin and her white bra through the gaps of her buttoned shirt. She rubbed his shoulder and down his back. The first time he had been touched properly for a few months. She sat on his knee, with her blue jeans on.

“Would you kill him? if I let you fuck me?”

Darryl put his hand on her leg, as the other one hang facing the tiles. He felt sick but he also did feel horny. He could kiss her neck right now. Grab her breast. Feel her tongue in his mouth. But he had not even brushed his teeth. He did feel slightly grotesque and for the first time in some time confused.

“You would do that huh? Fuck me, so I could kill a kid, so your daughters first love is gone and she will be the way you want her to be? also, what about that husband of yours, what's his name, Brett?

“It’s Brent, and yes, I would do that for my daughter”

“And the world thinks I'm the crazy one”

She rubbed his back and opened up her body to him. He wanted to bite the shirt off. But after all these years could this dick and sex drive not get him into trouble? But if not trouble, then what? What is there other than something new, something exciting, just some thing.

“Are you doing it for Lucy or are you doing it for you?”

“I am doing it for Lucy”.

“I think you just wanna be fucked”.

“Maybe I do”.

Dear lord, he thought. Darryl was too much of a seasoned drinker to get hangovers, but the morning after a session really tested one’s own resolve.

“You miss my pussy?” she whispered in his ear,

“Not really” he said, standing up “Get out of here ya bastard!” he yelled at the pigeon that made its way back on to the kitchen bench,

“Fucking pigeons, problem is you can’t tell if it’s the same one or a different one all the time, they all look the same”.

Darryl poured water into a mug and drank it, turned around.

“What's going on Jude?” he asked in a more concerning tone,

Judith broke down and started to cry. As if months of pent-up sorrow fell from her.

“I'm so lonely” she cried, “I am so so lonely” as if the tears themselves were talking.

She fell to the tiles now and Darryl sat beside her and put his arm around her. He knew the perfect life was an image that was thin and had nothing behind it. No stories written on the back of the picture. Breaking open the frame to find nothing. But did he know it was this bad? Probably. But a part of him was happy. Not that she felt like this, he wished she didn’t, but to at least know she is sane, or smart enough to be aware, still be alive, still have a soul in there somewhere, however painful.

He held her and she cried onto his t-shirt. She looked funny when she cried but still so beautiful.

“How long do you have until you have to go home?” He asked,

“A few hours”

“Come here bubs” he stood up, leading her to another room.

The room was clean. Filled with ambience and all your spiritual type shit. There was a part of Darryl that he kept to himself. A room that helped him realise he was just a soul. When he is lost out at sea and wants someone to be with. Or other souls, ones without a body. No one had ever saw this room other than Darryl and maybe that pigeon.

“Sit down” he said, and they both sat with their legs crossed.

He set a timer for 10 minutes. He held his hands out, Judith held them.

“Just 10 minutes. Just sit here with me in silence, for just ten minutes”

So they did, and to begin with, Judith felt silly. Felt she should move. Say something. She watched herself through the eyes of everyone else in the world. Mocking her, how ridiculous. Then she just gave in. Let it go. She cried from a place she had not been for so long she forgot it existed. As if splinters in her flesh were falling out. She cried for everyone and then she finally cried for herself. Once the tears seemed to dry, she chuckled and then she really laughed. Until she cried again. The timer went off  twenty minutes ago and Darryl stopped it. They sat in silence longer. He rubbed her hands and she rubbed his. I am not sure how long they sat there for; they aren’t either. Who am I? I guess I'm the pigeon.

“I am sorry Darryl” Judith said, a little more grounded than before,

“Me too” he said.

They didn’t have to say what for, but they forgave each other.

Judith drove off. Darryl wrote a poem about her. He didn’t feel any better and maybe she just gave all her pain to him. But that was okay, because he could handle it. Darryl looked at himself in the microwave door and through that decaying face he gave himself a smile,

“Maybe I have changed”.