Midnight Murder

A Chapter by LM281987

The back door of a corner deli opens violently and a short bald man scrambles thru it and runs franticly out and into the icy cold streets of New York City. The bright full moon shines along side the other colorful lights of the busy city skyline. The loud noise of cheering and WOOOS from thousands of people on the streets are deafening. You would barely be able to hear yourself think let alone speak. Running into people and pushing some out of the way he drops his grey scarf, but he doesn’t notice. He finds an opening into an alley, this dark sanctuary, a place to hide or better, escape. As he walks through the lengthily dark armpit of a street he takes a sip out of his flask and not the first of the night. The Vodka did not go down well at first, but this did not bother him, he needs his courage and for that he needed a little liquid courage. His hands tremble as he brings the flask to his lips again. The noise from the street is not as loud here as the tall buildings shield the noise, but a few screams of celebration still streak through. As the bald man drinks from his flask he looks around at his surroundings, the alcohol burns his throat less, the more he drinks. The tall skyscrapers hide the bright moon from sight, but just like the noise the moonlight is able to shine through in certain areas and shadows loom in over the distance taking frightening shapes. The smell of rotten banana peals and other trash from the building is awful and the bald man puts his arm over his nose so not to breath in the nauseating smell. Fear fills his mind and the sudden thought that he might not survive this night overwhelms him. He fears death more than anything. He does not worry of being mugged by some young gang member hiding behind a smelly trash bin. No, this fear comes from the knowledge of being stalked like prey, hunted. He is running from someone and if found by his pursuer he may have to give up more than the contents of his pocket, but something much more valuable, His Life.

As he gets closer to the other side of the alley he can see a ray of light coming from the next street. It was a billboard for some perfume with a gorgeous blond with green eyes and full red lips advertising it, his wife has green eyes like hers. The model reminds him of his wife in her youth when he just met her. The bald man hears more cheering and this blond beauty goes in and out of sight as the people push and shove one another for more room, the sounds of the crowd grow louder and louder and the smell from the trash is not as harsh as he gets closer to the end, to the warm embrace of this green eyed girl. The slight feeling of relief starts to come over him, as he gets closer and closer to safety. The energy from the crowd gives him more confidence to make it to them, to celebrate with them, to get lost within them, they will shield him from his impending doom or perhaps this feeling of sweet relief is from the booze. The dumpsters no longer look distorted in the blend darkness and moonlight. ‘Yes’, he thinks, as he gets closer to the street, ‘I’ve made it’ freedom is only a few short steps away. He will see his family again he will hold them once more in his arms his wife and daughter, but just as he gets to the corner, to freedom, a man in a long black coat with a black cap comes from that same corner and points a gun at the bald man cutting him off from the rest of celebrating world, his face hidden in the darkness.

The sweet relief that the bald man was once feeling was soon replaced by that old too common feeling of fear and dread. His dreams of freedom shattered. He started to think about his son, his wife and daughter. How will his family survive without him, what will they do? He thought of their sweet faces and their smiles and that he would never see it again. He wished he spent more time with his family and he wished for just one more day to say a proper goodbye. These are the wishes we all face when death comes knocking on our doors. Death, its not death itself that we all fear, but that we haven’t lived enough and need more time to do the things we missed out on, to say the things we didn’t get a chance to say.

This tall man with the gun is the very same man who has been chasing the bald man all night and here he has caught up with him at last. The bald man turns around and holds his hands in the air in surrender dropping his flask to the snowy ground. He begins to walk toward the dumpsters back into the nasty darkness. His legs shake not from the frigid cold but from the fear of having a gun pointed at his back. ‘This is the end’ he thought.

“ I didn’t send anyone the file. I didn’t tell anyone anything I promise No one knows and I will never tell anyone. You don’t have to do this”, He Begs. The gunman says nothing to his victim as they head to the dumpsters; the smell is awful he turns around to look at the gunman himself, face-to-face. If he were to die, at least he would be able to look at his murderer in the eyes as he did it, he would be brave.

Looking at this man with the gun brought little comfort. Hope that maybe he won’t die, maybe just maybe with what little luck he might have left in this world he would be spared, maybe he can talk his way out of this trouble, or the gunman may show some mercy. But he knew deep down that this was false hope. “Please” the bald man, pleads. “Please I wont tell anyone, I swear, I promise You can trust me. Please I have a family, a wife, and a daughter. No one has to know. I can keep a secret, just let me go...please”. The bald man’s pleads fell on deaf ears. He hoped that maybe pleading would get him sympathy, but the man with the gun is not sympathetic, he does not care if you have children or parents, brothers or sisters or anyone for that matter. He kills for the sheer excitement and joy that it brings him, for the thrill, and of course for the right price. One should always enjoy what they do after all. And this gunman definitely enjoys moments like these, he savors it, breathes in the air to remember it. It makes him feel like God. That he decides who lives and dies, the power in that. Once he has you, you’re dead.

With his cold eyes transfixed on his victim the gunman points his gun at the terrified bald man as the crowd just a few yards away start their countdown and he speaks for the first time. “There is no need to plead for you life. Your job here is already done, and your fate is already sealed. My employer doesn’t like loose ends”. He says coldly then shoots a single round into the scared man’s chest robing him of hope and life. The gunshot rang in the alleyway, but it was herd by no one. The bald man falls backward onto the wall and slumps to the ground, his eyes open in fear looking up at the night sky and at all the bright lights and he remembers the first time he came to the city as a child with his parents. He remembers running around Time Square with them, being at awe at all the billboards or the time he proposed to his wife in front of the flat building. Time Square looked much differently then as it does now, but the energy, the aroma in the air that makes this city so special is still here even as he lays in-between two smelly dumpsters motionless as if already dead.

The gunman puts his gun back inside his breast jacket pocket, looks over at his victim one last time and heads out of the alley and into the crowd to join everybody else in the celebration. The gunman runs into an attractive young girl in all the commotion, “ Happy New Year!” she says. “Happy New Year!” says the gunman with a smile as if he didn’t kill someone a few seconds ago, whose body is laying just a few yards away still warm. The gunman smiled and continued to walk with the cute girl as if nothing happened. “I love New York, you never know who may run into here” said the naïve young blonde who was buttoned up from head to toe. The gunman looked her over, smiled and replied, “No, you never do”.

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