Murdering Mister Starr
In the broad daylight of a bright sunny afternoon, you would never expect assassins to show up out of nowhere. But two of them drove up in a dark sedan outside of a fancy white-painted house. The driver cut the engine and the vehicle rolled to a stop just in the driveway of the luxurious home. Gravel crunched underneath the wheels.
Without exiting the car, they watched the house for a solid minute. No sign of anybody home. Just as planned. Two figures in black suits got out of the car. With their sunglasses, silky leather gloves, and nondescript features, they might have even passed as security or bodyguards to any onlookers.
The home of Mister Starr stood alone, surrounded by walls of trees and other lush vegetation, isolated in a quiet, wealthy neighborhood. Not the big enough sort of money to be isolated from the world, but sufficient for what a well-paying lawyer could earn to comfortably live with.
The two men straightened their suit jackets and approached the front door. In a subtle flash, one of them produced a small pouch with lockpicks. The other slung out a small sleek electronic device upon which he pressed a little red button.
They paused at the front door, staring at it in disbelief. The two killers exchanged confused glances. One of them cautiously reached out to the door’s handle. Twisted. Pushed.
The door opened, putting up no resistance. The two men swiftly stepped inside and looked around. Bright walls, lots of light flooding inside through large canopy windows.
“Alarm was never online,” the tall one—Barker—commented.
“Who the fuck doesn’t lock their house?” asked the other one—Allens.
He shut the door behind them and they pocketed their breaking-and-entry tools. In their place, both of the two men whipped out a pistol from a concealed holster each.
Even without any artificial lights on, the afternoon sun shone at them through the multitude of windows all over the Starr residence, painting the place in a stark contrast of glaring brightness.
The two hit men swept through the first floor, room by room. Arms at the ready, guns pointed ahead of them, scanning across every chamber, around every corner, looking into every nook and expecting someone, anyone to jump out at them.
“Well, at least nobody’s here,” Barker said.
“Not a good god-damned soul. Alright, I’ll be right back.”
Allens holstered his firearm in a fluid motion. Barker kept his gun in hand and nodded at him.
While Allens left the Starr house through the front door again, Barker began to look around more carefully. His gaze continued over all manner of electronic devices in the living room. Cutting edge, expensive audio systems attached to a wall—a wall that was, in fact, a gigantic television screen. Barker marveled at how Starr must have put most of his wealth into these multimedia toys, rather than the house he lived in.
Or security.
Just when the engine of the car outside sprung back into life and Allens drove off with their car to park it in a different location, Barker looked around for a remote control. He could not help but satisfy his curiosity to see what a screen this big looked like in action.
Before he could find anything, the TV sprung to life on its own. Instead of the regular entertainment program he expected to see, it displayed a hallway littered with doors. The image stood still, but slight errors in it and mild static revealed to him that it was not a still image, but rather a live camera feed.
Barker pushed his shades down his nose to look over their brim and squint at the gigantic screen. Within a few heartbeats, it dawned on him that the camera displayed the upper floor of the house. He let Allens sweep that area, but had only glimpsed it in passing.
One of the doors in the hallway opened up without revealing who stood behind the opening, allowing an intense crimson glow to pour out into the hall.
Someone else was in the house.
Barker drew his gun again. He was ready to go and ready to shoot, but not ready for the figure who had snuck up behind him.
When Allens returned, he found the front door ajar. Knowing fully well that he had left it closed, he looked around with a growing sense of dread, then stepped inside. His gun was out before he closed the front door behind him.
He stood in the foyer for several moments, hearing only his own breathing and the rushing of blood in his own ears. Gun held tightly in his hands, finger curled around the trigger, ready to blaze away.
Only with delay did he begin to perceive strange sounds coming from upstairs. Pistol pointed up and out in front of him, he cautiously ascended the wide stairwell, ready for anybody to leap out of a corner at him.
He entered the long hallway with the many doors, where the sounds echoed from. Muffled groans. Something like whipping sounds, or like wet bags of raw meat getting slapped against a hard marble counter.
One of the doors stood open. Red light flooded out from it, standing out against the bright white light that entered the Starr house through its many windows.
He approached it with careful steps, inching towards the mysterious red-glowing doorway. The sounds stopped when he made it halfway there.
But Allens had a job to do and he had been in worse pickles before. If Barker was dead and he had to kill more people than he had bargained for, he could always talk about better pay on the next hit if he made it out alive. Maybe he could even argue to cash in on Barker’s cut for himself, as well.
When he finally arrived at the red glow from that open door, it bathed him in its fiery crimson light. Allens’ eyes went blank at the sight there. He slowly lowered the pistol, incapable of tearing his gaze away from what he beheld inside that room.
Instead of shooting, or uttering any words of protest, or doing anything else, he leaned forward, grabbed the doorknob, and pulled the door shut. Stepped away once it engaged into the frame with an audible “click” and the closed door prevented any more of the red light from spilling out.
Allens’ visage had turned white as a sheet; all the blood had drained from it. He swallowed and struggled to negotiate with his brain what he had just seen. He refused to acknowledge it and wanted to just pretend it didn’t exist.
So he left, went downstairs and sat down on one of the chairs in the dining room. He placed the gun on the table in front of him and buried his face in his hands as he recovered from the harrowing sight, doing his damnedest to forget it.
The next moment he looked up, another man pointed a gun at him. Dressed similarly, it took him only seconds to recognize the contours of this man’s face.
The other man standing there—Carson—also wore a three-piece suit and sunglasses. Once he, too, recognized Allen, he lowered the gun.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Carson asked.
“The fuck do you think?” Allens countered.
“You were here to whack Starr as well?”
“Together with Barker, yeah. Didn’t Harry tell you?”
“No,” muttered Carson. He looked around with his brow arched and a face contorted in confusion.
“Where’s Barker now?”
Allens just stared at him—through him—and the blood drained from his face once more.
“What?”
“I—I don’t know.”
“Whaddya mean you don’t know?”
Allens sighed deeply. To Carson, he simultaneously looked both like he had seen a ghost and like he was a ghost.
“I can show you,” Allens said. His voice shook.
Carson’s cheek twitched at the sight of him. Allens looked broken. The cockiest hit man that their handler ever handled, and this guy looked like he was about to walk into his own execution without any intention of putting up a fight.
Allens got up from his seat and led Carson upstairs. Down the hall. All the way to that damned door. He paused in front of it and Carson stared at him in disbelief as the seconds dragged on while Allen stood there, motionlessly.
“Well, what? Open the fucking door!”
Instead of turning to look at him, or say something, or do anything whatsoever, Allens shook his head. He swallowed a few times and edged away from the door—one step backwards, then another.
Carson’s patience wore out and he lurched forward to grasp the doorknob. He twisted, and pushed the door inside. Had all the energy to barge right on in and fire several rounds into the room at whoever awaited him there. But he paused abruptly, mid-motion. Froze.
Powerful red light engulfed him, pouring out of the door into the hallway. Carson’s jaw dropped and he stared through the door, dumbfounded.
After several seconds, Carson finally closed the door. Stepped away and rubbed his eyes.
“Is that what I think it is?”
“I think so,” Allens said, croaking out the words in a coarse whisper.
“Is Mister Starr the fucking devil?”
“Not really,” said a third voice. Posh British accent.
Carson’s dread fueled his panicked and split-second reaction. He spun around, pointing the gun at the third person who had spoken behind him.
This man, too, was dressed in a suit, albeit a bright white one. Slumped shoulders and bad posture. The corners of his mouth twitched with an awkward smile.
Neither Allens nor Carson recognized the man in white. He almost blended in with all the bright light flooding in through the windows.
“And just who are you, now?” Carson asked him. The gun in his hand trembled ever so slightly as his finger curled more tightly around the trigger.
The man in white cleared his throat and the smile faded from his face.
“Well, I am not a murderer like you gentlemen, nor did I come here with any intent of murdering Mister Starr. Any good guesses as to who I am?”
Wordlessly, Allens and Carson stared at him. Allens drew his pistol as well, now with both assassins aiming at the man in white.
“Boys—are you really sure you want to do this? You can always walk right into that door over there if you want to fast-track things. Barker had it long coming. You still have a little time left,” said the man in white. His voice gained in melody, almost turned into delighted singing, the more he spoke.
The two hit men remained silent.
“You wouldn’t dare pull those triggers now, would you?” asked the man in white with a chuckle. “Come now, get lost. We all have better things lined up for today, don’t we? You have a mob to run from for failing at your job, and I have other business to attend to.”
Carson and Allens exchanged a nervous glance between each other. Then they started moving. Despite keeping their guns trained on the man in white, they gave him a wide berth and walked around him in the hallway. They never dared turn their backs on him.
The two assassins picked up the pace and disappeared around the corner, making their way out to escape from Mister Starr’s strange home.
“Oh, and drive carefully, boys! Wouldn’t want any innocent people to get killed in traffic accidents—they’re of no use to me,” the man in white shouted after them.
He smiled. All to himself.
The man in white turned to the door and opened it again. Red light flooded out and his feeble smile grew wide. Toothy. But his eyes were dead. Malevolent. The groans of pain from whatever awaited beyond that door were music to his ears while he stayed deaf to any pleas of mercy.
“Oh, Mister Barker. You’ve been a very naughty boy. What ever shall we do with you?”
He laughed as he entered.
The door slammed shut behind him, swallowing the red light.
—Submitted by Wratts