The Question

The sun’s too bright, piercing through my barely cracked eyelids. Cool, crisp air belts me from the ceiling fan. Ceiling fan? I blink, trying to get my bearings.

Where the hell am I?

Slowly, not wanting to disturb the pounding headache ringing in my skull like mortar rounds, I sit up and scan the room.

“Shit.”

It’s a curse but also a prayer. Neatly wrapped like the bank does in my wildest dreams, money lies on a rickety wooden coffee table just a foot from the couch I fell asleep on.

“It was real.”

The bar from the night before, two men with bright-white smiles, and a wet dream walking. I was enraptured by them, dazzled by their attention. Who wouldn’t be? I am nobody, a wallflower who passed through life wishing for more but never having the courage to reach out and grab it.

Thirty-five. Single. No children or husband. A job that pays the bills but was going nowhere fast. That’s me, in a nutshell. But they saw more, wanted more. Made my body sing with knife-sharp desire and my heart pound with broken dreams I didn’t know I had. And I wanted it.

So when they asked me if I would take twenty thousand dollars in exchange for some simple instructions, I screamed yes.

A phone ringing snatches me from thinking of them, wanting them, and I find a sleek cell phone glowing with “Deus.”

“Hello?”

“Did you see your gift?”

His voice, silken chocolate and decadent wine, slips around me. It vibrates within me until I curl my legs underneath me to relieve the ache between them.

“Yes.”

“Good girl. Now, next to it you’ll find a little black book. Open to the first page. We’ll be waiting. We can’t wait to see you again.”

He hangs up between one breath and the next. Hovering over some precipice I’ve never encountered, I gasp. We. I’ll see them both again. Deus and Nyev. That’s all it takes for me to scramble to the table and search for the black book. I don’t even take the time to count the money.

KILL THE NEIGHBOR.

I read it again. This can’t be right. Flipping through the other pages only reveals pristine white paper and nothing else. Still gripping the phone in my hands, I redial the number.

“I’m sorry, but your call can’t be completed as dialed. Please hang up and try again.”

I dial again and get the same results. Shaking my head, a chuckle escapes my lips. “So they were playing with me.”

I swallow the frustration and hurt. I should be used to this. At least this time I’ve got something for my trouble, unlike so many other times. Searching the room, I find a black duffle—maybe how they got the money here in the first place—and stuff my earnings inside, counting it this time. Twenty-thousand dollars. I could do a lot with more than half my year’s salary all in one go. Pay off bills. Start that company I’ve always dreamed of. Create a new me.

“That’s exactly what I’m going to do. Fuck you, Deus.”

Adding a one-finger salute, I grip the handles in sweaty palms, find my shoes, wallet, and keys, and I’m out the door. They may have touched something within me, but I’m not going to stick around for this.

Slick, white linoleum polished to a brilliant shine lines the hallway, and the walls are just as stark. Each door is framed with matching white molding and glistening golden handles. It’s sterile yet chic, comprised of stylish lines and glamour, with me standing in the center of it. I’m a black stain on the perfection, from my dark curls to the tips of my midnight heels.

But I feel powerful right now. I stand out, for once. A beauty of color where there is none. I snort, liking the way I’m thinking, and do my best walk. It emboldens me, pushes me to flip my hair over one shoulder.

A phone jangles a chirping tone and I ignore it, until I realize the vibration is coming from the bag. I stop, wondering how it’s possible for me to hear the phone. I didn’t pack the device or the black book in the bag, but when I unzip it, they are on top of the money.

I groan and answer when I see Deus’s name on the screen.

“Little bird, you’re not following instructions.”

“You must be joking. I’m not killing anyone.”

I hang up and disregard every call as I drive to the bank to make a deposit and then head home to get out of my clothes. I ignore the calls the entire day as I shower, eat, and prepare a business plan before throwing that phone and little book out my car window and into the lake not far from my home.

“You did it, Amy. You did it.”

“And what did you do?”

I spin around and nearly fall off my sofa to find Deus and Nyev standing in my kitchen. I can’t breathe, can’t think. Held between them, tears in her pretty blue eyes, mascara running down her cheeks and over the tape over her mouth, is my mother.

Struggling to my feet, I reach for her. “Let her go.”

Deus shakes his head. “Very simple instructions, little bird.”

“I’m not killing anyone.” My head is light, and my tongue is too thick in my mouth, causing my words to slur. Trembling, I reach for my mother once more, choking on a raw ache in my throat. “Please.”

“As you wish,” Deus whispers.

A knife to flesh is like butter in the hands of a monster. It parts the cells, digging to the red meat underneath like a lover finding their favorite home. And so easily, a life is gone.

Nothing more than a gurgle of blood slips from the macabre smile on her throat. Her head tilts back on her shoulders, widening the gap.

“No!” My scream blasts through the room as I leap at them, terrified but wanting to hurt. To maim. To kill.

Deus grips me easily, yanking me into the air by my throat and ignoring my kicking legs and flailing arms. My mother hits the floor with a wet thud, and I scream again.

“So loud now. Be quiet, please, so you can hear me.”

His fingers crush inward, clenching soft flesh until I’m gagging, gasping for air like a fish out of water. I claw at his fingers, but he only squeezes tighter.

“You will do as commanded, or I will kill someone important to you. And then someone important to them, and someone important to them. The possibilities are … endless.”

Dark dots dance on the horizon of my vision, swirling with the sight of my mother’s lifeless eyes as memories assault my mind. Dance recitals and late-night talks. The faded pink of her favorite robe my dad bought her years ago. She refused to get rid of it, no matter how many times he bought her another. My lungs beg to expand, to receive life-giving air. But I … stop. If I’m not here, he can’t make me do this. He can’t hurt anyone else.

“Ah, ah, ah. None of that now. Death won’t come for you. Watch.”

A hot poker digs into my chest, the grate of bones cracking grinds through me as my heart struggles to catch a rhythm. The agony burns across my nerves as my limbs grow heavy.

It’s worse when he pulls out the blade—the same knife he used on my mother, her blood now within me in ways I never would have wanted. But even as I fall to the floor, face slamming into the hardwood, my heart grows stronger. The lights are brighter. I breathe. And the pain is gone.

“You see?”

I clench my chest with shaking hands. There’s blood all over my t-shirt, but no wound, no break in the skin. “How?”

“You can’t die. So no trying it when we’re not here.”

Deus hunches down beside me, the dark soles of his boots in danger of being destroyed by the spreading pool of my mother’s life across the floor. “Go back to that hotel and to room 334. Or we’ll be back.”

He steps over me like I’m trash on the ground, and Nyev lifts my mother’s body into his arms and follows. I don’t have the strength to get up, to look. I’m only left with the blood on the floor and the black book open to the first page.

KILL THE NEIGHBOR

And so I do. God help me, but I do. I gag and choke on vomit as I stab him. Over and over. It’s a disaster of terror and rage, agony and hope. Hope that as he fights me, he’ll do enough damage to end me. That I will be saved, and maybe he will too.

But that doesn’t happen.

I survive, slick with his life force on my skin, whispered words of “I’m sorry” ringing through the room repeatedly. Sorry doesn’t give him back his life. It doesn’t revive my mother. And it doesn’t make the sting of the hot shower I take in his room feel any better either.

My body shakes with sobs, my fragile hurt bruised beyond repair. What can I do? What could anyone do? I step out of the shower and stand naked and dripping before the foggy mirror, silently begging for this all to end. The quiet in the room is broken as the phone chirps over and over, the pings bullets I wish would hit their mark.

Each message is a picture of a family member, a friend. In their homes, at work, at school. Age makes no difference. Social status isn’t a factor. I wrap a towel around me to hide away. They are just tools, tools that make me a slave to the little black book.

I go to the book and open it, fingers shaking, my hair clinging to my cheeks.

KILL THE NEIGHBOR is scratched out with a thick, black line—a mark on my soul I’ll wear for all time. If I’d killed him first, my mother would still be alive.

A sob breaks free, even as new, slowly typed words appear on the page.

KILL THE MAN AT 547 ROUNDCLASS WAY STE 2

This time, I know it’s not a joke. I don’t smile and feel empowered to have twenty-thousand dollars in my bank account. Wait …

“The money.”

I could give it back. Forgetting I’m only wearing a towel, I streak from the room, keeping my eyes averted and slipping to avoid the blood. I speed to the bank and somehow get through without the cops stopping me.

“Ma’am, we can’t service you while you’re undressed.”

I swallow, thinking quickly, memories of my mother flashing before my eyes. “I just need to make a withdrawal. I was robbed and don’t have my things on me.”

“Name?”

“Amy Arlington.”

He looks me up and down before escorting me into a room where an employee comes in with compassionate eyes. “Ms. Arlington, I understand you want to make a withdrawal, but there is only one dollar in your account.”

“One dollar? How? I just deposited twenty thousand yesterday.”

She nods. “Yes, and it had a stipulation, a contract. One dollar for each task completed.” She smiles, and my world ends.

She looks just like Deus for a moment.

“Please, pay attention to the instructions and have a good day. I believe the clock is ticking.”

Two men walk into a bar. That’s how so many stories start, right?

“If I told you I would give you twenty thousand dollars and all you have to do is follow simple instructions, would you do it?”

I … I answered so wrong. So very wrong.

Two men walk into a bar … and that’s how my life ended.