Bruce let loose a guttural laugh followed by a cough and few spots of blood. “Did you also forget to tell me where we were going? Did that slip your mind as well?”
Norahc stopped at the doorway and turned around. “No. I told you—three times, in fact. You just wouldn’t accept it.”
“That was Hell!”
“Yes. It even works as a metaphor, doesn’t it?”
Norahc looked down the row of empty stasis tubes. “Time to go pick up another load.”
Benjamin X. Wretlind ran with scissors when he was five. At ten, he wrestled the giant ape creatures of Seti Alpha Nine while nursing a bad case of the measles. At fifteen, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for blowing stuff up. At twenty, he admitted that only the scissors thing was true. He is the author of CASTLES: A FICTIONAL MEMOIR OF A GIRL WITH SCISSORS and is working on another novel to be released in 2012. You can read his musings at http://www.bxwretlind.com.
THE GHASTLY BATH
by Dawn McCullough-White
A young man dressed in black crouched in an alley between two city houses. The coming dusk cast deep shadows in every corner. Rain pelted him.
Off in the distance he heard an argument between a mother and child. Thunder rumbled overhead.
Jules sat in the shadowy darkness, watching the window of Gilbert’s house intently. There was a candle in the window of the one-room home, a dirty little picket fence surrounded the place, and the man apparently threw all of his garbage in the alley, because Jules was sitting atop a pile of it. He suspected the culprit had to be Gilbert, or his neighbors, a young couple who fought more than two people in love probably ever should. He’d been sitting there half the day, listening to them, beginning to smell like rotten eggs while he watched.
Someone snuffed the candle.
Jules smirked. He jumped down from his pile of trash and leapt easily over the fence. Glancing around, Jules saw that he was indeed alone, and with that he peered into the window that faced the alley.
Gilbert was shucking off his pants, getting ready for bed.
Jules pulled a dagger and a blackjack from his belt and crept up to the front door. It was unlocked. Without hesitation he walked right in.
The other man’s eyes widened when he saw Jules in his black clothes, with the emblem of the assassin’s guild, a red letter A, embroidered on the front of his cape. Water dripped all over the floor.
“Who—”
“Gilbert Marklegrove?” Jules hissed. Gilbert was an older man, a jailer and sometime executioner.
Gilbert turned suddenly to reach for a pistol but tripped on his way to the table and fell.
Jules stepped over to Gilbert, who was face down, struggling to free his feet from his pants, and cracked him in the back of the head with the blackjack, sending him reeling.
Gilbert lay on the floor, tangled in his pants and long underwear…not exactly the fanciest vestments to greet death in.
Jules stabbed him in the back. Without explanation. Without whys or hows.
After he was certain Gilbert had stopped breathing, Jules wiped his blade on the man’s blanket and tucked away his weapons.
He took a look out the window to see if anyone had heard the struggle, and he was in luck—no one around. That was certainly one nice thing about small towns like this; there were so few people, and most of them went to bed early. That’s what he’d been counting on. Generally he hated being sent so far away from Lockenwood for some simple hit, but this had been easy enough, he thought, chuckling to himself. Still though, he might’ve come in through the front door, but he was not going to carry a dead body out the same way. The window facing the alley would probably be the safest bet.
“And now,” he muttered, dragging the dead man to the window and gradually shoving him out. Gilbert got stuck about halfway through, and Jules contemplated cutting off some of the excess bulge so that he might fit, but after a minute or two of struggling, his victim dropped into the muck outside with an unceremonious slosh of mud.
Jules breathed a sigh of relief and slipped out the window himself, landing more gracefully beside the corpse.
The young man next door was dumping his garbage onto the refuse pile in the alleyway. Their eyes locked. He looked over at mud- and blood-streaked body and screamed.
Jules flung a dagger. It caught the man in the stomach but did not have the effect that the assassin was hoping for, and the young man staggered out into the street, screaming even louder now.
A guard, apparently out for a stroll when the neighbor went into histrionics, sprinted around the corner and spotted Jules carrying away Gilbert’s body. Usually Jules had no problem getting into places, killing people, and getting away unnoticed—it was the way he’d made a living for years, and he was good at his job—but this time his employer, or whoever hired his employer, wanted the man’s body brought back. Jules didn’t know why, and was a bit miffed at that part of the order, and as the guard came running at him he wished they had just asked for the head.
“Dammit.”
Jules panicked and hefted Gilbert, then tossed him over one shoulder and nearly collapsed under the weight. He had planned on bribing the coachman, loading up the body and making his way out of Plunyport in comfort, as the coachmen were quite used to working with the Association. But apparently that was not going to happen tonight. No, tonight he was going to have to lug Gilbert to the stables on foot.
Two lanterns lit the stable—one on a peg beside the main door, the other illuminating the bay horse tethered in a dirt hall between the stalls and the boy who was fiddling with the cinch.
Jules dropped Gilbert’s body to the ground and drew his dagger.
The child startled as the assassin ran toward him, brandishing the shining blade.
“Get out of here!” Jules pushed the boy roughly to the ground.
The lad scrambled to his feet, nearly knocking over the lantern, and raced out of the barn.
The horse proved difficult to control. It spun around outside the stable, and Jules caught sight of the sheriff and several of the locals running toward him. They were still on foot.
He kicked the gelding hard in the sides. This got its attention. It stopped spinning and picked a direction. At first it just leaped forward, but Jules kept kicking it and holding onto the reins with one hand, pulling them back too tightly and confusing the horse. With the other hand he gripped the saddle, straining to stay upright as the animal raced out of Plunyport and on toward Lockenwood and Wick’s tower.
He just needed to get into Lockenwood, back to the tower that was the heart of the assassin’s guild. He’d be safe then. Generally the guild was left alone, well protected by the crown. It was only because that stupid neighbor had actually seen him with the dead body, that’s what everyone was so up in arms about—that and the fact Gilbert was the town jailer. Apparently they didn’t like their citizens being assassinated, even if Jules was wearing the cape with the Association’s emblem on the front.
No one was behind him now. For one moment he felt his worry ebbing away, and then he snatched a glimpse behind him as the horse galloped blindly through the dark and pounding rain. As he did, he glanced down and saw that Gilbert’s body was sliding off the back of the horse, until just one hand remained visible, still tied to the back of the saddle.