Paid In Full

Clever, clever boy…in the wake of the massacre, he’d gone deep underground after fuelling the fire with the notion that he’d died in the carnage…he skipped town…he shaved his head…he wore a mask…

The lengths a man will go to in the throes of desperation in order to save his own hide are remarkable. So much for the Captain going down with his ship…he was halfway across the ocean in a rowboat by the time his went under. He even managed to live entirely off the grid for a time.

Still…old habits die hard, and Death is patient. After a couple of months with no word, no tails, no trouble, it was only natural for him to take a peek out of his hole, a lone prairie dog mired under a battlefield soaked through with blood and ill intent. The money was in the soft touch. The first couple of peeks were timid, paranoid…he wasn’t broken, but he was so close.

So close.

Looming outside in the shadows cast by the tall trees of Ferelas, I watched him. I watched him tend to his garden, watched him hunt for his meat, and watched him slowly become confident that he’d pulled a fast one on Fate. Over time he stopped carrying himself with a wounded and apprehensive slink, reverting to his nose-up, shoulders-high haughty stride.

It was time.

Watching him through his window, phased from view in the shadows, I resorted to an old trick and pushed through his, then backed away from him. He gathered his rifle and ammo pouch and set out for his bi-weekly hunt. He would return in five to six hours time, successful or not.

True to form, after six hours time he returned, dragging the dressed corpse of a deer. I watched him peg it to two trees just outside the door, then readied my garrotte and lay in wait beside the entranceway. He entered, set his rifle on the rack off to his left and then rolled his shoulders back with a moan. Before it had escaped his throat, I was behind him, crossing my arms behind his head as the razor wire bit into his flesh. He let out a strangled yelp and thrashed about frantically, but soon wore himself out and slumped to the ground, completely limp.

I frowned, released my grip on the wire and let his body fall prone to the floor. Something tasted wrong…he’d dropped too soon.

Too soon.

Shit.

The blast from the rifle knocked me backwards through his dining room table. Ceramic plates leftover from his breakfast crashed to the floor alongside me, and I looked up at him just in time to see him trying to beat a hasty retreat.

Clever, clever boy.

I had to resort to a new variation of an old trick in order to take him down. From my slouched position, I willed myself to reach up through his shadow and grabbed him by the back of the collar, pulling him backwards onto the giving end of my blade. He let out a liquid belch as a bubble of blood formed at his lips, then popped and spilled down the front of his tunic. He looked down at the two inches of blade pushing out of his stomach, incredulous for a moment until I twisted the handle, turning a puncture wound into a full out evisceration that I punctuated with a savage jerk of my arm. I fell back through his shadow to my spot in the middle of smashed table and plates, observed the surreal sight of the trail of blood flowing from his back, stopping completely, then resuming in a perfect line some twenty yards back at my side.

I sat still for a good while, then gingerly patched up the bullet hole in my own stomach with a netherweave bandage and rose to my feet. I made my way to his side, lifted his face up by the forehead and skewered his skull through one eye socket, then the other.

Fool me once, shame on me. No room for second chances.

Satisfied, I made my way back to Camp Mojache and penned a letter consisting of a single line to Krelle, then smeared the blood from my blade across the bottom of the parchment.