Philip set his sniper rifle on the base at the edge of the building and he wore his hand gloves carefully. He was prepared to take another step toward satisfying his growing urge and so, he wasn’t planning to mess it up. He held the sniper gently and looked through the telescope. He could see a woman and a man stepping out of a car, and when he wanted to fire a shot at the man, he saw a child stepping out of the car. The mother held the boy’s hands and watched as the father walked away from them quickly without looking back. It was as if he was angry at something or someone or maybe his wife. Philip took his eyes from the telescope for a minute and exhaled softly, then he focused his eyes at the man through the telescope again. As soon as the mil-dot reticle was positioned properly on the man, he pulled the trigger and fired the shot without a sweat. As fast as possible, he directed the sniper to the woman and fired the bullet immediately. From where he was, on the roof of a seven story building, he could hear the cries and screams of the young boy. The driver came out of the car immediately and took the boy into the car, while the guards surrounded the dead bodies and began firing their guns in every direction. The noises distracted Philip that he didn’t know when the driver drove away.
Philip pulled the trigger and fired shots at the aimless guards and withdrew the sniper without looking at the damage he had done to the guards. He was rather annoyed and dissatisfied that he didn’t kill the child, because the child was his main target and not his parents. After he had taken his sniper down, he took out his phone from his pocket and dialed a number to call.
“The boy was taken away,” he said.
“Then chase the boy and kill him,” said the man.
Philip cut the call and returned the phone to his pocket and kept the sniper inside a case. His insides burned with impatience and desire to get a bullet or knife inside the boy. He knew very well that he wouldn’t rest properly until he had finished his job.
As soon as Philip got into his car, his phone buzzed inside his pocket. Because he wasn’t in a very good mood at that hour, he didn’t answer the call but when the phone buzzed a second time, he took it out and pressed the answer button, “I am listening,” he said as he inserted the car key into the ignition and the engine fizzed with life.
“Someone wants to meet you, Browne,” the male caller said.
“Who wants to meet me?”
“The owner of Vision Hayes company.”
Philip turned the steering wheel of his car and drove off the surroundings smoothly. He had never been afraid of anything in his life and so never rushed to do things. “What does the owner of such a large company want with me?”
“It’s for you to find out, not me,” the caller said, “When do you want to meet him? ”
“Next week. I have an unfinished job to complete.”
“Next week it is, then.” The caller hung up and Philip slowed down on the road when he saw the red light. He had heard that the owner of Vision Hayes was a man of integrity who pursued money by all means. For some time, Philip had always wondered how a man could love money and yet be honest. Though everyone knew that the man had a child, they didn’t know the gender of the child, how the child looked or where the child was currently. Philip knew that he had to congratulate the man for being successful at keeping his child safe from harm for so long and also for hiding the identity of his child from public eyes and ears.
Nevertheless, Philip didn’t care at all about children or adults or babies. He cared about nothing because there was nothing in his life that he could hold on to or obsess over. He had nothing to lose and so could do what people would think he couldn’t or wouldn’t do.
********
Philip walked into a store and walked around just to see what he could buy. He wanted to find a good vacuum cleaner and possibly a well-perfumed laundry soap that could do the handsome job of washing his clothes clean and making them smell better. Body sprays could do the job of making him smell handsome but he wanted his clothes to add to the magic. As he walked past a shelf of household items, he felt something strange within him. He felt a pull when someone passed by him and it was most definitely strange for him to experience such a weird pull at that time of the day.
He looked back to see who had passed by him some seconds ago and he couldn’t find the person. He turned back as soon as he heard the voice of a child holding the hand of an adult. He wasted no time in recognizing the child, but he couldn’t recognize the adult. As an assassin, good eyesight was essential when performing complex missions and the day that the driver took the child into the car, he saw the driver’s face and could recognize him from anywhere but looking at the adult holding the child’s hands, he knew that something was definitely wrong. In fact, everything was wrong at that moment. After feeling that strange pull within him, he knew that something or someone was fishy.
The child seemed happy because of the toy that had been bought for him by the man. Philip couldn’t discern why the boy was comfortable with someone he didn’t know. It then dawned on Philip that the boy knew the man. The boy and man walked out of the store after paying for what they had bought and Philip followed them, but stayed far behind so that he wouldn’t be noticed.
Philip walked stealthily for some time and then hid behind the car before watching them approach a car. The car wasn’t the same car that the driver had sped off with that night. This car was different and looked more expensive. Philip had to stop and ask himself who could be wealthier than the man who he had killed. In fact, he found it impossible to believe that such a person could own such a car. Just as the man was about to get into the car with the boy, he stopped and then closed the door. Then he squatted in front of the boy and whispered something into his ears, which the boy seemed to pay attention to very carefully. After that, the man stood upright and held the boy’s hands, then they walked away from the car and returned to the store again.
Philip followed them keenly, until they stopped at the men’s restroom. The man entered the restroom with the boy and Philip entered after some minutes. He wanted to get his hands on the boy as well as figure out why he felt that pull when they passed. Within seconds of entering the restroom, he felt a sharp pull on his chest before a punch landed on his face. Not having recovered from the full impact punch, he immediately felt a knife pierce his right abdomen. The pain grew more when the man pushed the knife further inside that same location. Philip groaned and withdrew from the man quickly. Unfortunately, the knife was still in the man’s hands and with the man approaching him again with the same weapon, Philip had to dissociate himself from the pain he was feeling and stood on his ground to challenge the man. He looked to his right hand side and saw the boy on the floor, with his mouth covered by a tape. He looked carefully and found out that the boy was dead already. The bastard had covered the boy’s mouth with a tape and strangled him to death.
Philip gently pulled out his own knife from his pocket and held it with such determination that one would think he was ready to kill and cut the man into pieces. As soon as the man came nearer with the knife, Philip’s iris turned red and he threw the sharp blade at the man. Being struck at an unusual place, the man stepped back a bit and spread out his hands. His knife dropped to the ground and he felt blood dripping from his face, down to his hands. He felt Philip’s knife, digging further into his eyeballs, down to his brain. He pulled out the bloodied knife from his right eye with a groan and threw it to the ground, then he lunged at Philip with inevitable force. Both of them were at a disadvantage because they were wounded in critical places, and Philip knew that very well.
He blocked every attack with his two hands and managed to dodge a few blows. When he saw that there was a chance for him to strike, he took hold of that opportunity and punched the man in the wounded eye, then he gripped the man’s neck strongly and pushed him with force, causing the man to collide with the wash basin ceramic. The ceramic broke as a result of the forceful collision and he fell down, and some heavy pieces of the broken ceramic fell on his face. The man moaned out of extreme pain and he slowly tried to get up from the ground but when two knives dived into his chest, he fell back and gave up the ghost immediately.
Philip cleaned some traces of blood from his lips and placed his hands on the place where he had been stabbed. The pain was so much that he couldn’t bear to stand up again, after enduring most of the pain during his fight with the man. Looking at the boy, he felt like he was damned. The boy was dead and was killed by a complete stranger. Nothing that happened made sense to Philip until he saw the tattoo on the man’s right hand. It was the tattoo of a skull which was green in colour.
“Damn it,” Philip said to himself as he sat down on the tiled floor and closed his eyes for a minute. He didn’t know what was going to happen next but he knew that whatever it was, as long as the people with the green skull tattoo were around, then it meant real trouble for everyone in the city. Literally everyone in the city.