"Please," he whimpered, eyes cast up from the polished linoleum as if in prayer, a single rivulet of blood trickling from a nostril. "I… I have a family."
"A family?" Charlie glanced from one crumpled heap of flesh and gristle to another, a distinct disinterest building behind insect black eyes. "How many kids?" "I… t-two.""Boy or girl?" "Both boys."He squatted next to the man, spinning the massive .357 on his finger like the protagonist of some spaghetti western. The barrel whirled around the blur of his hand like Death's private helicopter, gaining and losing momentum in a peculiarly evident yet indecipherable rhythm. He blew a breath out his nose, tightening on the smooth wooden handgrip.
"Shame," he said, shifting his gaze to the man's eyes. He donned an expression of false concern, snatching the tail of the man's hot pink striped power-tie and roughly wiping away the bloody nose. "There we go. Shame. What're their names?""… Please…""Both of them? Not terribly original."The words that next tried to free themselves from his throat garbled and mushed into each other, a river of wailed vowels that brought a small smile to Charlie's lips."That Swahili?"The barrel met the man's temple. Charlie sighed slowly and deliberately."Try again, Dad. Their names. First and last.""… Brian and Tucker. Davenport. Please. Don't hurt them.""Why would I care in the slightest about them, Mr. Davenport?"The man tried to look up, but saw very little. One eye had swollen shut. The other could focus on nothing but the gun and the whirling cage of white teeth behind it.
"Don't mistake my intentions. Please. Oh please oh please." A throaty indigo chuckle loosed it self from a neck coated in strange, gray veins. "You are nothing to me, Mr. Davenport, just as you are nothing to anyone else you've ever encountered. Your friends, your teachers, your clientele… nothing. You're just dust. A shadow on the back of their brains, already long forgotten. Such is the nature of this life, Mr. Davenport! We are in it only for ourselves, and to Hell with the next guy."Gingerly, he placed two fingers under the man's bruised chin and pushed his face upward."But family, family is different, isn't it? Family cares. Family will always be there. Blood is thicker than water, after all. Speaking of."He drew his right hand between the man's nose and upper lip and wiggled his fingers, throwing flecks of deep crimson into the man's already-teary eyes. "The wife and 2.3 children will be really upset if Daddy never comes home. And that's how serial killers are made, Mr. Davenport. A weak or nonexistent parental figure during a child's developmental years, paired with some radical trauma. These are the seeds of neuroticism, the lightless pit from which psychosis crawls."Davenport stared up at him, quivering, terrified to move. Slowly, as if with great effort, Charlie lowered the gun."Get up, Mr. Davenport."In seconds he had scrambled to his feet, wiping his nose on the sleeve of his business suit."The last little bee in the hive," Charlie said, clucking his tongue. "You don't have to worry about your children, Mr. Davenport.""I… I don't?"The pistol flashed up suddenly, two dime-sized bullets tearing through the double-breasted pleats, ravaging his sternum and the organs within. Exit wounds the size of golf balls punched through the back, spraying the wall with a macabre rainbow of bodily fluid."I'll tell them you died on your feet like a man."