The night sky exploded like electrical wildfire, with a winter drizzle falling with a slight horizontal angle. Thomas Greco dug his bare feet off the banks of Pine Hill Lake; reminiscent of his home in Kingsgate, Minnesota. The rain was unaffectionate, like bullets falling from a tower under the guise of a hidden full moon.

Nevertheless, it wasn’t the rain that disturbed him; rather a seething heart, made of ebony, pumping vicious poison through his veins. A painfully deliberate process in which he found himself abandoned, with emotions disguised filling a persona that irritated him relentlessly. At times, he truly believed another mind demonstrated graciously until satisfactions were fulfilled. What good is it to reflect on a past that only angered him beyond reparation? Consequently, he lifted the heavy black trash bag and dropped it into the lake.

When Thomas got back into his car, his soaking clothes ruined the fine leather car seats while excess beads of rain irritated the contact lenses in his eyes. On the interstate, Thomas observed the resonating headlights bounce from oncoming traffic, smearing the road in front of him. Headlights were never clear white dots on nights like tonight; the rain and moisture in the air blurred the lights like gobs of white. However, driving at night was therapeutic for him; the peace of a night breeze, eliminated annoyances from over-anxious drivers racing through rush hour. For transparent reasons based on earlier events, Thomas kept the radio on, concentrating on breaking reports that Senator Pickens was murdered tonight.

A dark hue in his rearview mirror faded while a rising glow through his windshield grew, traveling between towns in seclusion. When he looked south, Thomas forced his entire body’s weight into the break pedal. Hydroplaning over layers of excess rain, the car slid sideways slowing several feet from the embankment. Thomas jumped out of the car and slowly approached the woman in a bright white dress, facing away from him, just beyond the embankment.

Like the summer winds overwhelming a winter cold, the sun lifted world, the birds chirped beautiful melodies and a slight breeze brushed against aged, yet healthy, leaves hanging off thick branches. Even the air changed, a world transformed from a sunless miserable winter rain to a summer cleansing with the scent of intoxication from the oceans. It was almost like all his demons were washed away, forever, down a river of redemption.

When he opened his eyes, the woman in the bright white dress remained, facing away from him. What frightened him the most is suddenly wondering how his 15-year old sister came to the side of this road, nearly 800 miles from where he kissed her on the check, promising to return one day.

“Gina,” he whispered barely louder than his own foul breath.
“Gina,” he spoke slightly louder, still appropriate for a library, or a wake.

When he put his hand on her shoulder, she turned. Winter rains returned, exploding across the landscape with terrifying monsters in shadow screaming from nowhere, and everywhere. Thomas tripped recoiling into a puddle of water, while a flash of lightning electrified the air with a hair-rising humming sound. Her eyes were a deep black, like her pupil invaded the green iris and white sclera. Her soft delicate dark face was replaced by a pasty white canvas, like frozen water easing through the pores of her skin. Mute as Gina was, Thomas was dismayed, shocked and frightened. When he wiped the excuse water with his hand, she disappeared.

Thomas pulled himself up, surveyed the landscape briefly, returning to his car with several backward glances. Driving towards the nearest town, Thomas’s vision, or a ghost, of his sister, kept his nerves fried; unlike the overwhelming desire to sleep before seeing what he saw.

He couldn’t help but reexamine the events that were, that brought him here, while resuming his hasty drive. For a time when the job came to be mundane and friends showed a disheartening truth, caring little of Thomas’s well-being, no incentive to actually remain in life’s purgatory held his ambitions. Then there was her. Nevertheless, she was gone, abandoning him when he needed her the most; using him for nothing more than biting emotions and bitter memories.

Still unsure how to categorize his thoughts, Thomas was eager to obey the darkness he felt; especially, after the disturbing trend he felt in the past year. When moments of clarity blossomed like a high-noon Alaskan sun sitting directly over the peaks, he reflected his troubling mind; disintegrating a once powerful joy. Largely, he blamed himself; trusting people claiming to be close friends, angered by petty selfishness that turned everything into a shade of red. Thomas was like every upstanding male, desiring a beautiful woman to have, to share tremendous love for gorgeous children. He even tried to court someone he thought that held his heart, only to become abused with achievements, fueled by selfishness and fake personas; which only angered him further.

Fuck it, his mind exploded. What happened ago, what happened tonight and what’s soon to pass are elements that can’t be dictated by a bruised ego. His mind was on the job, and only the job. The digital beep signaled a text message on his cell phone. After a quick glance, Thomas closed the phone and pressed the accelerator.

He turned into an all-night diner, with full sized trucks suffocating the small parking lot, for a taste of fried eggs, burnt toast and overcooked bacon. After inhaling his final bite, Thomas leaned back against the soft cushioned booth, stretching his arms across the back. The bitter old waitress cleared off the table, refilled his coffee and flung a plastic ashtray like throwing a Frisbee.

“Do you have something to go with that,” Thomas asked nodding to the white circular object, less than an inch tall.
“What makes you think I smoke, sweetheart,” the waitress said with a scratchy voice that long-time smokers develop.
“Look, the stores are closed, and I’ve been on the road all night. I would murder for a drag.” There’s truth to that. And it frustrated him when she visually didn’t take him seriously; a mistake for most that rot at the bottom of Pine Hill Lake. She pulled a cigarette from her soft pack and rolled it across the table, resting at Thomas’s left hand. “Thank you,” Thomas smiled as she walked away annoyed.

Thomas pressed his shoulders along the booth’s upper-edge, taking a drag, and exhaling like an elitist after a day’s work; paid handsomely, performing services that do not deserve even half the pay. His mind drifted towards the radio reports of a murdered State Senator.

Jeff Pickens was no Saint, Thomas justified. He squeezed money from local businesses, developing a small gang that forced residents and business owners alike, to pay a new tax that held no name; nor passed through any legislative body. Individuals showed up unannounced, and definitely uninvited, at common doors using intimidation to demand the tax; which was typically half their yearly income. Pickens was also largely responsible for underground distribution centers that sold illegal weapons in one of the largest weapons trades, mainly unmolested, in the country’s black market. The money was being funneled somewhere, though Thomas didn’t care. Thomas’s employer felt a twenty percent share should be negotiated, though Pickens’ declined. His ignorance and arrogance would later prove to be a fatal mistake, for himself and his family.

While Thomas walked through Pickens’ mansion, books and records were sealed away; likely in large safe boxes hidden behind six-figure drawings that littered the house. Amulets and charms were littered through the house with a dark blue hand, of three fingers, two thumbs on each side and an eye setting inside the palm.

Three men, around their middle twenties, walked into the restaurant, whispering to the older woman at the front counter. She pointed behind her, and the three men, well built with dark complexions and trimmed beards, followed her direction. Thomas paid little mind, taking another exhaustive drag from his cigarette when the old bitch returned.

“So your meal isn’t going to pay itself,” the annoying older waitress said with her hands on her hips.
“I see. I can understand your urgency, with the line of customers out of the door praying to have your beautiful smile at their table.”
“Oh, I know your types, seen it so many times before,” she defended. Thomas had half a mind to break her neck and drown her in the kitchen’s deep fryer. Instead he pulled out a roll of bills from his pocket, pulled out a hundred dollar bill.
“You can break this, can’t you? I don’t imagine business has been too terribly slow, when your ray of sunshine jump starts their morning.”
She took the bill, spun around and passed through the swinging kitchen door. Seconds later, a large man with a stereotypical hat made of paper and a mesh top, targeting Thomas as he approached.
“Look, asshole,” the cook, Thomas presumed, angrily said, drawing the attention of other undesirable stares. “Leave off her, or else I’ll have to teach a lesson on manners.”
“Now, how’s that exactly? Would you,” Thomas mocked boxing motions, “rough me up? Or would this be a lecture? Which brings up another point? Would I be able to understand you with bacon shoved in your mouth?”
“Mother fucker,” the large cook said in disbelief, grabbing Thomas’s shirt by the collar.
Before he cocked his arm, Thomas instinctively pivoted his left leg, whipping his right leg into the back of the cook’s knees. The guy was the girth of a 7,000 year old tree, as sturdy as one too. Fortunately for Thomas, the cook’s weight pressed forward, after a missed lazy punch. Thomas sprung up and plowed his right elbow into the back of the guy’s head, forcing him to fall forward in a haze.

Thomas pulled a fork from an adjacent table, spun it in the palm of his hand, and punctured the cook’s right eye. An inaudible scream filled the restaurant as other trucker-types stood, preparing for battle. Thomas’s felt exhilarated and anxious, with uncontrolled rage building. Three stood afore Thomas, flexing their arms, cracking their knuckles. On the right, the shortest one pulled a switch blade; which Thomas inventoried. He noticed the age of the man on the left and the stiffly moving man in the middle, who approached first.

The tallest man, sporting an unkempt fumanchew grown beyond his chin, walked like a man without knees. Rather than receiving an uppercut to the chin, Thomas kicked his left leg out from under him, dropping him face first onto the tiled floor. Thomas lowered his knee into the man’s neck, loudly cracking bone; the man moved no more.

The eldest man, wearing a beaten grey ball cap, missing several teeth and white whiskers without a shave this morning, collapsed when the wooden chair collided with his upper chest. On his way down, the back of his head bounced off the red-padded metal stool; the man moved no more.

The youngest, and shortest of the three, slowly approached with his switch blade easily visible. Thomas grinned at the mistake; never show your assets. If it wasn’t for the switch blade, then Thomas wouldn’t have shot the man through his left eye. Two others remained sitting, while the rest of the restaurant bailed out, either frozen or unaffected by what just happened. Either way, he’d been seen, and killed the remaining men with single shots through the head.

Thomas guided to the cash register, pressed the “Sale” button and took all the cash; a measly 324. He leaned over the counter, gazing down the barrel of a shotgun, held by the old waitress with cool eyes that were collected like a windless ocean breeze.

“Hello, Rachel Rose,” Thomas said smiling broadly. “You have me at a disadvantage, though that’s hardly surprising, given your history.”
She started laughing as she stood, targeting Thomas between the eyes. “Like I said, I’ve seen millions of people like you. Sadly, I’ve had to kill most of them because they can’t keep their business out of mine.”
“No,” Thomas grew serious, “you’ve seen no one like me.”
“Be that as it may, I have no intentions in changing.”
“So what do you intend to do, Rachel?” Thomas asked observing Rachel’s cocked head, aiming her left eye down the barrel of the shotgun.
“I would assume that’s obvious, enough,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “You killed four innocent people and Stifles. He was just a kid.”
“Kids are weak,” Thomas said intuitively. “If they aren’t strong enough to survive in our line of work, then they have no business being in it.”

Thomas knew he hit a nerve, when she cocked the shotgun jamming the barrel into his left cheek.

“Why are you doing this,” she asked, with a hint of motherly sadness.
“Because the Teralls have something we need,” Thomas responded. “And knowing the operation, I wouldn’t suspect anyone to be in a giving mode.”

Suddenly, her eyes exposed a realization. Her eyes narrowed again. “Goodbye.”

When the shot was fired, Thomas’ heart skipped. The only pressure he felt against his face was the nozzle that was jammed into his bone, likely leaving a bruise, nothing more. Seconds passed before he grasped that the shot hadn’t come from her. Watching her shocked eyes sink while her face planted against the surface and her body slumped behind the counter.

Thomas’ mortality was challenged, and he didn’t like it one bit. The three men, with dark completions and thin beards, approached. “You alright skip,” one of them asked.

He nodded and asked, “Did you get it, Mack?”
“We got it, skip,” he said proudly.
“Good. Start a fire, and let’s get out of here,” Thomas ordered.

And they did.

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