Frankie Wanted to Kill
by Liam Sweeny

Frankie wanted to kill that night. In a dark room saturated with vodka and stale Garcia Vega smoke, he wiped the sweat from his brow on the front of his stained wife-beater, taking apart his .44 Magnum, cleaning it and putting it back together. The muffled sounds of the Beach Boys played in the next room. He didn’t know who lived there. He chugged what was left of the vodka, and stripped off his clothes. Shower time.

He’d long ago washed the sand off him, but every now and then, he’d find some he missed. That fucking sand clung to him; like everything else he’d seen and done in Iraq. It all just clung to him. He’d spend nights scrubbing himself raw.

He brushed his teeth and combed his hair. He didn’t look in the mirror. He dressed in a white cotton tee and clean boxers before returning to the room. His BDU sat on the bed, neatly pressed. He put it on, made sure that the Silver Star was pinned just right. He tucked the .44 into a side holster after putting one bullet in the chamber. He had only one target.

Frankie enlisted in the Army in 2001, after September 11th. He was twenty-four and married. His wife, Linda was supportive, said she’d stay true to him. What a lie that was. He got a letter from her a year before he was stop-lossed for the second time. I just can’t do this, she wrote. She wanted a divorce. Frank wanted Al Qaeda to stop shooting at his position. He signed the divorce papers, with too much surviving on his mind to give it much thought. In combat, you have to think when you can, and when Iraq began to stabilize, his thoughts caught up.

The Army trains killers. Frank became a killer in Iraq, whether he wanted to or not. He remembered being ordered to drive over kids in the road, because of ambushes. He could still feel the thump of one girl’s frail little body going under the truck. Killing was easy, Frank had surmised. It was easy to kill if you were a killer, but once you’d done it, you’d always be a killer. There was no turning back.

Frank left the boarding house and opened the door to his Ford F-150. He didn’t have much, just a tape deck and one Johnny Cash tape. He popped it in as he turned the key and peeled out. He had one place to go before reaching his objective.

Miller’s was a shit-hole bar on the outskirts of town. They served food there, but aside from chicken wings, no one ate. They had two TVs on top of the bar, usually sports games. It was where he met Linda. Linda was supposed to meet her friends, but she showed up at the wrong bar. Frankie was there because his friends wanted to get him out of the house. He almost didn’t go. Looking back, he shouldn’t have gone. But there they were, and once they met, they talked until the bar closed. They exchanged numbers, and the romance blossomed.

When Frankie was discharged, they should’ve realized he had something wrong with him, but they just wrote down the number of a shrink and sent him on his way. He tried to find a job, and he found one; he found many, but couldn’t keep any of them. He managed to find a job working grounds at an apartment complex that he kept, but the pay was lousy, just enough to afford the room at the boarding house and keep his truck and himself going.

Frank had two Bud drafts at Miller’s, knowing it would be the last time he’d see it – not where he’d be going.

He got back on the road. Linda would be in bed by now, with her new fiancée, Chuck. Frankie didn’t care about Chuck. Chuck wasn’t his target. As he drove the highway towards Bay View, he didn’t feel nervous or anxious. He felt relieved. The killer free to exact justice. No one was shooting at him, or putting bombs on the highway. No white knuckle-ride; just Frankie and Johnny Cash singing “Folsom Prison Blues”

He got near the house and turned off the lights. He popped it into neutral and let it coast in front of her driveway. He opened and closed the door without making a sound, and made it to the door undetected. He pried open a window; Linda wasn’t security conscious, and he knew she wouldn’t have an alarm. He climbed in through the window. He knew the house; she and Chuck invited him to it when he came home, mostly out of guilt. He padded his way up the stairs, turned the corner and noticed the bedroom door was cracked open. He walked over stealthily and pushed the door open without a squeak. Linda was in bed on the right side, Chuck on the left. Frankie turned on the light.

“What the fuck-,”

“Frankie! Oh my God!” Linda screamed.

Frankie had his gun drawn by this time, gripped at his side.

“Please, Frankie,” Linda pleaded, “Put the gun down!”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that.” He said. He paced what little space there was in the room. He ripped the Silver Star off his BDU, throwing it on the bed.

“I’m a killer now, Linda. Do you know what it’s like to be a killer?”

Linda was sobbing, shaking her head no.

“When you sent me that letter in Iraq, you killed me.” He screamed. “You’re a killer! And now I want you to see what killers do!"

Before anyone could react, Frank brought the gun from his hip and fired.

“Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust” the priest said. Frankie wasn’t there to see it. At the end of the ceremony, when everyone took a flower from the coffin to remember the deceased, Linda placed Frankie’s Silver Star on the lid.

BIO: Liam Sweeny is a novelist with one published book, Anno Luce. He has contributed fiction and poetry to various venues, both online and in print. In his free time, he likes to go into the Adirondacks of New York, shoot things and drink whiskey, in that order.