The Taker
by Chris Deal

Simmons woke to an almost imperceptible shift in the atmosphere, like a single molecule was out of place.  The alarm clock told him it was after four, and he had been there sleeping for but an hour.  He lay groggily looking to the ceiling, counting the cracks in the plaster, what he could see in the thick dark, when had that feeling again, of something being off.  Shrugging his head towards the window, it took a moment to notice the form obscuring the blinds, another to register the glint of metal.  There was a man there beside him, sitting in his chair, and the metal was a pistol in his hand.

Simmons made a move for his own gun in the bedside table, when the form spoke, “It’s gone,” the voice like that of an old man, or someone too tired for the night and its deeds.

“Who the fuck are you?” Simmons could only ask, the pounding of adrenaline in his chest, his temple.  He sat up in bed, his back against the headboard, his bare chest sweating in the night air of a tomb.

“Nobody,” the man said.  The only features visible for Simmons was the shape of a fedora sitting low on the man’s head.

“Are you him?”

“Him,” the man said, more a statement than a question.

“You’re him.  The Taker.”

The man said nothing but the body seemed to shrink in the dark.  He exhaled deeply, a raged breath like a hound.

“I thought you were a ghost story, you know.”  The man laughed and it sounded like a cough.  “We used to talk about you in the schoolyard.  Don’t snitch or the Taker will come for you, that sort of thing.   My dad used to talk about you with his friends, joking as they cleaned their guns.  He said you always left a single bullet casing behind with each body.  Why you did that, he didn’t know.  I guess to tie each body to the one before.  There was one beside my pop.”

“Earl.”

“Yeah, that was him.  You did him, didn’t you?”

“The Taker did, yes.”

Simmons laughed, and reached for his smokes by the bed.  “You mind?”  The man didn’t respond, so he took that as a no, lighting up and inhaling deeply.  “So, what did I do to deserve your presence?”

“You know.”

“Would it help if I declared my innocence and ask for compassion.”  The man, the Taker, he said nothing.  “Thought not.”  He inhaled again at his cigarette, and blinked at the tears forming.  “Can I have one mercy, before?”

“What would you like?”

“Let me see who the Taker is.”  The man’s form seemed to grow in the darkness, and he stood, taking a step towards the bed and he reached to the lamp, turning it on and flooding the room with light.

Simmons laughed like sob.  “You’re nobody.”

The Taker raised his hand, the suppressor on the end of the muzzle barely an inch from Simmons’ head.  He squeezed the trigger once.  At the brutal cough, Simmons twitched and was then quiet.  The Taker picked up the spent casing and pocketed it in his overcoat, replacing another in its place.

And like a ghost he was gone.

BIO: Chris Deal writes from Huntersville, NC.  He is the fiction editor for Red Fez, and he writes on literature for Creative Loafing in Charlotte.