Stooped over, his thin, dark frame slouches over his work. He delicately sculpts the soft clay with course hands, his balding hair greasy from days of continuous focus. A raspy, haunting melody drifts lazily about the room as our silent steps encroach upon our frail target, unknowing of the imminent death closing fast upon him. Classic record albums decorate the two story high walls, hung with the utmost care and precision, covering every inch except where the large hearth stands jutting out from the wall and where the massive wooden rafters are braced high above. Light streams in a few small windows, illuminating the massive studio and the wooden floor covered in layers of tarp, dried clay, and suspicious stains. Half-completed busts peer crazily around the room, their pupils cut deep into their manic eyes. They are in human form, but they are not human. They are like him.
Together the three of us encroach closer and closer on our target, Marianna taking the high route, Dahl working as backup, and me as the main assailant. The massive tarps stifle my steps as inch by inch I close in. This strategy has never failed, nor could it ever fail. With Marianna and Dahl, I have a family, that is, as close as the three of us can get while planning other people’s demises. I always admire them, Marianna, and Dahl. We move as one unit, effortlessly and brutally, bringing a silent and swift death to whomever we are assigned, and this man is about to be next.
I look upward, checking that Marianna is in position, although without any real concern. Marianna is stealth. Every single one of her steps is calculated, from the amount give in the oak rafters to her distance above his head. She is our flawless escape, that is, as flawless as a silencer and a handgun can be. She is the only person I know who can kill someone and they say thank you beforehand.
Dahl waits outside the door as our backup, fierce and unwieldy. I would call him a tank, but that would be an insult to the vehicle. He is known for stylish brutality, having once choked the life out of a mule because he lost his Rolex in a bet on it. Never ask him about his abusive father or his Armenian childhood unless you want to follow the mule to a vengeful grave.
“Careful now. Don’t surprise him. We need this mission to go smoothly,” says Marianna into her miniature mic as she weaves herself around a slanted wooden beam.
“If this mission goes wrong, your eyes are my breakfast snack, you…” he says, his thick accent rolling off his beefy tongue.
I never listen to Dahl anymore unless he has a plan. We share a mutual hate kindled by our passion for blood, usually each other’s. Yet, for all of his blunt threats directed at me, I somehow believe he would carry me out of a burning building if I asked.
Creak. The wooden floorboard beneath the tarp moans under my foot. I freeze. Marianna freezes. Dahl mutters insults under his breath. I hold my breath, counting to a minute as my mind races by, knowing the sudden death that would come if I were the one who failed this mission. My rope must wait for another day. I instinctively reach for to handgun at my side.
The humming of the pottery wheel stops. I hear the police sirens in the distance and pray they aren’t coming. Not today, please not today. Slowly, steadily, I raise my gun level with his ears, prepared to fire in an instant.
“Come in. Make yourself comfortable.”
The decrepit figure slowly swivels around, revealing a muddied apron and his darkened sunglasses.
“I figured I would be seeing you any day now. Here.”
He motions to the hearth where a pair of empty glasses and a bottle of a vintage red sit. A genuine smile spreads across his face.
“No, thanks. Stay right where you are” I say.
“Fine. But if I were a member of the Scythe and I were caught between either murder or a certain painful death, I would never turn down a drink.”
I pause. He knows. He knows about Scythe. He knows about us. None of our targets have ever said a word about our team.
“Before you kill me, would you mind if I saw what you look like? I have been waiting for this moment for years, you see, and I never liked the idea of dying without seeing who my killer was.”
“It’s a trap,” says Marianna, breaking our team’s silence. “Remember we only have three minutes to complete this.”
“No shit, Miss Holmes. Back in Armenia if we…”
“Shut the fuck up, Dahl.” I say under my breath.
“So, there are more of you?” says the man, overhearing me. “Then you really wouldn’t mind if I just stepped over and took one good look at you. What? You don’t trust a man on his execution day? See for yourself!”
The man slowly slides out of his apron and lets it fall to the floor, revealing his long khakis and Hawaiian shirt and yet, no weapons. He raises both his wide, clay-spattered palms in the air towards me.
“He’s bluffing” Marianna says.
Dhal mutters an incoherent threat. They both know it’s not just my life on the line. If one of us dies, all of us die if the mission isn’t completed. That’s Scythe’s second rule.
I stand, my nerves hardening and my head becoming clearer. “He isn’t bluffing. I see no weapons. I’m going to let look at me,” I say, half-stunned at my recklessness as I click off my mic and headset with my left hand. We never are allowed to turn off our mic, let alone our headset, but for some stupid reason, I did. Then again, a target has never known we were coming.
Again, he overhears my remark to Marianna and Dahl, and slowly, one barefooted step at a time, he inches closer to me. I expect him to raise his sunglasses and to peer at me with sunken dead eyes, but instead, two large, gruff hands carefully press against my mask.
“No fabric, por favor,” he says, with a slight laugh. “The beauty of a blind man is that I can feel my destiny and embrace it. Seeing, I have learned, is an obstacle that prevents us from seeing who we truly are. I simply want to feel you and to understand why.”
The ice-cold tip of my gun rests against his temple as he pulls back the mask covering my face. His brown hands touch my skin, and before I can protest, he begins to trace my lips and nose, the divots around my eyes, and the deep-cut lines in my forehead.
“Ah, here is a rare beauty. You one of us, my child of the Caribbean. But you are worn, yes. You are betrayed by yourself. You have abandoned all whom you held most dear and now you come to steal that which you truly cannot take from me.” He pauses, cradling my face in his hands. “You have been harmed by this life that you lead, but you and I are more alike than you believe. You see, we both still have hope.”
I scan high cheekbones and bushy eyebrows, searching for the source of his wisdom, afraid that he may compromise me, terrified that my decision could put all of our lives in danger. But against all reason, I trust him.
“Amani, my daughter,” he says, in a low whisper, “I know you must kill me. I know that you must do it, for I am the only thing which keeps you human.”
I catch my breath, unable to believe this man with the calloused hands. “You can’t be my Papa! My father left me long ago.”
“But Amani, I am. I wish I could tell you how sorry I am I left, how sorry I am for leaving you and your mother in Salvador, how sorry I am for...” He presses his own forehead to mine. “Forgive me.”
Seconds pass in silence as I stand spellbound by this man—our target—and soon he begins to tremble in spite of his former confidence. I see a stray tear wander down his face. Since when do targets cry? Since when did my Papa cry?
A shout echoes from outside. Dahl bursts into the room, the splintered door collapsing onto the floor. Marianna slides down a rope from the rafters, gun aimed. They have been waiting too long, and I know it. The three minutes are up. It’s now or never.
“Do it” the man says, finally tearing off his glasses to reveal scarred, burned eyes, reddened and blotched grey where his pupils once had been. Then I finally see him—my Papa—no longer a target.
I pause in absolutely confused, and yet, in a clarity years in the makings. This man is my father. Looking at him now, I remember his wide toothy smile from when he played in the sand with me out in Rodney Bay, calling me “My Mermaid” as I sang and squealed as loud as I could. I watched my little pudgy fingers wrap around his, as he swung my feet into the white foam of the tide, my mother snapping pictures with a bulky black camera, laughing from underneath her wide-brimmed straw hat. I could see his face drawn tight when we had to move to Brazil from Saint Lucia, his constant writing numbers on large lemon pad on the kitchen table as it rocked back and forth, one leg shorter than the others. I recognize the father I had pushed from my mind the day he walked out on my mother and me, large tweed briefcase in hand, not caring that we didn’t have a clue how to speak Portuguese, how to dance the samba, or even what type of food Moqueca was. He left and took my love with him.
Dahl and Marianna are almost touching us. I hear Marianna’s shriek and Dahl’s angry roar. Bang! My Papa’s body slumps over on top of me, covering my face in blood. My ears are ringing from the sound of the gun fired so close to me. Marianna has a gun to my head and Dahl’s hands are pressed too tightly against my throat. Air. I need air. I pass out, drifting into the murky blackness.
“You betrayed us! You whore! Why do you think we had to brand you with this?!” Dahl lifts my ankle, revealing a scar of a scythe etched onto my skin. “Do you think you are on our team to sit there fucking around with a target for four minutes while Marianna and I are as good as dead? Who the hell do you think you are!?!”
The darkness fades as I look around and see a record of the singer Carmen Miranda smiling down on me. I feel my sore neck, probably now colored with Dahl’s purple handprints. I can’t move from below the work table yet; my body is too weak. I understand why Dahl is so upset. Dahl and Marianna almost had to kill family. They almost had to kill me.
“Dearest,” says Marianna in her too-sweet voice. She bends over to lift my chin with her sharp finger. “If you ever, ever pull a stunt like that again I can guarantee, Sweetheart, that your brains will be plastered on the wall just like our last target’s.”
I feel my body grow rigid at the thought of both my Papa’s and my own body flopped over lifeless together and stunned Marianna could threaten my life like this. Could this be the same Marianna who rescued me from my past, who brought me to Scythe after my mother was forever taken from me? I remember when she had curled up next to me in the dark alley of Salvador, my face smeared with grease and dust, the traces of leftover chicken scraps surrounding my sinewy lap. She had cried, arms wrapped around me, whispering delicately into my ear how she would save me. What had happened to my Marianna?
“I shot him though,” I say, stuttering in my defense. “You were in the room with us the whole time, Marianna. I thought you could tell Dahl…”
“Tell me what?!” Dahl grabbed the now empty wine bottle and smashed it against the fireplace, scattering shards of green everywhere. “You know not to turn off your mic or your headset!” He rests his arms on the mantle, gazing down into the grey soot below.
“Love, you know we trust you because we have to, and you know just because we’ve worked together for four years doesn’t mean we won’t kill you. We’re family, but a self-preserving family. Now, tell us. Why did you turn everything off?”
“I don’t know.”
“Bullshit” says Dahl, kicking the ground.
“Tell us the real truth, Honey.”
I want to punch her. Just to pull her to the ground and scream at her for making me kill my Papa. No remorse. No regrets. Just to hit her hard enough to make her sorry, and to see her cry the way I thought she should. I look over and see the puddle of his blood pooling on the tarps. Reaching up, I wipe off a drop of his blood painted on my cheek onto my pants. How is Marianna supposed to know the truth? Would she even understand? For the first time, I felt she would kill anyone, family or not. She is suddenly cruel and I know she believes in death as the easiest form of escape if necessary. I decide to lie.
“I was curious. I got tired of each kill being so straight forward, and well, boring. This target had something different, and I was interested.”
Marianna takes a deep breath and looks down at me for several seconds, checking for signs if I’m lying to her face. I just keep staring back, eyes fixed on hers, afraid and ashamed of nothing.
“She’s telling the truth, Dahl. We have to listen to her.”
Dhal doesn’t move at first, but soon he walks over to the body. My father’s body.
“Doesn’t he have a great face? Come here, Marianna. Look at his empty eyes. It’s like he and I once knew each other.”
His wicked grin tells everything. Marianna just keeps staring down at me, knowing I haven’t told everything, and waiting for me to confess to something. Then it happened. Dahl began kicking. Thud after thud, he began ramming his foot into my father’s lifeless face, smashing in any semblance of what he looked like, kicking until his body bled anywhere his foot landed. Though Dahl didn’t see it at first, I noticed a small remote fall out of the body’s pocket. It is tiny, barely bigger than my thumb, and it has only one button. Marianna looked up from me and over to Dahl just as it falls, catching her glance.
“What have we here? A remote. Well what does it turn on? The cable?”
As Marianna spoke, her voice grows too sweet. Dahl spots the remote and tosses it over to her. With a slight smirk, she presses the small grey button. Suddenly, screens fly down over all the windows forcing the room into pitch blackness. Dahl laughs.
“So, the poor man couldn’t sleep, eh? Or is this for the ladies?”
There is a low rumble. It starts off softly, but soon its deafening roar begins to shake the whole room, vibrating the albums, and sending records crashing to the floor. The pottery wheel begins to frantically spin, and clay spatters fly off the newly-formed human head resting on top of it. All the busts on the floor glow different colors, one green, another blue, some red. From their deep sunken eyes shine bright lasers, streaming in scattered directions before all the streams of light rest on the pottery wheel. The wheel stops, the clay now gone, revealing a projector which, as soon as the lasers touch it, begins to play a video with a loud, booming voice that I recognize as my father’s. Soon his image dances above the fireplace.
“The terrorist organization known as Scythe is a Latin-American run program dedicated to the elimination of unwanted political activists in South America. Particularly known for their work in groups of three, they can be attributed to some of the greatest political and social assassinations of our time. They have three main laws among them, namely, kill or be killed, never fail a mission upon pain of death, and death before disloyalty. However, though they will always abide by these common laws, they have never met the source and founder of their organization.”
I watch image after image fly by of countless bodies. Men and children, the young and the old, no one is exempt. And I am one of their killers.
“Today, I would like to introduce you to the founder of this organization, Mr. E. Acosta, who happens to be none other than myself.”
I sit in horror, eyes glued to the happy, healthy figure of my father dressed in an Italian suit, arms stretched wide. The blackness is calling again, but I know if I give in now, I will never know the truth.
“I began this organization first on the small island of Saint Lucia, at first only eliminating a few people myself for a few dollars on the side to support my family. But soon, I felt the rising pressures by the local government not to stop, no, but to help them. I soon found myself a hired gun by my local government, killing not just for a few hundred dollars, but a few thousand. I found loyal friends who, after seeing the prosperity I was bringing for my family, were also brought into the family business. Soon, our organization had to be moved to a bigger, more generous area where we could expand from a few people to a few hundred agents working globally for governments to extinguish unwanted political uprisings.”
Dahl and Marianna are engrossed. They too are captivated by this presentation, realizing that the man they just killed had been the organization’s creator and provider. Both are in shock, eyes wide and weapons discarded.
“Everything went well, that is, until I lost my family because of this organization. I was compromised, and found that rather than the world revolving around me, I was lost in it. I lost my beautiful wife to a car accident after she drank too much after I had walked out on her one night. I lost my daughter to the streets of Salvador. I lost myself in Scythe. After twenty years, I decided to shut down my organization and reduce head count, well, one at a time.”
I suddenly realize why my father brought me here. We are the last of Scythe. The three of us. My only remaining family, and I alone am meant to be the survivor. I glance frantically around the room, looking for anything that would last a chance as a weapon against either Dahl or Marianna in case they turned on me. I spy my father’s bloody and battered corpse, and catch my breath as my insides burn the same way they did the night I held my Mamma’s hand, painting her fingernails a brilliant red when she said the fateful word: cancer.
Finally, I see it. My gun. It is on the floor several feet away. I just have to somehow crawl there without making a sound. My father’s voice is my protection. I shimmy across the soft tarps, reaching silently to grasp the weapon firmly before tucking it slightly under my thigh. Neither Dahl or Marianna noticed my movement.
“After another twenty-five more years, I had negotiated with many of our partner governments to finally eliminate their use of Scythe and to return once again to their own agencies. It was difficult yes, but not impossible. I realized that once we were free, though, my agents would realize what was going on and turn on me. Of course, I predicted this, and therefore without informing them, I had teams of three individuals eliminate each other’s members one by one.”
My Papa looks at us with that same toothy smile he used to give his mermaid. By now, I have the gun in my hand, and am slumped back against the bench concealing it under my thigh. Dahl and Marianna are finally recalling their senses as they shoot each other looks of panic. Raising the pitch of his voice the same way he would when warning me about the tides of Saint Lucia, I understand my Papa is finishing his lecture. I realize that my only chance at survival is seconds away. The screen’s image suddenly vanishes, and a new image emerges of my father. The small, blind, and decrepit old man sits perched on his stool, running his fingers around a clay face he had just formed.
“Finally, after all this, I was left with, well, you. You three were an unusual team. You were incredibly efficient, organized, and were a total miscalculation. You were created by one of my former colleagues to destroy me. Rather than have you exposed to my employee elimination, he made you believe you were part of my own organization, yet had you kill long-time criminals rather than my own people. The three of you quietly worked in the background preparing for the day you would one day kill me. Dahl’s father was the first to come the closest, and I have him to thank for my blindness. I know you, Dahl, will be able to appreciate his skill with a branding iron.” My father gave a polite nod as though his own eyesight were trivial. “Marianna came second, since the moment your employer was eliminated she herself took up the mantle in revenge to kill me. After all, this same colleague who brought you three together was none other than her father.”
A very pale Marianna shrieks and, after sinking to the floor, she pounds it with her fists. “I swore I’d kill you! And I did, didn’t I?!” Her screams turned to cackles and wailing. Her gasps and sputters are only too ironic of a display. I silently envy her emotion, but I know how emotion can kill. Dahl stands dumbfounded. After checking that the safety truly is off, I press my finger to the trigger. “Daddy! My father…”
“That leaves you, Amani. My girl! Who would have known you would be hired by my rival and used against me? But my little girl, my precious mermaid, believe me when I say it: I did it all for you. You were the biggest miscalculation of their operation. You, the silly little girl who would hop up and down the beach refusing to take off her little green tail. I began Scythe to give you a happy life, and I end it now to give you one of peace.”
“You!” Marianna snaps her head back to gaze at me with her anaconda eyes, poised to squeeze out every drop of my life. Dahl prickles and also turns, cracking his knuckles. He would do anything to protect Marianna and to take revenge, since like me, he had been “saved” by her from the hopeless maze of destitution.
I fire two shots. Marianna flops to the ground. Dahl dramatically falls backwards, and with a loud crack, hits his massive head on the fireplace. I quickly crawl over, gun still in hand, and check their pulses. Nothing. All my family is gone, and I alone am their killer. My insides sting with anger and I pretend not to feel my quivering lips betray me. It was either me or them. What choice did I have? My Papa’s voice continues droning on, as though oblivious to the tragedy that he knew would ensue.
Hot tears welled in my eyes. We are trained never to cry over death, let alone a target. But here I am, exhausted, soaked in the blood of the man I called Papa and staring down at the bodies of the people I could have almost called brother and sister.
The video is still playing. My Papa pauses, smiling. He swivels the bust he has been working on to face me. It is my face, perfectly cast in clay, down to every detail, even though this must have been filmed before we had engaged him as the target.
“Thank you.” He motions as though he would have winked, had his eyes permitted him. “I’m glad I could always count on you. Now I too can be at peace.”
Pressing the remote’s grey button, the doors and windows open. The smell of death and gore leave my stomach in knots. I leave the studio for the last time, remembering my father stooped over his work, taking the time to be precise and methodical. With another click, I slip out into the midnight air, pocketing the remote.
I run to avoid the blaring sirens which rush through the labyrinth of city streets. Hide. I must disappear. But where do I go? Scythe is gone. Dahl and Marianna are gone. Papa is gone. Our safe haven is more dangerous now than ever. Go home. To Salvador? To Saint Lucia?
I climb over a chain-link fence and hurtle over a barrel of garbage. An hour passes, then two. I go numb with the rhythm of my feet, the world around becomes a transient blur. I see Dahl on the mantle, Marianna on the tarp, and my Papa sprawled in-between them. The sirens fall silent. Stop running. My body freezes immediately as I recall Marianna’s training and my instincts take control once more, only with no idea where I am. Rounding the corner from the alleyway, I duck inside a clothing store. Don’t look down, or they get suspicious. Don’t look up too much, or they will also get uncomfortable. Blend in. I remembered the way Papa used to hold my hand tight when I was in a new place, my tiny steps always chasing after his brown sandals, unknowing that one day I would follow in him more than I expected.
I hold up a puke-green beach wrap to hide my blood-stained shirt when the clerk walks by, pretending I like its hideous color. The woman walks past, giving a gentle smile, before stepping into the backroom, not noticing the large blood stain. Marianna was genius for making our team always wear black. Grabbing a new set of inconspicuous clothes, I head into a dressing room to quickly change. Biting off tags, I remember my father’s steady hands when he cut the scratchy tag off the mermaid costume he had given me for my fifth birthday. No tears.
I sneak out, throw my old clothes into the deserted alley, and slip into the crowds lining the main boulevard before entering a faded pink hotel with an angry neon sign pointing to the rooftop club. “Olá! Olá!” The DJ stands center stage, attracting all the attention that I needed to avoid. No one expects a killer in a club. I slither over to the bar.
“Uma caipirinha,” I say.
I motion to the tender who gives a macho nod before turning away.
“Faça isso dois,” says a gruff voice at my side.
I look to the left to spy the front page of a Folha de S. Paulo newspaper.
“You like caipirinhas too?” I ask.
“Never liked anything else” the man replies. “Whereas you, my dear, should try something else for a change. There are so many more seductive options here in the city of Belo Horizonte. Then again, why should a gorgeous girl listen to an old man like me.”
The low pulsing bass of the music seems miles away as the tender brings the two of us our drinks. The old man puts his hand on my knee. I seethe, wishing I could just snap his neck there and then. Would he even care knowing what I had just been through, that I had just murdered my Papa and friends in cold blood? Could he even imagine the look of those fiery red scars for eyes or the forever humming pottery wheel constantly going around and around in my head? I glower, staring intently at the little umbrella stuck in my drink, like it was the one who needs cooling off.
“If you keep pulling moves on me, I swear I will end you.”
“Ah, now don’t make promises you can’t keep.”
The newspaper rattles as he shifts the paper’s weight, but his hand remains on my knee.
“That’s what you’d like to think, you bastard. You know, it’s men like you who deserve to suffer, preying upon younger women like you own them. Let me tell you something you probably are too pi-headed to understand: you don’t own anything. Not the paper in your hands or the life you’ve lived for god knows how long. If I had it my way, I would…”
“Let’s save the insults for later, Hun.”
“I’m not going with you anywhere!”
The man jostles the paper again, his rough hand unmoving.
“You are going somewhere,” he says, “you’re going to Saint Lucia with me.”
I pause, unsure whether to slap him or stab his hand with my little umbrella.
“What makes you think I’ll come with you?” I grit my teeth, squeezing my glass with whitened knuckles.
The man draws a long, long sigh before slowly folding the Folha de S. Paulo to reveal his face.
“Because,” says my Papa, his untouched eyes glistening, “I think it’s time I take my mermaid home.”