Lady and the Hitman (fallen tales series)

Chapter 3

Chapter 3
Lilly
I made my way down the street to the large house on the corner. Rose bushes line the brick path up to the steps. I climbed the steps and knocked on the door. I frowned when I heard whistling.
"Archie!" I called walking back down the steps. I stepped onto the green grass and walked towards the back of the house.
"Archie!" I called again. I spotted Arching hanging out washing on the line. The old Scotchman just wouldn't do as he was told.
"Hello Lassie, I didn't see ya there," he said smiling at me. I walked towards him and looked at the empty basket.
"Archie, I told you that you shouldn't be doing anything. That's why I come here, to help," I had to tell him that every time I came here.
And he would always answer, "I'm not spending my retirement in a chair. I can rest when I'm dead."
I shook my head in defeat. There was no point arguing with him sometimes.
I sighed, "Where's Hamish?"
"Where he normally is, in his chai –."
"Chair," I finished. I sighed again and headed up the back steps to the back door.
I had been coming to Archie's and Hamish's house since I was fifteen.
They were old war veterans and fought in Vitamin. Hamish would tell me stories about their time in Vitamin. Stories about what they ate, where they slept, who they fought. Even though times must had been tough for them, I couldn't help but think how exciting it must have been. Everyday something different happening.
Both of their wives were long gone and their children lived far away. So it's just the two of them in this big house.
I walked down the dark hall and turned right to the library where I found Hamish in his lounge chair.
"Hey Hamish."
"Hello Miss Lilly," he said as I sat on the lounge in front of him, "How is that sister of yours?"
If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me about Charlotte, I could be a millionaire.
I always answered, "She's fine."
"It must be hard for her."
"Yeah it must me," I didn't mean for my voice to sound so bitter.
"Something wrong?" he asked frowned under his glasses.
I sighed, "No, I mean, didn't she know that it was a possibility that he was going to die."
"Maybe she didn't realize. You never really know the loss till it is, lost."
I buried my head in my hands, shaking it. Guilt washed over me as I realized my mistake.
"Of course, Hamish. I'm so sorry."
"It's okay. The misses and I had some great times together before she passed."
"But isn't it harder. I mean, the more the love the greater the lost."
He nodded, "Yes, I suppose, but I would rather the great lost then no love at all."
I sat back taken in his words.
"Well if love makes you feel that, I'm never want it."

As I made my way back down the road, I noticed everything that seemed so perfect with this neighbourhood. Mrs Britton's lovely Veronicas in her front garden, Mr Cropper's proud standing bird bath that he displaces in the front of his garden. How every tree on the street had a fence around it, and not one piece of rubbish lied in the gutter. Everything seemed prefect. But nothing was behind the closed doors.
Like how, Mr and Mrs Rosabell's daughter's fiancé cheated on her, but they were still going ahead with the wedding. How Mrs Eaton's granddaughter was now a paraplegic because she was texting while drunk driving. Or even how Mr and Mrs Glover son is dating a black man.
Everyone on this street hides behind great gardens, beautiful houses. They didn't realize that if they just opened the door for a little, everyone saw inside.
When I came to the front of my house, I realized what my family hid inside. A seven month pregnant widow and a daughter that had night terrors and was often forgotten when it came to her darling older sister.
For once in my life, I didn't want to me the other sister. The one that was just there in the photos. And once this baby comes, there wouldn't even be room for me in the frame.
I knew what I wanted, I just didn't know how to get it yet.





Marcus
I lied in my bed, looking up at the cement ceiling. I kept on imaging, that it could fall and crush me. First my lungs would burst and my scroll would crumble. Every single bone in my body breaking. I lied there, frowning at why I was picturing my own death.
Maybe because I had seen many people die, I had come immune to it. Immune to the thought of death.
The only thing that worried me was that, if I died here. If my body was crushed under the fallen ceiling, would anybody realize that I was missing. My own family would think it was a blessing to have my soul taken from this earth to another cell in hell. That's Italians for you.
But I couldn't believe in a God, or heaven and hell. I feel, if there was a hell, it wasn't just some place underground. It was in someone. In the very heart of the person. Not even an angle could save that person, not even God.
And besides, weren't it people that created the story, that created the places, gave them names. What even defined the ways of being good and being evil? What if it had just been one person telling another one, "I don't like it when you punch me, that's bad," and that's how it appeared as punching someone bad. Would that same view be changed if that person hadn't stopped the other from punching him? Probably. But does that make punching someone evil just because one person at the start of history said that it was bad?
Feeling tired of my board brain, I rolled out of my mattress and headed for the hall. The cold lino froze my feet as I made my way to the stairs. My toes cracked with each steps toward the cement floor of the warehouse.
As I made my way to the laundry, I tried to imagine what type of warehouse it could be. A butchery, a sweat shop. Either one was a possibilities.
I pushed on the shiver handle of the door and open to a laundry. I don't think it was truly a laundry, but it had a wall of sinks across it, two washing machines and two driers on the other side, a window that looked out onto an apartment block and tilted flooring.
I opened the door to the direr and pulled out the pile of clothes that still sat in it. I was still amazed that power and water still ran through this place. It had to be years after the place shut down. But I never truly focused on the details. Not when my brain still worked on ideas to justify all my horrible mistakes.
But I couldn't change what I had done. I couldn't truly get rid of the scared tattoo on my left shoulder. It was all scared into my brain like a night terror. Like Patrick's face.