Silencing the Circling Echoes

by Nikki Isaak © 2008

I: Betrayed

"I could tell you all of Jeff's secrets.  You could head the family instead of him."

Faith Marconi's voice was husky.  Her breasts brushed his arm as she raised her tight skirt.  Her shaved pink cunt glistened beneath her nimble fingers, their speed increasing as her breathing grew more ragged.  Simultaneously, she stroked his tented crotch.

"Like you told that Fed, Scott Pollack?"

Faith leapt back in shock.

The shot took her in her well-endowed chest.  Her exposed cunt caught his eye.

Her true nature displayed, he thought.

Don exited the Sedan, whipped out his cell phone.

"Boss? Your divorce is final."


II: Takedown

Wearing a headset, Scott Pollack listened.  The bug, placed in one of Faith's diamond teardrop earrings, worked fine.

They'd been waiting for this moment for years, to bring down the Marconi machine.

"Like you told that Fed, Scott Pollack?"  he heard Don Singleton say.

"Fuck!" Scott cursed, thinking: I promised her freedom, now she's dead. Heart racing, he met the gaze of his startled partner, Adam Adelberg, who nodded: let's go.  They tore off their headsets, and exited the hidden surveillance van, careful not to slam the back doors.

Running, they turned the corner of the abandoned warehouse, and approached Singleton, parked just outside it.

Ten feet away, Singleton stood next to his Sedan.  From Singleton's pose, Scott guessed he was talking on his cell phone.

Singleton must have heard their footfalls, because his voice became louder: "It was a trap!  That cunt must've hidden a wire somewhere else-!" Singleton dropped his phone and reached into his jacket.

"Give it up, we've got you, Singleton!"  Adam's warning fell on deaf ears.

Their shots took Singleton from four feet away.  Cursing, gurgling blood, Singleton fell, his .45 clattering to the ground.

Your turn next, Marconi, Scott grimaced. You won't get away from me.


III: Desert Silence

It wasn't so bad living out in the desert, once you got used to it, Jay Merlone, aka Jeff Marconi, mused.

He'd been living out here in Zenken, a California desert town, for a year now.  Don's warning—"It was a trap"—had set him in motion.  He'd grabbed his emergency suitcase (the one Faith hadn't known about), full of cash, clothes and fake identification papers, and rolled out of town without a word to anyone.

His hair was longer and blond, not black, now.  He had a deeper tan, and had lost thirty pounds.  And he ran a gas station, one that resembled the one Robert Mitchum owned in Out of the Past, one of Jeff's favorite movies.

The hot wind squeaked the hanging metal sign Jeff's Station.  A mile away, buzzards made good use of roadkill.  The gas station was empty—not a lot of business came this way; but then, he didn't require a lot of business. He just needed to lie low for a while, in this tiny, almost-ghost town, the one where his parents, long dead (like so many others he knew), had met, and later, ran away from.

Nobody would find him here—not even Sophie, his soft-curved, clever mistress, whom he missed on long nights, when a woman's warmth and wisdom could still the voices in your head.

Mostly, though, Jeff was fine with his new silence, this cleansing desert. He'd been weary of defensive planning—protecting himself from so many bloody plots (especially Faith's, may her soul rot in perdition).  Getting rid of Faith and others had been an attempt to simplify his life—following those murders, he would've gone legit, exited the criminal life.

But life, as it was wont do, totally fucked that up…

The first car of the day—it was two o'clock, the station had been open for five hours—appeared on the road, two flat miles away.  Jeff didn't get many customers, mostly Zenken folk.

The car pulled into the station: a dark Sedan, like Don's.  Jeff winced. Don had been a good man.

The driver peered out as Jeff got up and approached the Sedan .  Blunt, male face; sunglasses.

"Your Aunt Marian told me about this place."

Jeff, with a shocked expression on his face, only heard Scott Pollack's opening words.  By the time Jimmy was done speaking, two bullets were lodged in Jeff's head.

Sighing, Scott got out of the car.  Placing Jeff's body on a plastic tarp, he dragged the corpse a ways behind the gas station.  Then he flipped the door sign in the gas station to CLOSED.

Goodbye, Marconi,  Scott thought as he drove away.


IV: Dream Meat

Two days later, the vultures dug their hooked bills and claws into the soft meat that had once been Jeff Marconi, aka Jay Merlone.  By the time they were gone, there were only bones and flies.

Later that night, roosting together in their trees, the vultures dreamt. They dreamt of alien things they didn't understand: a human female shedding her second skin, revealing hard, living meat as she undulated, legs spread; emotions—surges of rage,  joy, violence, and the strong urge to mate.

Several of them fell from their perches, myoclonic leg twitches—another thing alien to these pacific-minded carrions—causing them bewilderment. Once they shook off their bruising falls, they flew back to their roosting-spots, their red hairless heads gently rubbing each while they affectionately nipped one another with their white beaks.

It was time to mate.

_______
© 2008 Nikki Isaak. All rights reserved. Content may not be copied or used in whole or part without written permission from the author.

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