“I demand to see my personnel file”
“The Agency is sorry for your loss. If there’s anything you need to help with the funeral arrangements, you have all our resources at your disposal- ow!”
“I w-a-n-t to read my file”
“Well you can put in a request in writing to access it-“
“Take this gun at your forehead is my request. Six bullets in the chamber, that’s double triplicate”
“Real tough guy pistol whipping someone sat on a chair”
“That barely scratches the surface of what you’ve had me do in the past”
“Course the psych report did highlight certain ego issues. But not the id. That was all in order I’m glad to report”
“Just give me the goddamned file”
“The missions are in another file-“
“I’m not interested in the mission stuff”
“But if someone tried to kill you, you’ll need to look back over the missions to work out who”
“I know who tried to kill me. It was you fuckers”
“Don’t flatter yourself”
“How do I know it was you? I saw the timer and the device rigged up. It’s all Agency kit”
“On the job even when on the job eh? Ow! One of our enemies could frame us, make it look like we put the hit on you. I mean a beheading for goodness sakes. I know it's all the rage, but just not our style"
“I k-n-o-w it was you, because you screwed it up. Big time”
“…Well?”
“Well what?”
“You’re waiting for me to say it”
“Say what?”
“That we screwed it up because we couldn’t put our best agent on it”
“Nice double bind play. Prove I really did have ego issues if I agree with you”
“Found what you’re looking for yet?”
“I never screwed up a single mission. So you can’t be icing me for that. Never disobeyed a directive, never gave you any trouble. It’s not about any money…”
“It’s always about you isn’t it? - Ow!”
“No, it’s about my wife who is lying on my bed in two pieces, fully bled out”
“Yes no more receiving head from her I’m afraid”
“You motherfucker! I’ll rip your head off your shoulders, see how you smile on the other side of your face across the room then”
“Ow, ow ow!”
“Fuck, there’s nothing in the file”
“Oh there’s everything in the file. Pass it me, let’s see if there are any clues there? Sexual orientation… Hetero”
“I was married for fourteen years. Longer than working for this backstabbing outfit”
“She wasn’t stabbed in the back- Ow! Stop hitting me”
“Stop playing games then. You know why this has happened. The directive would have come through your hands at some point, if you didn’t issue it yourself that is”
“I keep returning to the sexual orientation. You ever play away from home?”
“No. I loved her too much”
“Not even any honey trap missions? I’ll need that other file…”
“No. I never had any of those. You better not be playing for time here. Someone comes through that door and I plug you first”
“I’m simply trying to help you get some closure here. I’m telling you, it’s all about the sexual orientation”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“You may not have done honey traps, but you’ve done enough surveillance work where you’ve recorded the mark making the beast with two backs before you lay him out on his back for good”
“Yeah, so?”
“Well we, um know the sexual predilections of all our agents as a matter of course”
“You snap us having sex?”
“Well it makes for good currency, or at least it did anyways before people started making their own porn and posting it online”
“You sick fucker. I bet you watched it in your downtime right? Made you all hot and hard did it?”
“Not really. And that’s kind of the point. In your case we didn’t have to update it. Ever. Like clockwork you two. Same night of the week. Exactly the same time at night. Same place within the house, the marital bed…”
“What’s wrong with that? We had a very loving marriage”
“If you away on assignment I bet you could just as effectively phone it in- Ow!”
“You’d know if I did, since you’re sure to have bugged my phone”
“It’s all just a bit… vanilla isn’t it? Ow! Well, tonight was the designated night of your termination from the Agency-“
“Why?”
“We felt you were, well, just too set in your ways. Not able to respond to our changing times. Gone stale”
“What, based on my sex life?”
“Of course not. But that was the exclamation mark on our analysis. Anyway, for years and years we’d seen you and your wife gently doggy. I ‘spose so she didn’t ever have to look at your face, while you couldn’t see her disinterest and going through the motions- ow! Ow! Okay okay, that was a bit gratuitous I grant. So anyways, on this one carefully planned night, with all the contraption rigged up and primed, there you guys go and change up on us and she’s on top, her head where yours was supposed to have been. And, well you know the rest…”
“If you wanted to take me out, why not just do it and dump me in an alleyway or the desert? Why was she supposed to have to witness it?”
“Because it would ensure her silence. She would know the price of opening her yap”
“You do know, you of all people, that I have been trained in all manner of torture. Affronts to the body. Grievous physical afflictions and psychological degradation”
“I’m fully aware of that. I wrote the textbook on it”
“Well you’re just about to become reacquainted with it. A refresher course”
“End of the Vanilla Man. I’ll have to make a note in your file before you get started on me”
11 comments:
This is such a mix of emotion and detachment. Haven't quite decided what to make of it yet.
I wondered if the mode of dispatch for the wife was influenced by what has been happening in the news. Cold detachment here in the character of the employer and such high emotion in the main character, I too am not sure what to make of it. I can't quite get my head around the employer accepting his imminent death so calmly.
To my mind and there is no reason why this is definitively the logic, the boss man knows they made a mistake in the mission of killing the agent, so he knows with failure comes punishment or retribution, call it what you will
Yes that makes sense Marc.
Y'know Marc, this is one of those rare times when your story hasn't sent me running for the online dictionary. LOL.
I really enjoyed this, and especially the "Ow Ow Ows" in dialogue. I'm not sure if it was intentional, or if it's just my sense of humour, but I did find the story rather amusing. :-)
Well it's a bit of a laugh/cry game isn't it? Or I'm just bad at this and chuckled more. All in all gruesome act, kind of rebounding with news and life in general. I too liked the "Ow Ow" in the dialogue.
Very Brazil! Sounds like the agency's a little too fond of quantifying everything.
This was just so *weird*... Interesting, and WEIRD!
When I first started into the piece I thought the assassin was talking to a machine. Imagine the oddity of threatening a robot or a computer with a pistol.
Interesting way of presenting a story.
Interesting, but tough story. Ouch!
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