Six Bullets

I got a call a few days ago, I was eating take-out with my cat, I named her Dinah. You know that iconic cat from that famous kid's story written by that pedophile.
Ring!
It multiplies itself by three before I reach over and pluck the receiver, the thing weighs a ton.
"Detective?" A voice asks on the other end of this faceless call.
"Who's askin?" I sneer back at him.
"Someone with a lot of money."
"How much? Price is triple for someone without a name. I read all about that damn cyclops who looked like an ass because he was blinded by Nobody. And I'm no ass." I tell him back, amused at myself.
"Triple is fine, detective Cutter." He tells me.
"Alright, then what can I do for you?"
"A man's coming to kill you, tonight. I want you to follow him and tell me where he rests for the evening. Can you do that for me?" He asks.
"Sure thing." I say shoveling a taco into my mouth. "If I don't die."
"You won't. I'll call you on this line tomorrow, bright and early, at 8:00am. Got it?"
"Yeah, I got it. Good riddens." I say then hang up. The nerve of some people, expecting their paper to control the minds of others. I was never blinded by that green paper, never made much sense to me, it's just paper.
After my meal, Dinah and I walk out onto the fire escape and I sit against the cold metal railing, the rust no doubt will stain my shirt. I lean my head back and gaze into the dark sky. The moon, a massive sphere with a color as pale as bone, looks down on me with light almost as brilliant as the sun. I let myself go some place inside my head when suddenly I hear a garbage can knock over below me.
I spin around and see some figure in a white hooded robe pointing a gun at me from the street. I dive inside my apartment as he fires off three rounds. I race around my apartment, grabbing my twin revolvers and rushing back outside. I race down the fire escape. I can see the bastard running down the alley way towards the train station.
I rush after him, my feet slamming loudly against the hard concrete floor of the city.
I can already hear the steam from the monorail, this poor excuse for an assassin is probably going to jump on just as it's leaving. I hate free loaders.
I can see him, a small white blur just outside of my focus. I can see the white blur turn and sprint up the escalator. I slam into people that are too slow to move out of my way.
"Hey, watch it!" They call out, I turn back--still running forward, mind you--flashing my revolver, they shut up real quick.
I hear the loud hiss of the monorail preparing to leave the station. I watch the tiny white blur jump into the orange train, and I watch it slowly start to move forward. I sprint faster down the station. I run to the end.
You see there's a drop point, a place where the station ends like a cliff face, that's where I'm sprinting towards. Better to run next to the monorail and jump into it, than jump behind it and fall short.
I'm sprinting as fast as I can when I see the lights stop and the ground turn black, I holster my revolver, that's my cue to leap, a leap of faith if you will. If I miss I'm headed straight two hundred feet down into Reznor Lake, the fall might not kill me, but it would still hurt. This is that part in the movies where the music stops and everything gets really quiet, most likely just the main character's breathing can be heard. That's exactly how it is, everything is slowed down, it's like I'm moving in molasses I can see everything, in painful detail, but can't move faster than a snail. I can see several rails, no doubt used for servicemen when repairing the monorail. I extend my arms toward them.
Just as my fingers wrap around them time and sound return. The loud whipping of the wind pops my eardrums and the pull of the monorail nearly dislocates my shoulders.
The wind tears at my eyes. I put my head down and notice I'm looking through the window at a family, children tucked safely within the arms of the parents. They look terrified. I climb forward, towards the doors I know there's an emergency open switch on them, just need to find it.
I pat around violently trying not to lose my grip of the railing. I feel something, smack it and hear a loud whoosh! sound. I manage to open one of my eyes and see the door is open, so I pull myself inside the train. I look back and press another button inside that shuts the door.
I look around people are staring at me.
"Hi." I wave. Then I hear someone scream from one of the cars ahead of me. I turn around and head towards the sound, pulling my revolver out. I follow the dumbfounded faces of the people the white wearing poor excuse for an assassin brushed past. I start jogging.
Just as I open the third door I see him.
"Hold it!" I scream, my revolver pointed at his back. He freezes and and stiffens, he must be six foot two inches tall, at least. His shoulders are narrow, basketball type.
"Turn around." I order him, he does. I can only see his wide jaw and white teeth smiling at me.
"Remove the hood and walk towards me, slowly." I order him. "And don't try anything funny, I've got you locked in my gaze." His smile widens and before I can react he lunges for a crumpled up newspaper. I fire, everyone in the car flinches except him. He lifts the cylindrical newspaper, his hand shaking vigorously. I watch in amazement as something seeps out of his palm, onto the newspaper, transforming it. I can't see what it is at first, but it only take a few seconds for me to figure it out.
"Everyone get out of this car!" I scream at the top of my lungs. "He has dynamite!" This triggers something inside of him, so he throws the sticks of dynamite at me, I can see the fuse is near it's end. There's no place for me to go, except out the window. So in that same slow motion dramatic action style I turn towards the window.
BANG!
I fire and the glass shatters into a million little pieces and I dive straight for it. Then everything gets quiet and there's a big flash of light. I can see the whole lake, like it was midday and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. Then I feel the heat and that's when the sound hits me.
Ear shattering doesn't exactly encompass the full extent of volume. And that was the last thing I remember, the flash of day light, the heat and the sound too loud for words.


"Hey, Buddy. Wake up!" I hear a voice say to me. I'm wet and it feels like I was run over by a truck. My ribs ache and I can hardly breathe. I try to get some stability and lift myself up but I feel dizzy. That dizziness you feel when you're losing blood or when you've gotten hit in the end hard, but not hard enough to knock you out.
"Whoa, old man!" The voice says. "Calm down, let me help you!" I feel someone's arms wrap around me and help me to my feet. I open my eyes and I see a young man, mid twenties standing next to me, I'm still in his arms.
"Hurph...stagga..." I can only manage to mumble and grunt.
"Haha, it's alright save your energy. Come on, let me take you some place not so, wet." He says, I surrender and let him carry me. "Wow, man. I've never seen anything like that. I mean I'm here doing some midnight fishing and then next thing I know, BANG! The monorail blows up and I watch something fly out and skip like a stone all the way to shore. Sorry, I couldn't get to you sooner all I've got is a row boat, but man, it's amazing you're even alive!" He says, I can hear the smile on his face. It's the size of a kid's on Christmas. "So, hey not to rush you, but what's your name? I gotta call someone to come get you, right?"
"Cuh...Cuh...Cutter." Is all I manage to spit out.
"Cutter? Sounds like a name to me. Ha! Well, Cutter it's a pleasure to meet you, I'm Dean. Chase Dean."
"Hamamh...hmmm..." I say, then I see a power pole and stop. There's a flyer on it with an insignia, the same insignia I saw on the white cloak of that poor excuse for an assassin. I tear the flyer off of the pole and start pointing at it.
"What? You wanna go to this? It's some kind of New Years Party, are you sure? I mean you DID just get launched out of a moving train."
I nod my head.
"Eh, alright. I guess I can't let you go alone, so I'll call a cab." We walked onto the sidewalk and Chase raised his arm. A faded rusty old cab stops in front of us, I can hear the engine steaming and snapping beneath the hood. We get inside and Chase tells the cab driver the address and we head off.
"Cutter, yeah I dunno what kind of guy you are, but you don't look like a cult member to me." Chase says.
"Wuh...wuh...what?" I say.
"Well, yeah. This is one of those places where they sacrifice people."
"WHAT!?" I shouted.
"What, dude!? Yeah, they kill people at these things. Look, it says "The Hand" that's that huge cult. You know, the ones who had that big scandal with killing all those homeless people." I try to tell him that we need to take them down, bring them to justice but I manage to do is scream an incoherent shriek.
"Here, dude. Here's some paper, write down what you're trying to say." Chase tells me.

"We need to bring those guys in!"

"To who? The cops? Yeah, what happens then? I bet they've got half the staff bankrolled!"

"Then we bring a more personal kind of justice to them."

"Cutter. This is a crazy idea...I'm in." He says with a smile. "Do you have any guns or anything?"
I nod and pull out my remaining revolver.
"It only has six bullets!" Chase says.

"Then six of those sons of bitches are going down."

"I like you, Cutter. A man who has nothing to lose really is fearless." I nod again.

"So what are you going to use?"

"I've gotta bottle of vodka and a handkerchief in my coat, I'm burning down the house."
The next thing I know, we're standing in front of a very long hallway, up to an enormous mansion. Inside every window is lit up, it looks like the view of a city when you're sitting on top of a mountain. We open the gate and start walking toward them. I can see a white golf cart driving toward us from the mansion. I get a hold of my revolver.
"Excuse me, this is a private party. We're going to have to ask you to leave. If you do not comply we will move to more hostile means of convincing you!" The man in the passenger seat says as they stop a few feet ahead of us. With th cover of the night I raise my gun and shoot them both in the head.
BANG!
BANG!
Nothing to it. I check the bodies, nothing but a few hundred bucks, two flashlights, and two walkie talkies.
"These could help us listen in on their strategies." Chase says as we toss the bodies out and drive up to the mansion in the golf cart. We reach the mansion and get out, no one is outside, which is odd. We enter.
The inside is massive, cathedral like with one big hallway going straight to the back of the place. Huge ceilings, gold everywhere, fancy paints hung on the walls, expensive furniture scattered all over.
"Wow, these people are loaded." Chase says as we walk down the main hallway. "Maybe there's like a big study or like a living room, wait what would rich people use as a living room? Like a court room or something?" I shrug, honestly I have no idea what the hell he's rambling about. We just keep walking straight down the hallway. Soon I see two people standing outside of a pair of magnificent double doors. I tap Chase and point.
"Yeah, that's not obvious at all." He says stuffing the handkerchief into the bottle. There's really no need to hide, this is a suicide mission anyway so I walk calmly up to the two guards with my revolver at my side.
"Hey, you two! What business do you have here?" The guard on the left asks. I raise my gun.
BANG!
I turn to the other who looks terrified.
BANG!
Four down, two to go.
We search the bodies, nothing of use as well. Chase opens the doors and gasps.
"Cutter!" He whispers. I stand next to him.
The doors reveal a gargantuan theater, the old kind, the kind you'd go watch a fancy ballet performance in. We're on the ground floor, every single face is looking at us, all of their pompous sneers, holding their expensive alcohol and completely oblivious, and the two of us are looking at the stage. On stage are three men sacrificing a group of young girls, each about nine to twelve years old. There are probably about twenty girls standing up there, each bound, black bags over their heads, and tied together in a line, leading up to their deaths.
The three men are tearing the clothes off of one of the girls and stabbing her repeatedly as she screams with every ounce of strength she has. One of the men throw another girl on the stage, her arms bound behind her back, ball gag in her mouth. She starts kicking her legs in a windmill type fashion, the man grabs her ankles and spreads her legs open. Even from this distance I can hear her trying to scream from behind the ball gag. The man starts thrusting into her and the audience starts to murmur, slowly their murmurs turn to cheers. Then the other man, after killing the first girl, walks over to the rape and gracefully slices his already bloody knife around the girl's throat. Her body convulses and a deep crimson floods from her glossy pale neck. The crowd goes wild. 
"This is not right." Chase says. He lights his molotov cocktail and I run as fast as I can to the stage. I'm saving these last two bullets for those monsters, and the last one is going to get the life choked out of him. I hear a gasp of dozens of people behind me and the shattering of glass, followed by that roar of flames. Then I hear the stampede.
People start flooding out of their seats, spilling their vodkas and their brandys as they try to escape the flames. I hear Chase screaming behind me, like a mad man blood-drunk, it makes me happy.
"All you bitches are gonna burn!" He screams.
I'm nearly there when I raise my revolver. I lock onto one of them.
BANG!
Another one.
BANG!
I throw my revolver to the side and leap onto the stage and sprint towards the last remaining monster. He spins around and catches me just as I slam into him. I feel a burning heat coming from my stomach and then I start to feel sick. I look down and see his knife in my stomach, he twists it and slides it up my chest. I see my guts spill onto the floor and...


-Sir Jestro