Slicky Boys

9

The killer crept from shadow to shadow as silently as the night itself. Charcoal smeared his face, and his black clothing made him almost invisible.

It was warm in the midnight alleys. Summertime. Crickets chirped from a row of quivering elms across a broad expanse of road; the raw dampness of the River Han filled his nostrils.

At the back wall of the yoguan, the killer grabbed a drainage pipe and probed with his foot until he found a toehold in the brick. In the moonlight he hoisted himself up, inching skyward like a huge, lethal spider.

He passed two windows, making no sound. When he reached the third floor, he paused. Listening.

Heavy breathing. Moans.

“Yobo. Dasi hanbon.” Lover. Once again.

Repeated over and over by a woman’s voice. A voice the killer knew only too well.

Straining with the massive muscles of his neck and arms, the killer pulled himself higher and peered through the open window, past a curtain of fluttering silk.

The light of the moon shone into the room, bathing the two bronzed bodies in a golden, almost holy glow. He saw her face beneath the man’s shoulder, her eyes pinched closed, her mouth cooing soothing words as she ran the long fingers of her soft hands over his back.

Hands that had once touched me, the killer thought.

How many months had she lied to him? Too many. Probably from the very beginning.

The rage bubbled up from his gut like lava exploding from a volcano. Still, his years of training kept his movements deft and silent.

He crawled into the room.

For a time the lovers didn’t notice him. They were still too far away, still enfolded in their cocoon of ecstasy. The killer placed himself at the foot of the bed, feet spread shoulder-width apart, watching.

The woman noticed him first. Her eyes popped open. She pushed up on her lover’s shoulders, unable to say anything-unable to scream. The lover twisted his head, grunting, and then his eyes widened in shock, finally spotting the dark monster looming over them in the shadows.

Before they could move, the killer’s fist shot out like a bolt of black-gloved lightning. The lover’s head snapped back. He rolled off the woman, a lewd slushing “pop” ringing through the room as he slid out of her body.

The woman screamed. The killer backhanded her with his ironlike knuckles.

The lover was on all fours now, shaking his head, moaning, but when he started to rise to his feet, the killer shot forward, jabbing his fingers brutally into the man’s neck. Slicing deeper, gripping flesh, he jerked backward with all his strength. The lover’s throat flopped out onto his naked chest.

Blood splattered everywhere. Against the wall, onto the sheets, along the outstretched arms of the screaming woman.

Choked by her own terror, still, the woman’s body moved. Clutching at a blanket. Kicking back toward the open window.

As her spine slid over the wooden sill, the killer grabbed her feet and shoved. The woman fell backward, thudding against brick outcroppings on the side of the building and finally smashing, headfirst, into the street below.

Bone cracked.

She lay silent in the alley. A naked doll, twisted and broken.

The killer shuddered, his body aflame, his manhood engorged and stiff.

People were awake all through the building now. Many of them screamed, and screamed again. Louder and louder. The killer stood by the window, gazing down on the snapped body beneath him in the street. Blood dripping from his hands. Confused.

Why didn’t they stop screaming?

The killer jerked bolt upright on his sleeping mat, kicking back the sweaty comforter.

“Yoboseiyo. Shikkuro. Choyong-hei choral” Hello. It’s too noisy. Quiet down!

He hopped to his feet, instinctively crouching in a fighting stance. His eyes scanned the darkness. Walls, a sleeping mat, a small cabinet, cold air seeping in through a crack in the window.

Not summer anymore. Winter. Outside the steamed window, snow drifted on a sea of tile roofs. He was in a room he had rented last night. Quickly, he groped in the dark. His clothes were here, his money, the knife. It came back to him now. He was safe. The woman pounding on the door was the owner of this rat-infested hovel.

He cleared his throat and spoke.

“Arraso.” I understand.

The owner’s footsteps pounded down the hallway. The killer listened at the door for a moment to make sure she was gone.

Bending down, he grabbed the o-kang, the porcelain pee pot, held it pressed against his thighs, and took a leak. When he was finished, he replaced the lid and shoved the o-kang back into the corner. He squatted back down on the sleeping mat.

The same dream. Over and over. How many times? How long would it haunt him?

He checked the time on the clock radio. Zero five hundred. An hour past curfew.

The killer slipped on his clothes, wiped his face with a damp hand towel, reached under the comforter, and examined the knife. It was long, wickedly curved at the end. The handle wrapped in leather, the steel honed to a razor-sharp edge. Fine workmanship. A Gurkha knife. From Nepal.

Using the hand towel, he carefully wiped off the tiny flecks of blood that still remained. He slipped the knife in his belt behind his back and let his shirt hang loosely over it.

Before leaving, he checked the room to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything. He wouldn’t be back.

Outside, bundled up in his down-lined jacket, his feet crunched in the snow on the dark, almost deserted roads. Scattered flurries of flakes powdered the city. Rats scurried off the sidewalk at his approach and disappeared into broad trenchlike gutters covered with perforated cement block.

He should’ve ditched the knife last night, he thought, but he hadn’t been thinking clearly. Too exhausted by the fight.

He shook his head. Not professional. Not professional at all. He’d allowed the fight to go on too long.

He remembered the terror in the Englishman’s eyes. He could taste it on his tongue. The delicious terror. The sure knowledge that he was going to die.

The killer fed off of it again, closing his eyes, reliving the final agony of the dying Brit.

He walked for almost a half hour in the darkness until he was two blocks from the site where he’d killed the Englishman. In the distance, blue and red lights flashed. Emergency vehicles.

He found a deserted alley, crouched, and dropped the knife into a rock-lined sewage ditch. The knife fell, cracked a thin layer of ice, and splashed into the filthy water below.

The killer straightened and walked away. They’d find the knife. No matter, he thought. They’d never find him.

An old woman pushing a cart laden with steaming chestnuts trundled past him. She stared into his eyes and, her face filling with fright, turned away.

The killer smiled to himself.

Terror. Everywhere he went. Terror.

But no time for that now. He had work to do. So much work to do.

His heavy boots plowed through the growing drifts.