The Book of Practical Kills

Chapter 3: Now or Never

I'm dead. I just know that I'm dead. I can't hear anything, can't see anything, let alone feel anything. Guy thought he could outsmart me, but he was wrong. I shot the last bullet, and now the gun is useless. There's nothing Guy can do with it now.

He can't kill me with it.

He can't take over the world.

I started to wonder where I would be when I woke up. Would I wake up in front of a big, giant golden gate, standing at the Big Man's feet? Or, instead, would I start to feel heat across my skin, the smell of burning flesh just begging to make me vomit.

Assuming from how jerky I began to feel, I took it that I was going straight down to Hell. But why? I did nothing wrong; I practically did the right thing! Now, since one gun was useless, Guy couldn't take over the world anymore. He would no longer become another Hitler.

I began to jerk some more. My side was penetrated by a metal wall, and as I started to cry in pain, I heard a muffled voice. Someone else was on the van to Hell, too.

As the pain left my body, I sat up against the wall. There was going to be a bruise there in the morning, but accepting the fact that I was going to Hell, I didn't even bother worrying about it. Bruises would be the last thing I needed to worry about, anyway.

The muffled voice soon turned into a scream, a scream that was crying for help, but I didn't know where it was coming from. It could have just been my imagination playing with my head, something that happens when you're in deep shit. It plays games with you, pretending that everything is peachy keen, but then you face reality. But my reality is death.

I jerked again. Something fell from God knows what and hit my bruise. Pain emited throughout my neurons, and in that moment I cursed that I have neurotransmitters. My screams blended with the muffled shouts, piercing my ears.

Before I got it together, I placed the palm of my hand on my bruise and applied pressure. I kept the screams to myself, and spoke to whoever was in the same van that I was in.

"Who's there?" I asked, but no one answered. Whoever was in the van possibly didn't hear me, because even I couldn't recognize my voice. Usually, in an eclosed space, voices would echo off the walls, but nothing happened here. I tried again, louder this time, though. "Who's there?"

A muffled reply.

"What's your name?"

Again, a muffled reply.

Since I wasn't going to get much out of whoever it was in the van, I gave up. Why they couldn't continue a conversation was out of my range. They must've be one of those deaf people who have never heard their voice before, and are afraid to.

Then a lightbulb blinked in my mind. The girl who was in Guy's van, she was tied up and was being gagged. Could she be on her way to Hell, also? Or was I not dead?

I threw my back off the wall, hand still placed on mybruise, and crawled over to where I knew the little girl would be. The ride was still jerky, so as I found the adjacent wall, my knee scraped across something sharp.

My hand brushed over a hairless leg, and at that moment I started to search for her mouth. By accident, I traced my hand over her breast, and quickly retreated. You fucking pedophile!  The voice rang in my head like a bell. Flashes of a scene flew across my mind. It couldn't be... was I really not dead? If I was, I certainly was a pedophile at this point.

When I found what was gagging her, I removed it from her mouth. Her breath smelled like she hadn't brushed her teeth in two days, but that didn't desist me from interrogating her.