I flipped the coin.
Heads.
I looked around, resigned to my fate. Somehow it always ended up this way. The clink of metal against smooth cement floors, the head of Abraham Lincoln taunting me. Maybe it was my destiny to always have shit luck. But it was most likely because I had a defective coin. The Senate did that to us sometimes if they deemed someone as more than just a weapon. We were useful, we were able to kill without constant guidance, we were smart and we knew it.
We could flip a coin to decide what to do with their lives. Heads they died, tails they didn't. A coin kept us trusting that they trusted us. A coin decided the life or death of many people. A coin gave me a decision. Or it would if I hadn't gotten a trick coin.
"We have to do this. Luck wasn't on her side today."
"I know." Beet, my partner was right. Luck wasn't on this lady's side today, nor would it ever again. Honestly, she didn't deserve a chance at luck.
"She kidnapped two kids and raped them before killing them."
"I know."
She did horrible things to those children. Their parents had been searching for months. Months were a long time when people usually died at thirty.
Beet's heavy boots ground the woman's head into the sand, and she cried out in pain.
"You don't want to kill ever since that man was found innocent."
"I know."
I cringed at the memory. My gun down his throat as he choked on it. He pleaded innocent, but everything pointed to him. Then a week later another man confessed to framing him, showing us the missing pieces that would have proven the dead man was telling the truth. But my hands had still pulled the trigger on a victim of deceit. I had cried the tears that the dead man couldn't. He didn't even have a name when he died.
"She even confessed. There's a ton of evidence. She told us she was guilty."
"I know."
Beet looked at me with a mixture of pity and irritation on her face. Her blonde hair was sticking to her skin with an adhesive-like substance that was made of sweat and mud.
I was so clean compared to her, but I felt so dirty. So very dirty. His blood was still on my hands, his brain was still splattered on my shirt.
Beet sighed as she saw my memories pass along my face.
"Hye, you need to do this. We're reapers, we get rid of criminals."
"I know."
I took out my gun and pointed it at the woman's head. Tears were streaming down from both our eyes. Beet put her mask on. The reapers' masks were gold plated and each person's were different.
Beet had a golden beetle's face covering her own.
My face was covered by a gleaming dog-like hyena's.
"We're all girls here. They were brats, they deserved what they got! It's not like they lived long enough t-!"
My life was permanently covered with the iron red blood of others, but none of them were children. The blood was nameless, but these children had families.
I still cringed as the bullet shot through her head.
God, I felt guilty.
"She deserved it."
"I know."
I put the gun to my temple. I flipped a coin.
Tails.
