The Crown | myg

nine

To hold up my reputation, I arrive at the place of our dinner reservation a few minutes before the hour, not wanting to show up at a random time. Never in my entire career have I been late, nor shown up at a weird time, to something like this. It wouldn't look good to others.

The moment the clock strikes the hour, I find myself already standing by the door to his house with my duffel bag sitting by my feet. With gentle force, I tap the dark oak door a few times before stepping back and waiting for it to be answered.

Within mere seconds, the door to the large home has been opened and an older woman in a maid uniform emerges from behind the large wooden rectangle.

"Miss. Lee," the maid says in a kind tone, eyeing me over once before taking in a deep sigh. "It's been a while since I've seen you."

"I'm sorry we had to meet again while I'm on business," I say in a sincere tone.

"You have a dinner reservation."

It's not a question, she knows everything about the man she works for and everything about the jobs that he and I do. With kind eyes, she steps to the side and gestures for me to walk inside.

Grabbing my bag, I step into the building and stand in the foyer, hoping there are further instructions from the man who sent me here.

"He isn't here, Miss," the maid says with a kind tone. "He told me that you know what you're doing, so he doesn't need to be here to watch you."

I nod.

"Basement."

"Thank you," I say kindly before walking across the house to the dark stairway that leads into the cement basement of the large mansion.

As I enter the room, I pull a mask over my face to protect my nose from the rotting smell emitting itself from the few corpses scattered throughout the room. Knowing exactly what I'm meant to do, I drop my bag onto the floor and unzip the zipper to pull out exactly what I need.

With my body covered in a full-body hazmat suit, a mask, goggles, and gloves, I begin by gathering the bodies and moving them to one pile in the corner of the room where the washtub is. Silently, knowing exactly how to dispose of such a mess using only a washtub of this make, I walk back to my bag and grab my beloved power saw, a smile spreading onto my face as I listen to it purr.

Before I even think about using this saw on the corpses, I place down some tarp just to make my job a little easier, though I knew what I was getting myself into when I made this a part of my life all those years ago.

With the tarp sectioning off part of the basement, I crouch on the floor beside the pile of corpses and silently curse at myself for not bringing a thicker mask with me. Taking a deep breath of the air above me, I turn on my power saw and begin to slice through the rotting flesh and bones of the poor people who faced their inevitable fate much too early.

"Miss. Lee," the maid speaks as she walks down the stairs of the basement, keeping her distance as to not smell or see the mess. "Would you care for a snack? I made freshly tossed salad and lemonade."

"Thank you so much, Loren," I smile as I remove the mask from my face and leave the secluded walls of the tarped off spot in the far corner of the basement.

Loren waits at the bottom of the stairs with a tray in her hands, a large bowl of fresh caesar salad and a large glass of lemonade sitting on top. Before I take the tray from her, I pull the blood covered gloves off of my hands and put them into the pocket of my hazmat suit, not wanting to get blood on her or anything else.

"I'll bring up the dishes later on," I smile as I take the tray from her hands.

Loren lets out a deep sigh and her shoulders slouch as if a weight has been lifted off of them. "Thank god, this place gives me the creeps. I don't like coming down here."

"It much scarier beyond the tarp," I say in a calm tone, gesturing over my shoulder to the tarps hanging from the ceiling.

With a silent look over my shoulder, Loren nods awkwardly before turning away from me and walking back up the stairs and into the normal part of the place.

After inhaling the salad and chugging down the lemonade, I snap my gloves and mask back into place before walking back to the crime scene. To be honest, it looked better before I got here. Afterall it was just a few dead bodies at that point, right now, however, it's the same dead bodies, but they're partially chopped up and dismembered.

The fun and hard part ends in about an hour, having to cut through bones and pounds of flesh is not quite easy when it's one body. There's no exception for when it's four bodies. Four bodies of extremely muscular men.

If this were a normal job with someone I was unfamiliar with, I would bring my own bucket made of special material. Instead, having worked in this basement multiple times, I know that the washtub in here is made of chlorosulfonated polyethylene, meaning that the chemical I use to break down the corpses won't eat through the washtub and destroy the floor beneath it.

With all of the bits and pieces of these men crammed into a single washtub, I waltz over to my bag and grab a few bottles of hydrofluoric acid and a gas mask from within it before returning back to the tub and crouching on the floor beside it.

I let out a deep sigh before removing of the thin mask and replacing it with the gas mask so I don't inhale the chemicals I'm about to pour.

The room has been so silent for so long that the crack of the seal breaking on the bottles nearly causes me to jump. I roll my eyes at myself before emptying three bottles into the corpse-filled tub.

Smoke quickly rises from the tub and a loud, yet calming, sizzling sound fills my ears, adding a calm feeling to the dark room. As I wait for the chemicals to completely dissolve the remains, I stand up and begin to remove the tarp and clean up any blood that has made its way outside of its boundaries.

I haven't missed this job, but I've built a reputation around it, and a lot of people trust me. They would pay anything just to make a dinner reservation with me.