“You have a bag over your head, right?”
“Y-yeah…”
“So why the hell would I tell you where we are going?”
Vortecx couldn’t argue with that logic, honestly. But when you find yourself in a situation like this, well, you don’t really have much logic to rely on.
“Let me give you some advice,” the voice said. “I’m a person willing to tie you up, blindfold you and chuck you in the back of a van. If I’m a person willing to do that, nothing you could say or do is going to deter me from whatever it is I’m planning on doing. It’s just going to piss me off. You’re still alive, which means I’m not planning on killing you. So just be quiet and… I don’t know, think happy thoughts or something.”
Vortecx pondered on this for a while. The voice made some very good points after all. After what seemed like a half-hour more of driving, the van pulled to a stop and shut off. Vortecx considered screaming for help, but the voice had given the impression that Vortecx wasn’t about to die. Best to not test his luck.
“You smoke?” the unknown man said.
“S-sometimes…”
“You want one?”
“Y-yes… p-please, S-sir…”
“I’ll make you a deal. I’m gonna lift up your hood, and put a cigarette in your mouth. In return, you are gonna sit there, shut up and listen carefully to everything I’m about to say. Alright?”
“I p-promise, Sir!” Vortecx responded as plainly as possible.
He heard the sound of a small cardboard box peeling open, and light paper sliding out. This was followed by a match scratching roughly against an abrasive surface and the smell of smoke being coaxed out. Seconds later, the hood was lifted up just enough to free his mouth. He felt the business end slide between his lips, which he accepted gratefully.
“Remember your promise?” the voice asked.
“Y-yes sir.”
“I was supposed to kill you… same as Jakob. We had plans for the Mad Bunny that didn’t include any of the rest of you. He’s dead now… I shot him. Right through the head.”
Vortecx shuddered visibly as the hair on the back of his neck stood up, “Oh god.” he thought, “Oh my god, he’s going to kill me.”
“It was easy to do,” he continued. “No one liked that perverted little prick. Him and his stupidity… I don’t normally enjoy killing people, and I didn’t enjoy killing him, but I did enjoy finally having a moment’s peace without listening to his idiotic drivel. It’s different with you, though. You never caused me any trouble whatsoever… neither you nor Vivika. You two were always easy to deal with. You just sat around, playing your instruments like good little children, not asking any obvious questions. For that, I want to thank you.”
Vortecx began to cry. He didn’t say anything… not a damn word. But he wanted to scream his bloody guts out in the hopes that anyone might come to his rescue. Yet something else began to pull at him… some familiarity of some sort, “I know that voice…”
“So, here is what I’m going to do. If you promise me that you will sing my little song, I will let you go. You will have a fancy new life on the west side of the Wall. You can go anywhere you want to go, do anything you want to do. You can take those bright, liberal ideas of yours and use your musical gifts to spread them all over the world. I’ll even sweeten the deal and leave you with a few-hundred marks so you can get an apartment… one of those fancy artist squats right next to the Wall, so you can stare at it like everyone else. Maybe write some stupid song about it. Maybe build a career of idolizing the damn thing after hating it for most of your life.
“The only thing you have to do for me is tell everyone that you escaped. Tell everyone that you made it over the wall. Tell everyone that the second the show was over, you made a run for it… and then conveniently forget about me, this van, or anything associated with it. That’s all you have to do, and you have your freedom. Can you agree to that?”
“Y-yes S-sir… I p-promise!” Vortecx swore.
“Hold on a second,” the voice said. Then, he heard a strange sound, like a small length of metal sliding against another before slamming back into place. He assumed it was a knife, or part of the vehicle or something, but when a cold steel rod was pressed against his temple, and he felt the hollowness…
“Oh God it’s a gun.” he screamed at himself, “Oh god… oh god, he’s got a gun.”
“I really want to get my point across here,” the voice said plainly. “Because here’s the thing: if I don’t kill you, I have to spend the rest of my life worrying about you opening your mouth. That could jeopardize my safety.”
“I promise! I’ll keep your secret!! I promise!”
“You don’t think I care even the slightest bit about you, do you?”
“S-sir?”
“Jakob was the first person I’ve killed, believe it or not. Honestly, I didn’t think I would care all that much. Especially since I didn’t like him.” With this, his voice raised up humorously, “But what do you know? Surprise, surprise… I actually don’t like killing! Do you think that’s bad?”
“I… I…”
“Don’t worry about answering that.” he laughed, “So, here’s where the rubber meets the road. I don’t like killing… but I do like being alive. And I care far less about you than I do about how much I dislike killing. So…”
V-ortecx heard a heavy click towards the back of the gun, and he shuddered… “Oh god, here it is. I’m dead.” Yet nothing happened. Nothing at all.
“So, I have your word, then?” the voice menaced. “You will sing my song and disappear and never again be my problem?”
“Yes! Y-yes sir! You have my word! I swear to you!” He swore with every ounce of his being that he would do that and anything else he asked of him. No matter what it was, if it meant one more day of freedom, dammit, he would follow through.
“Good!” the voice said. “I’m going to cut your binds now. Don’t squirm, okay?”
Vortecx felt a rough sawing against his feet. Second by second, millimeter by millimeter until finally his feet moved free. He tested his mobility at first, then remembered to lay still.
“Once I cut your hands free, I want you to count to two-hundred. Then, you are free to leave. Your money will be in the passenger’s seat.”
“Th-thank you s-sir! Th-thank you s-so much!”
“Don’t mention it.”
Vortecx waited for the sawing-feeling to appear on the binds that wrapped around his wrists, “Freedom! Sweet freedom!” he thought to himself with barely stifled excitement. But when he heard what sounded like a loud, quick burst of air blowing through a nozzle right next to his ear, and felt a heavy, head-achy pressure on the back of his head that began to spread like a warm, sticky sensation between his ears…
“Ugh.” Patrick thought to himself as he rubbed his face roughly. The stink of gunpower and scent of newly exposed human flesh crept into his nostrils with a wet, sickening sweetness that clung to the back of his throat. “Why do I have to do all of the work around here?”
As he looked down at the lifeless body of this strange little man, with all of his strange little ideas now leaking out all over the interior of the vehicle, it all seemed less surreal than he figured it would be. Jakob really had been the first person he had ever killed—directly, at least. Patrick had figured that he would lose something—a part of his soul, or something of some religiously-similar quality. He figured that somehow he would feel a little lighter. A little darker perhaps. Strangely enough, though, none of it was true. He felt absolutely nothing. No disgust, no fear, no sense of impending doom, no feeling that his name was being scratched off of some deity’s list… nothing. At least, nothing meaningful. And now that he had killed a second person, he felt even less.