A Love Gun Saga

Darkness embraced the city in its veiling wrap. The carpet of darkness unspooled over the sky, leaving but one rent in its fabric and out of this chink escaped a bright and surprised halo of light called the moon. Smoldering the darkness with its intensity, it cloaked the city with partial light. If we are to leave this raging war, whose magnitude has bored the people to such extents that they had ceased watching its combatants bleeding it out for sovereignty. Down below, in the bosom of the earth, a buzzing, pulsating city engulfed in its own mechanical preoccupations existed, undaunted by the sparkles manufactured by the battle above. The condensed air swirled around bridled for fear of losing the orb called decency. In this city, there were a hundred edifices, describing each own would take a considerable amount of my time and would as well be irrelevant. A particular building rooted a particular side of a particular corner of an alley commanded my interest. For Stoopy aka Pickwick was there, or so I was told. The origin of the name I do not know, maybe someone scrutinized his appearance gave him that name, or maybe who observed his enemies state after a confrontation gave him that name. Whatever the case, I decided it was of no great importance for they could be changed at any stage. I now entered the building.
As one would expect upon entering a pub, the smell of booze hung high accompanied by the vision of swirling smoke. Waitresses were according to the men’s wishes (literally in some cases), the proprietor stretched a smile across his face as he sapped money from many a inebriated. There in the centre of the bar, yet a remote island apart sat Stoopy in deep cogitation. I wound through the crowd to the very place he occupied, perched upon a chair opposite to his. He acknowledged my arrival with nothing more than a glance (which was rather insulting). He continued pumping out smoke, building rather intricate designs that were a product of practice.
“So, what have you decided”, I asked, my hands rapping the table (partly to mask the tremble)
He brought the cigar dangerously close to my hands, I drew my hands out of its trailing path and almost grimaced, but stifled at the last moment.
“What do you want?”, he asked with practiced nonchalance.
“Money and I give you the girl”, I said, slightly inflecting my tone higher to hold a shard of command.
“I want to see her first”, he said, his hands planting the cigar into his slightly parted lips
A shrill whistle pierced sharply the languorous kerfuffle of the liquorices. A man of considerable bulk responded to my whistle and opened the backdoor of the bar. There gagged and bound by ropes stood a girl, only her eyes betraying courage for her frail body was literally trembling from the icepack stuffed in her ribs (as a method to make pungent the already drifting freeze).
Stoopy’s eyes travelled to Mr. Bulky (for his name I knew not and I did not plan a tea with him either). It stopped on the knife pressed against the girl’s throat threatening to slit it with a single swipe. Stoopy made his first move and brandished a gun against me under the table.
“I am not one of them”, I said slightly quivering.
He immediately drew his gun away. His brows furrowed a bit but made it back before it reached perceptible limits. He lay the briefcase on the table and worded, “You may count it”, he said, his voice slightly withdrawn. Stoopy dropped the charred cigarette and stamped it with retreating authority. To be frank, I was surprised, Mr. Pickwick, the critically acclaimed detective cum brute was suckered by a simple connivance such as this, I could not buy it. Yes, the trick was new, dispatching an outsider into the field of exchange, but how could any plan go unnoticed to this man, maybe he was really aging. I took the briefcase and unlatched it, inside instead of the stacks of cash I was expecting were reams of paper, one of which was enveloped. He motioned me to go on. With a slight sense of dread insinuating me, I unfolded it.
“You had a daughter didn’t you , a daughter you lost in a carnival, if yes then turn on, if no then, below the parchments there is the real cash, pocket it and leave”,
This blew me out of shallow waters and sent crashing pincers of nostalgia. Flashes took over my vision, envisaging a trailer of a chunk of my own piece of my life. I gripped the paper for a second, then as inconspicuously as I could, ruffled over the parchment. There again was scrawled,
“Well, if you have turned the page, then you are trying to bartend your lost daughter. Do not panic just yet the gun is still under the table. Fold the suitcase and take it as you go. If the articulation is predictable, you will have to hand him the suitcase. Pocket the gun and just as he takes the suitcase fire at him. I will handle the charges; I will negate them on self-defense. If you concur with the plan then take the gun if no, it is your daughter not mine’,
That was the last straw, I could not help riling, but kept my shock in the incubator, I had to convert it into angst, I knew but how could you with your palms quaking. I turned around and saw the guard impending his knife against my daughters throat, threatening to end her chapter with one gratuitous sweep. I seriously did not know, if Mr.Stoopy was telling the truth. I knew that murdering one of Kangar’s men would have wide-ranging repercussions. Just when I was on the brink of declining, I noticed the mole on the child’s cheeks. That was when anger came gushing through my emotions, my wife, she had a mole right there. At that moment, I realized that it did not really matter, for if Stoopy had a faltering candor than I would just stop being a puppet in another grand scheme driven by avarice. With my hand trembling (more out of anger), I grasped the gun, my knuckles turning bone-white. Stoopy smoothed it, relaying that the job was of subtlety, he was making it easier for me. I silently mouthed a thanks, I knew not if that would have involved a slight straining of muscle in my temple further ending in conveying the guard that some kind of secret communion was passing between us. I cared not, I was blinded by the bliss of retribution. I turned around, and with none of the fieriness from my eyes wiped, signaled a thumbs-up to the guard.
With the pistol tucked under my voluminous coat, I started advancing towards the guard. He stood there, rearing to get a hand on the briefcase; his eyes were ringed with lust. He slowly drew the knife out of my daughter’s throat and stretched his palm out for the suitcase. This was where I was out of maneuvers, I did not know the correct sequence of action, whether to give him the suitcase and fire at him with my faculties at speed, or just pull it off with the element of surprise at my side. I gave the suitcase more out of the lack of time than out of prudency. The second he took it, my hands were rummaging the pockets of my coat. It was a fleeting second, but infinitely liquid in the eyes of the guard. The moment, he saw the slick black sheen of the gun emerging from my pocket, he kicked me and his hands were back to my daughters neck, this time half plunged. I stumbled back, but was back within a matter of milliseconds. I converted my retarded motion and propelled myself onto him. Along with my lunge, a discernible staccato burst out triggered from my gun. Why I had not shot it the moment he kicked I knew not, maybe it was the necessity to vent my outrage at his trying to dagger my daughter. At the same moment, the security lashed the knife at me. Both the bullet and the knife impregnated their target fleshes, slicing out the skin according to their own whims. The second the cold edge of the word spliced my skin, I knew I was a goner, at the same time, when the gunshot that was a cosmic boom amongst the riveting silence our strife commanded dove into his flesh, the guard knew. At that second when both of us collapsed, our demises the results of the bonds we had entwined ourselves with, one of sublime purity, the other of profound instinct. We thanked mutually, for we had both just liberated ourselves from such shackles, for however divine these ties are they just entangles us in a thousand loops. With that word of thanks that defined the motive of our lives, we crashed hard against the mosaic. I knew not if blood started stagnating around our heads, or whether it was another cliché, I was no more interested, for I had discovered the bliss of oblivion.