Destination Nowhere

This is Fiction

I don't use them. I score them for a middleman on the upper north side of the city. I guess that makes me a middle, middle man. Okay, I lie. I did use them once, but it wasn't to my liking. Synthetic H. The mechanised, fake heroin. The primary ingredient is the melted microchips that run Swiss watches. The modern watches, not the old ones. That's why there are so many daylight robberies of jewellery stores. We’re not doing it to sell the merch on the street, I can assure you. You get more from a watch by smelting it down.

It's a good thing I didn't get hooked either.

Tommy Petronelly used synthetic H once and didn't get off the train again until the day he died, which was three months later, and as a result of the stuff. The doctors said he had more metal in his liver than a steel fence and if he were still breathing, he could piss out a sword.

So it goes, I guess.

Where was I? Oh yeah, so I was the middleman, and it was my job to make sure the product was brought up from our factories across the rivers. I use the term factories lightly. They were really converted basements and unused apartments in abandoned buildings. I had to bring the stuff up and make sure it was distributed on the streets. I took the profits and made sure the local dealers got their piece, then took the remainder to the main man on the upper north. From there, I got my bit. But only after all of those wheels had been turned first.

So one day, this new kid arrives on the block, fresh out of the can, and he decides he's going to have a crack at our turf. Not all of it, but a block or two down south where the city meets the Point Junction Bridge. He's selling synthetic at a cheaper rate and lapping up all of our old business. So our main guy sends me down there to take care of it.

Now, to take care of it means exactly what you think it means.

I am to remove this person from the face of the earth. Now I know that I have never personally taken another life, well, not knowingly. Of course, there's the small matter of all the death caused by the synthetic H that came from my business dealings… We’ll come to that. But I'm talking about actively taking a life. I hadn't done that yet.

I was prepping myself for the possibility of it, don't get me wrong. We weren’t exactly running a daycare centre here. But it was a while before those services requiring that special touch was called upon.

So anyway, that's how it goes.

Where was I? Yeah, I didn't know what the fuck I was doing, and my grand plan was to drive up to the building where this kid lived and knock on the next-door neighbour's door at three in the morning and tell them I was Uncle Vinny, my car broke down, and I needed to call the car company to get a ride back into the city and yadda yadda yadda. I thought I could be convincing when I needed to.

So I drive out there, just as I said, and I make my way into the building, just as I said. I find the door to the apartment right next door and knock at three in the morning. A tiny voice answers on the other side. It's a young girl, and I can tell she's scared.

Remember, this is right next door to my guy, the one I'm meant to take out. I wanted to get inside her apartment and wait until morning when he was leaving to start the day, and then unload my weapon on him while he wasn’t suspecting.

So anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, she's all nervous.

"Who is it?" she's asking.

I tell her it's Uncle Vinny, my car broke down, yadda yadda yadda. I'm thinking right away, I fucked this up. There's no way she's going to open the door. No way. On top of that, I've probably woken up my old friend next door, and he's probably watching me through the peephole with a gun ready to unload on me.

Then the next thing I know, the door opens, and this little girl is standing right there in her nightgown. She's almost shivering; she's so cold. And you know what she says to me? In the most unconvincing way possible, she says,

"Okay, come on inside, go ahead and use my phone," she says.

And me, like the idiot that I am, I walk right inside and close the door behind me. And who is standing right there with a knife in his hand? My old friend from next door. Turns out he was seeing her in secret. She didn’t want her husband to know, and the husband was out of town.

I didn't even see him when he lunged at me with the blade. I felt it plunge right into my heart, and that was that. I was out.

So it goes.

Now, where was I? Oh yeah. So the rest is how you know it. I got sent here. Not paradise and not damnation. A sort of purgatory. Well, not sort of… that’s exactly it. Purgatory. Too sinful to enter paradise, not sinful enough to be cursed for my deeds for eternity.

So yeah, as it goes, the powers that be give you the option of changing your circumstances if you tell all of the stories of your life, but the catch is, you have to do it in the most objective way possible. No lies. No embellishments.

So here is story number one, I guess. I am pretty sure I told it as is. I admit that it was my intention to kill him. Okay, that I didn’t brush over. You can't punish me for that.

Tomorrow I guess I'll tell another, and then another, and another until you decide I have said enough and will consider moving me on.

I guess by that stage I will want a decision on my eternity made, and I probably won't care if it's hot or mild. Just get me somewhere. Stop leaving me hanging. Give me a final destination.

So it goes, for now. Same time tomorrow, I guess.