Six - part 3
by Koby McSlick

I sat in the furnace room of a nearby motel. I had brought in one of Big Jimmy Velenski's thugs I had picked up off the streets, not officially ‘legally' but he doesn't know that, he thought the drugs I had planted on him were his. Idiot. He sat there tied to a chair, staring at me with an arrogant look of disrespect on his face. I stood up, grabbed my wooden baseball bat from the table and wiped that look right off his face.

His face, drenched in blood, looked up at me from the chair in a mixed look of fear, disbelief and pain. He then made the biggest mistake of his life. It looked up at me slowly, grinned a now toothless smile and then spat in my face. I dropped the baseball bat and wiped the green gob of phlegm from my face and in one move picked up a lead pipe and splinted the scum's shins and then I kicked him square in the ribs. It coughed up blood all over my new, two-tone shoes as it fell, with its chair to the ground. I pulled out my knife, cut the bonds, lashing it to his chair and it slumped to the floor, a writhing mass of blood and pulp. After that, it spewed like a fat kid on a roller coaster. The thug told me everything I needed to know.

I drove to Big Jimmy Velenski's HQ, down by the docks. It was your typical abandoned warehouse. I turned off the headlights, piercing the dark: I wouldn't want them to see me coming.

I then opened my car door, went to the boot, opened it and took out two handguns, which I carefully put into my two shoulder holsters. I picked up my ‘persuader' shotgun, pumped it and stuffed about a dozen shells into my pockets. Not nearly enough, but I wasn't thinking straight at the time. I couldn't see anything but red and my blood was boiling. In a more comic situation I would say steam was coming from my ears, but this isn't funny. It's real life, and real life ain't that funny.

I walked over to the big double doors, and blew away two guards in one move. Suddenly the whole place exploded into a frenzy of Uzi sprays and Tommy gun fire, that lasted for fourteen minutes. Now, I don't know if you have ever been in a gunfight, it is nothing as glamorous as in the moving pictures, it is very loud and very tiring. Countless bullets zipped too close, past my ear. I took out 4 thugs and took one bullet skimming across my left arm creating a huge, nasty gash. I dived behind a crate, I ripped my blood stained shirtsleeve off and fastened it around my arm as a make shift gauze dressing. I took a peak over my crate and saw about thirty gangsters grabbing Tommy guns and lining up all along the second floor walkways and resting them on the railings aiming for yours truly's face.

I quickly crouched back down and looked around. How could I come so far and through so many things and die so quickly because of such a stupid mistake? Then something inside me woke up, something that had been lying there dormant. I can't describe to you what it was. You would have had to have been there. It was a feeling of hope, of believing, of passion and most of all of power. I will never feel that again and it pains me.

I scrambled out a cigarette from my top pocket, lit it with a match and then chucked it at a huge vat of oil, right beneath the supporting wires suspending the second floor walkways. I thank whatever power or luck, which had placed things where they were that night as other wise I would have surely died, either by a bullet or by slow and painful torture, much worse then I had inflicted to the thug earlier that day. Unfortunately the noise of the erupting oil and other such flammable gas which either killed the thugs or sent them plummeting to their doom destroyed my hearing, at the time I hadn't noticed the silence or the blood gushing from my ears till much later. I think the adrenaline pumping through my veins is what kept me going.

Anyway, I slowly got up as I was badly burnt and very injured as well as nearly being shot. I emptied my remaining shotgun shells into the bodies of the thugs who for some miracle survived both the explosion and the fall. I chucked my gun down and it made an echoing clanking sound as it hit the floor. I had to steady myself before I passed out. I was no super man, just a man hell bent on revenge.

I woke up at almost the same instant I hit the floor. I was not ready to die yet. I looked around me, there was now no way up to the control box where Jimmy Velenski undoubtedly sat, as I had just destroyed the whole of the second floor. Out of the corner of my eye I spied a roof access staircase. It was better than nothing, so I hurried up there as quickly as I could.

I got to the top and looked around and saw the skylight that led directly into Jimmy Velenski's office. I knew what I had to do. I produced the two pistols from my shoulder holsters and jumped. The glass splintered below my feet and I hurtled through it straight into Big Jimmy Velenski's office. The room was thrown into pandemonium. Thirty bullet filled seconds later and I was pointing my gun straight into the face of Big Jimmy V. His guards slumped down against the blood painted walls.

"You betrayed me. Not smart Velenski" I spat.

"Johnny was in the way, I assumed-" he began,

"Don't lie to me. I want the truth."

"It's about the 6 isn't it?" He asked calmly. He showed no sign of fear, even though I had just killed every man in the building, including his infamous personal bodyguards.

"You made me make a choice. I killed Sly. You made me chose the 6 over my own family!" I shouted.

"You knew this sort of thing would happen when you became the 6^th."

"But, you set me up, you made it so I had no choice. I-" I didn't bother to finish, it was something about the look he was giving me made me angry. The look of a man so full of hate, the look of a man who thinks he is superior in every way than you, more like a snake than a man does.

"Argghhhh!" he screamed as I kneecapped him.

"Shut up!" Tears were starting to form in my eyes, I could feel my grip on reality slipping. I was spinning out of control, I was past caring."

"You're c-crazy!" he stammered.

"You did this to me, you played with everything that happened. Why? WHY?" I screamed in his ear. I didn't know what I was saying, every bone in my body wanted to kill us both right then. It took every muscle to restrain myself. He took a pause to reassert himself back into his previous position of power and dominance. He didn't fool me though, I saw him wince in pain as he moved his leg. He would never walk properly again.

"You know why," he began more calmly, more sure of himself. "The 6 would never have survived unless arrangements were made. Besides we needed to test you," he said with a subtle grin.

I polled back the gun hammer and pointed the nozzle right in his face.

"Test this," I said.

If the story had ended there it would have been a happy ending and I would not be who I am now and where I am today. Unfortunately, I am myself here today and the ending to this story is not happy.

I couldn't pull the trigger, Jimmy was smiling at me with no shame whatsoever on his face.

"You are not going to shoot me," he said.

"Are you sure?" I questioned in an attempted mocking voice. But he was right, no matter how much confidence I mustered, I could not pull the trigger.

"You already chose whether you would shoot me when you killed Sly. You chose the 6, you chose..." He leaned forward to make full affect of the statement. "ME! You chose me and I own you now, and you have just proved it, so put your gun away, no one else is getting shot tonight," he joked, looking around his room in which a huge pile of dead bodyguards had previously been standing.

He was right. No matter how little sense it makes to you, it was true. I am sworn to secret and so there are many things in my tale, which I may not reveal. No matter how little sense it makes to you, it was true. I felt like I had sold my soul. I felt every last shred of my hopes, beliefs and dreams rip from me and shatter.

I lowered my guns. I had lost.

FIN