The Killing Hour

Feldman lives in a single-storey townhouse, twenty years old, maybe thirty. The lawns need mowing and the garden is in disrepair but the house looks like any other in the street, well kept and tidy. Most killers have pretty average lifestyles. Steady jobs too. Sometimes they’re even living the family life – white picket fence and a four-door sedan.

The curtains are closed and there are no lights. No car in the driveway. He finishes his cigarette, feeling his lungs relax. He thinks about the crowbar in the boot of his car. The effort to break open the back door would be minimal and, without a warrant, also illegal. That’s the problem with the law. Criminals break it all day long, but God-forbid a cop bends a rule. He’s standing outside the home of a guy who isn’t home, a guy who took the lives of two women, and there isn’t anything he can do about it.

He stubs the cigarette butt into the ground and walks over. He waits two minutes at the door after knocking loudly but nobody answers. He considers asking the neighbours if they’ve spoken to Feldman, but doesn’t want to risk them alerting Feldman that he’s wanted for questioning. He walks around the house, peering through the windows but can’t get an angle past any curtains. Back in his car he dials Feldman’s number on his cellphone. Nobody answers. The guy doesn’t even have a machine.

He either has to wait for Feldman to show up or go and get a warrant. At this time of the night the only judge he can find will be a severely pissed-off judge. Best to wait. The longer he waits the more evidence they can collect. He can see himself waiting here all night for nothing. Feldman is probably too nervous to return home. For now. He will come home, though, because he has a life to return to.

If they release Feldman’s details to the media the man will go into hiding. However there’s a simple way to get around that. He calls his contact at the paper then watches the house for another thirty minutes before driving home.





8


Tuesday morning and we wake up to rain. Warm rain. The type you get in summer and love to walk in. I turn on the radio and listen to a weather report. An old guy tells us to expect twenty-eight degrees. Tells us to expect more rain tonight. Tells us the twenty-eight degrees is going to drop to around ten. He doesn’t tell us what we should do if some guy is trying to kill us. I figure he’s just looking out the window and telling it like it is.

I have woken with a small headache, a dry mouth and the flavourless dregs of a dream. There’s no difficulty in separating the dream from reality – I only have to look over at Jo to know what’s really going on. I have abducted her. I have stolen her away from her life and in that action I’m starting to become the monster Cyris is. Though my dreams were full of death and murder I was a hero, yet from the moment I stepped out of my Honda I was a hero doomed to fail. I don’t even know what I am now.



There was a point where I thought I was going to succeed. Cyris was on top of me, the hard ground was digging into my back, the night air was still and there were no signs of life outside of our small trio. I managed to throw my head up and crack my forehead into his nose and I used that momentum to push him backwards. I got to my feet and raced for the torch. He knocked me off balance before I made it and my tangling legs had me back on the ground within seconds. When Cyris brought his knife down towards me his intentions were clear, and in the weak edges of the torchlight I knew death wasn’t giving me up as a lost cause.

It all came down to luck then. I reached out with both hands, preferring to have my hand skewered rather than my chest. My arms straightened without encountering a thing because I’d thrown them too soon. They arced inwards and clapped together right onto the blade. Had I tried this deliberately I’d have had my fingers scattered over my chest. The knife slid between my hands harmlessly as my palms slowly gripped it. It kept moving until the hilt pressed against the tips of my fingers. I looked like I was praying.

I pushed my arms to the side to redirect his balance. The moment he began to topple I used my right palm as a hammer and nailed it into the base of his broken nose. It loosened his grip on the knife, and a fist into his face made him let it go entirely. There was no room for hesitation. I picked the blade up and plunged it ahead. The blade hit something hard before slowing down and it felt like I was pushing it through wet cement. I kept pushing until it came to a complete stop. For one moment we were frozen and then his mouth dropped open and the air that rolled out smelled like spoiled meat.



I dragged myself from beneath him and listened as his fingers slowly tapped out a death march against the handle. The silence then was complete, heavy and thick, an emptiness of sound that pushed into my ears and into my mind, crushing my thoughts. I had killed a man and it felt good.