Serenity

A hit man works through an existential crisis

​Dark brown water stains ran down the wall, the drip causing them tapping out the passing moments. The room is full of the steady dull noise. It stinks in here, it’s full of filth. Dirty clothes strewn about the floor, dirty dishes piled in the sink. A cockroach scurries across the floor. I sit in a plain brown chair, deep groves implying it was salvaged from a pile of garbage somewhere. I pull my black gloves tighter against my hands. I shift my grasp on the grip of the revolver I’m holding. To pass the time, I wonder how I got here.
​I could start from the beginning, the true start, the big bang. A rapid expanse of the universe from a singularity, spewing matter near the speed of light. Huge clouds of gas condense denser and denser under the pull of their gravity, until the friction causes a spark and a sun is born. Matter forms from these explosions, coalescing together to form planets.
​When you think of these galactic forces, their enormity, it makes whatever reason my employer sent me here seem petty and small. I tap the gun against the knuckles of my hand, then hold it in my palm feeling its weight. It’s hot in the room, my skin is damp. I close my eyes and focus on syncing my heart beat to the dripping sound coming from within the wall.
​People tell other people, when they’re down, to think about how amazing it is to be alive. To think about how unlikely it is that they were ever born. The point is that each day is a gift, because we are granted such a rare experience. However, given the expanse and infinite variety of the universe, life is a highly unlikely inevitability. Out in space, rarity is nothing special, neither is being common. There is plenty of both.
​ I slowly open my eyes, still wondering how it was that I got here. I think of my parents, two chimps, drunk, probably off of a chemical that a microorganism pisses out when you boil it with corn. Other chimps take the microbe piss, carefully crafted from generations of experience, stored in oak casks for months, maybe years. Then funneled into bottles and sold in a store by another chimp behind half an inch of bulletproof glass.
​I think of the sun, a nuclear explosion billions of years old. Its radiation streaks through space, waves of light bombarding our rock. Plants and photosynthetic bacteria and algae convert it into energy, and this becomes the bedrock of the food chain. Other more complex organisms eat these plants and convert them into energy to propagate their own lives. Other organisms then feast on them. I think of my parents, guzzling microbe piss and gobbling sunbeams by proxy, gaining enough energy to place a few squirts of jizzum right where it matters most.
​Yes, I guess when you think about it, it is kind of amazing. All those tiny sperm, microbes, swimming like b******s in an unimaginably hostile environment. Are they considered alive? Do any of those millions of potential chimps have thoughts of their own? Do any of them ever have a moment when they’re crushed in the pack, and they just think “You know, what I would really like to do is paint.”
​I check my watch and realize how long I’ve been sitting in this chair. Annoyance hits, then washes over me. The dripping sound, hammering the silence. The window is open and children are playing out in the street. Everything has its lifecycle. Even stars will eventually run out of fuel and snuff out, but when they do, sometimes they collapse inwards. They become so dense that they cause gravity wells so strong not even light cannot escape. It is possible that they can punch a hole into another dimension. Another place in a different, yet parallel time, where a similar yet different me is living a different life, possibly on a different yet similar planet. It’s entirely possible he is an accountant, desperate for a life with a little more action and adventure. Possibly craving more money, a mental concept that you can hold in your hand but doesn’t actually exist. The side effect of a bunch of hairless chimps playing house.
​I hear footsteps clunking down the hallway. I hear the jingle of keys from just outside the door. I stand and ready myself. The man outside drops his keys with a muffled curse. Matter is neither created nor destroyed. I lift my hand and stare at it, imagining the small atoms swirling around each other, held together by electro-chemical bonds. Every molecule of my body is billions of years old, formed in the begging, the great all important singularity, all used and re-gifted. E=MC2, what that really means is that matter is energy, there is enough power in my fingernail to destroy the planet hundreds of times over.
​ Light beams scattering across the universe, powering life, causing cancer, fading the curtains your grandmother made, providing warmth, scorching the earth. That is the very essence of life. That is what brought me here. That is the truth.
​The door opens and a very surprised individual flinches at the sight of me, arm extended, dark black hole of the barrel, possibly leading to another dimension, another universe. My finger pulls back on the trigger, releasing a catch and converting the potential energy stored in the hammer into kinetic energy, causing the hammer to strike the percussion cap in the shell of the bullet. The powder inside the shell explodes and the rapid expansion of gases bursts the bullet loose and sends it spiraling down the short barrel and out in a flash. All simple Newtonian physics, I wonder if in fact I could count Isaac Newton as an accomplice.
​The bullet is made of copper plated lead, minerals formed when the planet condensed, changing its structure with the various changes of temperature and pressure over millions of years. Eventually a hairless chimp discovered these metals and mined them for various uses, one of those the production of bullets. In a factory this metal is processed and fed into machinery that makes bullets. Bullets produced and sold as a commodity. As common as loaves of bread. It took hundreds of individuals to produce these bullets, hundreds of people whose tireless work has made this moment possible.
​ These projectiles that very easily could have ended up inside of a criminal, or a soldier, or any other socially justified destination. Instead, through some sort of twisted fate, I stand as it smashes through the surprised man’s skull, blasting its contents, the result of millions of years of evolution, across the hallway.
​I let the gun slide from my hand and dump onto the ground. I step over the corpse. I apologize to the already rotting corpse. I tell him that I realize that none of us asked to be here, and that none of us will ever escape. I think of how confused the red blood cells must be, trying to deliver oxygen and nutrients to the faded wood of the hallway.
I know that chemical reactions inside the body are already stopping and the constant self maintenance is breaking down. Within a few days, the body breaks down into organic matter, fuel for future organisms. Gases will build up, emitting from parts of the body and containing microscopic parts of the body. These gases will float up, slowly, into the upper atmosphere, and eventually out into space. The energy delivered by the sun will continue its journey.
​If you could see into my own brain, a lump of gray matter, a miracle of evolution, you would witness the thousands of synapses firing off, forming my thoughts. My brain, that organic electrical storm, buzzes as I step out into the hustle and bustle of a city street. I blend in with the horde of hairless chimps just like me, living lives in which the loss of one low caste individual has no effect. I brush past hundreds of primates, donning costumes made from strands of plants woven together, coverings of leather strapped to their feet constructed by starving children half a world away.
If you could look into the center of the gray mass inside my skull, you would see my rationalization.

Author's Note

Love it or hate it, let me know

Reviews

[Goat]

This is a magnificent story! It is interesting and held my attention very well, i couldn't stop reading! Weel done!

[Marie]

THis is extremely interesting. It's well written and on a higher plane than I usually see here. Without quite being pretentious.

[M.R Douglass]

Whoa, high praise. Thanks.