Rueben’s hands were inside the cracked wall safe when the garrote looped around his neck, cutting off his ability to breathe. Before he could react, he felt a foot against his back, pinning him to the wall.
Two thoughts flitted through his mind:
What the fuck happened to Mickey?
Followed by:
I’m a fuckin’ dead man.
Rueben knew he might already be dead if his attacker had used a wire to choke him. Luckily, it felt like a scarf or tie was closing his airway. Not that it ultimately mattered. Suffocation was suffocation, regardless of the method being used to carry it out.
Head pulled back at an awkward angle, arms and torso unable to move, Rueben tried to shift his weight to his left leg and kick backwards with his right. Once, twice, three times he got nothing but air. Impossible to get any leverage with his body locked in such a weird position.
Tiny black butterflies wavered across his vision as dueling heartbeats thudded at his temples. The world around him started darkening at the edges, continued moving closer and closer to the center of his sight, as if he were driving through a tunnel in reverse.
The light was getting smaller and smaller.
A pinprick.
Then, air.
Air!
Rueben slid down the wall, sucking in great lungfuls of oxygen, wincing at the sensation of razorblades in his throat each time he did so.
“Holy shit, Rueben, are you okay? Jesus Christ, I’m so sorry.”
Still breathing deep, down on all fours, Rueben looked up at his partner on this caper, Mickey Moran. Some people called him “Mouse” as a play on his first name; others called him “Moron” as a play on his surname. Rueben wasn’t much for bullshit nicknames, but tonight he leaned toward the latter.
“What the fuck happened, Mickey?” Rueben’s voice was hoarse, sounding like Froggy from The Little Rascals.
“I, well…I think I drank too much coffee before we came out. I wanted some caffeine to help me stay awake, you know? But then I had to piss. Figured I’d be okay to use the bathroom, but then this prick jeweler came home,“ Mickey motioned to the crumpled body on the floor with the fireplace poker he held in his hand, “snuck up behind me, and hit me with something. Hurts like a son of a bitch.”
“Help me up.”
Mickey dropped the poker and reached out his hand to help Rueben stand up.
“Goddamn, my head hurts.” Mickey moved his fingers gingerly over his scalp. “Right here, see? How’s it look?”
Rueben reached inside his sport coat, withdrew his .38 from its holster, and placed the muzzle against the bump on Mickey’s skull. The blast was deafening in the confines of the walk-in closet. Mickey pitched forward onto his face, knees bent beneath him, ass in the air. Moving back a couple steps, Rueben aimed at the jeweler and put a bullet in his head as well. The business end of the fireplace poker had left a sizeable dent in the man’s skull, but it wasn’t worth taking chances.
Gun back in its holster, Rueben grabbed the two velvet bags of uncut gems from the safe and pocketed them. He stood over the bodies, chastising himself for taking on a partner as dumb as Mickey Moran. It was a lesson he hoped he wouldn’t be lamenting from behind bars. The heat from this job would be intense. Thankfully he now had a lot of ice to cool it down.
~ fin ~
Andrew Monge (Twitter: @MuchAdoAboutNil) lives in Minnesota with his wife and kids. A computer programmer by day and a voracious reader by night, he is a lifelong introvert who only finds his voice while writing. His work has appeared in Punk Noir Magazine, Trash Cat Lit, Urban Pigs Press, and Shotgun Honey.
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