Breakdown - 16. 15 Winner Takes It All

Cam looked down at the sheet of paper before him on the coffee table. He was holding himself, as if he were afraid he was going to fly apart at any moment. He looked down the list of letters, letting his eyes see it but his brain was a little slower on the uptake. It was so hard to believe.

He’d passed grade 11. And he’d done it with a B average.

Cam almost wanted to cry with joy, but the emotion was trapped beneath the wave in his stomach and the shake in his hands that was telling him that something else was quickly becoming more important than his graduation. Cam stood and walked towards the brown bedroom, working his mouth in an attempt to force moisture into it.

When he had started this, Cam had been worried that Aziel had put cameras in the house to watch him. That, however, Cam had convinced himself was paranoia related to his addiction. Cam was pretty sure that Aziel wouldn’t waste the extra expense on a whore, and the thought had never occurred seriously to him again.

With no further hesitation, Cam went to the dresser in his bedroom and knelt before it. There was a gap between the floor and the dresser of about two inches. It was too narrow for what Cam had under there to come out the front, so he pulled the dresser away from the wall.

Cam had cut the decorative bottom of the dresser crudely so that it was four inches above the carpet instead of two. He reached in the larger gap and pulled out a small duffel bag. It was about half full, sagging slightly. Cam glanced around, knowing that no one was home but unable to shake the feeling of guilt that was wracking him.

Cam reached into his sweater and pulled out his wallet. Opening it, he thumbed through the bills and pulled out $400. He unzipped the little duffel bag. Inside, green bills greeted him. Cam straightened the $20 bills into a nice stack, and added them to one of his stacks that had a piece of paper with a number $600 scrawled on it. That made this brick $1000 in twenties, and Cam shoved it back in the bag. The duffel bag had 12 of these stacks now.

Cam zipped up the duffel back up and slid it under the dresser. Carefully, he moved the dresser back against the wall, and then slipped his hand in the two inch gap to make sure that the bag was all the way to the back, and that the strap wasn’t hanging out. Then he ran his hands along the carpet, smoothing out the marks he had made from sliding out the dresser.

Cam stood up and stared at the dresser for a long time, and then turned around and went back out to the living room. He took up his grade 11 transcript and put it on the fridge. Still staring at it in a sort of deranged wonder, Cam pulled out the little plastic phone, the little red devil that was forever by his hip, and placed it on the counter. Cam knew it was only a matter of hours tonight, before Aziel phoned to ‘congratulate’ him on his accomplishment.

Cam looked up to the large picture window in his apartment, able to see a ghostly image of his own reflection. He looked haggard and pale, almost deathly. He knew that was probably just a trick of the light, but…

It reminded him of Derek.

There wasn’t a lot of time left. Cam put his hand over the blue-purple veins in his arm. Maybe Cam was already too late.

“I think I know the rules now,” Cam whispered to the empty house. “And be goddamned if I’m going to let you win.”

Aziel was standing in a small room with only a bare light bulb for illumination. There was a small wooden table, laden with various tools. A man was slumped in a chair, blindfold over his face, wrists tied behind his back, chest and legs tied to the chair. Blood ran in a clotted river from his nose and mouth. There was a dark spot on his shirt where it had soaked in. In better condition, he would have been a handsome man in his late forties.

The assassin slowly ran his hands over the various tools available to him, and then looked back at the other. He’d been out long enough.

He took up the smelling salts and wafted them under the man’s nose. He jerked into consciousness, his wide, bloody lips trembling. He groaned in a mix of pain and fear, pulling at his bonds. Aziel could see the realization dawn on his face all over again.

Round two...

“I just want a number,” Aziel said softly. The man jerked his head in the direction of the voice, lips quivering. Blood and snot dripped from his chin, and Aziel stared at him neutrally.

“I don’t know any number!”

Aziel sighed, as if annoyed with this whole procedure. “When you first passed out, it was simply because I had punched you until you stopped moving,” Aziel said. “But while you were taking a nap to rest and think about your situation, I brought in my tools.” The man stiffened. “Now, let’s be honest with each other. I’m going to kill you either way. The difference in you telling me that number is whether I kill you painlessly with chloroform, or I kill you painfully by first breaking all your fingers and toes, removing them, and then performing heftier surgery. I didn’t bring any anesthetic.”

“Monster,” the man said, believing he was being brave in the face of the Devil.

Aziel replied, shaking his head, “You have been embezzling from a rather prominent business. I kill people. I don’t think a slight from a man like you has any bearing on what I am.” He sighed, looking at his watch. “You’re really taking up my time. I have somewhere to be. You know the conditions, I want the number from you, and you don’t want pain.” He picked up a small, heavy hammer from the side table. “And since I am a businessman, and time is money…”

He walked around the other, who was struggling violently in his chair. Aziel ignored his struggles. He’d bolted the chair to the floor. Aziel was wearing a full body suit, including a hood and goggles, so the changes of a hair falling loose and leaving evidence behind, was nil. He really could keep this man here forever, or at least until he starved to death. Aziel pulled out a small stool from under the table. He placed it behind the man, so that his knuckles were resting on the stool.

Aziel was smiling. He loved his job.

Before the man could figure out what was going on, Aziel slammed down the hammer on one of his fingers. There was a fleshy thump, followed by a horrible, rasping scream. Aziel waited four seconds, and then slammed the hammer back down on his fingers. Three of his fingers were broken, hanging at odd angles. Large fleshy welts were developing where the hammer had struck, oozing blood.

The man screamed and Aziel waited for him to stop.

Eventually, he ran out of breath. Shuddering, the man gasped, spit and snot flying from his mouth with each ragged breath.

“You have seven more fingers,” Aziel reported. “I can crush them slowly, or like this. I’ll leave that choice up to you.”

“I’ll talk,” the man whispered.

“Do tell,” Aziel said, pulling over the notebook that rested with his tools on the table.

The man recited a number, and Aziel wrote it down. Then he closed the notebook and put the hammer back on the table. He couldn’t help but be a little disappointed by the whole affair; he’d talked entirely too quickly.

“You’ll… kill me now?”

“No,” Aziel replied. “I will take this number to my employer. He will verify it, and then I will come back. If you lied to me, I’ll finish breaking your fingers before I even begin to question you again. If you’re telling the truth, I’ll come back and put you out of your misery.”

The man’s breath shook from him, but he said nothing.

“See you later,” Aziel said, leaving the small room and bolting the door.

The red plastic devil on the counter was ringing. Cam left his food simmering on the stove and picked up the phone. He hesitated before he greeted the voice he knew would be on the other end. It was like receiving a phone call from the Hell.

“I’m running behind tonight,” Aziel said quietly. “I will be at the penthouse in a half an hour.”

“Oh, okay,” Cam said. “I have time to eat?”

There was a pause on the other end, and Cam almost thought that Aziel had hung up. “Yes. But don’t gorge yourself.”

Cam hung up the phone without saying goodbye. He went back to the frying pan that was sitting on the stove, bubbling and filling the penthouse with the smell of meat and tomatoes. It was some kind of Hamburger Helper, and Cam couldn’t help but think that it looked much more attractive on the box than it did in the frying pan. He read the instructions again, trying to figure out if he had done something wrong.

“Gorge myself,” Cam whispered. He’d never felt less like eating in his life, he just knew that he had to. He knew it was the drugs that were cramping his appetite. He knew that if Aziel raised the stakes any further, he wasn’t going to get out of this alive. What kind of man did this to someone? Set him before a daunting task and then threw infinite roadblocks in his path?

Cam was almost completely sure that Aziel would kill him if he failed a class. It seemed extreme, but that was part of this sick game that Aziel had thought up, wasn’t it? Often, when he was lying in the brown bedroom by himself, Cam wondered if Aziel had a wife. The thought was almost laughable, but for some reason the thought kept surfacing in Cam’s mind. A beautiful, voluptuous trophy wife that spent her time reading magazines at the salon, looking at her nails and crossing her pretty little ankles under her. How would a man like Aziel treat her? With aloof indifference while she spent his money? There was no way something like Aziel would ‘lower’ himself to loving another. The kindness was simply not there.

Maybe the wife was just a show, and Aziel was really gay and in a position where his job would be compromised if someone found out.

Maybe Aziel didn’t have anyone, because he was too fucked up in the head to have someone too close to him for long.

Cam stared at the bubbling concoction on the stove feeling like his stomach had turned to stone. He turned down the stove and sat at one of the stools in the kitchen, looking towards the big picture window. Unlike the previous nights, Cam didn’t feel any trepidation. Instead he was excited. He knew that was the drug speaking, but it couldn’t hurt if he could enjoy himself a little bit, right?

Right?