The World Under

The name is Paul (Part 2)

Angelina all tensed up and panicky broke another sweat and felt as it slid down the side of her face, and fell silently onto the vinyl floor of their living room. Rounded up with her family in front of the TV screen still displaying the ‘Tonight Show’, she knelt, held at gunpoint by three men, dressed in black flat caps and Ulsters—a long, loose Irish overcoat made from frieze fabric.

Their pleasant family time on this New Year’s Eve which had continued long after she had returned from the bedroom with ‘Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show’ had come to a sudden end the minute the three unknown men had plumped in on them in their living room. Hence, turning a New Year's Eve atmosphere that had once been charged with warmth and laughter into a strained, tense one within a fraction of a second.

Shaken almost to her core already, she made one final bold move, daring a glance from under her thick lashes at the men, whose faces were partially hidden by the flat caps worn on their various heads.

Having grown up in a cold world of even stranger men, where even the subtlest changes in expression can tell a million tales and determine true intent and where loyalty lies, she had learned to tell people’s intention through their expressions. And had tried looking at the faces of the men in the hope of gaining insight into their intent, but was unable to find the slightest hints on their unrevealing and impossibly deadpan faces.

But, luckily for her, what their faces had refused to show, she was able to grasp through their comport and bearing. Once she did, she was filled with a sudden dread, which sent the beat of her heart mushrooming and a little over normal.

She had gathered from her minute assessment with a judgment so keen and acute as a gangster’s that, these men were no ordinary thieves or burglars, but are no less evil.

They were in fact, crueler and worse than thieves and burglars. And their faces were the last name of fear.

From the vast experience she had garnered from that strange world she was raised in and her father, she had known men of their profession come not to reap in belongings and possessions, but only to reap from men one thing; their lives.

They are nothing but a messenger of doom. The last faces seen by every of their victim.

And she feared in their case, it would be no different. She also knew with a conviction solid as a rock, that there can be no escaping from this with just a scratch, except through divine manifestation, which she very much doubted exists.

After minutes of stunned silence and growing tension, her husband seemed to find his voice and courage and stuttered out a string of questions himself. “W-ho a-re y-ou? A-nd what do you want from us?”

To which none of the three men reacted in the slightest or gave a response.

They are hatchet men, Angelina thought in response to her husband’s naïve question, staring sidelong at him in a cold, penetrating way, as if by doing just that she would be able to transfer her own thoughts to him.

And their faces are probably what we will last see before we die, she reasoned drearily this time, clasping a hand over the face of her older son, who knelt by her side, equally shaken by the sight of the three gunmen.

As she watched the men disengage the safety of their guns and her final moment drew closer, her thought drifted to her father, who she’s been estranged with for long now, wondering in her own small way if he was in any way responsible for this. And would possibly be the reason why they all have to die in this manner.

Had her father's truce with his associates in the underworld fallen out? Had a business proposal fallen through and a gang war ensued? Is this a personal vendetta, or strictly business?

The thoughts rushed at her almost as a tsunami as she recalled one of her father’s teachings; ‘There’s no effect without cause'. No smoke without fire!

She bobbed out of her reverie the minute she heard a shot fired, going numb and stock-still as she watched the impact of the shot knock her husband hard and cold against the floor.

Angelina, thawed out from her frozen state, and now delirious with strong, raw emotion lost every semblance of control the next minute, taking her hands off her son’s eyes, and scampering over to her husband, who lay sprawled and unstirring on the floor. Dead.

It took some time for this to register with Angelina, who sat sobbing as she rocked his body, and the moment it did, an ear-splitting cry decibel over the sound of the TV playing in the background tore off her throat, shaking the building to its root and foundation.

Time dragged painfully slow before any of the men could see this as a red flag and react. In reaction, they subdued her by emptying one round each into her body and the small boy’s, watching as they both dropped to the ground, like a flipped coin.

As Angelina laid down there dying, eyes opened a mere slit, she reached out a hand to her older son, from whose punctured chest and torso a puddle of blood was now forming across the floor. But despite her push and strains, she was unable to come within reach of his outstretched hand.

Coming in and out of consciousness now and giving that up already, she thought back on Vince, her younger and other son, who was still sleeping in the bedroom and whose existence she had kept hidden from the gunmen. Trying her best to bring to the fore of her mind his sunny smile and cute innocent face, at the same time she prayed to the God, in whose existence she had doubted for the past ten years to spare and keep him safe. For her.

Before the darkness that crept onto the edges of her vision come full circle and blackened out every semblance of light, Angelina saw a light, divine and blinding in its glory, like that of a thousand diamonds glinting at once in the sun.

Heavens, she thought with a small smile, before light and life left her eyes and body respectively.

The men seeing their job was done after her death, left the room unannounced as they have done earlier, leaving behind a room once filled with the voices and laughter of people to the sound of a TV playing and the rank odor of death.