Death of a Hundred Kisses

Waters from Heaven

Every chaos in this world is weirdly connected to each other. You pull a string; you mess up the network of every chaos. The messing up is what we call consequences.

I had maybe pulled a string three years ago, like agreeing to come here. And after three years, I do realize, it was a dishonest mistake. I could've avoided this all screw up.

And now, after all these I was facing, the man who pushed me this far towards the disruption, had the audacity to call me. That was really weird.

I picked up the phone. Durante looked at me, ‘Whoever it is, put it on loudspeaker. I don’t like interruption.’

Whatever, he had the stakes with him. I slowly touched the screen.

A laughing sound came in, ‘Hey Fabio, still too worked up?’

I felt like an annoyed middleman. Durante was excited, ‘Reno, you bastard. Being wise again, huh? Shove that wisdom up in your ass.’

Grandpa was too much disrespectful to anyone, ‘Ah, Fabio, I would like to chat for a while. But you know, I want to talk to my grandson. So, addio.’

I could never imagine how Durante felt. But if he knew grandpa well, he shouldn’t be surprised.

Grandpa spoke to me, ‘Lazio, you there? Listen to me carefully.’

I had nothing else to do. He continued, ‘Listen. As far as I know Fabio, that loser can't stand any kind of defeat. Even if he knows that you having nothing to do ruining your business, he would get a consolation prize if he could squeeze the life out of the prince.’

I already started hating that name. He kept talking, ‘So, I can assume that he asked some guys from the Taiwanese cartel to come to you. So, hear me clearly. If you need an escape from that mansion, the unused chimney in the hall room has a getaway path. I built it when we ruled Milan together. Even Fabio doesn’t know about it. You can figure out the rest. Good luck, see you when you come back.’

The atmosphere in the room changed too quickly. Micah was still too drunk to understand that. I had to act on quickly.

I quickly grabbed the king from the chess board, and shoved it in the back of Durante's neck. It was horrible. But I didn’t regret. Trust was supposed to be mutual. One would never jump off a cliff just by hearing from anyone. And the irony, Durante was a fool to use metal chess pieces.

The cross over the king piece pierced through the neck. Durante was dead without a sound, and the blood was all over me.

It would be rational to find the getaway. I walked to the chimney. It was too old, and quite rusty.

I tried to dig up the soil and coal stuffed inside there. It was a tough thing to do, too much to do. But I had to be fast, too much time could be dangerous.

I was able to dig up enough coal to find the way. But I wasn’t ready for what was inside. There were too many bones inside, and the smell was too much to tolerate. It felt like there was a crowd full of smells. I felt every smell threatening me to go back. But I couldn’t.

I went back to Micah, grabbed her hand, and came near the chimney. I just needed to get us to hotel Foernicato, Mazzio could manage a pilot to take the plane back to US.

Micah was drunk enough not to protest anything I did or was doing. We got into the smells.

The interior there was quite well made. It was too polished to be a escape way. I had to drag all the coals and soils to block the entrance. It was a sloppy work, but I wouldn’t be here for them to find where it led. Now it was me and her, and a road with angry smells.

The skulls and bones made the place creepy as hell. I wondered how Micah would reach if she was sober. Maybe she would be scared, afraid of the environment, concerned about our lives and the life I had taken. Well, rational thinking would approve that. But was I rational?

The walkway was huge, and a little dark. There were some dim lights, after every half a kilometer. It wasn’t sufficient, but it was enough to avoid any huge obstacle. I was holding Micah's hand, I was already in deep troubles, and killing of a influential mobster, I couldn’t afford the blood of a federal agent on my hands. This girl should learn to handle her sobriety. This would be hard to explain once she got over this half unconsciousness. More or less, we needed to survive.

We were walking too slowly. The smells were too much unbearable. The walls were like a dungeon wall. Grandpa was a very ridiculous person, nothing to deny that.

Micah burped, ‘Lazarus, can we stop for a bit? I am not feeling well.’

Too much of Charbonnay could really f**k up the stomach and liver. It was really necessary for her to take rest for a while.

She lay down on the ground for a while. I kept her that way, ‘Okay, you stay here, I should go and look for an exit. Don’t go back. Just lie here.’

I went ahead. She was an adult woman, she was capable of taking care of herself. She should be.

I started to walk, in the least bright light. It was really a weird moment for me. I had experienced too many bad situations as a federal agent, but this was too much weird. Why did I have to come back to my family? Why did I need to solve the case by myself? Why couldn’t I trust IBCI?

I didn’t know. It was something unspoken to me.

Why was Micah obsessed with me? She said she worked on my blood pool case. It was one of the most mysterious cases I got in my life.

It was about a mass murder. The unique part was that there was blood all over the body, it was as if they were drowning on their own blood.

I got the case suddenly; I was working on a case related to the Italian cartel. Boss pulled me off that case and put me on the mass murder. There was no evidence whatsoever. It was really a difficult one.

I didn’t know John back then. That was the first case we worked together. He was quite sloppy, but hardworking guy. He wanted to work on this case even after the work hour. He knew that we wouldn’t get any overtime on that. But he was determined. It was enough for me to trust him.

We started to work till late night. It was effective. We were able to gather around the prime suspects, the time of incident. We were able to work on a theory.

But it wasn’t enough, every suspect had an alibi. We were quite nearly at the dead end.

We were out on a restaurant. It was me, John and Noire. The case would be listed as a cold case very soon, or maybe FBI could take over it. We were enjoying our dinner, a defeating dinner to be exact. And it was that time when it hit me.

I immediately called the forensics, to run a thorough check around the intestine. I was hopeful there would be something.

And surprisingly, there was. It was not a work of sane mind. One of the victims was a cannibal, who ate all of them, by cutting their bellies. And then he felt overweight, he tried to cut out some of the raw meat he ate, by cutting his own stomach. The cutting pattern proved my theory.

The case was closed with an ending. The families got their answers. I got transferred from the narcotics department to the homicide department. John and Noire became my regular partner.

This case was the case I wanted to forget so badly. This case was a nightmare to me. I got recognition for a man feeding himself on human flesh. I got promoted exposing humanity denial. It wasn’t a promotion to me; it was a straight up nightmare.

And now, a girl was obsessed with that case. The world was a really f****d up place. I was just an audience to these charades of world.

What was I thinking? I needed to find a way to flee from here. I started walking real fast. How long could this tunnel be? It seemed to be never ending. I was exhausted of finding any exits. But grandpa said there was, and I knew he wasn’t lying.

Suddenly I hit a wall. It was a half-built wall. The lower part was incomplete, and one could pass through that by rolling over. Maybe this was an escape route.

The cold breeze from the open part of the wall was hitting in my legs. It was an wonderful feeling. Maybe this side had an open exit, away from the jurisdiction of Durante's people.

I rushed back, to get Micah. It was quite a long way back, but she was exactly where I put her. She wasn’t asleep, just tired and hungover. I shouted, ‘Hey, Micah, wake up, fast.’

She couldn’t understand anything I said, ‘What? Who?’

I pulled her up, ‘Hey, hurry up, we gotta go. I'll explain later. Get up, fast.’

I supported her to walk with me. She was too tired to walk alone. Why did she get drunk too much? What was the reason she was shaken up to the core?

She was blabbering something. I couldn’t understand. Maybe it was something in her native language. Whatever that was, it meant nothing to me. I needed to get her to safety, come what may.

It was harder for me to carry her for that long, she was slowly getting unconscious. The smells and the stress were making me also exhausted, but I couldn’t afford to sleep or faint. I had a life on my watch. I couldn’t give up on that.

We slowly came near the half wall. The cold breeze was fading, yet the air was full of refreshment, less smelly.

I let her lie on the ground, ‘Micah, can you hear me? You need to roll over, now. Hey.’

She couldn’t listen to me; her unconsciousness was beating her to sobriety. I had no other choice. I held her on me, hold her hand, and started rolling over.

She hummed in unconsciousness when we were crossing the wall, ‘What if we were two, though I never meet you?’

The tears in my eyes whispered to her, ‘And then I tell you, we will always be two.’