Return to Amberville - Guardian Angel

Author's note : Amberville is a purely fictitious town where morals are a dime a dozen and all is not as it seems. Earlier posts included Amberville and Payback, besides the extremely long Chasing August.. I really just wanted to revisit this town once more. Have a nice read.



I try to look up as the cold steel of the barrel touches my head. I find I can't see beyond tiny horizontal slits. I imagine having two black eyes would have looked comical under different circumstances. I try to smile but the pain running through my chest is like a jagged knife.
This is the end of my story. I know it. And it's ok. I had a good run. I open my mouth and exhale, my ribs groaning under the additional burden.
"Do you have any last words ?" asks the voice. It's closer now than before, waiting for me to break.
I nod. I can feel that breath - a hint of peppermint, on me. I say the only things that come to my mind.
"Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name."
My assailant withdraws away in anger.
"Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.."
I hear the gun's safety go off.
"Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses.."
I see a red light directly pass through my line of vision. I know that light. Sniper. There's more than one bullet with my name on it tonight.
"lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil."
The gunshot reverberates like a thunderclap through the still night.
And then there is darkness.

1 week ago.
It was a routine job. B-E-R-M, we call it. Breaking- entering-robbery-murder. Make it look like a robbery gone wrong. But somebody had goofed up and sent me the wrong order. There was to be a woman involved. I don't do women.
It's my quirk and I'd maintained that policy since I got into the business. My 'agents' were okay with my policy because I was the best at what I did. Yet here, they'd sent me the wrong file. Calls were made, I imagine they spoke to the larger fish that fed them and in the end, they agreed to let me keep the case and do it my way. It was simple enough. A wealthy business man and his blonde trophy wife. One man dead, one bewildered widow. I didn't ask why. I don't get paid for my chatter.

The file was elaborate and detailed to the last point, as always. An insider, I imagined. Perhaps the maid servant or the driver was in on it. It didn't matter. I had what I needed. My way in.

I knew that the husband and wife slept in separate rooms. So once inside, I went as per the plan. I locked up the wife's room from the outside. It wouldn't help to have a hysterical woman running around the house before I was gone. Once that was done, I made my way to his room and entered silently.

He lay asleep, his whole body covered under the sheets. The file said he slept that way. I wonder who knew such intimate details about him. The maid servant ? Perhaps she had slept with him while the wife was away... perhaps a jilted lover ? It didn't matter.
I wasn't there to judge him.
I was there to execute him.

I attached the silencer to the automatic and aimed at the sheets. A sigh passed through the sheets and he turned to sleep the other way. I stopped a fraction of a second before my finger pressed the trigger.
Pink nails.
In the clear moonlight passing through the window, I'd seen small pink nails as the figure had turned to sleep.
I came closer and lifted the sheet, my brain sending out alarm bells my heart was responding to.
It was a small girl. The file had never mentioned anything about a small girl. What was going on ?
In the silence of the night, I heard a sound outside the door... a sound I knew byheart from years of experience. It was the sound of a silencer being attached to a gun.
The girl's eyes opened and stared straight at me.
It was a setup. I wasn't to be the executioner.
I was the fall guy.
I felt her pull at my sleeve.
She asked " Are you my guardian angel ?"

Click here to read the ending of The Guardian Angel