The Anti-Heroes

The electrical pulse, like an artificial heartbeat, revved into life. The dark shroud in the doorway moved slightly. 1

The alarm set for eleven pm on his mobile phone had gone off. Grudgingly, he fished the device out of his pocket and held it eye-level for better inspection. Frown lines spidered across his haggard face like an ink stain. 2

The fluorescent glow lit up the dark stubble on his unshaven chin. She was late. Unbelievable. Especially when so much work was still left undone.3

*4

"Arghh!", howled a disheveled woman, her hair tumbling into wavy disarray as she tripped over a rogue crack in the pavement with her stilettos. 5

“For the love of--”, she cursed to herself as fellow pedestrians alongside gave wide berth in her wake, shaking their heads in unison. 6

Her face was made up heavily, with kohl-rimmed eyes melting into her plastered makeup, her face hollow and hardened. For one shying from sunlight as much as she, there was a darkness to her being, although none of it appeared on her face. Her skin had an unnatural ivory tint, one would say bloodless.7

It would be impossible to hazard at her age either, her face was made up like a mask, she could be anything from eighteen to thirty-eight. 8

An almost-pretty femme fatale, for the moment swaddled in the heavy fabric of a large trench coat. With a reluctant pout taking on her features, she eased off the shoe from her swollen ankle. The feeble, clawlike heel had snapped as she tried to escape. Another month’s pay, down the drain, she thought gloomily to herself. Great, absolutely fabulous. To make matters even worse, she was late for her next job.9

Hobbling the rest of the way, with all the grace she had been endowed with from her current state, she turned into the dimly-lit lane of a particularly grim quarter. Unsavory layabouts, getting their boozy fix for the evening, cat-called as she made her ungainly procession past. 10

"Hey missus, up for a little in-out-in-out, like?", belched a tramp splayed out on a rickety stairwell, one hand fastened on the neck of a precariously placed bottle of rum.11

Shaking her head in disbelief she made her way to the bus-shelter close to an underground passage leading to the station. This was where she was to meet her partner; the one who was probably shitting bricks as each second she was late ate into the precious time they had to achieve the task at hand. He would berate her later, she didn’t care.12

Making a beeline to the landmark she was looking for, she spied an equally dodgy looking character, the red rim of a lit cigarette and at intervals the silhouette exhaling puffs of smoke. Except he wasn’t just any dodgy sod, it was Dan, her partner in crime. 13

Whilst she was surveying him, Dan looked up and caught sight of her. “Another bloody parade”, he thought, “and she thinks she’s fashionably late!”14

“What fucking took you, eh? And what’s with those bloody shoes?”, he growled.15

“Good to see you too, you look a complete train-wreck yourself”, she replied.16

“You realize we need to get this over with tonight, no questions asked, yeah?” he continued. “My arse is on the line already, and I don’t need you to keep screwing my promotion chances up”.17

“Jesus, you and your bloody promotion!", she rolled her eyes theatrically. "Anyway we have a job to do, so shut your trap and lets go!”, she spat. 18

He cursed inaudibly and received a sharp slap from her gaudily manicured hand.19

“Ow! --the hell was the for?”, he moaned, shying away from the touch of her menacing-looking clawed nails.20

“Grow up, you bloody idiot... c’mon we’re wasting time here in this hole, let’s get moving”. 21

*22

Night had fallen quickly and soundly, as if someone had smeared a tarry smog over the sky, choking the stars. Down in the subway below, the last train of the night pulled into the station, the hazy glow of the lights evolving the deserted platform into a ghostly antechamber. 23

"We're supposed to find our guy right here, you know the drill", Dan murmured.24

"Do I look like an idiot to you? Of course I know what we need to do!", protested the woman standing an arms breadth beside him.25

"I'm not quite sure you do, I can't afford any screw ups on your part, it'll reflect upon me", he replied.26

"Stop worrying, we just get over a little 'negotiating' and we'll ease him over, no questions asked".27

Dan laughed hollowly. The stench of rotting newspapers, overturned beer cans and the unwashed musk of the buskers who frequented this place was heavy in the air. 28

"Whatever you say, Dara", he finally responded.29

The yellow-tinged lighting on the ceiling of the platform flickered threateningly. Aside from the fact they were breathing, it was as if they had melted into the immobile objects around them. All was silent. The ringing white noise echoed off the walls and reverberated loudly in their ears. A creeping shadow stretched out from nowhere, approaching slowly with very little sound, until the click of footsteps grew closer to where the accomplices stood. A small man, shabbily dressed, hair askew, tumbled into the scene, looking lost and sorry for himself.30

"They have to be joking, they call this an assignment", snorted Dara to herself. The man, freezing in his footsteps, turned towards her with a stricken look of an animal caught in the headlights of a truck. Arching her back, she made her way jauntily forward, never taking her eyes of the blubbering mess of tonight's prey. Blood was for the spilling.31

*32

"Mmm... I do love a little flesh on the bones", murmured Dara softly, a mask of congealed crimson staining her wide mouth and neck. 33

"You realise you really are hideous when you eat", said Dan, flaring his nostrils in disgust. "And mind you keep his internals intact-- you remember what happened last time don't you?"34

"Maybe I was a tad too overzealous... I don't remember", she responded thickly. 35

Shaking his head in mock disbelief, Dan fished inside his dark overcoat, withdrawing from its depths a carving knife and several large plastic bags. Snapping plastic gloves over his hands, he bent over the evening's task.36

"What I hate about this job... is the lack of clean and mess-free presentation...", he said, with an air of a deep-sea diver preparing for a plunge.37

Dara giggled in response, to which she hiccuped up a bubble of blood.38

"Charming", her male compatriot murmured to himself whilst a hand firmly around the handle of the knife, plunged it into the warm flesh.39

The man had not been dead long. The dark, rubied glitter, the contents of his last heartbeat oozed out fast and still warm. Starting from the solar plexus in a straight line down to the pelvis, Dan cut through the flesh with the dexterity of a surgeon. The newly fledged cut created a bizarre image: no longer a vessel, the body was now a broken mirror of itself, the flotsam of a shipwreck upon windy shores. 40

Grasping the slithering organs with one hand -- and trying not to gag on the overpowering smell of blood, dirt and decay -- Dan sliced and hacked until he had removed what he desired.41

"Tonight we have been asked to retrieve both kidneys, the heart and the liver... I don't think this bloke's lungs are up to it", said Dan aloud, ticking off a mental list.42

Dara stared down at the unrecognizable mess of swarthy flesh, her heart staccato-ed up a notch, she was excited at the prospect of this much gore, food for her soul. 43

As a vampiress, the opportunity to pounce upon the living were few and far between. To the image before her, many would turn away in horror and disgust, perhaps once getting over their shock alerting the authorities of a heinous murder. 44

Not Dara. 45

This was poetic, the man splayed out on the ground, a large wound in his neck where she severed his jugular was spilling in red reams, ribbonlike, meandering on the cold ground of the station. His arms, spread-eagled as he fell, his legs apart, she thought with a relish that she had created her own interpretation of the Vitruvian man. It was flawless, a perfect murder. And what was more, no one would ever believe it. It was all too grotesque.46

With a small sigh escaping his lips, Dan grasped the slithering mess of organs in his gloved hands. Sliding in a sullied pool of black blood, it was a difficult manoeuvre to get the organs in good condition for the Boss. The kidneys, like fleshy cockles, slid dejectedly into the plastic bag, clinging to the edges, as if aware of their fate. 47

A couple more organs -- then it was time to leave.48

*49

"Satisfactory performance, lads", declared Boss aloud, despite the fact Dan and Dara were the only present and neither one laddish in the slightest.50

They were in a makeshift laboratory, with hackeneyed silver instruments littering what could easily have passed for a mad artist's studio. Every surface was littered with brown-edged documents and open books crowding like feral teeth. There was little light streaming in, partially for Dara's benefit, though it was already morning.51

"The organs are intact, yes, that is true", the Boss spoke again, with some reflection.
"However, that was messy work, you cornered that man I sent you to take out but you left his entrails everywhere... another lead for them to get on to us. That would spoil all our hard work and sacrifice all our efforts towards the Project".52

Dara turned on the saccharine factor, she could weasel them out of this one. "Boss, you know I am devoted to the Project and would never DREAM of doing anything to sabotage you... isn't that right, Dan?", she said.53

Extricating herself yet again, thought Dan. "Boss... it was an empty station, an abandoned station in fact... we were lucky to find him there...", he finally responded, measuredly. 54

"BUT WHAT ABOUT THE NEXT DAY, HM?", yelled the Boss, spittle flying. "YOU SHOULD HAVE FOLLOWED HIM HOME AND DEALT WITH HIM ONCE YOU SAW HIM AT THAT KEY POINT", he bellowed before wiping his sweaty forehead with a large hand.55

Dara saw it was time to launch back in the argument as she saw they were steadily falling out of favour. "Dan was wearing gloves when he worked on the body... and I don't have fingerprints to track", she purred.56

The Boss, a big man of about fifty, jerked suddenly.57

"I know you Dara... we could never get the Job done without your input. That is no excuse to be sloppy, however", he concluded rounding on Dan. "Too many close shaves than would do us good, I don't want to see it again".58

He bowed his head over the night's extractions, still clothed in bloodied plastic bags. With a sudden dexterity, he removed them to be imbibed in a clear solution, to better preserve the entrails.59

Dan and Dara both stood back, the knew from experience not to ask the Boss the purpose of retrieving certain organs and information, he was volatile at the drop of a hat.60

Still, they wondered, to what use the fresh liver, heart and kidneys had to the current state of affairs. The Project: to topple the state, the absent dictator at the sidelines and his million-strong cronies. 61

A bloodied heart, liver and kidneys. Next thing they could expect the Boss to fly into one of his dangerous creative moods, likened to Dr Frankenstein. Deus ex machina.62

Unfortunately for them, at least this time, they weren't half wrong.63

*