How could any of them possibly know what it was like to suffer, to wake up every morning disappointed that death hadn’t taken them away in the night? No one could possibly understand the undeniable feeling Cadmus couldn’t shake, that the best things in life continued to avoid him purely because life seemed to hate his face. He sat on the bus bench every morning watching them go by in their Bentleys and Beamers laughing at the common folk walking the streets. He’d watch with stones in his stomach as each of them rolled down their tented widows at the stop light and throw their seven-dollar cup of coffee out the window before burning out with their middle fingers sticking out the sunroof. He knew the type well, assholes in Armani, who would never earn a single dime they had piling up in Swiss bank accounts. He could tell that the most physical labor they’d accomplish in a year was pulling a nine-iron out of their staff bag when the caddie quit mid-game. They were the perpetrators of privilege, the gatekeepers of upper-class, they paid off politicians and polluted the pacific. You’d never see them opening the car-door for their wives, not even their mistresses or walking the old lady across the street. But you better believe if there was a few million dollars to be pilfered they’d find a way to cut to the front of the line. He knew them all including the addresses to their summer homes by the beach, he had to know all he could about these wolves who wore sheep’s skin by Salvatore Ferragamo. This extensive knowledge was a part of his job, not a paying job by any measure yet he felt compelled to deliver on this obligation, nonetheless. For if he was not to finish a job at least once a month, sleep would allude him until so. Chester the hedge-fund manager was he selection for this month, Chester was a molester of little boys. Boys who were told to keep quite about the molestation or else Chester would lose their parent’s retirement funds. He was a manipulator that was about to be mutilated, Cadmus already had the location prepped for the bloodletting which was to be followed by the man’s flaying. Some may think Cadmus got some sadistic pleasure out of this occupation, but this is not so. He never burst out in laughter while removing the genitals or tried to make them feel guilty for the choices they made in life. He just went about his business as usual, headphone playing Gary Jules’s of Mad World from the Donnie Darko soundtrack. From the initial abduction to the closing cremation, he played the song on repeat, all the while keeping just one thought in his head. The only spoken aloud to them, which he whispered into their ear at the very end.

Cellardoor

By C.L.Norby

From: United States