The Task

He had not been expecting a letter. He hadn't been sure how this would be done but he didn't think a letter was the way it would have been since it left a paper trail. He read the letter, which held his task and how he needed to do it, as well as a disposable cell phone. That was also something unexpected; he didn't know there would be a particular to do the job.

He poured himself a tumbler of scotch and took a sip, contemplating if he could really do the task that he had volunteered for. It had seemed like an easy to way to make money at the time but now that it was laid out for him, in black and white, he wasn't sure if he could really go through it. There were a lot of things that would be destroyed by doing it.

Plus there was the risk factor. If he failed, there was no one he could point the finger to; he would be going down all on his own. That was another thing he hadn't fully thought through when he initially decided he would set out on this life. It seemed really stupid to have glossed over that little bit of trivia but then again everything seemed that way in hindsight.

He jumped as the disposable cell phone rang.

"Hello?"

"Did you receive the letter?" came a gravelly voice.

"I did."

"Are you up for the task?"

"Seems pretty gruesome."

"We don't ask why these things are done the way they are done, we just satisfy the customer's request. Are you up for the task?"

"I'm not sure. Why the letter? Isn't that like evidence?"

"You're suppose to burn the letter," came the derivative reply.

"Oh." He was silent and took a sip of his drink.

"Are you up for the task?"

"Yes," he said after another moment. "I think so."

"You think so? We are not a business that is in the habit of accepting suppositions from our agents. We need a definite answer; if you can't do it we can assign the task to someone else and perhaps come back to you with a different job. Maybe something less gruesome?" came the voice again, this time with a hint of sarcasm.

"What's that suppose to mean?" he asked, a flare of anger erupting in him.

"Ours is a business that is never not gruesome. There will always be some form of the macabre in every job. To be blunt, if you can't do this job, you can't do any of the others."

"And why is that?"

"Because this would is considered mild by the standards."

A wave of nausea filled him at that statement and he had to swallow to keep from vomiting.

"Are you serious?"

"Sometime I wish I wasn't," came the dry reply. "Are you up to the task?"

He opened his mouth to say no but then he caught something out of the corner of his eyes. It was a pile of envelopes all with the threatening words Final Notice on them as well as a letter that said his account had been turned over to a collections agency. He looked around at the dive that was his apartment and thought about the shambles that was his life. And he thought about the money from this job that could conceivably clear all his debt and start him out on a new life. He could go out and get a legitimate job with his debt cleared and start over, not making any mistakes this time, not living outside his means. All it would take for him to start over was to take this one job and the money that went along with it and then forget that he had ever entertained any notion of this life. Up close the illusion and glamour wore off and he saw that this wasn't the life he wanted to live. All he had to do was this one job and he could forget this life.

"Are you up for the-"

"Yes," he interrupted, finishing the rest of his drink off in one quick gulp and coughing. "I'll do it."

"Very well then. You have the information and the deadline on the letter that you are to burn. After that date I will call you again to make sure it is down and to see if you are interested in staying in our association." He heard dead air after that.

He got up and poured himself another drink and told himself it was just one time, one job. Then he could try to forget it all.