The strangling of a man was always a violent ordeal. Once this one’s body finally gave out and went limp, I was surrounded by the leftover carnage. I waited a while longer until his pulse stopped throbbing under my fingers. The stillness remained as I lowered the body to the floor and leaned a knee against his neck, feeling the pop and crunch of tendon and bone as I opened the messages on my phone and sent one.

“Done”. It was vague. And the response was equally so: “!”. It was nothing more than an acknowledgement.

Now the clock was ticking as I reached down and checked for any sign of a pulse or heartbeat, finding nothing.

Time to get things cleaned up.

I pulled the gloves on tighter, and began dragging him out through the back where a truck was parked, silently waiting. 

Once I had entered the warm, damp outside air, a partner came by and helped me heft his weight up and over the edge of a jumbo cooler and shoved his limbs in after him. I nodded to him, and he returned it silently before we pushed the cooler onto the pickup’s bed with a decisive thud and scrape. Then we parted ways. His boots made soft sounds in the grass as he walked to the driver’s seat, then a low grumble echoed as the truck came to life. I watched it pull out and onto the highway before looking back at the house and sighing.

I had tried to take him by surprise and bring him down quickly, but there was still quite a mess to clean. The humid air made this all the more unpleasant as the gloves quickly became sweaty and sticky. I changed them with a practiced, almost habitual, motion of peeling the old ones off and shoving them in a pocket before immediately pulling fresh ones on.

Then I opened the back door.

The floor creaked beneath my feet as I examined the surroundings and compared it with a photo on my phone. It wasn’t a very high resolution photo, but the fine details weren’t important.

With my long hair braided back, a mask on and the paranoid glove-wearing, the only evidence left here was the clutter. The coffee table had a glass tipped over and water dripping down the side, a side table was tipped over with books and papers now scattered on the floor, and then there was the largest point of concern: a broken plate and scattered sandwich pieces, the remnants of an unfinished lunch.

I got to work, carefully righting the side table and replacing the books and papers before getting started on the broken ceramic and food-trash. I had half a mind to eat the remainder but knew accidentally eating the pieces of plate would be miserable so instead it all went in a trash bag. I then soaked up all the water and set the glass back up on the coffee table.

That was that. I adjusted my gloves uncomfortably. It was my time now.

The director wouldn’t notice any slack as long as I was quick about it, so I snooped into the back bedroom. It was still a careful snooping, moving things aside gingerly, picking things up just to put them down, careful not to let any bare skin touch any surface so there would be no DNA left behind. Not a single skin cell. 

I found what I was after, and pocketed about forty dollars of cash before stepping back out into the living room and methodically passing over every inch of the floor with a duster. I took care to never step back onto the dusted surface, and finally backed myself against the door.

A final look-over showed only a gently lived-in space, exactly as it had been when I entered. I pushed the door open and stepped backwards out of the house.

The thing about murdering people in their own homes was, of course, you had access to all of their keys and tools and everything so it looked even more like he had just disappeared after I locked the door with his key and dropped it into my little garbage bag.

Job done. It would rain later, and the tire tracks and shoe prints would be washed away with it. No traces left behind, our job was complete.

I sent another text.

“Done.” The simple addition of a period made all the difference. We were finished with this job. He could now demand payment in full from the client.

The response I received was a simple “Good.” Which was shorthand for ‘get your ass home now.’

I shouldered my trash bag and once I had gotten off the property, walking along the shoulder of the highway, slipped my used gloves into it. My hands welcomed the fresh air even as they got to work, pulling braids out and my hair fell in tight curls, molded by their former prison. It would take time for them to return to normal. The sweat wicked away from my scalp. Every once in a while a car passed, going fast around difficult curves and steep hills.

And then one nearly veered right off the side of the road. I jumped back in anticipation of getting run over, but they recovered and I was left knee-deep in weeds and brush along the steep slope. A pounding persisted for several moments behind my ears as I stared where the vehicle had disappeared. It had been just a compact red car, with an out-of-state plate and otherwise didn’t stand out at all. I began to step back up to the shoulder, my balance wavering on the unfamiliar terrain, and then the ground suddenly rushed up to meet my face. My other foot slid down the hill and with a panicked grasp, I found my hand filled with thorns and brambles, and for no good reason as I tumbled, unceremoniously down the slope until my head finally smacked against a rock on the bottom. Everything went black.