Thursday, September 15, 2016

Murder at the Olin Part 1

*****WARNING*****This blog post contains graphic violence. Reader discretion is advised.
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A silver Ford Taurus peels into the parking lot of the Olin Motel. This time no voices are heard as the door opens, just the door slamming shut again. Ken walks quickly from the car and dashes up the stairs. He nervously fumbles with the key at the lock of room 8 and finally opens it. Ken enters the room with his regular duffel bag plus an extra one. Looking utterly distressed he throws it down on the bed and unzips it revealing an unimaginable amount of cash. He inhales and then just says "Babe, I need you to help me count it....as fast as we can..."

Heather was watching a movie she had seen a hundred times before, so she did not have to concentrate on it very much. But she still jumped when Ken came into the room and opened the bag of cash. She gaped at it and reached out for it, tentatively. "I ... sure .... Where the hell...." and then she decided she didn't want to know. She starts to count, placing piles to the side as she reaches one hundred.

Ken counted with her looking anxious "Ran out of time......pick up is here tonight...not the plan.......not the fucking plan......" he muttered. He was sweating and his hands were shaking. He made his piles, looked at Heather's and wrote down a figure on a scrap of paper from his jacket. Then he started putting bands on the bundles and shoving them back in the bag just as there was a pounding at the door. Ken jumped about a foot off the bed and hissed "Get in the bathroom....and shutup..." to Heather.

Heather stared at the completed pile of money, stunned. When Ken ordered her to go into the bathroom, she tried to get up, but her legs tangled and she would up stumbling into the room with no grace, closing the door and backing against the furthest wall, thinking the whole time that she had never seen that kind of money before Ever.

Through the wall Ken can be heard opening the door and speaking in a low voice to another man. From the rising of his voice, he seems to be stepping into the middle of the room. Lots of it is muffled but words that can be made out are "promised discretion Mr. Hall...." and "There can be no witnesses..." Ken starts to argue with the other man's voice "I had a girl here but I sent her out....I swear....." The man keeps moving forward in the room and suddenly the bathroom door burst open revealing a red faced man with a receding black hairline in a simple black suit. He raises a gun towards Heather's position when suddenly another one goes off behind him shooting him twice through the back. The man winces and then falls dead. Ken is standing in the doorway with a handgun catching his breath. A dark pool of blood starts to spread under the man on the floor.

Heather kept pressing herself against the wall of the bathroom and, when the door slams open her eyes widen. Before she can scream, Ken shoots him dead. Heather stares at Ken and, not running onto the arms of her savior, crumples and begins to cry hysterically.

Ken slides the gun into a holster on his back, one he didn't usually wear around Heather but he hadn't taken it off yet from the job he came from that's gone from bad to worse. He has a moment of genuine concern and remorse and steps over the boy to Heather trying to pull her into his arms "I'm sorry....I had to."

Heather doesn't fight being held, but she is shaking like a leaf. "I ... I ..." is about all she can manage through her fear. Her body and voice are shaking like something in a hurricane.


Ken holds onto her a little longer and then leans back from her and pulls her face up by her chin to meet his gaze "I need you to stop crying and get your shit together. Help me get him in the tub so he doesn't bleed through the floorboards. Soak up what you can with towels from the floor. We can get rid of those. I'll come back for him but I have to take his pickup to the delivery point or there'll be more of him looking for it." the way he's talking about this make it clear that this situation or others of its type are not as new to him as they are to Heather.

Heather is still crying but at Kens .. request ... her eyes widen and move from Ken to .. a dead body and she begins to back up, still shaking her head and whimpering. "Noo .. I .. nooo."

Ken is at the end of his stress tether and it starts to fray, his voice rising "Fuck I just saved your life! Step up and help me bitch!" He rises to his feet so he's standing over her now.

Heather is still shaking her head, now looking up at him. "Ken .. please ...." she manages, still shaking like a leaf in a storm. Her breathing is hard, fast and near hysteria again.

The tether snaps and the back of Ken's hand comes down hard across Heather's face "Get the fuck up!" he now screams at her. He moves towards the body, grabbing for some towels and pushing them down into the pool. They immediately go from white to crimson. The coppery smell of blood starts to infuse the air. Ken fishes in the man's pockets, pulling out and pocketing a wallet, an iPhone and a set of car keys. The dead man has a ring on the middle finger of his left hand that looks almost like a class ring with a dark rectangular stone. The stone has a symbol engraved on it that looks like some sort of tooth, maybe even a fang. Ken starts dragging the man to the tub to heave him in. There's a river of blood trailing behind him and as the body moves across it mingles with piss. The man's bladder had let go as he died. The combined stench was horrific. "Fuck, take his legs!" Ken demands.

A yelp of pain accompanies the back of his hand against her face. Still shaking uncontrollably, Heather does move now. She slips in the blood and helps with the legs almost unaware of the smells and even the blood. Then she claws at the towels and begins to mop the blood up with one. "Th-there ,.. not ... I ... need more .. towels..." she chatters, barely coherent. Knowing only that she needs to clean or face Kens anger again. "To . to clean..." she cries and wipes her tears with the back of her hand, leaving the man’s blood on her face.

Ken steps back from the tub and pulls more towels off the upper shelf and tosses them down to Heather before washing his hands. Then he turns and looks at her, covered in blood now, with obvious inexpressible guilt about what he's making her do. He's horribly clueless about things between them but even he knows this is asking too much of her, of anyone. He pulls the gun from the holster on his back and sets it on the vanity by the sink "I have to go out...but keep that one just in case. Don't call the cops....don't answer the door for anyone." His tone is uncommonly apologetic and he leaves before she can acknowledge it or protest further.

Heather concentrates on cleaning and decides maybe it would make the body cleaner if she turned on the shower, so she did that. When he speaks she looks up at him and then at the gun and then at him again. She sniffs and nods. "No. I won't. I'll stay here." she swallows and gets herself back to cleaning as best she could, occasionally rinsing out towels in the water that is washing the blood from the man in the tub down the drain. She could mop the floor with her tears.















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