Chapter 5: The Carpet

1875 words.

A cringy fic I wrote for creative writing class. The prompt was something like "someone forgets their birthday, and someone else reminds them in a touching way." Non-canon; features mafia people killing each other.

Sparky was finally alone in the house.

She closed her eyes, waiting for the ringing in her ears to stop, and the thumping in her chest to subside. She opened her eyes.

The curtains were still drawn and the lights were still off, but she could see.

Carefully avoiding some parts of the floor, she went into the restroom. Her trench coat and the detergent fit perfectly into the sink. She turned on the tap.

In the drawer near the hallway she found some huge black garbage bags, unused. She took one.

The fridge looked bigger on the inside. Good. She emptied the bits of fruit, bottles of milk, and cartons of eggs into the bag. The fridge shelves also had to get out of the way.

When she was done, she closed the door. Stepping back, she waited a few moments to make sure it stayed put. She bent down to pick up the wads of paper towel she had placed on the floor, crumpled them into a huge ball, and stuffed it into the garbage bag.

In the closet she found a broom and a dustpan. Sparky's brows furrowed. No mops.

She took the broom and dustpan and began sweeping glass shards off the floor, dumping them from the pan into the bag. Some tiny pieces fell into the gap between two floorboards as she swept. She knelt down to pick them up, but gave up in frustration after a while. This was taking too long. Though she couldn't read her watch in the dark, she knew that time was running short.

She looked into the closet again, this time stepping further inside. There was something tube-shaped leaning against the back wall. A rolled-up carpet, tucked behind a low row of cardboard boxes.

Standing upright, the carpet was more than a feet taller than her. She wrapped her hands around the tube and lifted it, holding her breath amid the dust.

Spread across the floor, it covered all that she wanted to cover. She patted off her clothes. The dust returned to the carpet where it came from.

She checked her coat again. The sharp smell of bleach was something she could never get used to, but the coat looked okay. She turned off the tap and stuffed the dripping coat into the garbage bag with the fridge content. Out the back door, the black bag fit right in with the others, dumped against the wall. Sparky took off her gloves and started to leave, but her path was blocked by a burly man in a suit.

"Sparky!" he leaned down and said.

He stepped forward. Sparky stayed put.

"Melody."

It was worded like a threat. Either he didn't catch that, or he didn't care. "Know what day it is?" he smiled.

"The day you graduate kindergarten," she answered off-handedly. Her mind was busy. How did Melody know she was here?

Again, he ignored her words. "It's your birthday!" He took another step forward.

No, it wasn't. Or was it? Sparky was no longer armed. Her gun was in the garbage bag, disassembled.

"I've got a present for you." A black tube slid from his sleeve onto his left hand. "It's called a suppressor. You should try it sometime. I heard that shot miles away."

But the walls were soundproof. Or were they? He was getting awfully close.

Melody fitted the suppressor on his pistol with one quick flick of his wrist.

He was scared of her, she realized. He was trying to put her off guard, but it was failing because he was scared.

The tip of the suppressor prodded against her chest. "Let's go inside, shall we?" said Melody.

Sparky opened the door with her elbow. Light shone in a bright beam across the carpet in the living room, into the kitchen, and onto the hard metal surface of the fridge.

Melody ushered Sparky inside, either forgetting to close the door, or preferring the light outside. As he headed towards the kitchen, Sparky stayed near the door, watching his dirty soles and the grimy carpet compete to see who was filthier. She decided that it was a tie.

His back was turned to Sparky, but the muzzle of the gun was pointing towards her. She kept still.

He swung open the fridge door. It ricocheted against the wall and bounced back on the corpse that had tumbled out. The blood hadn't even dried, staining the floor crimson. The shelves stacked at the back of the fridge collapsed onto its feet.

Its face was disfigured, a bloody mess where the bullet hit. Bruises painted its arms into a blooming flower garden. Melody recognized it not because of discerning features, but because it couldn't have been anyone else. "Tephra! Poor Tephra. He was in line to be the next underboss, after you killed Jackal." His head turned to look at Sparky, though his gaze lingered on the corpse for a brief while. "But you know that, don't you? That's why you came after him."

Sparky thought she could feel her pupils trembling. He somehow knew Tephra would replace Jackal.

Carefully avoiding the bloodstained parts of the floor, Melody stepped into the living room. He grabbed a corner of the carpet and lifted it like peeling away some wrapping.

The evening sun tinted everything in its path a warm fuzzy orange. The tiny glass shards between floorboards glittered like gold. The blood seemed to glow.

"Didn't even bother mopping this up? When did you get this sloppy, huh?" The gun was still trained on her.

He'd guessed she would be here. He'd been waiting for her to come here, perhaps waiting for days. She had walked right into his trap: Melody knew that Tephra was the next underboss because he leaked the information!

He threw the carpet back into place with a slap, sending dust dancing like tiny flies in the light. "Close the door, will you?" His finger tightened around the trigger.

Sparky obliged. She kicked the door shut with a deafening smash. And she dashed forward.

He never had a chance to pull the trigger. His face was pushed into the carpet. The gun was wrenched out of his hands. She rolled away far enough so that blood wouldn't get splattered on her when the trigger was pulled.

The fridge couldn't hold two people. Sparky no longer cared. She threw the gun down on the carpet, yanked open the back door — which was already a bit dented from the kick — and ran to her car, tucked invisible behind a wall of bushes off the side of the secluded country road. She had to admit, she never saw Melody as a threat, so who would have thought he'd pull a stunt like this? When her informant told her that Tephra was in line to be the next underboss, she had never suspected that it was a trap laid by Melody.

She threw open the car door, got inside and tried to turn on the ignition and close the door at the same time. Her vision darted across the rearview mirror, but something there caught her eye.

Tephra, alive and well, sitting in the back row, sneering.

Something icy cold pressed against her temple. A muzzle, no suppressor.

The car seat blocked most of the blood spray for Tephra. Only his glove got stained, and that could be easily gotten rid of. He got out of the car and headed home under the setting sun and bloodstained clouds. He wouldn't be able to live there anymore, but he wanted to check it out for the last time.

It was a mess. His double didn't maintain the place very well. It looked like he stuffed all his trash into huge bags and dumped them near the back door. The door itself had a dent in it; he guessed that is was Sparky's doing. What a pain; she wouldn't even spare a door unharmed? Such a crazy gal. Her revenge was already complete after Jackal died. She was just bloodthirsty and completely mad, intent on destroying the entire family. Thank goodness she was dead. He went inside, turning on the bright white artificial lights.

Someone took out his old carpet. His double? Maybe. Melody's corpse lay there, supported by a layer of wool, a layer of dust, and a layer of blood. Tephra almost felt sad. Years of camaraderie, fallen apart because the position of underboss couldn't hold two people. Blame Sparky; she killed Jackal in the first place. Blame Melody; he came after Tephra in the first place. When the rumor that Tephra would be appointed the next underboss went flying around, did Melody really think nobody knew he started it? Sparky fell for it, sure, but only because she was an outsider. He wasn't going to curl up and wait for her to murder him.

Inside the kitchen, the corpse of his double was on the ground, half sticking out of the fridge. When he signed up for this he never knew what would happen to him. He'd probably greeted Sparky with delight when she showed up, eager for some human interaction. Tephra chuckled at the thought.

The sun had set. Tephra left. He would go meet the boss tomorrow. He would go as the person who eliminated Sparky and avenged the deaths of Jackal and Melody. And he would become his new right-hand-man.

In the darkness he walked, with his carpet, one again rolled up, carried over his shoulders. He had taken a liking to it.

Alright, that's a lot of murdering people LOL. I wrote this like a year ago? It even took me a bit time to figure out what was going on. So if you didn't get it: