Signature Kill by David Levien

he didn’t mind the music when he worked and he’d been through it enough times to know how likely it was that she’d scream when he removed the tape.
    Danielle Crawley didn’t though. She just looked at him, breathing panicky breaths through lips that were reddened from the adhesive. He kneeled near her, the concrete floor cold, hard, and rough against his skin.
    “How are we doing, Danielle?” he asked.
    She didn’t answer.
    “I said, ‘How are we doing?’ ” he repeated.
    “Please let me go,” she said.
    “Ahh,” he said in response. He put his hand on her flank, and felt her shudder and inch away as much as she could despite the binding. His eyes roved over her body, pallid, white, and unmarked except for a cluster of moles at her abdomen, and a tiny faded shamrock tattoo on her right calf.
    “The ropes are hurting my wrists and ankles,” she said.
    “No one is exempt from pain and suffering. Nothing is,” he explained.
    How had he come to know this?
    He thought back to when he was young. All he’d wanted then was to know God, to touch His existence. The desire had pulsed inside him. But he’d sit in the church between Grandfather and Mother and nothing would happen. He’d listen and speak and kneel and sing, but he knew he was being ignored, for he was alone. He knew that He existed, because everyone else around him seemed to be able to touch Him or at least believe. As a boy he would try it in his room too,kneeling and praying, but He who had caused everything to be wasn’t there either.
    So he’d gone out on his own and tried to master life, in the woods behind his house. He had set snares and caught things. Squirrels, chipmunks, birds, stray cats. But he had failed miserably in his labors, and only succeeded in bringing death. Whitening bones, and skins tacked to pieces of bark and drying under rock salt, were all that remained. He was being mocked for his efforts. A jealousy rose inside him over His power and it consumed him. Day by day he learned the eternal truth: that everything had a miserable end.
    The final form of the lesson was a robin chick that had fallen from its nest. Seized of an idea, he’d bolted to the shed and retrieved a yellow can of Ronsonol. The little bird burned in a glowing ball of blue. He’d hardly call them flames. The tiny creature’s beak triangled open, calling out with barely any sound, not so much in pain but indignation. That won him over. He had a momentary pang and wondered about extinguishing the fire, seeing if the chick survived, or at least ending its pain with his heel or a rock. But instead he stood there and watched for another two or three minutes, transfixed, while the fire advanced and the bird’s downy feathers and delicate skin, then bones and organs broke down, until the thing was just a loose gelatinous ball. Eventually he’d kicked it off the trail under some low brush and never went back to look at it again and came away knowing he
did
have a power, the power to govern that end, to administer it and to feel the clarity that came along with it.
    That’s when the song on the radio had changed to a British band from the eighties, and it brought him back from his reverie. He looked at Cinnamon again.
    “Tell me about this,” he said, touching the tattoo of the shamrock.
    “Just something stupid I did when I was in school,” she said. He thought about that for a while, as she looked at him. It seemed they were both considering all of the moments and events in her life that had brought her here.
    “You must mean everything to someone,” he said, with appreciation.
    “No,” she said, some pleading in her voice.
    “To your family. Someone …”
    “Not really.” The calm they could show was admirable.
    “Well, you mean everything to me. Now.”
    “Thank you.”
    He took off his glasses and set them aside.
    “You’re nervous. Are you wet?”
    “I don’t know,” she said.
    He reached out and pulled the panties away and felt