Two Steps From Hell

Chapter 7: Identity Crisis

A couple of hours later he turned up on the front porch of his two-storey sub-urban home, soaking wet from head to shoes. A puddle of water formed where he stood. Looking to his immediate East he saw the mango-coloured lights of the sun peeking over the horizon. Dawn was upon him and it would be best if he didn't allow anyone to see him standing on his porch, especially after everything that had just gone down in the passing hours. Already he had risked everything by just coming here. Why did he come back here? In his head, he believed that this was the last place the police or anyone else would expect to find him. He may be right because as of this very moment the police are still scouring other parts of the city looking for him. This was even more so heightened at the death of Captain Briggs, something they will no doubt pin on him also. In any event, he cannot stay here for long. 

With his hand holding his injured side, he decided to enter through the door by stepping over a police yellow tape and pushing up another while he entered. The tapes were placed in such a way as to form an X at the doorway. This was because Essen's beloved mahogany door was bashed in off its hinges. He cried a little inside when he saw this. He would soon after weep heavily inside when he saw the rest of his house: the sofa he once found comfortable was disembowelled; nothing stood upright anymore, they all laid flat on the floor; his once cleaned walls were graffitied in red, reading 'Murderer' and 'Cop Killer'; and almost every crockery laid broken on the kitchen floor. Certainly, a whirlwind had passed through my house, Essen pondered among his thoughts. No way was this done by the police. What were they looking for? Then he remembered the flash drive which Ezra currently possessed. "Oh that. What is really on that flash drive? It must be really important for everyone to be going all batshit over it. Maybe I need to speak with that kid again. But first I must get what I've come here for, he said to himself as he went up the stairs. 

Upstairs wasn't any much different from downstairs. Everything was ransacked. In his bedroom, he went. In there his clothes littered the floor; his pillows and mattress were ripped apart; his dresser drawers were deprived of their contents. Everything was not at all how he had left it. Everything except a picture frame that remained firmly secured on the wall. It was a simple picture of a small sailboat navigating the calm turquoise waters of a sleepy fishing village. The picture frame was quite worthless in its true nature. No. Behind it laid its true value. He shortly after, removed the frame to reveal a small safe built into the wall. He quickly placed his thumb on a scanner and unlocked the safe. Inside were a couple of jewellery, some documents, a g*n and money he had set aside in case of an emergency. At least his mind could rest at ease now that he had found out that the police hadn't found his safe. Then hastily he grabbed a gym bag from out of his closet and began to stuff a couple of clothes in it. In the process he found a clean pair of jeans and shirt to change off into. He also changed his wet shoes.

Afterwards going back over to the safe, he took out all the money he had in it and jammed them at the side of the bag. He also took out the g*n and placed it in the back of his jeans. Then out of nowhere, he heard a slight crushing sound coming from downstairs like someone had stepped on a piece of broken glass. He tried to brush it off as nothing, but then he heard it again and again. So closing the safe's door halfway, he cautiously went to investigate.

Firmly carrying his bag in his hand, he walked and stopped at the top of the staircase to get a better listen. But he heard nothing. Then right when he was about to go downstairs to have a look for himself, he felt a sharp stabbing pain in his side. It was his abdominal wound acting up. Luckily he remembered that he had some old painkillers locked away in his medicine cabinet that he could use to dull the pain. So instead of going downstairs, he headed straight for the bathroom. But just when he entered the bathroom a figure emerged up the stairs unknowingly to him. Anyways, in the medicine cabinet, he found a bottle labelled 'ibuprofen extra strength'. He gently popped the cap, gulped down two of the pills and drank some water directly from the tap. After this, he threw the bottle that contained the remaining pills into his bag and decided it was time to say goodbye to this place.

On his way down the stairs he heard the same sound again, this time it was coming from both upstairs and downstairs. Bear in mind that he was midway on the staircase. His eyebrows tensed together in frustration as to what or who was really making that sound. Surely it was someone stepping on the debris that decorated the floor. To his real terror, he started to hear defined footsteps coming up from the basement which was right below him as well as footsteps coming from upstairs, walking towards the stairs on which he stood. In the blink of an eye, he dashed down the stairs and into the kitchen. It was his two most favourite assassins.

Hiding behind his kitchen counter that stood in the centre of the room, Essen pulled out his g*n and got ready for a fourth and possibly final confrontation with the assassins. The two walked into the kitchen and Essen gripped his g*n ever so tightly. But Essen would soon learn that he was overreacting as surprisingly they didn't observe that he was in the room with them. 

"That's it," the yellow assassin said. "He is not here. Apparently, he wasn't stupid enough to return to his house as you've expected."

"He is stupid," the purple assassin defended. "He was here. I found his wet clothes upstairs in a bedroom. There was also a safe in the room that wasn't reported in the police raid. He came back for something."

"The flash drive?"

"I think so; yes. Nonetheless, we have to find him"

The yellow assassin then looked at his refrigerator door and saw a bunch of kid drawings, primarily of a father figure, a mother figure and a child figure collectively titled 'My Family'. There was one real picture of the family featuring a smiling Essen with his loving wife and daughter. He had a healthy curly afro with a clean shave in the picture, versus the low dehydrated hair and untidy facial hair he presently wore.

"He has a daughter and a wife," the yellow assassin noticed.

"So?" The purple assassin replied with a scornful look on her face.

"Merci, how many husbands and fathers have we killed?" 

"How many times have I told you never to use my real name when we're on duty? Someone could be listening."

"There is no one here with us."

"Walls have ears."

"Regardless, the question still remains, how much?"

"That doesn't concern us and you shouldn't be asking questions like those," Merci warned while starting to walk around the counter. Essen heard her stilettos hitting down on the wooden floor as she approached from around the corner. So he stealthy moved around to the other side.

"I know. But after a while it does has its toll," the yellow assassin revealed, holding her head down in shame.

Merci immediately stopped. "What's up with you? You haven't been the same after that warehouse siege. It's that old man, isn't it? " 

Merci was referring to the time when she had hesitated to kill Antonio when she had the chance to at his warehouse. Essen, however, was relieved that she discontinued her walk around the counter. But then he found himself wanting to hear what the other assassin had to say in response.

"You hesitated to kill him, why!?" Merci continued, this time demanding an answer.

"Don't you ever stop to ask yourself why?"

"Why? Why what?!"

"Why do we do what we do? Why does Victor want us to kill these people? What have they've done to him that would cause him to resort to such extreme measures?" 

"They screwed with him and he wants them dead. It doesn't get any simpler than that," Merci replied in an irritated tone of voice.

"No. There must be a larger picture we're not seeing. The people we've hit...they are all scientists, businessmen...undeserving of death. I don't see the correlation or point of killing them anymore," the yellow assassin passionately confessed.

"The point I understand now is that you've allowed that dead man to barrow his way into your mind. Now you're all questions and doubt. Maybe you need a lengthy session of systematic reeducation. But being the caring sister that I am, let I just remind you who we are. We are killers. We were trained to be such from birth. That's who we are...killers," Merci proudly declared.

An intense silence then developed between the two in their discourse. And before one of them could break the ice, Merci received an incoming call. She subsequently answered it secretly and ended the call after exchanging just a few words. 

"Come on, we have to leave now," Merci informed. 

"Why?" The yellow assassin asked out of curiosity. 

"He did not say," she said ending the conversation. 

Essen nervously waited behind the counter for them to leave and they eventually did. He stood up when he heard their bike engines starting up. They shortly sped off. 

Day had broken and yet again Essen survived another encounter with the two deadly assassins. He could finally take in a deep breath. Then to his surprise, as he turned around he saw a dark-skinned man sitting down on his kitchen floor in a Buddhist position with his legs crossed over each other and hands together. He was just sitting there with his back turned to Essen and his face facing the door leading to the backyard. The middle of this man's head was bald, but he had long white dreadlocks hanging down from the sides and back of his head. Essen was puzzled as to where this man came from all after a sudden. Not taking any unnecessary risks, he pointed his g*n at him and said, "Where the hell did you come fro---"

But before he could finish his question, Essen was pulled by an unknown, invisible force over the granite counter-top, in mid-air towards the man. Right there and then Essen didn't know what was happening. All he could confirm was that there were no strings attached to him. How can this be happening then? Nonetheless, he came to an abrupt stop and realized that he couldn't move his hands or feet. The man then levitated off the floor and held his relaxed Buddhist form in mid-air. His hair danced as if it was being moved by the wind. Essen's jaw dropped in disbelief and fear withheld his voice. The man then began to slowly turn himself around, to reveal a sinister smirk. His eyes were shut. Essen tried vigorously to get back control of his hand which contained the g*n, but before he could, the man opened his eyes and blasted his mind telepathically, causing him to hear hundreds of voices all speaking at once. His hands were now freed and he tried to cover his ears, but it didn't stop the voices. The man subsequently pushed him straight over and across the counter without moving a muscle. The voices ceased and Essen got up almost instantly to aim his g*n at the man, yet he couldn't see him anymore. In truth, the man had placed a mental block on Essen's mind so that he couldn't see him.

The man blasted him again with another dose of the voices, this time they were even louder than before. Pots, utensils and other small objects in the kitchen began to hover slightly, knocking amongst each other as they did so. Essen covered his ears again, this time he barely could keep his eyes open with the increased level of telepathic-induced pain he was under. It was so harsh that he allowed the g*n he had to fall out of his hand. Near feeling like his head would soon explode, a little glowing hand out of nowhere stretched forth through this ghostly man's chest and caused him to vaporized with a screeching cry into a pillar of black smoke, which slowly vanished into thin air. 

Essen at the same time fell to his knees free of the telepathic t*****e that he was under. He was, however, left confused as to what had just transpired. It would seem that his world just kept on getting weirder and weirder by the day. Sadly enough, this was just the tip of the iceberg. Straight away someone ran past him into the living room. Unwilling to believe that he was losing his mind, he reacted quickly and went running after the possible intruder. But he saw no one at first. 

"Look you think I'm afraid of you! I'm not! Show your face, you coward!" Essen shouted courageously in the empty room.

Then out of the blues, a small familiar voice whispered, "Daddy." 

He heard this and almost instantaneously his eyes filled up with tears because he recognized the voice. He afterwards looked downwards to see his nine-year-old daughter standing before him. She was wearing a pretty little white gown with her luscious curly hair resting on her shoulders. "Jody," he replied with a shaky voice. 

"Daddy, we must leave now. The pastor, he is in danger," the little girl insisted, pulling at his hand for him to follow her through the door. 

But Essen sceptically pulled away his hand from her and said with a very disturbed look on his face, "Jody, you should not be here. You are dead."