#multilation

Par for the Course

Mickey is fourteen and he’s wondering if tonight is the night he’s finally going to kill someone. He knows that the particular warehouse he’s standing in is the one where the McKennas carry out most of their executions. He knows that, for a few months now, Murphy McKenna has been telling Mickey he needs to get a notch on his belt. And when two men emerge from the shadows at the back of the warehouse, dragging a barely conscious third man between them, Mickey knows that man is not going to survive the night. He just doesn’t know if he’ll be the one to end it. 

The man is a dock-worker whose been skimming off the top of McKenna shipments for months now. For his first warning they’d been reasonable and set his car alight. His second warning had involved a visit to the docks where his hand had been broken by the very specific application of a hammer to his knuckles (directed by Paddy, wielded by Mickey).  

Nobody gets a third warning when they cross the McKennas. 

 So now the man is kneeling on the floor while Aiden McKenna, nineteen years old and heir to the McKenna crime family dynasty, is pacing in front of him and monologuing each and every injury he’s going to inflict. Mickey tunes out because Aiden McKenna is a stupid twat and his voice makes Mickey want to punch him.  

Aiden’s wielding his gaudy, gold-plated knife with the snakeskin handle and scorpion themed pommel. Every now and then he’ll jab it towards the kneeling man and laugh when he flinches and sobs.  Mickey’s own switchblade is tucked in his sleeve, combat knife in his boot, he feels the press of them against skin more than usual. 

Mickey tunes back in when he hears Aiden’s voice change, louder, faster, excited.  

“And then I’m going to send all the bits of you back your daughters, piece by piece...”  

The man is begging for mercy, already bleeding from shallow cuts where Aiden’s blade has nicked him because Aiden’s knifework is sloppy and he doesn’t fight often enough to know his own range.  

Well...Aiden doesn’t fight at all. Not really. 

Aiden takes the jobs like this one where the men have already been beaten and he has an audience to play to. The jobs that happen in McKenna turf in McKenna warehouses with McKenna back up. Jobs that men like Murphy arrange and boys like Mickey clean up afterwards. This month the warehouse is housing sports equipment and the man is being tortured at the end of an aisle of golf supplies. Mickey wishes it was football stuff - he might at least have been able to nick some.  

Mickey’s eyes snap back to the man as he screams, guttural and raw. Aiden is slicing through the man’s ear, cursing as the blood is making everything slippery and hard to see. Once done laughs and shouts a terrible joke down the hole that remains at the side of the man’s skull.  

Mickey doesn’t look away. He hasn’t looked away since he was eight years old and Paddy brought him to see a man being killed and told him to watch. And Mickey had watched, unblinking as Patrick Cole shot the man in the head and afterwards called Mickey a ‘good lad’ for not closing his eyes and Murphy had called him a ‘proper little soldier’.  

Fingers next, one by one, Aiden swearing and grunting because he doesn’t understand the difference between a knife made for cutting and a knife made for stabbing or that his custom-made piece of shit isn’t good for either. The man’s screams have turned into one continuous, moaning wail that just goes up and down in volume depending on what the blade is doing at that particular moment.  

Right now the blade is sat on the shelf next to a tub of golf balls and ball cloths and Mickey sniggers internally because he’s a fourteen-year-old boy and jokes about ‘rubbing balls’ are always funny.  

Aiden barks orders and the two men either side of the prisoner move and lay him down flat on the cold concrete warehouse floor. Aiden is strolling lazily back and forth, his brown eyes scanning the aisles like a bored shopper. He stops when finds the golf clubs, picks one up, and tests his swing.  

“Have you ever played golf, Miller?” he asks Mickey, though he already knows the answer. 

“No Sir,” Mickey answers flatly.  

“Of course you haven’t,” Aiden scoffs at the idea of it. “I’d let you be my caddy next time I play but...” He puts down the iron and picks out a driver. “They don’t let your sort in the golf club.” 

“Aiden...” Murphy’s voice interrupts in a tone that’s both a warning and a chastisement.   

“Don’t worry, Uncle Murphy, nearly done.”  

Aiden takes the driver and pockets a ball from the shelf. On his way back to the victim, he carefully picks up his blade from the metal shelving and then crouches down.  

“This bit...” he whispers to the man who’s now clearly going into shock, the mangled stumps of his hands twitching on the blood-covered concrete.  

“This bit I’m going to send to your widow.” 

And then he slices; a squelching, hacking cut across the fleshy nub at the bottom of the man’s nose until the whole tip comes free. Aiden drops it into a small plastic bag and hands it off to a goon behind him. The place where the man’s nose used to be is now a grisly crater of blood and cartilage. Aiden admires his work briefly and then, produces the golf ball from his pocket and drops it in the newly created hole. 

Murphy’s muttering something, Paddy cursing quietly in the background but Aiden? Aiden is laughing so hard he can hardly hold the club. He swings once, twice, then drives and the ball goes soaring, blood dripping as it flies up and out of sight, landing with a CRASH in the far end of the warehouse. 

Aiden nods as though he’s just scored a hole-in-one. 

“Shot!” He congratulates himself and then turns to Mickey.  

“Go and fetch that,” he orders and Mickey does. He walks to the sound of the crash and away from the new sound of metal meeting flesh.