I May Have Faked It

Open the scene on a young woman. She is huddled on a bed in the dark, exhausted. She is waiting up for someone. It is late, and she is almost drifted off into an uncomfortable sleep when a noise at the door to her apartment rouses her. He is home. She stands and meets him halfway between the front door and their bedroom. He looks tired as well.

“Baby, why are you getting back so late recently? It’s got me worried. Is something wrong?” Her voice is quiet and uncertain, like she’s the one that’s wrong.

He holds her close as they walk back to their room, talking as they go. “No, sugar, nothing’s wrong. The boss is just being a real jerk and making me work crazy hours since I told him we could use some extra money. That’s all, I promise.”

She nods, but then she thinks for a moment. “Wait, I thought you said your boss wouldn’t give you any overtime. And working at a tech center shouldn’t make you sweat as much as you shirt smells like you have been. What’s going on, Benjamin? Have you been going to a… a club or something?” She sounds so unsure of what she is accusing him of; he hardly has to reject it for her to believe him.

“Sally, of course not. I’d never be caught dead in one of those places, especially when I have a beautiful gal like you to come home to. And what are you even doing up? I told you not to wait up for me.” His voice is harsh, even if his words are caring. “Come on, let’s get to bed.”

************

It is Benjamin’s birthday. Sally is taking him out tonight. She suggested going to a burlesque club to bring them closer together. She has birthday sex planned, done just the way he likes it. He “might know a place” they can go. And here they are. Sally shifts uncomfortably in her seat, but Benjamin doesn’t notice. He is too busy enjoying the atmosphere. She bites her lip before excusing herself to the restroom.

A few minutes after Sally leaves, Benjamin is approached by one of the ladies of the establishment. She is brightly colored and wears a mask like the rest of them. He leaves a note so Sally won’t worry about him too much. The tropical bird of a woman takes him to a back room for an almost private spectacle. There is another man in the room to make sure Benjamin doesn’t break the rules of the joint.

He recognizes her almost immediately when she starts whispering in his ear. “You’ve come again, then? Good. We’ve some final things to discuss,” she says.

“Perfect. My wife thinks my company is sending me overseas soon. Ha! They fired me a couple of months ago after I started getting wrapped up in this whole affair. So, you want me to off someone. Who is he and where can I find him?” Benjamin carries no emotion with his words. He’s done this before. Every “business trip” Sally is left alone for, another important man disappears. Benjamin is a mercenary of the most effective sort.

He can see her mouth, uncovered by the mask, smiling as she talks. “Bear Grylls needs to die. He’s becoming cocky and unrealistic with that little show of his, and we are sick of seeing it everywhere. Can you do this?”

Benjamin doesn’t like this order, not at all. He pales and his mouth clamps shut so he hardly has lips until he can talk again. “Bear?” he almost squeaks his words out in surprise and something else. “I knew him. I grew up with him. He was my best friend for most of my life before he went to go and ‘survive’ everything. I-I can’t… take him out. What am I doing? I’ve got to get out of here.”

He runs.

He makes it about three steps before there is a giant bang, and the man who stood watching them the whole time is standing there with a gun pointed at where Benjamin’s head used to be. The woman is screaming, on her knees crying over him. She takes off her mask and it’s Sally. All dolled up and hysterical, but it’s Sally and she won’t look away from him, not even when the nameless man in the corner tries to shut her up and drag her away.

She’s screaming that might be English, but it’s so high-pitched that mostly you can only make out the sobs. The man with no name and only a little bit of a face sees that she’s not going to be moved, and he runs for it. Maybe the police will catch him later, we can’t know now. She is left alone in a room with a corpse, and now other people come in the door and they find her and she’s stood up now, still holding Benjamin’s hand from when she was crouching over him checking his pulse, checking that, yes, he was dead.

Later, Sally is huddled in the alley behind the joint, trying to remember how to breathe correctly. This is where the police find her, bloody and manic and still holding Benjamin’s hand because she’s dragged him outside with her into the open air. She’s probably destroyed some crucial peace of evidence, but it’s a strip-joint shooting and they aren’t really serious about the case. It’s a big city; there will be another dead man in a few minutes.

They lean over her and shake her so she looks up at them. “Ma’am, can you give us any idea of what went on in there, please?” They say. It doesn’t matter which one. They’re all the same from Sally’s view point – large and blue and oh so polite. She decides to answer them. They did ask nicely, after all, and wasn’t that what her mother had always taught her to do?

“He told me he’d never be caught dead in one of these places,” she says, “so I brought him out here.”