INGA ORTIZ [Assassin #6] stood above the corpse of Governor Irina Blythe-Pillsworth. The governor’s eyes were staring up at the gilded bathroom ceiling in the Grand City Hotel. They betrayed none of the horror they’d shown when she’d turned a corner, just moments ago, and saw an Employed leaning against a marble sink.
Inga unlocked her phone and opened SoMeApp. She uploaded a picture of an angry looking opossum in a dumpster. She pushed the phone back in her pocket.
She ducked down and peeked under the door. The hallway outside seemed empty. She readjusted the bag on her
shoulder and slipped past her victim to the bathroom window. She shoved it open. Next to the window was a dumpster that would cover a quiet escape through the alley.
Inga lowered the bag out of the window while ignoring the phone vibrations from each new ‘like’ on the opossum picture. She let the bag go and cringed at the sound of metal tools clanking against the concrete. She pulled herself through the window, shouldered the bag again, and leaned against the dumpster before sprinting to the end of the alley.
She waited for a pedestrian to pass by before disappearing into the trees across the street.
***
DETECTIVE LIONEL Conner hated the projects. The tenants almost always lived in squalor. He didn’t understand why someone would live in government housing. They could just get a better job and move someplace without bugs and mice, or domestic disputes filtering through the walls.
Conner banged on the door where the yelling seemed loudest.
A short, bald man cracked open the door just enough to push his red face out. “What?” He snapped.
Detective Conner flipped open his wallet to show his badge and closed it in a fluid motion. “It sounds like your future noise complaint could use some mediation.”
The man paled and shook his head. “No! Uh-,” he gaped for a moment, “no, we’re done. Sorry. Won’t hear a sound out of us again, I swear, officer.”
“Detective.” Conner nudged the door open so he could see inside the apartment. A man in a pale yellow bathrobe was hugging himself while rubbing the bald man’s back. “Would either of you boys happen to know an Inga Ortiz?”
The men exchanged a look. Before the bald man could speak, the man in the yellow robe squeezed his shoulder to cut him off. “Inga’s in 1744. She used to be on this floor but they moved her when the rats took over her place a couple months back.”
Conner leaned forward and took the door handle. “Thank you so much for your time.” He smiled and pulled the door closed.
The choice between twelve more flights of stairs and a rickety elevator was not one Conner was happy about making. Six floors were scary enough. He supposed – seeing several people using it – it must have been safe enough by tenants’ standards. He doubted their standards were as high as his, but he was not up for twelve flights of stairs. His knees were beginning to ache more than he wanted to admit.
Four minutes of clacking and banging later, the elevator arrived on the seventeenth floor. The doors eased open and Conner slipped out quickly – before the cable could snap and send him to his death. The door numbers started at 1700. Three long halls and two turns later, Conner found 1744.
He knocked hard and waited. After no sign that anyone was inside, he removed the skeleton key he’d picked up from the Government Housing Office. He opened the door a crack, readied his gun, and kicked the door hard enough to send it careening into the opposite wall. The apartment was dark, small, and empty.
Conner leafed through papers sitting on a table as he scanned the area. He flipped on a light switch in the entryway. The apartment flooded with harsh, high-efficiency strip lighting that momentarily blinded him. He blinked a few times. When he finally opened his eyes he saw the glow of a cell phone under a pillow on the bed. He shoved his hand under it until he felt the hard case.
He ran his thumb across the bottom of the phone and it lit up to scan his face. After a moment, it unlocked. His likeness was registered in the law enforcement database. Conner read the text messages. Most seemed to be from Inga’s mother – saved as ‘Birth Giver’ with a rattle emoji. Birth Giver seemed upset about Inga’s recklessness. Conner let out a humorless laugh. Inga was their primary suspect in the murder of a bank teller. He wondered if her mother knew just how reckless Inga really was, living in some awful government apartment and spending time with Lay-Abouts.
Conner scrolled through the apps on the phone and found SoMeApp. He found a timeline of animal pictures and nonsense peppering a feed of people complaining about the government and each other. He’d never seen anything like it. His own feed was filled with family pictures, travel, children playing, and complaints about the service industry. He wondered how depressing Inga’s feed was to see every morning.
Behind him, Inga cleared her throat. Nervous as she was, she had already accepted the possibility of being arrested. After the teller, she sometimes felt she had it coming. “What are you doing in my apartment?” She asked.
Conner flipped open his badge, still scrolling her timeline. He stopped at the picture of the opossum from just a few hours before. He furrowed his eyebrows. Inga had posted it in a group called ‘six opossums shitposting the end of the world.’
“You like opossums?” Conner asked, crinkling his nose. He was goading her. Inga narrowed her eyes at him. He sighed and pushed the phone into his pocket. “Evidence.” He smiled at her. “I’m here to ask you a few questions about the murder of a bank teller named Iris Teig.
“I don’t know an Iris Teig.” Inga shook her head. “Sorry, officer.”
Conner pulled his own phone from his pocket and scrolled through his gallery until he reached a video. “I have surveillance video of you following her into the bank the night she was murdered.”
“If you’re going to hang this on me why haven’t you cuffed me yet?” Inga asked angrily, pushing out her chin and eyeing Conner.
Detective Conner pulled the cuffs from his belt. “Inga Ortiz, you’re under arrest for the murder of Iris Teig and suspected subversive activities not yet detected.”
He pulled her arms behind her back and cuffed her tight.
“Fucking pigs…” Inga muttered as she was marched into the hall.
Conner pulled her by the elbow into the elevator. Once inside, he continued to scroll through her phone. “I don’t understand half the shit on your feed, you know that?” He shook his head. “It’s just a bunch of random numbers and words that don’t mean anything.” Inga spat on his shoe. “Still, I bet there’s something good they can get off this thing.”
“Fuck you.” Inga said quietly, staring at the floor.
Conner shook his head. “Your feed is fucking depressing.” He watched Inga from the corner of his eye and he softened for a moment. “Look, you don’t have to live like this. You could get a better job or something.”
Inga gaped at him for a moment. She laughed. “You’re a fucking idiot.”
Conner’s brows furrowed and his guard went back up. “I’m not the one in custody.”
***
JEFF YE [posting under his alt ‘Comrade Trash’] opened the assignment group ‘C H O N K S 4 S A L E’ on his laptop. He scoped the parking lot of the fast food restaurant where he was stealing wifi to make sure no one was watching. He was always cautious. Six [Inga] hadn’t posted anything lately. He hadn’t seen any posts from Three or Seven either.
He uploaded a picture of a big, old gray Maine Coon and added the details: ‘#11 The Beast ^1412 !dinner’ to let Nate [assassin Eleven] know he was assigned to kill the district attorney outside his office at the former #1412 bus stop around 7 p.m. There hadn’t been a bus stop there since Jeff’s father was born. Jeff’s grandfather had run the small grocery there before he’d been driven out of business.
Jeff closed his laptop. He had twenty minutes until his shift started as a customer service representative at the social
security office. For two years, Jeff sorted the applications into ‘yes’ and ‘no’ piles. He’d seen a therapist about his sudden sense that everything was irreparably terrible. His insurance hadn’t covered a very good therapist so he took generic Felixibilis, until he couldn’t stand the restless legs. He quit the pills and therapist and prescribed himself weed and animal memes.
Jeff swiped his ID card and pushed the heavy glass door open. He was used to seeing cops in the lobby but it always made him nervous. He shuffled past as quickly as he could without drawing attention. As he stepped into the customer service area, he knew he was done for. Three policemen were rifling through his desk drawers and a detective was standing just inside the office.
“Jeff Ye?” Detective Conner asked, taking a step back. He checked the suspect photo on his phone. He pulled his handcuffs from his belt. The three police officers were rushing over, guns drawn.
“Get on the ground, Comrade.” One of the cops barked with a smirk. Before Jeff could make it to his knees to
comply, a cop twisted his right arm behind his back.
Jeff tried to pull away and heard his shoulder pop as the cop twisted harder. “Man, fuck you.” Jeff growled, trying to swing a punch at another cop lunging for his left arm. The third cop fired his gun, hitting Jeff in the neck. Jeff went down sputtering blood before he went still.
Detective Conner sighed. “It didn’t have to be this way, Jeff.” He knelt down and checked for a pulse then marked the time for the paperwork later.
“He was the last one, right?” The cop who shot Jeff asked, nudging the body with his foot. Conner nodded.
“Good-fuckin’-riddance.”
Tish Markley is an artist, writer and poet from Central Illinois living in Las Vegas, Nevada. Growing up they had a pet cow named Bob – named after an auctioneer at the sale barn. Markley beat up homophobes in high school. They literally once owned a pair of rose-colored glasses but lost them. Markley is an editor at Red Wedge, and an editor a Locust Review — where this short story also appeared in the first print edition of the journal. They are currently working on two serialized novellas, as well as the Born Again Labor Museum project with Adam Turl. Turl and Markley’s website is evictedart.com.