in distrust of merits; ichabod

“You absolute fucker.”

Shredded stacks of paper littering my feet, my own handwriting scattered across their pages like a last will and testimony to a task I would never undertake again. Paper-cut hands and a blood mind stood flush against the wall, chest heaving as he lost his balance in the time it took him to rip a world’s worth of work apart in the time it took for me to realize why he had chosen this particular course of action.

He grinned, bloody and barren like the smirk of the insane when they finally realize that they are so. So fucking insane and able to bring to light the reality of it all he gestures to the papers at my feet, “This— this is not what I wanted to see, Ichabod.”

To be truthful, I had not wished to see a year’s worth of work torn apart on the ground, either.

“You wanted to know the results and I gave them to you. There’s no fault on my part that what I found out was not what matched your petty agenda.”

A knife at my throat and a fist at my stomach— god, what a drab way to spend a Tuesday afternoon.

“If you don’t like the results of my research, you should never look into the way your wife spends her spare time or the likelihood there’s a back alley group planning your demise— you won’t like those results either.”

A moment of silence, the cool steel of a knife blade and the cut I had just made in his own skin hanging in the balance of the thirty seconds of tension that pass.

“Get the fuck out, Ichabod.”

My back pressed against the wall prior I pause at the door, “I want my payment.”

“No fucking way—you’re insane.”

My pride catches in my throat and spits itself out at his feet as I whirl around and move towards him until I’m standing level with his collarbones, looking up at the humor and amusement dancing in his eyes.

I’ve never been more furious.

“I did my fucking job— I carried out what you asked me to have done, and if you do not manage to do the same, I’ll make sure those back alley groups— those I mentioned earlier—know exactly where you are and at what precise moment you go to sleep.”

He pauses, ponders, considers at what point he becomes the conceited man who does not grapple with chance, “You make a lot of big threats for a small girl.” He pulls a wad of bills from his back pocket and hesitatingly places them in my palm.

“You turn up a lot of unimpressive results for a man with such a large ego.”

He sighs, defeat evident in the loss of a bargain missed and he repeats himself, though with less gumption and much less of an ability to appear threatening, “Ichabod, get the fuck out.”

Gladly.

That evening, standing with my back to a concrete wall and a shoulder pressed against a boy whose name had never been of importance but whose insight had been the source of decent conversation for three years running (a record amount of time, in this line of work), I produce the wad of bills, place one in his palm, and smirk, “A penny for your thoughts and all the decent advice you’ve given.”

He takes it delicately (again, unusual considering my own calloused palms and bruised bones), and watches me for a change of heart, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in such a decent mood— it’s kind of unnerving.”

“It’s not every—“ The boy whose testosterone was previously contained inside the red tape barriers of the ring fell at our feet, blood dripping across my feet like a reminder of the research done to place the stack of bills in my palm. He stands, apologizes, and whirls around to return to action without reminder and I lose my train of thought for the first time in a year and three months, “Fuck.”

He notices my lack of concentration, places the bill inside my back pocket and whispers in my ear, “It’s not every day what, Ichabod?” He lets his hand linger, draw lightly across my hip and press me further to that concrete wall as he closes the space between us, “Three years and I’ve still seen you as no glory—I’d like to change that.”

What’s a successful woman in a man’s world?

Still the property of his palms I give him a final chance to take my silence as a secondary answer as sights of the man’s collarbones, these bills, this loss of credibility flashing through my mind as he whispers all the things he promises will bring me glory in a world where there is none for me to find.

A gun fires and my focus finds itself once again.

My finger still quivering on the trigger I see the bullet lodged in his neck, the same place he was marking my own skin with his words. He twitches, three years of conversation drowning in the same scarlet that dotted my feet just minutes earlier.

Truly stained now, I suppose.

The fight has stopped, the action of violence turned attention in my direction I remove the bill of question from my back pocket and place it in his twitching palm as I kneel down beside him.

“A penny for your thoughts.”

I step over him as I exit the room, stained shoes and all.

Still haven’t found that glory.