Sandmen Read online

  He wore his suit and slacks and his holster with the gun. He left his room too early; he needed coffee, black, he needed his heart pumping until it hurt. He went down to their lounge at the third floor and made himself a cup of it. There were few people in there, all in their uniform, some were reading novels, some were checking the Internet, maybe tweeting, updating their fucking statuses: sitting my ass on the lounge, LOL. Feeling annoyed, feeling satisfied. They were allowed to use Internet, but they should be careful on what they put in their profiles. Selfies, surprisingly, were allowed too.

  Fritz hated those selfies. It was one of the banes of his existence. He actually couldn’t see the point in doing such an egotistical thing. Yes, that’s it, Fritz thought. This social networking, for him, was the great epitome of ME-time for the common people from 10 to 30 years old. And there were also many things, stupid things, countless things, this world had submitted into. Fritz knew because he watched them happen year after year.

  With his cup of coffee, he went to a window and looked at the blackened sky, a sky that was older than him. He wondered how the sky felt, watching the world spin for over incredibly many years. It must be tired. It must be sick of it, sick of them.

  Fritz went to the ground floor after his coffee. The receptionist was a different kind this time. She looked Italian, and she always greeted you with a good (put the part of the day). He liked her very much.

  “Oh, good evening, Fritz,” she said. Thank god it’s not William, he thought.

  “Evening there, Claris. Anyone snooping around here?”

  She bit her lower lip. “Only you, babe.”

  He was going to fuck her.

  And then to the basement. This was where he always went to whenever he was going crazy. Because this place, this place was the bomb. It was different all the time, various people, various icons. Sometimes, if he were lucky, there was even a mythical beast. He wished there would be one, maybe two.

  It was the Mop Room.

  “You again.”

  “Yeah, me again,” said Fritz.

  The man, named Mars, shrugged this off and returned in stacking the bodies to the incinerator. And there Fritz saw their beautiful Marilyn with a nice bullet wound between her blue eyes. Her nose was bent now, that was from the impact. There were other old-timers there: Frank Sinatra, some presidents, a Nazi soldier, and some random people he didn’t know wearing clothing from the fifties.

  “Any myths in there?” he asked.

  “Hey, Burke!” he called, a man bobbed his head up from a mountain of dead bodies, “do we have any myth?”

  “Yeah, there’s a small dragon, why?”

  “How small?” Fritz said.

  “6 feet, thick as your leg.”

  “Where?”

  “Why?”

  “Because I like to see it.”

  Burke looked at Mars. “Fine, I’ll take him,” Burke said.

  They moved along the line of bodies. There was no stinking stench yet, there were only mixtures of scents from many imagined aromas. Fritz had no idea where the smells came from, no, not that, he didn’t know how they came about.

  “How many have you collected last night?”

  “Roughly 500. Almost didn’t reach in time, you know.”

  “Again?”

  “Yeah, some shit like it bloody. Whachamacall’er?… Ah, Lori’s the name. She hit all the major arteries, dug her way through them like she was in surgery. I hate that bitch. Bitches and bastard.”

  “Sorry to hear that.”

  “I like your kind, you know. You make it fast, easy.”

  “Why thank you for that, anything for you, guys.”

  “OK, here it is.”

  A dragon.

  Its scales were gray, but there were parts that remained iridescent. It would have been a treat if he’d seen it alive. Fritz always liked dragons, and elves, and vampires, basically everything connected to impossible things provided by legends and enhanced by movie magic. This dragon, he knew, was either from China Town or a white kid who had just discovered anime. But whoever had dreamt this myth, this kind of person was one of the dangerous kind, the kind that could produce objects that had the possibility of being uncontainable, could not be killed by mere guns, things that were plainly nightmare for anyone in the waking world. Fritz liked them dead, but he also wanted to see them alive even for a moment.

  “This flew?” he asked, pulled out a stick of cigarette, lit it, and smoked.

  “Not sure. The report told us that Mick killed it before their tandem had a chance to see.”

  Fritz nodded. He looked at all the dead bodies, their collective stench finally starting to smell. It was time to incinerate them all, the legends and the icons, the childhood sweethearts and the bums, the fantasies and the nightmares. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. From here to being forgotten.

  “Have you ever thought of dying, Burke?”

  Burke was silent for a jiff. He looked unsure. “Come on, Fritz, don’t go there. I still like what I do… Why? Do you think of it?”

  “Only sometimes.”

  “Don’t do that, man. No. So many things to live for.”

  Fritz laughed.

  “What?”

  “You and I know that’s not true.”

  They always met with Wilder before they started their murderous occupation, all hundreds of them. They were in the seventh floor, all of them were standing in front of their desks, their eyes looking at Wilder walking around, with his hands behind his back, like a general that would be saying a great speech.

  “We had two level three last night,” Wilder said.

  Level one was the recently dead puppies, and cute cats, harmless dreams kids thought of to existence. Level two was the fantasies, just like Marilyn Monroe and the pop stars Mark was fed up about. Level three was the nightmares, myths, and killers, those who had been dreamt up with guns and knives and a mind of pure hate. They were the dangerous ones. They fought back. Always fought back.

  “I want tandem 16 to check on area of 42,” Wilder looked at a man and a woman - tandem 16. “You’ll check on who dreamt of that level three.”

  The tandem said in unison: “Yes sir.”

  Wilder shifted his attention all around. “As always, take care out there. And keep it fucking clean, I’m hearing complaints about it from the mop up team.

  Many chuckled.

  “This is not a joke,” he pointed that index finger again. “I’m serious!”

  They then readied the guns and knives and towels to wipe off the blood if things got messy. And the rings, those rings that made them unseen by people. They all had the rings, enchanted artifacts that brought them power (they could piss anywhere without being sexually offensive, they could destroy a mailbox without being physically seen, or in more grim concepts, kill somebody). But other than these things, Fritz brought a novel, something to kill the time whenever they were waiting. Mark was with his smart phone, it was drowned with gaming apps. Mark was one of those old souls who basically had appreciated the technology, who at first had said “I don’t need that nonsense, people from ago survived without those shit,” but then ultimately submitted to the craze. Fritz on the other hand didn’t adore it, he didn’t hate it too, it was just a thing for him that would obviously lead to more progress-just like the railways, physics, discovery of gravity, and finally, the corset. But he didn’t submit to it, he’d rather read.

  “I hope something will be good tonight…” said Mark as they walked on the streets.

  This is rape, Fritz thought, always with the fucking rape it’s not even funny anymore.

  “I wanna encounter a myth,” Fritz said.

  “Me too, but that’s for sight,” he pointed at his eyes. “I want to feel.”

  “God, then fuck a unicorn or something.”

  Mark didn’t reply to this.

  “I wanna see a leprechaun… There’s always 50/50 chance of gold with them.” Fritz smiled. “When did you last see a myth, huh?”


  Mark shrugged, “Last year. Remember the dog?”

  Fritz remembered the dog. It was a six headed dog. A disgusting little thing. Maybe a child had read about a Cerberus and had a nightmare that wasn’t contented with three heads. No, Fritz didn’t want that, he wanted a dragon, a phoenix, a hot mermaid with wings.

  “That dog made me puke,” he whispered.

  They reached their post, an old bus stop that was packed with graffiti. They made most of the graffitis, one of their killing-time moments. They sat on the provided chairs and went to their own things; Mark with the digital buttons of his smart phone, Fritz with his novel and cigarette.

  Both of them were now waiting for that cold feeling on their napes, their jobs, besides the killing. It was how they identified those materialized dreams that were being born every night.

  Fritz pulled out a compass and put it between them. And then the wait, a grueling wait in the cold of the night. The same night being described in Fritz’s novel, which was a dark detective novel. He liked this kind of novel, one with darkness in the surroundings, who had a mystery in each turn. Maybe that was why he liked myths, because they were always unexpected.

  The compass’ hands started to spin.

  Mark put the smart phone away and grabbed it. The long hand stopped north, the short hand stopped at two.

  He stood up. “Ready your gun, man.”

  Fritz held up a hand and pointed at his book, “I’m in the good part.”

  Mark slapped the back of his head.

  “Damn it,” Fritz exclaimed, “what are you fussing about?”

  “It could be a girl from yester decades, man. C’mon!”

  Both of them came on and followed each rotation of the compass. North, west, east, north again, and then finally, they saw it.

  A bloody Claris.

  Chapter 4

  There was blood pooling at the back of her neck. Fritz and Mark immediately went to her to check if she were still alive. By the time they got to her, they only stood there and beheld this murder most foul. Claris’ head was almost decapitated from her once flawless neck; they could see the spine drenched in red, they could see the veins continuing to spurt out blood. There would be no saving anymore, there would be no calling the old office for help. There was only the standing and looking helpless like a kid who peed his pants.

  Mark was about to say something when they heard another scream. It came from a different alley. Fritz tried to remember badly who was Claris’ partner but couldn’t. So they ran towards the scream’s way, both of them readying themselves in seeing another massacre.

  When they got there, they saw the partner. His name, if Fritz’s memory served him right, was Ethan. He was panting when they found him, his eyes bewildered, and at the same time, scared. When this Ethan finally saw them, he shouted: “Run!”

  But he said it in a very odd way, because Fritz could see what it really meant: help me…

  Yet death was the first one to arrive, not salvation.

  A black-cloaked man jumped over him and impaled his shoulder with a sword, and then another joined, same outfit, different weapon. They stabbed Ethan like no one’s business. Stab, pull, stab, pull—blood splatter like fireworks in the sky. It was like it had been choreographed, and in a sick way, it was elegant.

  And you know what Fritz and Mark did? They just remained standing, their feet were in between running and helping the poor, poor Ethan. But eventually they chose running when the black-cloaked killer started to advance their way.

  “We are coward assholes today…” Mark said and Fritz couldn’t agree more.

  Fritz then looked back and saw the dark men following them in the light of the lamp post—they were both wearing variations of samurai armors beneath their black cloaks. But when he examined further…

  “They’re fucking ninjas!”

  It would be hysterical if this was another time, but at this moment, it wasn’t. But still, Mark laughed.

  “I’m sorry,” Mark said, panting between syllables. “Ninjas!” he said in a squeal mixed with absurdity.

  Fritz wanted to use his gun and shoot him, but strangely, he wanted to laugh too.

  “The gun,” Fritz said in realization and gave the samurais two shots. Bang, bang! The killers behind them slowed down, giving them the chance of a proper escape. It worked.

  But they didn’t escape, not really, what they only did was hide. They scampered away into a dumpster on the side of a building. And in there they waited for their deaths with hushed lips and sweaty skins. It was dark inside, it was stenchy, and the only thing that they could hear was their breathing.

  Honestly, Fritz had thought about a different ending for his life, most of the time he had been thinking of suicide and not this, not a bloody murder, because who would murder them? No one knew them, but only the organization that saw them through. So who wanted them dead? What were those things, those killers who followed them and killed two of their men? Were they assassins from a different branch? Or were they dreams themselves, conjured up by someone who had a murderous and fucked-up mind, like level-six-solitary-prison psyche. It was something to be scared about, to stay away from. But these assassins couldn’t be dreams, they were too intelligent. Most of the times level threes with the classification under ‘murder’ weren’t that efficient in actually killing in open space. They could easily kill them with a gunshot. No one had the capacity to dream of a complete, directed assassin that was both stealthy and fast. No one.

  “Who would do this?” he asked Mark, which seemed to be a stupid move because Mark didn’t know too. But he needed ideas, he needed something about his killers before he could ever kick the bucket.

  And he was right, it was a stupid idea.

  “Why the hell are you asking me?” Mark said silently, like he was one of the rats in this dumpster.

  “Because it comforts me to know who or what is going to kill me,” and he said this in an equally rat-like voice.

  But Mark didn’t answer him.

  After a few moments of silence, Fritz finally heard a whimper from Mark. But he was wrong to decide it was a whimper, because it was the opposite. Mark actually laughed. Again. It was a stop-it-oh-god-stop-it-it’s-too-funny laugh. Fritz, for the second time around, wanted to shoot him, for real this time. He actually cocked his gun, but the silly man Mark was, he only laughed more.

  Maybe it was natural to laugh, because as immortal beings, laughing in a situation like this was the most appropriate response. You know why? Because they were finally going to die. Because you see, living for so long would make you think that life itself was a big joke. A big, idiotic, laughable joke without ending.

  In the end, Fritz joined him too. He joined Mark in laughing, in not caring if the killers would hear them. Kill me, I don’t care, was the thought that went on in Fritz’s mind, you’re doing me a favor, anyway.

  The office finally found them sleeping with the dirty diapers and some foul sanitary napkins.

  Fritz and Mark were disturbed by the light that abruptly shrouded them as their shared coffin was opened. At first they thought they were the endarkened killers, with their big swords, the choreographed killing that even Fritz was impressed at (because seriously, they had hit all the vital arteries in just a few simple stabs, after that all the additional stabbings were only icing on the cake).

  “We thought you two were dead,” one of the few men who were looking at them said. Fritz couldn’t distinguish who was who because he was too rattled up by the whole experience, an experience one for the record books.

  “I thought so too,” Mark said and was the first one to get up and out the dumpster.

  When Fritz got out, he first looked around at what equipment the office had brought with them. What he found was a black van, and in it he found two body bags that had the names of Ethan and Claris.

  “What in the world happened to you guys?”

  “What time is it?” Fritz asked.

  “It’s almost sunris
e.”

  Fritz, for no reason, smiled furtively towards the dumpster. That was the best sleep I had for a very long time.

  “We need to go back. Wilder wants to talk to you two,” a man on a phone said, “and he also wants your filed reports on what happened tonight.”

  “Reports? Really, after what happened? What we’ve experienced?” Mark asked.

  “What? You’re a crybaby now?” Phone-man said.

  “No, I’m not a fucking crybaby, I just want a long rest after what I have seen you indifferent shit!”

  Fritz went between them. “Okay, calm down now, Mark.”

  But Mark continued: “—what if that happened to you? You would’ve done worse than what I did, you would’ve been dead like Ethan and Claris. You’d be fucking dead,” he said until spittle went out of his mouth.

  “Calm down, kid,” Fritz said. “We’ll rest in the van. We’ll just talk to Wilder and do our reports, and after that, we can rest. Okay, crybaby?”

  Mark almost punched him for that.

  Chapter 5

  Wilder wanted to punch them in their faces, and after that he would strangle them until the breath in their lungs hissed away and joined the ozone layer. Fritz thought of that as he watched him in his office, he thought of how to die in strangulation, how would it feel, was the sensation of your eyes popping out of your head even true? There was something very wrong with him.

  They were sitting in front of his desk, wondering what would happen next, and what would Wilder say to them, and most of all, to the whole office.

  Such an event didn’t happen before; maybe it had happened before, but if it did, it could be 1000 years ago when everything was still unpredictable. But in today’s society, everything seemed to be predictable. All the people of today were so buried in their routines that there was no fun anymore. Even they, the sandmen, had their routines now, a pathetic replay of every day.

  Finally, Wilder stopped and looked at them with clenched fists on his sides. His demeanor had a hint of enigma.