GOOD COVER By Jake Hinkson

For almost an hour now, I’ve been crouched beside this half-opened window with my eye socket sweating against the scope on my rifle. I try not to think about the time, try not to think about this long hour I’ve been waiting for someone to walk out the front door of the office building across the street.

It’s best not to wait. It’s best to clear your mind. Your mind doesn’t need to exist for this kind of deal, anyway. All you need is one eye and a trigger finger.

I’ve been shooting people since I was a kid. I shot my first human being on a snowy Monday night in downtown Cleveland. Some businessman hailing a cab. I leaned out a window facing an alley and blew his skull to pieces with one shot to the forehead. I left Cleveland that night. A year later, I shot a pregnant woman sitting on a park bench fanning herself on a warm Sunday morning in Dallas. Two for one. I went on a bit of a spree after that.

But I was just a wild ass kid those days. I’m sane enough to know that serial killers all end up getting caught at some poi—

The guy comes out, clutching the hair of a screaming little girl in one hand, an old revolver in the other. He’s shouting threats when I pull the trigger and split his head like a piñata. Blood, bone, and brain spray the glass door of the office building while his body, seized by gravity now, thuds to the ground.

The little girl wails. Her mother runs up to her, thanking god, surrounded by fifty cops. One of them turns around and gives me the thumbs up.

“Bad guy down,” someone crackles into my earpiece. “Nice shooting!”

I’m a hero again.

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Jake Hinkson is a writer living just outside of Washington, DC. His work has appeared in Beat To A Pulp, A Twist Of Noir, Crooked, and Powder Burn Flash. He also blogs about genre films at The Night Editor.

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