The Hit by R.Thomas Brown. PROMOTION!

Fine writer, R. Thomas Brown has graced our pages before.  His story, Finger Lickin' Good, was published on here in July 2011.  I found out later that it was the first story he'd written for a while and being published had inspired him get back into writing.  Since then he's gone from strength to strength and his latest offering is his 198 page novel, Hill Country.

Below is a story from his short story collection, Mayhem.  Ron's books are available on Amazon and links will follow.....

The Hit.

This job is too damn bloody. I don’t mind the killing so much. It’s the cleaning that gets to me. I mean if I wanted to be janitor, I could have a much easier life. Of course, I wouldn’t make as much money. Well, I haven’t been making that much lately anyway.

Maybe I should be a janitor. Cleaning up the puke from the kid who can’t handle the smell of school chilli or enchiladas can’t be as bad as picking up the loose pieces of bone and mopping up the blood. Yeah, nothing great about another chunk of brain on the floor. I need to go back to school.

Yeah, right. What I need to do is find jobs that pay better. The job before this one was supposed to pay. Some stupid rich kid wanted me to off his girlfriend. Damn. I used to skip those things. I had this motion that I would be above it all. Only killing those that deserved it. Well, all this kid did was piss off some rich asshole who wanted to get some. And I killed her for not putting out. But, the kid offered to pay. I figured that since my seat on the plane to hell was reserved, it might as well be first class.

At least with jobs like that one, even if they are tough on the soul, they’re easy to execute. She just stood there staring at me. Even when I aimed the gun at her, she just stood there. I guess, alone in her kitchen, she just didn’t know what to do. No yelling. No struggle. Easy.

At least the killing part was. The delivery and payment were a little tougher. I should have known it would be a pain in the ass to deal with that little prick. When he called me to set up the hit, he kept stepping away for a minute. Stupid me, I thought he was taking care of business or something.

Well, when I got to him with the body, I learned who I was dealing with. I got near the house I was supposed to meet him at, and some jackass jumped out in front of my car. I hit my brakes, but I barely saw him before he flew out there and I hit him anyway. Now, it may seem stupid for someone like me to be worried about hurting someone, but I’m a professional, not some idiot into random violence.

When I got out, I saw a bunch of guys running toward me. At first, I thought I should pull my gun, but then I saw that one of them has a camera. “Oh, shit,” I was thinking at that point. I jumped back in the car and started to speed off when I saw the punk I hit jump from the ground and start laughing. Then I heard the voice. That little rat bastard’s voice.

“You little shit. You moron,” I yelled when I got out of the car. “I could’ve killed you.”

“Yeah, I guess you could have. It is your job.”

He laughed again. It sounded like a hyena, or a jackal, or something else from the zoo. All I could think of was getting paid and getting the hell away from the little idiot. “Where’s your house, I wanna get this in the garage and finish up.”

“What, you brought her here?”

A moron and no memory. Great. We had discussed this about four times when he first called me. I’m not sure if he was distracted or cashed then, but either way I had to explain the whole plan to him again. “Alright, now can we just finish our business?”

He nodded his head and pointed at an open garage. I pulled the land yacht I was driving that day into the car hole and the kid shut the door behind me. I opened the trunk as soon as I could, pulled the bag down to reveal the face, and waited for the reaction.

The kid puked like I knew the lightweight would. I thought about cleaning it up. Maybe I really should be a janitor. I just left it, though. “So, where’s the money?”

“Money? Yeah, well, here’s the thing.”

The thing is always that the money’s not there. I waited while the kid told me his sob story about his imprisoned dad and how his mom was shacked up with some dude who paid for the house. I didn’t care. The story kept going. One thing I know is, the longer the story, the less the money.

“Look, you don’t have the money. So, you gotta pay me some other way.” Other way my ass. I take cash and nothing else. But, when you know that no money’s coming, you gotta have some fun. “Drop your pants.”

“What?”

“You heard me,” I said. The kid was quaking. I mean he was mad, scared and freaked out all at the same time. Beautiful. “Look, I need something for my trouble, and you owe the bill.” I just stared at him, occasionally glancing down. The kid unbuttoned the top of his pants, the whole time just looking around at his friends who were in the garage too. “And, I want it taped. I’m keeping this one.”

The little punk waved for his friend to start filming. I couldn’t believe he was going to let me take him, in front of his friends, with the tape rolling. He must have really been scared. I’m amazed he didn’t piss on the floor. I almost wanted to string it out a little longer to enjoy it, but in the business you learn not to take too much pleasure in what you do.

Well, the kid dropped his jeans and bent over. I waved for the cameraman to zoom in and he did. Then, with every one of the little maniacs staring at their bud’s naked ass, I offed him. I pulled my Glock from my pocket and planted a bullet right in the back of his mullet head. It was clean, easy.

I turned to the friends, and none of them moved. They just stood there. The dude with the camera kept filming. I felt like such an agent of Darwin. These people needed to be selected out. I knocked them all off pretty quick and grabbed the camera.

I left after that. I thought about doing a big cleaning, but then I felt that that stupid mother didn’t sound like someone who needed to be spared the nasty job of cleaning blood and guts. I pulled out of the garage and looked for people who might have come out to check on all the commotion. Lucky for me it looked like people were used to crazy shit from the little Spielbergs.

I drove off, shut the garage behind me, and headed out to get rid of the body. Damn! I killed a cute kid so that fart knocker could save his pride. Lot of good it did him. I didn’t mind taking care of the film crew either, little psychos. There are enough crazy people out there without letting that band grow up and reproduce. But the girl, that sucks.

I never thought I’d kill people that were okay folks. I mean, killing scum, that’s okay. But I’ve gone too far. And I don’t have any money. I think after I get rid of this kid, I’ll go get that job as a janitor. Maybe at a school. I have always been pretty good with the kids.

Bio: I write about damaged people and their struggle to deal with the chaos life has tossed their way. Whether it be a discovered murder, the barrel of gun, a bat to the head or a mysterious voice only they can hear, it's the reaction and attempt to make sense of the new reality that I like to explore.  My new novel, Hill Country, has just been published by Snubnose Press.  You can find me at rthomasbrown.blogspot.com

Hill Country is available in ebook form (and paperback in the States).

Amazon UK.
Amazon USA.

Ron's author page.


Hill Country.

Gabriel Hill stumbles home to find a mutilated corpse on his porch. A man who had beat him earlier. After puking, he finds a makeshift animal sacrifice behind his house. The next day, his life got complicated.

His home is broken into. He's beaten by a stranger. Seduced by another. Threatened unless he can find the valuables his dead brother supposedly sent to him.

Ignoring advice to run, Gabe searches for answers. He finds a brother unlike the drug addicted young man he forgot. He finds new threats, new enemies, more dead bodies, a courage he didn't think existed, a love that he didn't expect and a truth that he feared.