He hated the infants most of all. With children over the age of two, he could at least threaten them and make them stop crying. The babies were impossible to control. Their incessant cries made him want to shove nails into his eardrums.
He passed a blind woman waiting to cross the street. The golden retriever by her side growled at him, the fur on his back rising into short spikes. He ignored the dumb animal. The woman had picked the wrong seeing-eye dog. This one was confused by the blinking Walk light. Eventually the dog would lead her in front of a garbage truck.
He was so glad he didn’t have to deal with animals. He especially hated dogs. He never understood the general public’s fascination with dogs. They were worse than babies. At least infants grew up into children who could walk, talk, and take care of themselves. Dogs were forever in the dirty infant stage. You had to feed them, clean them, and pick up their shit. He watched the golden retriever squat and piss on the concrete. He hated dogs.
He didn’t know why he was hurrying. Today had been a slow day, and this would be his last appointment. He wanted the last one over and done with. The last appointment of the day was always the hardest. He was close to his destination so he might as well arrive ahead of schedule.
He hated this part of town. The streets were always covered with trash, and the buildings all had the same faded grey exteriors. Everyone walked with the same slumped shoulders and the same scowls etched into their faces. They all reeked of unwashed hair, booze, and disappointment.
He saw two young punks on the other side of the street. They wore colored bandannas around their heads. Their ridiculously low pants hung around their upper thighs. He hated the teen crowd as much as he hated the babies. The gangbangers, the dopeheads, the skateboarders, the pain freaks, the goth heads, the jocks, the nerds-they were all the same breed of whining malcontent. All they did was bitch and moan about how unfair life was. Of course life is unfair. That’s just the way it is.
The two wanna-be thugs walked into the path of a bookish man in a suit. The man muttered, excuse me, and that was his first mistake. The first thug grinned and shoved him in the chest.
The man held his briefcase in front of him and said, “I don’t want any problems.” That was his second mistake.
The thugs glanced at each other. They started to hit him with sloppy punches to the gut and face. He fell to the cold concrete and curled into the fetal position. He threw them his wallet and screamed for help. Strangers avoided the scene by crossing to the other side of the street.
The first thug took the cash out of the man’s wallet and threw it back on the floor. The second thug kicked him in the back until he was winded. He gave him one final kick to the head, and the thugs run away. The man in the suit didn’t move at all. The kick to the head crushed his skull. Just another day in the city.
He ignored the man in the suit and hurried away. He arrived at his destination fifteen minutes early. He winced at the loud wail of an ambulance siren. In this part of town, it was either a gunshot wound or an overdose. He hurried past the emergency room and headed towards the upper floor.
He found the woman on the third floor. She was an average woman, not too tall but not too short, not fat but not skinny, dull brown hairs that matched her dull brown eyes. He noticed the way her eyes darted from side to side, and he knew she was the one.
He watched her walk in front of one of the windows. She wore a fake smile, and she tapped on the windows. Any passer-by would think that she was looking at the rows of newborns.
She turned her head towards him. For a moment, it looked like she was looking right at him. He knew that was impossible, but he still felt her eyes boring holes into him. She even smiled at him. She reached inside her coat and pressed the detonator.
The bomb liquefied her instantly. The explosion turned the entire floor into a wasteland of fire, blood, bones, and glass. Black smoke filled the hallway as the sprinklers turned on.
When the bomb went off, twelve babies flew into his arms at the same time. The Reaper caught them before their little souls could float into the sky.
He stared at their screaming red faces. He wondered how something so small could make such a loud noise. He wrapped them all in one large blanket and threw the bundle over his shoulder. At the sudden movement, the babies started to cry louder, shrieking right next to his head. He sighed. He hated the babies most of all.
Hana K. Lee is a writer of genre short fiction and has been published in thuglit.com and rumble: the micro-fiction ezine. She is also one of the contributors of the anthology “Hell’s Hangmen: Horror in the Old West.”
You can find Hana at myspace.com/little_eyes.
The ending was delightfully horrific. I had the right idea on my prediction; I just missed the exact particulars. Very well written, and most enjoyable.