casual test swings as I approached the man of the hour, whistling a bit of that song from the advert with the cat and the duck playing the violin. I wanted to say it was for a tin of something. Peaches maybe? Nah, no one advertised tinned peaches. Tuna? Lima beans? Sweetcorn? Well, fuck me, I couldn't recall. That was gonna eat at me all damn day.
My gaze moved to the red blob art thing and I decided I wanted to know what it was. I reached out gently with my hammer and used it to peel the comforter away from Burnley's sleeping form.
He was a middle aged man, stout of stature and sporting some rather stylised chest hair. I couldn't say I'd ever considered growing my chest hair into a pattern before, but I guessed it was a conversation starter. 'Oh hey, Wendy, did you hear I manscaped my chest hair into the shape of a heart? Does that make ya wanna fuck me?' I had to say, I couldn't picture it flying so well, but maybe the women Burnley liked went in for that. Or men. Not judging. I was an equal opportunity serial killer. All races, genders and sexual preferences catered for.
"Is it meant to be a vagina?" I asked loudly and Burnley jerked awake with a shriek an eighty year old granny would have been proud of.
He lurched up, seeming inclined to run and I pressed the flat head of my hammer to that fancy heart shaped hair on his chest to force him back down into the mattress.
"What do you want?" he gasped.
Always with those same questions. 'What do you want?' 'How did you get in here?' 'Is that my wife's hat you're wearing?' 'Did you just piss on my rug?' 'Why do you have a knife?' blah, blah, blah. I wasn't in the mood for the old usuals today, so I just jerked my chin at the painting, getting him on track with my thought process.
"So, a vagina then? Or a never-ending portal to nothing and nowhere? A dog on a bench? What is it?" I asked and he craned his neck to look up at the painting for a moment.
"I-I don't know. It was expensive and I liked the look of it, so-"
"So you just plastered a huge vagina on your wall without even knowing it was a vagina? I mean, do you think you subliminally had vaginas on the mind that day or are you generally in a vagina mood?" I asked.
"W-why do you keep saying vagina?" Burnley stammered. I heard a lot of stammering in my line of work, begging, pleading, bribing, lying. Saw a lot of people piss themselves too. And shit themselves. Killing wasn't pretty work, that was for sure. Aside from all the red of course. My favourite colour.
"Well, if you've no answer to my question, I guess I might as well get on with it." I heaved my hammer back, lining up the best strike as he screamed again.
"Why?" he wailed, cringing away from me.
"I'm Liam O'Brien's boy," I said with a shrug and his eyes widened in realisation. Yeah, there it was, he'd just figured out that fucking over the biggest crime family in the city was a bad idea. Why was it no one ever had to tell people not to stick their dick in the garbage disposal and yet they needed reminding not to play games with mobsters which they couldn’t win?
"I've never seen you before," he breathed, shaking his head.
"I'm Niall," I explained, stowing the hammer in my belt and offering him my hand to shake. He did because he was one of those well-bred bastards and I gave him a good old squeeze because I appreciated manners even if mine were few and far between. "The youngest."
Burnley's eyes widened as I shook his hand vigorously and his whole arm kinda flopped up and down before I released him.
"The...unhinged one?"
"You've heard of me?" I asked, smiling widely because who the fuck didn't like being famous?
"I thought you were a rumour, a myth. You're never at corporate events or meetings, everyone says you don't even exist and you're just a lie they tell to make people fear them."
"Well, turns out I'm no legend - just a hot blooded man with a bloodstained soul. I’ll be killin’ ya now then,” I warned him, hefting the hammer in my grasp once more and giving him a moment to process that fact. “It won’t be fun and