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POWERFUL, RADIANT, YOU ARE THE RIGHT HAND OF GOD AND WILL KILL FOR HIM
Swansea shifts nervously in his utility room hideout. The weight of the axe in his hands feels almost prophetic, all three pounds of divine judgement focused in a (by now) dull blade. He has heard every word of what that man had told Daisuke, knew the plan as well as if it had been told to him directly. He is not excited about the idea of what he’s considering. He couldn’t even fully justify it to himself- sure, Jimmy was trying to poison him, using ingredients that could very well kill him, but there was nothing stopping him from not drinking it. There wasn’t anything Jimmy could do then, unless he was dumb enough to try and fistfight a man with an axe. Still, he reaches the same conclusion for the sixth time. An ultimatum.
It is a slow, devastatingly silent few moments as he finally stands and holds the weapon close to himself and leaves the utility room. It is equally as quiet when he calmly walks up the stairs to the lounge and opens the door. In the kitchen to his right, two faces snap around to look at him, surprised; shocked.
“Oh, umh- hey, Boss!” Daisuke is in on this too, and every part of him knows that he’s trying to cover up what they were doing as Jimmy elbows the empty bottle of isopropyl onto the floor. “What- uh- brings you up here?” An awkward, strained smile breaks out on the boy’s face, and he glances at Jimmy, who proceeds to say nothing.
He needs Jimmy alone. He doesn’t want Daisuke to watch this. In some way, Swansea feels that he is not himself, not in the way that often came with his drunken state, but something worse. “Daisuke, go check on the cargo. See how many bottles are still in the open boxes. Me ‘n Jimmy need to talk.” He barks it as an order, though with a lot less command behind it, so much so that the kid hesitates. “ Now. ” Daisuke slowly gets down from where he was sitting on the counter and moves to leave the room. Jimmy contemplates telling him to stay, but he assumes little of Swansea. Just a drunk old man, can’t do that much, right?
Swansea approaches, grip on the axe’s handle turning his knuckles white. Jimmy recognizes too late what he is doing when he raises it, and his reaction time much the same.
The axe falls right through his neck to his clavicle. It hits the bone and there is a muffled crunch as it breaks right in half, not from the blade of the axe itself cutting through, but because of the momentum. Jimmy wails out, though any ears not deaf remain in a state of inaction. Nothing to be done about it.
Jimmy falls to the floor and Swansea is on top of him, knee firmly slammed into his abdomen, and the second strike comes as the younger man attempts to speak.
It digs right into the same spot again, though at more of an angle. He screams yet again, hoarse and agonized, and cries out, “What the f-”
Swansea swings a third, lodging it right into the side of his neck, rending open his trachea. Jimmy’s words die in his mouth as he wheezes heavily. He chokes on his own blood and it pools in his mouth, settling under his tongue and gathering around his throat again.
Swansea wonders, for a brief moment, what his family might think of this. It is not factored in.
The man underneath him is dying but his hands move on their own now. He raises the axe and lets it fall back into the middle of his skull, splitting straight through his forehead. Jimmy stops moving.
One more (he’s lost count now) about an inch away from the first hole in his head. Swansea is fatigued. For the first time, Swansea actually looks at what he’s done. There is a mangled corpse under him. The axe blade is coated with blood. The axe handle is coated with blood. His hands are drenched in it. There are streaks and splatters soaked into his shirt.
He is filled with an innate and instinctive disgust and he quickly stumbles to his feet, getting only a few steps away before he keels half-over, hand on the kitchen counter for support, and vomits.
He stays there a few moments, just breathing heavy and making sure he’s thrown it all up and spitting to get that god-awful mixture of bile and mouthwash out of his fucking mouth and the feeling does not register because he is weak, he is weary, and wants to find something to support his weight somewhere else in case his knees give out like they want to. So, instead, he walks. His goal is the couch but he ends up stopping to lean against the mass of foam that consumed one of the corners of their kitchen, permanently sealing away their only source of cooking ingredients. It is tough and uncomfortable but it holds him up just like he needs it to, so he cannot find it in himself to care.
He holds onto the axe like a lifeline. He’s not sure if he can physically let go, feels as if his knuckles are locked tight into this position, but the blood caking the rivets between his fingers and the handle discourages him from checking. A profound quiet shakes him to his core, and forces him to acknowledge the act that he had just committed. There is now a dead body on the ship. His mind flicks to the law, if he’ll face any kind of punishment for this kind of murder. He can’t say that it’s an undesirable outcome. He supposes it’s deserved.
Coherent thoughts are pushed out of the way by a feeling that develops itself deep in his chest, something that reverberates through his being. A sense of dread, or relief. Something sinking, or something biting. Something that wants to break free, or is content to settle itself deep in his being. Something dying, or something birthing itself, like a parasite. Something like the tick-tick-tick of a clock going in endless circles.
His conscious mind is taken over by a scraping, painful longing for nothing . Not an absence of want, but the desire to no longer be. Not wanting to die, but most certainly not wanting to live, either. Eternal oblivion. A pardon, a pass. Escape. Anything but being in this place, in this life, in this person. He becomes uncomfortably aware of every breath that he takes but feels so incredibly distant that he cannot focus on it.
Everything circles back around again. An ouroboros with an empty stomach and full mouth. The end of every problem is the start of a new one. No breaks, no respite, no rest. Only thing you can do (if anything at all) is cope. He wonders if they’d believe him. He’d seen it play through his mind. Some prophetic vision. The axe embedded in Daisuke’s face, the total lack of Anya (Where is she right now? His mind calls out, and answers itself, Medical. Bad luck. Faulty lock, right?) , his own body filled with lead. Jimmy atop it all, every corpse under his shoes, not acknowledged, but there.
There is no follow-up to the notion because he cannot urge himself to care any more than thinking the thought itself. One more thought sparks in his brain, a prayer for forgiveness. From the rest of the crew. From his family back home, from God him-fucking-self, anyone. Then he slowly lowers himself down, closes his eyes, and allows himself to rest.
like hell they’d ever find us. tooth fairy might pay us a visit too, you reckon?