Emulated from the opening line’s of Paul Auster’s City of Glass.

It was not a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of the night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not; rather it had begun a week before and ended with the wrong number. There were some he knew of that would’ve argued this fact with their determined ignorance but, ironically enough, one had to be aware of something before arguing about it and of course, those individuals hadn’t the slightest clue. Anyways, who had time to argue such a thing when the deed had been done before the three rings? He was already cleaning up when the phone rang.

He remembers he found himself answering to someone else’s name, for anyone in his situation would have preferred to be anyone else. Anyone else, that is, that wasn’t in deeper trouble than he was.

“Charles Darr?”

“Yes, speaking.”

Of course, his answering to an unknown individual’s name was uncharactersitic of a man of his no-nonsense temperament, but rules could be broken. They had been broken when he committed the deed, and would have to be broken to cover up the deed, so he might as well get used to it, isn’t that right?

“Is it done?”

“Yes, of course.”

He did not know why he answered that question; his brain that always found a rationale for his actions scrambled for an excuse. He looked behind him into the entryway to the kitchen where he saw nothing, and then at the light hardwood floor of the adjoining living room ever so slowly pooling with darkness.

“What did you do with it?”

“Nothing yet. What do you suggest?”

Did this anonymous caller know? No. What a thought. No one knew. He watched as red splotches gathered on the floor. They fell from his gloved hand which clutched the phone, gleaming like the lacquered finish of the red mug that sat on the counter in reach of the moonlight. That was more than he could say for the deed, that happened with the lights off and the blackout curtains pulled. Deeds like those needed the covers of multiple darknesses; of night, of curtains, of bitter black coffee…

“Leave it on the last stop of the subway. I’ll take care of it and leave the cash we agreed on. No one will ever know what happened to Marcus Eaton.”

His eyes widened slightly at that, but of the many benefits of phone calls was the fact that the caller could not see the callee, and so his body language went unnoticed.The matter of his voice was, well, a different matter.

“Mm-hmm.”

“Meet you in an hour.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“An hour.”

Mm-hmm.

Click. 

An hour it was. He slammed the receiver into the cradle and laughed like a madman, for even sane men sometimes need to laugh like madmen. He went into the living room and surveyed the deed. He untied each limb from the chair one by one, placing them with the utmost care into the wooden chest and resting the glassy-eyed head on top, along with the office identification card he had found in the pants pocket. It was amazing how much space a man could cease to occupy just by dismemberment. 

---

The phone had rung three times before he had picked up and she had been afraid she had misremembered the number, but Charles Darr answered and so things would go according to plan. Ridding the world of maniacs had never been her job, but in her defense no one else was going to do it and, of course, she didn’t commit the murder with her own hands, only paid for it to be done by someone with admittedly more guts than she. 

She saw from her vantage point in the blackness of the arched tunnel of the last stop of the abandoned subway that Charles Darr had arrived. He materialized from the darkness of the adjacent tunnel, darkness from the dark, and placed a wooden chest on the torn up, rusted tracks between the tunnels and vanished again soundlessly back to where he came from, darkness into dark. The only reason she had to believe that he had been there at all was chest sitting in the semi-darkness between the darknesses. 

It opened with a crescent-shaped swivel-catch, and she saw the gruesome sight of a man’s severed head resting atop his own arms laid parallel across his torso which was on top of his thighs on top of the rest of him that was missing and her unconcious registered before her conscious that this man was not Marcus Eaton.

She turned her head to side, flipping her hair over her shoulder, and vomited on the torn up, rusted tracks.

Then she turned back to the box and saw the office identity card propped up against his ear. Charles Darr.

---

He imagined she felt a tearing, unknown pain between her shoulder blades as the dull blade of a saw ate its way through her spine, severing two arteries in gushes and spurts of bright red blood, as bits of her flesh flew, chewed up by the saw and wet, through the air and landed with wet splats on the torn up, rusted tracks. Her scream turned to the guttural groan of an animal in its final death throes as blood blocked up her esophagus and bubbled up in her mouth, and finally the saw bore it’s way all the way through her and came out the other side and ceased the back and forth motion it had adopted to achieve its goal. 

He squatted down in front of her and whispered in her ear: 

“I am Marcus Eaton, and I do not appreciate being killed.”

Then he got up and put his booted foot on her back and yanked the saw out of her to hear her last animal howl of dwindling pain, fury, betrayal; the jarring moan-scream-cry that died on her lips as she closed her eyes and gave in to the darkness.

---

Marcus Eaton left his sister slumped over the dismembered body of his would-be murder (now turned murderee) and went back home to the mess in his apartment. He turned away from the phone on the counter.

The phone rang.

He watched it over his shoulder as it rang one, two, three times; and picked it up.

“Marcus Eaton?”

He smiled. “No. Wrong number.”