Free Enforcer by Travis Hill

the evening was a nightmarish blur. Connor barely remembered the last two clients he and Dracul dealt with. His mind raced with fear at what he’d witnessed, what he’d been a part of. He’d always done his best to remain on the outside of Ojacarcu’s darker side. As the Lincoln cruised the streets, all Connor could think of was Travis Benkula’s face.
    Ten minutes after leaving the landfill, Connor made Dracul stop at a convenience store so he could open the door, lean his head out, and throw up. His stomach bucked and surged. Everything he’d put into it that hadn’t been digested already coming back up in a soupy, brownish-orange mixture. The smell of it made him gag and dry heave a few more times.
    When he finally felt like his stomach had calmed down, he wiped his mouth with his coat sleeve, leaned back in his seat, and closed the door. Dracul said nothing as he shifted the Lincoln into drive and pulled back out into the light traffic. Connor didn’t bother to steal a glance at the big man, afraid he’d find another toothy grin mocking him. He rooted around in his coat pockets looking for gum to cleanse the taste of stomach acid and partially-digested food from him mouth.
    Connor barely remembered stopping somewhere in South Meridian, where Dracul gave a warning to a young Hispanic kid. He had only a vague memory of visiting the last name on the list. He’d been surprised that the person turned out to be a woman in her forties. Dracul must have sensed that Connor was barely holding himself together, and did the job of breaking three of the woman’s fingers while she screamed.
    He had no idea why the woman’s fingers needed to be broken, and didn’t bother to ask. When he wasn’t recoiling in fear at what he’d witnessed at the landfill, he was paranoid that a police car would light them up. He tried to assure himself that he’d yell at the top of his lungs to the cops that the Romanian was a murderer, escaping from one nightmare to enter another that involved arrest, booking, and a hearing in the morning before a judge. His career and his life would be ruined. That seemed more important somehow, increasing the guilt and shame that he’d keep his mouth shut should they be unlucky enough to be pulled over by the cops.
    Connor barely made it up the steps to his apartment when Dracul dropped him off. He struggled to put the key in the lock, and somehow made it all the way into the bathroom before doubling over when the dry heaves began again. He spent the night guzzling the last eight beers in his barren refrigerator, and when that didn’t dull his senses enough, he clawed through the small pantry and his bare cupboards looking for a forgotten bottle of the hard stuff. When nothing turned up, he found an unopened bottle of Nyquil under the sink in the bathroom. He kept it down, not caring that he might have helped himself into a serious bout of alcohol poisoning.
    Connor woke to the sun reflecting from his bedroom wall, the blinds wide open, his apartment as cold as the old barn back home in Macklin during the dead of winter. The bright spot was the lack of nightmares. He had been haunted by nightmares of his brush with death, as well as Niklas Laarkonen’s ghost, and had no doubt he’d be dreaming of Travis Benkula soon enough. Maybe , he thought, Niklas and Travis will gang up on me and put me out of my misery .
    He dragged himself out of bed and stood in front of the mirror for five minutes with the shower running before climbing in. The water was too hot, scalding his skin, but to Connor, it wasn’t hot enough. It would never be hot enough to burn away whatever was beginning to eat him up inside. He didn’t bother shaving, barely even bothering to wash himself. He wasn’t sure how long he stood under the shower head other than long enough for the water to work its way from scalding to luke-warm to cold before he finally shut it off.
    After drying himself off and brushing his teeth to remove the