Free Hunting Season by Erik Williams

to kill her.  How I'd killed him to save her.  But the damn whore could also say how I'd confessed to setting Walter up.  How I'd stolen money and let the bastard die for it.  How I'd killed Dad to save myself and couldn't give two shits about her.
    My hands started to shake again.  I looked at my father's corpse and imagined landing back in prison.  I was thinking like him and hated myself for it.  Dad wins.
    I pushed up to my feet and grabbed the .357.  I looked at it in the dull light.  All those years just to go back?  This time for life?  I couldn't do it.  I knew I wouldn't make it.  No way would I go back.
    Only one solution.  Only one way out of this trap.
    I cocked the hammer.
    Only one exit.  Only one way to finally be free.
    Then I heard Dad's voice in my head say, "Why leave a living witness?"
    I leveled the gun and put two rounds through the hooker's head.  Her blood mixed with dad's in a pool engulfing their bodies.
    "God damn you both."
    I left them to rot in the cabin and took dad's Chevelle.  Thirty minutes away from the cabin, I dumped the car with the gun and the knives in a lake in the middle of the night.  Should have dumped the bodies, too, but wasn't thinking straight right after it all ended.  No way in hell I'd go back for them either.  It's okay, though.  I wiped down everything I touched.
    Now I head west, Walter's money in hand and fresh clothes on my back.  Now I leave this shit behind me, left dead on the floor of an abandoned cabin in the middle of nowhere.
     

TIES THE ROOM TOGETHER
     
    "You're fired."
    The cleaning lady looks at me but doesn't say anything.
    Probably because she can't speak English.
    But I can tell she understands those two words.  Her face slackens and her bushy brown eyebrows fall.
    Normally, I'm not such a straightforward asshole.  In rare cases do I result to such bluntness.  In this case, however, I see no alternative.
    "Go." I point to the hallway behind her.  "Vamoose."
    She turns and walks away, bucket of cleaning gear in one hand and toilet brush in the other.
    This is the third cleaning woman I've had to fire this week.  None have actually cleaned anything before getting the ax.
    The first walked through my customized stained-glass front door with muddy feet.  Such rudeness and lack of awareness cannot indicate exceptional future work.  I quickly terminated her employment.
    The second attempted to enter my two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment overlooking San Diego harbor with a bottle of bleach.  In hiring this person, I made it perfectly clear no bleach or bleach-product must cross my threshold.  The scent of the substance makes me sick to my stomach.  Yet there she stood, bleach in hand.  Goodbye.
    This one, though, made it through the door and into the kitchen.  Then she started to scrub my new granite countertops with a citrus-based cleaner.  I thought it common knowledge such acidic cleaners ruin granite.  A product with a neutral pH level is required.  Her incompetence proved she knew nothing of the intricacies of washing natural stone products.  Fare thee well.
    I walk into the kitchen and commence wiping her orange-scented cleaner off the counter with warm soap and water.  A smile spreads across my mouth and I start to hum while I contemplate what cleaning service to call next.
    The rag gets folded neatly and hung on a small rail I installed underneath the kitchen sink.  I look over the countertop one more time to ensure I wiped up all of her mess.
    The phonebooks are stacked neatly in a drawer under the kitchen island.  I chose this drawer because it would not interrupt the kitchen work triangle – the Moen Double Bowl Undermount Sink, the Wolf thirty-six inch rangetop and oven, and the Sub-Zero PRO 48 stainless steel refrigerator - I steadfastly maintain.  All drawers and cabinets within the triangle can only contain items related to actual kitchen work.  This minimizes excessive movement while cooking.  This