Sokowski
The old bastard had a bunch of liquor after all, and Sokowski found it in the cabinet above the stove. They didn’t drink whiskey, but that was okay. They had a bottle of vodka, one of rum, couple bottles of wine, but Sokowski went straight for the bottle of tequila. Virgin bottle of Jose Cuervo Gold. Still sealed. Sokowski put an end to that.
He drank nearly a quarter of it while standing in the middle of the kitchen. It tasted pretty sweet going down, but the violent urge to vomit hit him fast. He leaned over and retched out the contents of his stomach onto the kitchen floor in three violent heaves. After he spit out the last of the chunks from his mouth, he decided to drink some milk from the refrigerator. He gulped some of that down to coat his stomach, then tried a few more pulls on the tequila bottle. He waited to see if his stomach would reject it again, but it appeared that the booze would stay down this time.
The burn in his side from the bullet wound throbbed red hot. It felt like his skin was on fire. Sokowski glanced down at the damage—blood gurgled from the hole in his flesh, dark and thick, and spilled down his shirt and ran halfway down his denim jeans.
Gotta stop the bleeding some. Stupid fucking Carl.
Sokowski reached back into the liquor cabinet and grabbed the bottle of vodka. He didn’t want to waste any more tequila. He spun off the cap and poured it onto the gaping wound.
It stung like a son of a bitch. Like a hundred fucking bee stings. He bent over and clutched at his side, dropping the vodka bottle to the floor, where it popped and shattered. Sokowski took a moment to let the pain ease off. He leaned against the kitchen counter and waited for the tequila to get to his brain—not fast enough—so he reached for the Jose Cuervo and sucked on the bottle again. After an agonizing minute, the pain began to slowly drift away.
He looked around at the Bennetts’ perfect little kitchen. Glass canisters of flour, sugar, and ground coffee lined up nice and neat on the counter, a toaster polished up like it had never been used, a bread box and a cookie jar. Sokowski stared at the drapes hung over the window above the sink, then at the tablecloth that covered a small kitchen table—they had matching patterns of pheasants in flight with hunters crouched behind a tree, aiming a gun at the birds.
“Goddamn.”
Sokowski staggered back into the living room on feet that felt like cinder blocks. The old bitch was gone. If the retard took her with him, they wouldn’t be too hard to find. He wanted to finish this—had to finish it. A few loose ends to deal with first, and then he would hop in his truck and never look back at this shithole of a town. Head up to Canada and start over. The border was about a four-hour drive. He’d be across it and free of this shit before Lester or the cops knew he was even out of town. Sokowski would have no problem smoking with and selling weed to the Canucks—that would be just fine by him.
He glanced over at Carl’s body and took another pull on the tequila, then spit down on his corpse.
Stupid asshole.
The overwhelming urge to shit hit him like a boot to the stomach. He didn’t know where the bathroom was and didn’t really care. He just unbuckled his pants, squatted down, and emptied himself onto the carpet and didn’t bother to wipe. Blood leaked from the puckered hole in his side and rolled down his naked ass and puddled onto the carpet next to his pile of waste.
Christ. My fingerprints are everywhere. The thought made him laugh out loud, sounding like the caw of a damn crow.
He stood back up and buckled his pants, then retrieved his rifle. He noticed the old man’s rifle and picked that one up as well. He limped to the front door and peered back at the room one last time.
“Adios, motherfuckers.”
And he staggered out of the house.
