Amok: An Anthology of Asia-Pacific Speculative Fiction by Dominica Malcolm

wall or on low benches served as good targets during practice. Soon, he got tired of hitting stationary objects. To remedy that, he took his cans and plastic bottles, tied it to a rope and hung the free end of the rope on his mother’s clothesline. Targets moved back and forth. It gave him the level of difficulty he wanted, but that got boring too.

    Instead of plastic bottles, he shattered glass bottles with stones. His mother tolerated his slingshot fascination up until then. She said that the shattered glass flying everywhere should not be a part of Damian’s excitement.

    Kids who also enjoyed slingshots invited him to try shooting down birds. Those creatures were not stationary, and their movement was unpredictable. The bursting of feathers or sputtering of blood was also more fun than the shattering of glasses.

    Damian settled for inanimate objects and in his creativity to make shooting more challenging, he threw his targets in the air as far and as high as he can and shot it before it reached the ground. Sometimes he asked one of his friends to do it so the target’s movement would be more unpredictable. He avoided shooting birds lest he would have enjoyed doing it so much he might have resorted to shooting rats next, then cats, then dogs, and then humans.

    Damian released the sling and the rubber snapped in the air in a split second. The pocket passed between the wooden arms and recoiled. His wrist jerked forward for follow-through. If he had loaded it with one of his smooth pebbles, there would be another one stuck on his wall. A dozen small stones clustered on one side of the room that he used as target to release frustration.

    Damian’s pouch of ammunition was also in the drawer, small smooth stone pebbles, black, white and grey. One thing he liked about slingshots was that a stone is always ready to be a projectile. Any stone would do, but his job allowed him to be critical about his ammunition. Smooth, spherical stones have less air resistance to them during flight compared to sharp and irregularly shaped ones. The latter had a better chance of piercing skin and flesh with its pointy end. He could always let a stone pass through anyone or anything if he wanted, too. He had the skill and strength to do it, but it was not in his job description. Smooth stones and a mild force would do.

    Damian placed Y and his load in the right side pocket of his jacket. A pack of cigarettes and his lighter went in the left.

    “Man, what took you so long? I said five minutes right?” Umer waited down stairs, outside the building’s main door.

    “No. You said ten.” Damian went down the stairs.

    “Whatever. We just need to hurry up. We need to be there 10 minutes earlier than the agreed hit time. Remember protocol?” Umer ushered him to a white car on a No Parking Zone and occupying half of the sidewalk. “Get in.”

    Sunet—the agency’s informant, contact, recruiter, courier, and driver, an old wrinkled brown man in his late sixties—greeted them as they got in.

    “Where to, Sirs?” Sunet asked.

    “Books and Brew Cafe, 76920 J.P. Rizal St. corner T. Buenavista St., Los Baños City.” Damian’s voice echoed within the car. Umer’s smile seemed to indicate both approval and mocking.

    “That’s far away, Sir,” Sunet replied. “It’ll be a long ride. About an hour at least, two if we get caught in heavy traffic.”

    “Make it at most an hour and half.” Umer said as he looked at his watch.

    “Yes, Sir.”

    “At least an hour? Great. I can sleep on the way. You wouldn’t mind right?” Sleep, excluding cigarettes and the job, was Damian’s only addiction.

    “Sure. No problem. Sunet will keep me company,” Umer said.

    The driver looked on his rear view mirror and gave a smile to both of them.

    Excitement and doubt no longer filled Damian’s heart during the trip to the hit zone after 408 missions. He relaxed and went to sleep.

    §

    Across the street, the cafeteria’s neon light