said. I nodded. "Sad story." I said. "Yeah." He replied and passed me the bottle. "It'll do you some good." He said, laughing. It did. It really did.

Next morning, 7 AM, woke up, cooked breakfast. Jeremiah was a true gentlemen. I needed a drink. And a woman. And some new clothes. Yeah, life sure was grand. I wondered if the strong-man would like to accompany me to Bismark. He did. I was glad. It wasn't much, but still beat hitting the road all by yourself. You get lonely. I told him about the suitcase, about Horace and my life before the hike. He put on a dumb smile. I laughed and he laughed. We left. Five more days.

Bismark was gorgeous during the summer, all those people, all those emotions, all those sins and crimes committed on an hourly basis. I loved it. We got a room in a down-town hotel, pretty cheap, I think the black man scared the clerk a little. He was 6' 7"and 250 pounds. A real eye-opener. I liked his company and I think he liked mine. We were both the same deep down, I guess, drunk, homeless, dirty. Yeah, we found peace among our own kind. We went to check out

the area. Looked into Heinesen. He was a small-time socialist leader. Nothing too important. The whole job was probably personal, no reason in killing the parasites for being parasites and that's what Heinesen was. A leech. He never gave a damn about the people. Born in an upper-class family, rich kid, had everything he ever wanted handed to him. Probably rebelled out of some inherent human defect, hell if I know. Well, we talked about it. The man had no kids, no wife, no one would miss him. He was just polluting the air. I mean, sure, we all were, technically, but he was worse. He could have actually done something but instead sat on his fat ass.

We found him in a cheap motel room with some sixteen year old hooker, straight out of a Hollywood flick. Blonde, petite, well-endowed. Me and Jerry stared at her for a while. Maybe we could hire her some other day. Nah. Just a dream. We did our job. It wasn't messy. We knocked him over the head and took him out to the forest. Then we put three bullets in his stomach and buried the body. He was dead and we were damn proud of ourselves.

The next day a guy came to our room. Didn't mention how he found us. Didn't mention a Goddamn thing. He simply left a black suitcase and said goodbye in a low gruff voice. "Goodbye" I replied. I spied with my little eye something beginning with H. Horace. He was outside, sneaky devil. Got in the same car as the suitcase man and hurried into the sunset. Or something like that, anyway. The money was in there. All of it. Me and Jerry shared it. 50-50.

"What now?" I asked.
"LA."
"Huh?"
"The stars, the beach, the babes."
"Yeah."
"Wanna come?"
"You know, I just might."

Obviously. Surely. Definitely.

About the Author

My name's Dragos Manea. I doubt you can pronounce it. Just, I dunno, imagine it. Picture this gigantic leather daddy with blonde hair, deep blue eyes, tanned pectorals and ivory teeth. Or just call me Baley.

As always, your choice.

So, dear Winterwind reader... I assume you're a Winterwind reader. God, I hope you're a Winterwind reader. You should be anyway. It's a pretty good site, and free... as you might have already guessed, I'm a writer. A disgruntled unemployed writer who enjoys nothing more than having his work harshly deconstructed, reconstructed and thoroughly destroyed via analysis. I also like them arts with their fancy visuals and sounds. And Alcohol. We must never forget alcohol, the Average Joe's precious escape. So utterly fun.