Few people live after meeting Edward Frakes.

The rare few who’ve lived long enough to talk about the meeting can be counted on the tips of a person’s fingers. Been times when they could be counted on one hand.

Frakes has stopped a lot of heartbeats. A special brand of violence that erases unwanted relationships before they can begin. He’s also broken the lives of others he’s never met or ever will meet.

Two of the few still breathing are here, only a few feet from Frakes, huddled inside a small, rusted metal shed nestled amongst the trees. A sprawl of mountains just outside its locked door framed under the moonlight.

Frakes presses his ear to the shed.

Impatience makes his skin crawl like a thousand ants under his flesh. Racing along his bones. Maybe he hears them breathing inside the shed, maybe he doesn’t. Hard to parse those delicate sounds from the night noise that hums throughout the woods surrounding him. The whispering of the trees, the soft symphony of katydids and crickets swallows his senses whole. This place at night can trick a man into hearing all kinds of things.

           Wait.

           Is that…

           Are they laughing at me inside there?

           A pulse of anger thumps. He slaps the shed. The metal rattles and creaks before settling back into the quiet harmony of the night. Doesn’t realize he did it until his hand drops back down by his side. Sometimes the anger pulse makes him act before his thoughts can register as rational.

           “You done?” He pounds his meaty hand hard on the shed door. “Learn your lesson in there?”

           Stepping back, he waits. His darting, smallish eyes—perhaps only small compared to rest of his hulking skull—scan the stars that pepper the night sky.

A cool breeze drifts across his large frame, blowing what little hair he has left. Trees that seemingly stretch a mile high swaying like slow metronomes keeping time with the evening’s soothing rhythm. He breathes in the smell of the trees. Maybe pines and ash, Frakes isn’t sure. Mama would know things like that. There’s a kind of calm to this place. A peace that resides here in the woods at night, if only Frakes could let some of that calming peace inside his mind.

There’s a way to peace if you can simply let it in, someone once told him.

Or maybe it was in a movie or he heard it on one of those television shows Mama likes so much. Religious preachy-prose-bullshit, maybe? Frakes shakes his head hard. Those thick thoughts drop down, dipping into the darkness. Falling into that cold, pitch-black pit dug into his brain where he oddly finds the most comfort.

“You hearin’ me?” Spit flies.

Rage accessed in a snap. Always near. Never drifting, never leaving.

The metal shed shudders and shakes as he beats harder on the door. The whole thing could bust apart any second, sending sheets of metal to the ground if he keeps at it too long. Chunky confetti the color of dried-blood brown falls off the door as he slaps the shed with his fat palm again and again. Stopping, peeling back away from the frail structure, Frakes sucks in a deep breath searching for the strength to find some of that calm. He squeezes his fists tight, then tighter, until he feels his fingernails dig into his skin, then releases them quick. Repeats. Fighting to dull the pulse.

           It’s quiet inside the shed, but he can hear them moving now.

The sounds of quick, frightened breathing are now unmistakable.

Disgusted with himself, he shakes his head, remembering they won’t answer him no matter how hard he slams his stupid hand against the metal. One of them doesn’t talk at all and the other one usually only speaks in one-word responses. Three words max. Can’t believe he forgot those things about them. His mind, it’s been cloudy lately. There’s been a smoothing to the edges he used to have. The sharpness he needs in this life. Mama’s voice starts banging around inside his head. Her gravel-and-gravy voice pours her lifetime chant over his brain.

           Stupid. 

           Stupid.

           Stupid Eddie Frakes.

           Turning his head to look back, as if on cue Mama stands a few feet behind him.

“They’re just gonna try that shit again.” Mama snuffs out her cigarette into the dirt and flips a fresh one between her lips. “But you better let ‘em out. Don’t want a bigger mess than you’ve already done.”

His head dips down. A massive man made small.

She fires up her fresh smoke with what could best be called a handheld propane torch. Mama has supper ready. Frakes can smell it through the open door to the main house. It’s waiting for him. Waiting for everyone. Her cooking is like home. A shitty home, he knows, but home nonetheless.

Frakes looks back to the shed.

Knuckles pop. He knows his appearance frightens them but there’s not much he can do about that. His thick hands are marked with scars from struggles won and lost. A fat pinkish scar runs from below his left eye to his throat. Care of a near-death experience a couple of years ago. A complete death experience for the other fella. Frakes keys the lock and yanks the door open. The door creaks with a metallic wail.

Two children sit huddled on a torn blanket.

The girl is eight. The boy is seven.

They hold one another, then release quick. The moonlight cuts a faint shaft of light through the open doorway. Their eyes are hard. Much harder than they should be at this age. Faces blank. Their small bodies vibrate at the sight of him as if they are holding back, not wanting to show him how scared they truly are.

Frakes stands outside, his head tucked down, keeping his face in the shadows. He thumbs back toward the house. A silent instruction that it’s time to come inside. Mama huffs, turning away and walking back into the house through the back door.

The house is dark save for a few candles and a light with a bright-colored, daisy-decorated shade that hangs above a busted-up table. Dirty pots and pans are piled high in the sink. Plastic yellow plates with half-eaten meals have cemented themselves to the surface of the kitchen counter. Mama takes a seat amongst the filth, smoking like a chimney. She opens her arms wide in half-hearted, half-assed attempt to seem welcoming. Smile broken and false.

There are four plates set out with forks and spoons waiting.

The boy and the girl shake their heads, refusing to come inside.

“Come on now.” Frakes talks slow and thick, like he’s speaking with a mouthful of Jell-O.

He slips from the shadows into the moonlight. There’s a spray of crimson across his face. Almost completely dry and starting to flake. He offers his one uncovered hand to them, still holding the lock to the shed. Hopes they’ll come out and join them for supper without him having to be mean about it. A rubber glove covers his other hand. The thick blue glove is pulled up to his elbow, slick and shiny with blood that looks dark purple in the moonlight.

“Been working all damn day,” Frakes says. “Tired. Hungry as hell. Sure you’d appreciate a bite to eat too.”

He looks to the children.

The children stare back. Giving him nothing.

Booming silence.

“Alright then.” Frakes begins to shut the door, shaking the lock back and forth for them to see.

“No,” the girl says. There’s no begging in her voice. A command, not a request.

“No?” Frakes’s eyebrows raise his chubby face. He rubs the scraps of facial hair he likes to think of as a beard. “Any chance you two littles can be good? Friendly, even?”

“No.” Not an ounce of fear in her two-letter response.

The girl tosses a cheap, plastic cell phone at his feet. One of those kid cell phones—they call them dumb phones—that can only talk or text with one number. Frakes’s number. He couldn’t completely turn off access to emergency numbers like 911 and so on, but he made it borderline impossible to make that call using this phone. Buried deep in the settings is a feature designed to keep a kid from misdialing 911 by accident.

On the screen is a series of missed calls and texts. All from Frakes. He’d made her take the phone after the last time they misbehaved. Thought he might communicate with the littles from the house. Make his life easier. Didn’t work.

Frakes smiles. Can’t help it.

“Suppose friendly is a lot to ask.” Frakes looks back to Mama. She shrugs. He knows she’s growing impatient too. Supper getting cold and all. Turning back to the boy and girl, he says, “You gotta eat, so I’ll tell you what, then. As a peace offering—or something—Mama here is going to bring you a plate to share.”

Mama rolls her eyes, then picks up a plate from the table and starts spooning something steamy from the stove.

“That work?”

The girl and boy offer only a stare in response to the proposed bargain.

Mama moves out from the kitchen like a cannonball, steaming plate of mush and a glass of water in her hands. Doesn’t bother with the utensils.

Frakes steps away from the door as Mama delivers the meal to the shed’s dirty floor, then rushes back to the house. He knows the boy and girl will come around. Been through this before. Last night, even. They’re tough but not superheroes.

His mind shifts back to his work.

Closes his eyes tight. Punches his thigh hard. Upset that he forgot something. Distracted by this situation with the boy and girl. Mama is getting into his head too. Making him forget the details, and the devil that lies in those details. He’s already made mistakes, can’t keep making them. His face flushes red. Heartbeat rises. Everything, all of the time, inside his head.

Frakes needs to finish up with a mess from work. The mess sitting in the trunk of his car. Frakes did good today, did some good work, but he needs to finish up. Those men from the job this morning are dead as the dodo, sure, but they still require his attention. Two men he was told to take care of. Was told to make go away.

All the way gone, is what was said.

What’s left of both of them is still resting in his trunk. Frakes knows he needs to do what he’s told. Never half-asses a job—Full-on Frakes they call him sometimes—but those dead men will have to wait until after supper. Mama will be mad if she has to wait a single minute more.

Battles gotta be chosen in this life.

“Damn.” Frakes grunts as he locks the shed door.