The Suppressor by Erik Carter (good books to read for beginners .txt) 📕

arrangement of dusty silk flowers and a mound of easy-to-digest cookies. The floor had been recently polished, but the pungent odor of industrial-strength cleaner did little to cut through the scent of shit wafting out of the rooms.

Burton always looked to the future, constantly searching the horizon for the next great opportunity. If his life could be summed up in a single phrase, it would be Keep moving forward.

Forward, forward, forward.

Progress, progress, progress.

But this place, which he’d visited three times now in the last several years, always brought a sobering set of opposing realities to his grand vision. Ultimately, places like this were endpoints of forward momentum. The future held decay and death. It was inevitable. If he kept pushing onward, was he only shortening the time he had left before he, too, was rotting in a chair in a room in a shit-smelling tomb of a building?

He shoved the thought from his mind.

A nurse approached from the opposite side of the hallway, pushing a wheelchair that held a hunched, living corpse with pallid-gray skin riddled with imperfections and moles and sores. Cataract-ridden blue eyes looked up at Burton. There was a smile.

Burton forced his own smile broader, managed a nod, and turned into the room.

It was a narrow space full of white. White walls, a white drop tile ceiling, and white furnishings. A small TV sat atop a white set of drawers, and there was a pair of chairs beside the adjustable hospital bed.

Joseph Farone had been a small man his entire life, but his station had made him appear larger than he really was. Now that Mother Nature had stolen that station, he looked his size. Tiny. And even more frail now with his degrading mental health affecting his physical health. He was the picture of a little old Italian man in the same way that his daughter was the quintessential cute Italian chick. He had a kind old face with a big nose, wrinkled skin that had darkened with age. A shock of white hair, slightly thin on top, spiky and worn combed-back.

His eyes were clearer than the creature Burton had just seen in the hallway. Bright blue eyes. Crisp. They had the same stern but sparkling quality that Burton remembered from so many years ago, eyes that had seen promise in the teenage version of Burton, which had led Joseph to take Burton in, include him in the family, and give him a better life.

Still, Joseph’s rapidly progressive dementia was growing steadily more rapid. It had been six weeks since Burton had visited, and those bright eyes looked even more lost in confusion than when he’d last seen them. Gone.

Burton pulled a chair closer to the bed.

The gleaming blue eyes looked up at him. Joseph smiled, not like a father but like a young child, like a dog expecting a pat to the head.

“How you doing, old man?”

Joseph didn’t reply, only smiled broader, dumbly from his position propped up by a pair of pillows.

“I know it’s been a long time since I’ve visited, and I apologize for that. I’ve been a busy bee. You’re gonna be so proud. I’ve taken over your entire operation. Can you believe that? And I’ve already transformed things. No more of the petty mafia shit. Drugs, extortion, protection rackets. How antiquated. The twenty-first century is almost here. I’ve contemporized the operation, gotten more done in a couple months than you accomplished in decades. Pretty impressive, huh?”

Joseph smiled at him. He reached for the nightstand, grabbed a tiny canvas with a few scratches of paint, held it for Burton to see.

Burton glanced at it. “You made this, old man?”

Joseph smiled, patted his chest.

“Me,” Joseph said in his disproportionately deep and booming voice, which sounded scratchier than the last time Burton had heard it.

“I see,” Burton said and took the small painting, looked down upon it. “Joseph ‘Joey’ ‘The Jaguar’ Farone, painting with all the skill and vigor of a two-year-old.”

Joseph laughed then.

Burton joined him in the laugh, which made Joseph laugh even louder and more enthusiastically.

Burton put his hand on the old man’s tiny shoulder, squeezed, leaning over him as he laughed.

“Whew!” Burton said, wiping away an invisible tear. “Funny stuff, huh? Want to know something else that’s funny? I killed your son and daughter.”

Joseph continued to laugh. He pointed to his painting.

Burton laughed louder. “They died like the two clowns they were.”

Joseph’s laughter died off, and he looked at Burton, confused.

“Like clowns,” Burton repeated.

This brought a smile to the old man’s lips.

“Oh, you like clowns, do you?”

Joseph laughed again. Burton joined him.

“I couldn’t catch your other son, though,” Burton said between laughs. “I like to think you favored Pete Hudson because you were loony by the time you met him, but the truth is, I don’t blame you either way. I mean, Cecilia certainly favored him over me.”

He chuckled. Joseph joined him.

“You took me in when no one else would. You were a father to me. But this son could never impress you, could he? I was never enough. Not even as impressive as a random car thief that showed up a few months ago.”

Burton was no longer laughing. He reached behind the old man, took him by the shoulders, and pulled him away from the bed while he grabbed one of the two pillows.

“I’ve nearly wiped out the entire Farone crime family,” Burton said. “There’s only one member left.”

He put the pillow on Joseph’s face. Pressed down.

Joseph struggled. Minuscule strength pushing back against Burton’s hand. Just as weak as he looked.

It only took a few moments.

Burton removed the pillow.

Joseph’s eyes and mouth were open, face tilted to the side. Burton pulled the tiny body away from the bed and put the pillow back behind him, turned his face toward the ceiling. He brushed Joseph’s eyelids closed.

Something tickled Burton’s cheek, and he wiped it away, rubbed it out of existence, his momentary weakness.

He pushed the call button on the bed’s hand railing.

Waited.

And looked at the body.

There had been a single tear.