Showcase: Boston Masters, Dealing Death

                It had been a long night, but he was accustomed to waiting. He stood in the shadows across the street from the gangster party house in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Inside were several targets he had been sent to kill. He wasn’t hired by a rival gang or any of their victim’s families. He was sent by Death himself. Boston Masters had served Death since the late 1700’s, balancing the scales where ever he was directed. This gang had been on a wild killing spree, unstoppable by local law enforcement. It was time to balance the scales of life and death by ending their lives.

            Boston looked like something from the American Civil War except that his uniform was black and sported a golden skull on his hat and belt. His hair style and thick mustache were also relics of the old West. His hard ghost blue eyes could pierce the soul of any man. As he watched the party, his right hand gripped his 1860 Colt 44 revolver. It was a weapon blessed by Death that never needed to be reloaded. Sideways, in the small of his back, was his black bowie knife, but he seldom used it.

            Hours went by and finally the lights went out at 3 am. None of his targets had left and he would wait another hour to make sure he could catch and kill them all.

            At 4am he walked in silence to the front door and grasped the door handle. The door swung open freely, unlocked. Not surprising for overconfident thugs, not that a locked door was much of a barrier to him. He stepped into the living room of the small three bedroom house and looked over all the bodies of drugged out and drunken fools draped over all the furniture and across the floor. Straight ahead, he saw the back door and to the left the hall to the bedrooms. The kitchen was next to the back door and some fool lay on the kitchen tile.

            Boston reached back with his left hand and drew his bowie knife as he held his pistol ready. He flipped the bowie in his hand so he held the blade, took aim and threw the knife. It stuck in between the back door and the frame with a thud. This woke two men who started to look around in a daze. That’s when Boston started firing. To say that Boston Masters was fast with a gun, would be like saying Babe Ruth was merely good at baseball. The first six shots hit their marks in less than a second with fatal accuracy. One man managed to grab the back doorknob, but didn’t have time to turn it. That was the man from the kitchen floor.

            Three or four men pulled out guns and one actually got to fire at Boston, missing by wide margin. Then they started to come out from the bedrooms. Only a few left at this point, so Boston started moving in that direction. Boston never stopped slapping his hand across the hammer of his revolver like an old West gunslinger, putting a mystically generated iron ball in each target. As Boston stepped into direct angle of the hall, the destruction became more focused. Plaster exploded from the walls and picture frames shattered around the gangsters falling bodies. As he came to each doorway he fired shots into the room at any who tried to hide. He shot one man through a door and another who tried to climb out a window.

            As he finally entered the furthest room to the back, everyone in his path lay dead. But one man had escaped out the window and ran hard and fast down the street. Boston took careful aim but then lowered his pistol. He would let this one run.  Sirens were blaring and getting closer, it was time to leave.

            When authorities arrived, Boston wasn’t there, nor was there any trace of him. Despite all the holes in bodies and walls made from black powder iron ball projectiles, there was nothing to be found of any ammunition. The only evidence was holes everywhere and the mark of something that held the back door shut.

            Boston Master’s emerged from the run down hotel not far from the scene around 10 pm. He had stayed out of sight and was ready to move on since he hit all the marks he was sent for.  Suddenly, two cars and a beat up SUV pulled into the dusty lot and gangsters poured out of them. They aimed guns of all kinds in Boston’s direction. So the one that got away, got a look at   Boston after all. Boston lit a cigarette and took a long drag from it. He casually breathed the smoke into the air and it floated up around his black hat like dark flames.

            “Is that him?” one of the gangsters asked of the one who got away.

            “Yeah, that’s him!”

            “Yo, man, who you think you are?”

            Boston took another drag on his cigarette, “You weren’t on my list and you still aren’t, so I’m going to give you just one chance. You want to know what that is?”

            “Can you believe this dude?” said the first gangster who spoke, “Yo, what before we shoot you all up?”

            Boston Masters showed no emotion and didn’t even blink his cold blue eyes, “You have one chance to get back in your cars and drive away. Just one chance, because if I have to deal with you, I’m going to have to drop my cigarette. If I drop my cigarette, you’ll all be dead before it hits the ground.”

            This was met with laughter and the one who spoke, seeming to be their leader, said, “What? Man, you gots one gun and we gots all these guns. We awake, unlike our friends you shot up. Nah, man, we got dis here. You the one who’s dead.”

            Fingers tensed on triggers and Boston could feel each one of them, “Have it your way,” he held up his cigarette in his fingers and flicked it straight upward, spinning into the air.

            Before their fingers could get half way on the triggers of their weapons, Boston had fired three times. The cigarette still spun in the air above his hat. As hammers and firing pins moved, Boston fired three more times. The cigarette was almost starting to fall. As bullets emerged from barrels of the guns, Boston fired another three times. As gangster bullets reached the halfway point towards their target, Boston fired twice more and twice again as the bullets hit the wall behind him. The cigarette was about to fall past the brim of Boston’s hat. As the last three men tensed to fire a second shot, Boston fired three times again, snatched the cigarette from the air at eye level and put it between his lips. Boston breathed in from his cigarette as the last three men fell. None of their shots connected with him.

            “And I never waste a good cigarette,” Boston muttered.

            Again, before authorities arrived, Boston Masters vanished, his mission complete. The balance had been maintained and for now, Death was satisfied.