The Night Noises Lakes Make

As far as I can sea there isn’t a moon tonight, and I’m not necessarily supposed to be here. This marina stands somewhere between public and private property because how the fuck would you know if I did or didn’t have a dock here? Especially when it’s too dark to see me unless you’re looking. But if someone did, why the fuck would I be at the marina after hours? So I stay paranoid, as usual. There’s rustling in the tall grass behind me. It starts and stops a couple times like something coming for me and I turn around and look a couple times like I would be able to see it.

It's past magic hour, that time right after sunrise when you can't put your finger on the color of the sky and you have no idea why everything has a ghostly clear shine to it. Nature looks almost like a grainy paper set that could fall over or burst into flames at any moment. Almost as if you could walk right through your setting into the very fabric of whatever the real world is supposed to be made up of.

That’s why I don’t see my contact walk up, cause it's fucking dark and i'm trying to see whatever big foot or cop is stumbling through the sandy grass to the south. “It’s just a Rabbit" I jump a couple inches taller and sink into my below normal height that is somehow textbook average after, "Relax.” He speaks brief and hands me a cigarette. “Spooked ya huh?” I only see his outline and the white orange flame from his square, which I light mine off of. My contact is a big guy, Old world sort of big, all tree trunk like. they don't grow like that no more. Now a days big guys are just fat guys and tall guys are too skinny to do my line of work any good. We hire souls that somehow stuck around. We being Myself and my business partner. You might meet him tomorrow, but I doubt it. The name my contact gave me is phoney so i won't waste your time with it.

“No shit. How do you know it’s a rabbit?”

“Cause I’m not stupid.” And before I can ask if he’s calling me stupid he starts again, “So. There was an accident.”

“Accident?”

“That’s the polite way of saying I’ve got a dead body where there shouldn’t be one.”

" I know what an accident is," I’m hoping he’s fucking with me, but then I hear, “It was all roses; no alarms, minimal damage to the structure, easy enough combination… and then some kid showed up.”

“Who?” My contact didn’t say anything, but he was giving me that ‘what the fuck’ look. If he knew he would have told me.

“I’m hoping you don’t know who she is either. Cause if you do, then someone’s onto us. If you don’t then someone’s just unlucky, and that we can deal with.” He hands me a picture, and it’s one of those faces you don’t forget. Real pretty too.

"I told my self I wasn’t going to smoke anymore," and I had.

"Oh well," and that was that.

We didn’t say much after. The hum of the “burrowed” dingy and the splash of her body just added to the night noises that lakes make. You feel real sick adding on weight to accidents your first couple of times, and then you learn to cover your nose. After you get in this business, you start covering a lot of things; ears, eyes, faces. But there isn't much you can put over the backs of your eyelids. Somehow those end up remembering everything.