The translucent-yellow shot glass stood empty on the bar counter after its owner had sucked all ofthe vitality from it. Every last drop of its alcoholic life was gone. The owner looked down to see only fragments of melted ice cubes and sighed.

“I don’t have very much money,” he commented on the idea of perhaps buying another.

“That’s never stopped anyone before,” the bartender said as he took his glass from him.

“I’m not just anyone, though. I know my limitations.”

“So did they. It was just there limitations exceeded the realm of realism.” He sat the glass on the counter behind him to join the army of one hundred other glasses just like it.

The man turned his head to each side, surveying his surroundings for the fifth time since he had arrived. He was a detail-oriented fellow, so this activity particularly appealed to him. It was like any typical bar complete with the plain wooden counter with gold trim along the edges and stools without backs on them so the drinker was forced to lean forward to support himself with his elbows. About twelve tables were set up at random intervals throughout the rest of the room. One television tacked to the corner above the bathroom was turned to the news, and images of a grizzly murder were being displayed on the screen.

“Do you mind me asking what your name is?” the bartender inquired, expecting that the man would have no problem with divulging that sort of information.

“Radcliffe,” said the man as he lifted his gaze from the now bare counter to the bartender.

The bartender appeared to be much older than most of his fellow companions in the profession. A large, white moustache hung underneath his nose, concealing his upper lip. Bushy eyebrows of the same color hung over his lifeless brown eyes that hardly seemed to be able to stay open. He looked tired. Old and incredibly tired. The standard white apron tied around his waist was kept pristinely cleanand carried no trace of any mishap while mixing a complicated drink.

Radcliffe, on the other hand, was dressed in a nice white shirt with black slacks. Even though the knot in his tie was not as tight as most men preferred to wear it, it also retained the appearance of being neat. Unlike the eyes of a man who had been sitting at a bar for over two hours, his green eyes were completely clear and piercing. A calloused hand reached up to comb the way through his dark brown hair as he attempted to smooth out an already neat section.

“My name is Ernie as you might have guessed due to the fact that this bar is named Ernie’s Bar,” the old man laughed.

“There wasn’t any need to tell me your name. I knew who you were,” Radcliffe stated nonchalantly as he reached into his coat pocket and extracted a wrinkled package of cigarettes.

“Well, you would be surprised at the number of dopes who never put two and two together.”

“Nothing surprises me anymore.” He pulled out a slightly bent cigarette and attempted to straighten it back to its original state.

Ernie grabbed another empty glass, took a washcloth from his apron pocket, and began to wipe the inside of the glass. It was something he always did more out of boredom than necessity. Most of the costumers had already found their way in and stumbled their way out of the doors, and he was ready to go home. Stella wouldn’t stay up that much longer for him, and he really wanted to just talk to her like they used to do. True to the age old bartender joke that their marriage was “on the rocks,” Ernie really wanted to fix everything between him and Stella. Damn the business! She was all that he really had.

“Does business usually slow down this early?” Radcliffe asked, seemingly without purpose.

“Midnight is early for you? Geez, I don‘t know what kind of bars you hang out in.,” Ernie observed.

“Sorry, I didn’t realize what time it was.”Radcliffe pulled back his left sleeve to reveal a simple silver watch and check to see if Ernie had given him the correct information.

“Anyways, I’m certainly ready to go home. If only some people would finish up their business and leave,” Ernie muttered as his eyes fell on the man who sat a couple of seats down from Radcliffe.

“Is that a hint, Ernie?” the man asked as he clumsily hopped down from the stool and fell over the instance his feet hit the ground.

“Steve, your wife is going to kill you this time,” Ernie said as he walked around the bar to help the intoxicated man.

Steve floundered on the floor in his drunken stupor. His business suit was dirty and dusty possibly due to lying on the ground, but Radcliffe suspected otherwise. He looked as though most of the money he made at whatever job he preformed went straight into Ernie’s cash register. His blond hair was wild, greasy, and desperately in need of a cut. A field of stubble covered his almost forgettable face and his eyes were glazed over as tears leaked out.

“You’re right, Ernie. Jessie will kill me! What am I supposed to do?” Steve wailed as Ernie lifted him up off the ground.

“Hail a cab, go home, and apologize. Everything will be all right in the morning.” He pulled open the glass doors and shoved Steve out to survive the cold winter night.

“I go through this problem every night. Every night he gets drunk off his rocker, and every night Jessie takes him back. He spends the biggest part of their money here. Not that I’m not thankful for the business, but the man has a family for crying out loud,” Ernie mumbled as he walked back to this usual position behind the bar.

“There was no need to tell me that. I could tell just be looking at his sorry state.” Radcliffe took his plain metal lighter out of his pocket, flipped open the lid, and lit the now straightened cigarette.

Reaching for one of his cleaned glasses, Ernie turned away from Radcliffe to continue stacking them on the back counter in another of his usual rituals. This one was done for the same reasons as the previous one.

“Now, let’s get down to business, Mr. Oliver,” Radcliffe said, his eyes focused on intently on Ernie’s back.

The old man stopped with his hands trembling slightly. Slowly, he willed his feet to turn his bodyaround to face Radcliffe. A weird feeling crept into his stomach. Almost like butterflies fluttering around, but he hated to label it with such an appealing insect.

“I am your last customer. There’s no one else around, and I doubt that Steve will remember me enough tomorrow morning to give a decent description.”

“What do you want?” the question painfully escaped Ernie’s completely dry mouth.

“I’ve learned not to bother with too many questions. It’s bad for the business, and it’s also bad for the conscience. You seem like a nice man, so I don’t want to get too involved with this one. I did once. I knew everything about her, and then I had dreams about her every night.”

“You’re a hit man?”

“I don’t like that title actually. I prefer assassin even though it carries too many scary images for my taste.”

“You are going to kill me? Why?”

“I told you that I’ve learned not to ask questions. This one so far has gone perfectly. I’ve watched your place for two nights, learned your schedule, and just had to wait. I waited for two hours just to give the impression that I was a regular customer. At first, I was afraid that I would stick out due to my clean appearance among some of the refuse that came in here, but that proved to be not as big as a problem as I had previously suspected.”

“Refuse? Don’t you think it’s ironic for you to comment on them like that? They have more right to call you something worse! At least most of them feel bad about getting drunk as a skunk in the morning. You have conditioned yourself to feel nothing at all.” Ernie’s eyes met Radcliffe’s as he found some sort of courage in his observations.

“Don’t you understand at all? This is an art. An art that I have spent years mastering. You wouldn’t know anything about what I do. The studying, the understanding, the kill, the forgetting. It’s all an art form.”

“Art? Is that what you’ve labeled it as?”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“Can you sit there and tell me that you don’t do it for the thrill? That rush of excitement that courses its way through your veins. That sweet moment of ecstasy after you pull the trigger and watch their body fall to the ground. That quick moment where you are God.”

Radcliffe remained speechless. He stared at the old man, whose breath was coming in quick gasps. It was almost as if he could see his lungs inflating and deflating through his clean apron. Still trying to remain impassive to the whole situation, Radcliffe searched his brain for the right words to say in this situation. He wanted to keep it poetic, but Ernie was complicating the situation.

“You don’t know who I am, do you?” Ernie asked as his fists clenched at his sides.

“Ernie Oliver. Fifty-eight years old. White hair. White moustache. Five foot eight. Need I continue?”

Radcliffe lifted the cigarette to his lips, inhaled just enough smoke to calm his nerves, and blew it back out into the atmosphere. The gun in his coat pocket was heavy with anticipation. He wanted to pull it out right now and finish this before it got any worse, but that wasn’t his style.

“Those are all useless facts. Do you really know who I am?”

“A bartender?” It came out as a question even thoughRadcliffe had attempted to fight it. Yes, he had no idea, but he didn’t want Ernie to pick up on that.

“Who do you work for?”

“Weiss.” He saw no purpose in withholding that shred of information.

“So, he’s still running the whole thing. That crusty piece of scum. He will burn in hell one day, and so will you if you keep up with this act.”

Radcliffe kept his questions to himself. He knew when to talk and when to let the other person do the talking.

“I was just like you once. So damn thick-headed. I used to think that what I did was simply to clean up the bad people of this town, but then I realized that not all of them were bad. In fact, most of them were just trying to change this city. Its people like us that are keeping this refuse alive.”

“Your words are wasted on me,” Radcliffe said as he pulled the gun out of his pocket and pointed it right at Ernie’s heart.

Only the whir of a refrigerator in the back room could be heard as a subtle silence settled upon the bar. A drop of sweat slowly crawled from Ernie’s forehead to his cheek, and he wanted to wipe it away but was too scared to move. Radcliffe fought to keep his right hand steady from a combination of nerves and the weight of the gun.

“So, this is what it feels like? To be at the other end of the gun,” Ernie licked his lips as he tried to create some sort of moisture in his mouth. “Now, I see how they must have felt. My heart is beating so fast, I think it might explode. Would you be mad if I died from a heart attack instead of a bullet?”

“Whatever God chooses is fine with me.”

A few moments passed as Radcliffe judged whether the old man was going to kill over from a cardiac arrest. Silently, he hoped that maybe he would. Then, there wouldn’t be a huge cleanup and nobody could be blamed. Except for God, and people have enough faith in him to let the matter pass.

Unfortunately, God didn’t work fast enough in Radcliffe’s opinionof how long the moment should last, so he pulled the trigger. Ernie took the bullet in his chest and was propelled back into the tower of glasses that he had created. They crashed tothe floor in a million high-pitched notes that caused Radcliffe to wince painfully.

The glass doors were pushed open as a man entered with the cold wind at his back. He removed the solid red scarf from around his neck and the black fedora that sat on top of his head and placed it on a table at his right. There wasn’t much hair on his head except a patch that extended along the back of his head from ear to ear. His chin stuck out at a sharp angle and his cheekbones protruded so much that he appeared like a living skeleton. Two dark eyes that sunk back into his head furthered the reality of this impossible image.

Radcliffe stayed rooted to the bar stool as Ernie’s body slid down to fall to the dusty blue-tiled floor. Finally willing his arm to move, Radcliffe lifted the cigarette to his lips and took a long drag off of it.

“You let him talk too long,” the man said as he sat down next to Radcliffe at the bar.

“I know.”

“Why did you do that?” The man picked up a salt shaker that sat a couple of chairs down and emptied a pile of salt onto the counter.

“A man has a right to say something before he dies. He had more to say than the average person. That’s all.”

“Is it? Is it that simple? I hardly believe that you, of all people, would grant a man his last words.” One long, bony finger separated the salt grains into two more piles.

“You don’t know me, Weiss. I just work for you.”

“Yes, but I know your work. I know how you approach your work. You do the talking, and they do the dying. Did he tell you who he was?”

“I already knew.”

“But you only knew what I told you. Were you surprised at how much he knew about the art and the thrill. I hope you learned something from him. He was the best. Too bad he had to go soft. Let this be a lesson to you about what happens when someone wants to get out. Once you’re in, you’re in. Any thoughts about getting out, and you’re finished.” With the last words, he inhaled as much air as he could and blew the separate piles of salt off the counter and into the smoky atmosphere.

“What makes you think I’m planning on this?”

“Because you weren’t born to do this. You just got stuck in a bad situation. I saved your life, and now you owe me a huge favor. You don’t understand everything about what we do. I have the feeling you might want to run, so we will be watching you.”

Weiss stood up from the stool and walked towards the door from which everyone came and went. Pausing only to return his hat and scarf to their proper places, he exited the building without looking back. Radcliffe remained on his stool until he was done smoking his cigarette. Placing it amongst the other butts in the leaf-shaped ash tray, he stood up and adjusted his already perfectly-placed clothes. Ernie’s lifeless body was sprawled out before his eyes, and Radcliffe fought to divert them from the painful sight.

“From one to another, may God forgive your sins if he has not already,” Radcliffe said before he turned to walk out the glass doors and rejoin the world outside.