quick-sketch: to catch a beast

With no windows on the floor of the plant and no outside sunlight, the days seemed to run together. Zoe woke up, splashed her face with cold water, and looked at herself in the mirror.

She was about to do what she was hired to do long ago and had sworn never to go back to. Her hopes of a new life, an ordinary life where she could savor the little things were shelved while she lived out this nightmare.

After drying her still very youthful-looking face, for a thirty-three-year-old, she pulled out a pair of scissors from the cabinet beneath the sink and went to work cutting her black shoulder-length hair extremely short.

Now it was time to dress the part. From a Rubbermaid bin, she pulled a set of shrink-wrapped clothes out and changed from the comfort of her PJs into track pants, a US Soccer t-shirt, and a ball cap.

From the closet, she pulled out her Eastern Mountain backpack, and carefully took out what appeared to be an aluminum water bottle with a Nike logo on it. Gathering things up, she looked at her watch…3:30 AM, right on time.

A little more than 50 miles to the north, Hugo Santana was also departing to being his workday To him it was a normal morning, one where he got the opportunity to talk to his son after reestablishing good terms with him, or so he thought.

It was a normal morning for Hugo. Meetings with his underworld clients at the law office in South Boston. He expected nothing eventful today.

Hugo Santana left his home in the early morning hours, headed for the commuter rail lot.

By the time his train came into South Station, Santana looked up from his canary legal pad as the sun was now piercing the darkness.

At South Station, he exited the train and scanned the tables at the food court for his son Lev, quickly finding him and receiving a pleasant wave. The two of them set off down summer street.

Zoey had arrived in on the Red Line, setting out ahead of them by mere hundred feet on the same route.

Lev and his dad chat and walk, pleasantly.

Zoe continued walking ahead confidently and calmly. On the inside, she was a disaster. She was reliving a life she had intended to depart from permanently and forget. Her only comfort was that a vicious and brutal criminal, that was hell-bent on killing Lev just weeks earlier, would be removed from the picture with extreme prejudice.

At last, it was time to do her duty. As she closed on the corner of Melcher and Summer street, she took the cap off her water bottle, revealing a spray nozzle. At Melcher, she turned into a vestibule and waited for Santana to pass.

Lev, reaching his turn-off point suddenly turned back the way he came as his father walked on chattering, not knowing he was just talking to himself.

The streets were sparsely populated, with many people now working from home. Santana passes the vestibule of a store on Melcher Street where Zoe stood waiting, with hidden anxiety.

Exiting calmly, from 15 feet away she depressed the nozzle of the canister, which sprayed a flame of ignited white phosphorus onto Santana.

The few people on the street and in cars are horrified as the man burns to death in a shower of flames.

As the horror distracts people, Zoe re-caps her bottle and walking away calmly. At the A Street overpass, she disappeared down the stairs.