The Territorial

Sampson never liked the word hitman. Too clinical, too clean. It sounded like a profession, something you could list on a tax form.

He preferred killer, as it had honesty and weight. The kind of word that didn’t need an explanation.

He’d been at it twelve years, long enough to know the texture of dying, how air left the throat, how the eyes adjusted to the final surprise. He told himself the money was what kept him going, but that was a lie he stopped believing around year three.

The money was fuel, nothing more. What Sampson loved was the stillness that came after the chaos, the way a life’s noise collapsed into silence.

Tonight, he was in a fourth-floor walk-up that smelled like fried food and mold. The mark was named Denny Cole, a gambling man with debts and a mouth that had insulted the wrong people.

Sampson sat in the dark across the street, watching Denny through the window. The man was pacing, sweating in his undershirt, drinking from a bottle he couldn’t afford.

Sampson waited for the moment when routine turned to vulnerability. Everyone had one: lighting a cigarette, answering the phone, leaning in to check a reflection.

When it came, he moved. He crossed the street, climbed the stairs slowly, like a lover sneaking home.

At the door, he knocked once.

“Yeah?”

“Delivery,” Sampson said, voice low, steady.

A pause. The door opened halfway, chain still on.

A sliver of Denny’s eye and shoulder.

“I didn’t order…”

The chain snapped under a shoulder hit. Denny stumbled backward, the bottle smashing against the floor.

The gun made a sound like a sigh, and Denny dropped, twitching, then still. Sampson crouched beside him, not because he needed to, but because he wanted to see.

There it was, the look he liked, the disbelief in the dead man’s eyes. The understanding that everything ends, and always faster than expected.

He felt it rise in him, that quiet, familiar thrill, like the hum of a train before it passes. He stayed a minute longer than he should’ve, studying the scene, then he pocketed the gun, wiped the knob, and left.

Outside, the city was thick with rain. Neon lights bled across puddles like cheap watercolors.

He ducked into a bar a few blocks down, the kind that didn’t ask names. He sat near the end, ordered whiskey, no ice.

The bartender was a woman with sharp eyes and too much lipstick. She looked at him like she was trying to guess what kind of trouble he carried.

“Rough night?” she asked.

“Not rough,” he said. “Too loud.”

She laughed, poured him another. “You look like a guy who likes things quiet.”

“I do,” he said. “That’s the problem.”

She didn’t get it, and he didn’t expect her to.

By the third drink, he was thinking about the next job. There was always a next one. They came like dominoes, push one, and another falls.

Sampson didn’t even know if he wanted to stop. The idea of quitting felt like dying, and he wasn’t ready for that yet.

When he stepped back into the rain, the street was empty. The air smelled of rust and cigarettes. Somewhere in the distance, a siren wailed, climbing higher before dissolving into nothing.

Sampson stood there for a moment, hands deep in his pockets, feeling the city breathe around him. He thought about Denny Cole lying on that stained carpet, the light from the window still flickering over his body.

For a second, he almost felt sorry. Then he smiled.

The night was quiet again.