The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning

FILTHY SCUM OF THE EARTH! YOU DEVIL OF ALL DEVILS! YOU ASSHOLE OF THE UNIVERSE!”
    He picks me up by my ears, then head-butts me down again with his biblical forehead so I’m almost KO’d, crawling in my own blood, then kicks me in the groin. He kicks me again and then throws his heavy body on top of me, like a G-string clad wrestler in Madison Square Garden. He puts his right arm around my throat and twists my head with his left one. Fuck it. I’m being whacked by a priest.
    I can’t let it happen.
    The good old soldier from the Hrvatska army rises deep inside me, like Tito from his grave, and goes straight to work. In an instant my mental and physical weakness is gone. In a flash, my starved body is seized with the force of the hungry boar. I bite his hand to the bone and whip the fucker off my back with a swift turn of the spine. He lands on the floor, red with pain, and I land on top of him. I put my hands around his neck and let the grip tighten like a noose. I’m about to silence him for good when Comrade Tito suddenly appears in front of me. He’s in his good old general’s outfit, holding Munita’s head. I close my eyes and shake my own head. I reopen them and they’re still there. Head and leader. Leader and head. I fasten my grip around Torture’s neck, the image becomes clearer. I let go a little, the image disappears. I fasten it again and the image reappears. It’s like those plastic toys that squeak when you squeeze them. What’s it supposed to mean? The head of my life with the head of my love.
    Torture senses my confusion and comes to life, starts pulling my hands away from his neck. As he manages to loosen my left one, it gets tangled up in his glasses and they fly off his face. I instantly forget Tito and go back to work on my holy victim, getting back my grip on his throat. With a violent force, I manage to turn his head from red to purple, from purple to pale, from pale to white. I do not look up, I do not dare to look. But somebody keeps on bugging me: Suddenly the face of Torture becomes the face of my father. Without the glasses he looks just like him. Suddenly I’m holding my father by the neck.
    The fuck.
    I immediately let go, jump to my feet, and hurry into a corner, turning away from the man, catching my breath, blood dripping from my loud-breathing snot.
    What the fuck.
    The seven days of soul-saving have come to nothing. I finish the week of fasting by killing a boar. The born-again is dead again. Being a double priest-killer didn’t look good on my application for heaven, but being a triple one will surely destroy it.
    I pass a few more moments in hell before I sense some movement on the plastic covered mattresses behind me. The holy animal slowly rises.
    “Tomislav Bokšić…” The voice is broken but extremely dramatic. “Tomislav Bokšić. The Balkan soldier…” He seems to have done his homework. “I cannot beat you at your own game, so we better try mine.”
    He grabs my shoulder and turns me around. The glasses are back on his face and his cheeks show some color, but his bloodstained gown is in great disorder. He breathes a little. I welcome the fact.
    “You little son of a Croatian cunt,” he says and slaps me in the face. “You little son of a crazy Croatian cunt!” He grabs me by the shoulders. “Who do you think you are, huh? You think you’re something more than a lousy little louse that crawls around the kitchen floor in the kingdom of God, with a small hellish flame on its back? YOU FOOL!”
    He pushes me around. I do not react. He sort of drives me backwards around the room, with his hands on my shoulders, his feet fumbling from exhaustion. He uses me as his underpants-wearing Zimmer frame. Speaking like a drunkard: “You bloody fool. You bloody son of a Serbo-Croatian fool.”
    “Croatian.”
    “SHUT THE FUCK UP!”
    He stops. We stand still. Facing each other. Then he asks, in a more calm way, “How many people have you killed?”
    “Eh, how many? One hundred twenty something.”
    “One hundred and twenty SOMETHING!?”
    “Yes. I’m not totally sure.”
    “What do you mean? You don’t count them? You don’t count them like the women you’ve had? How many women have you had?”
    “I don’t know. Counting hookers?”
    “Counting hookers? I don’t have all day.”
    “Then…I’m not sure…sixty, seventy maybe…”
    “Sixty, seventy? You’ve killed more people than you’ve slept with? You’re worse than I