When I explained to my grandmother why I took the job, I told her it was because they offered to pay off my student loans, which was the truth. My housing and transportation were provided; I was given a separate stipend for necessities; health, dental, vision – all of it. The money I was making from the salary was pretty much all going into personal entertainment and accessories. With this job, I would have no bills, no debt, no uncertainty about future or quality of life.

Which definitely sounded too good to be true when it was originally offered. I’m not stupid; I assumed it was some kind of scam or sex trafficking thing. But when I was contacted, multiple times, by very public officials from Washington, I figured why not at least listen to the full offer. It’s not like my overpriced master’s degree was going to get me a job. And I couldn’t bear the thought of going back to my parents’ house after graduation.

I’m still not sure how or why they chose me, apparently it’s confidential. I’m not questioning it though. As shady as everything started, once the first check was deposited into my bank account, before I even started, I was good. The gig was real, and it’s mine now, until I die or become incapable of fulfilling my duty. And considering all I have to do is push a button once a week or so, I think I can safely say I have a long career ahead of me.

I don’t mind the solitude, not when I have what can reasonably be described as a mansion all to myself. Indoor pool and hot tub, basketball court, volleyball net, home theater and gym, restaurant quality kitchen, rooms I forget exist because I don’t go in them, everything you would expect there to be. There’s three different cars in the garage, one of them is specifically for snow and rain. I only drive to and from the grocery store and post office. Because people can’t know I’m up here, it’s really the only downside – no delivery. If I want pizza at midnight, I have to pick it up myself.

There are only two conditions to the job: no one can know what I do here, and no one but me can be at the house. Officially, I live in an apartment in DC and work as a “consultant,” which should make taxes complicated, but I guess the guys at the IRS are aware of this, or at least as aware as they need to be, so my paperwork doesn’t get flagged. I’m not concerned, it’s the government who’s telling  me to do this, so I would assume they have their own asses covered at least.

When I first started, I had my reservations. It seemed immoral, what they wanted me to do. Beneath the basement of the house, hidden in a bunker, there is a man strapped to a table. My job is to press the big blue button outside of the room, and it decapitates him with a modern day guillotine.

This man, the one who was already in the bunker and headless when I arrived, can regenerate. His body just grows another head, every single time. The heads fall through an opening in the floor, and I don’t particularly care where they go. My knowledge of biology is remedial at best, so I can’t even begin to understand why the body grows a head but the heads don’t grow bodies. If I spend too long trying to think about it, I end up with a migraine.

They, the men in black or whatever, told me that this guy is dangerous, that if he were left unchecked, he would kill millions. I didn’t question it because what choice did I really have? I’d already accepted the money and received the email from the government congratulating me on making the final loan payment. I’d already signed the NDA.

I don’t believe in an afterlife, but I’m sure this would earn me a top spot in hell. And for everything this job provides, mental health counseling was not one of them. So I try not to think about it, what I’m doing.

Maybe if boomers hadn’t fucked up the economy I wouldn’t have had to resort to this. I could have done something with my silly little degrees, made a life for myself without selling my soul. I knew that if I stayed in my hometown after school, a borough that doesn’t even have stoplights, I would never get out. I’d be stuck like the rest of my family, living with my parents until I got married or died, and I’d rather die than marry someone for convenience.

So I do my job. I press the button every week, listen to the man beg me to wait, because he somehow retains his memories, and watch as the blade cuts him clean apart. Then I spend the rest of the week distracting myself, not thinking about what’s happening in the bunker. Week after week, head after head. It always restarts. I keep hoping that one week, when I go down there, he’ll be dead. For real. They don’t check up on me, for some reason, to make sure I’m still killing him. They’re probably monitoring my phone calls, listening to make sure I don’t tell anyone.

I don’t know who I would tell. The only person I call is my grandmother. Even at school, I didn’t talk to anyone. I’ve never had friends, never could make them or keep them when I did. I asked one of the men if I could have a pet, even just a fish, but he said no. I was to be the only living thing in the house. I never figured out if he said that because the bunker is technically under the house or if he doesn’t consider the man to be alive.

I try not to think of him as being alive either, especially since he does spend more time without a head than with one. I wonder if his heart keeps beating?

So it really catches me off guard when, one day a few months after I started the job, he says, “Rory.”

My hand is hovering over the button, and I want to push it because I was always able to ignore him before, but he said my name and I make the mistake of looking through the large glass windows so that our eyes meet.

“I heard them, before you got here,” he says, answering my question before I ask it.  “They said the replacement was named Rory.” He is straining his neck forward, his shoulder barely lifting off the table, so that he can keep eye contact.

I figured someone must have done this before me. The process was too streamlined for it to have been new. But it doesn’t matter who was here before, or why they are no longer here, because it’s my job now. I just have to push the button.

But I don’t, not yet. Because I need to know.

“What did you do?” I ask, thinking about how dangerous they had said he was but never with specifics.

“Same as you, I’m guessing. They agree to pay off your student loans?” He laughs a little. “To be fair, they did pay mine off, so don’t worry.” He’s not thrashing around or trying to break out of the restraints, so I decide there’s no harm in letting the conversation continue. “I agreed to medical trials, specifically. Stem cells and tissue transplants. I think they were trying to find a way to grow new limbs and organs for people, you know? Without having to worry about graft vs. host or waiting for someone to become a vegetable.”

I don’t say anything, keep my hand over the button. I don’t know if he knows I’m curious, or if he is just stalling. If he wants to keep talking, he can.

“Obviously, it worked. Too well.”

That doesn’t explain why I have to kill him every week. I move my hand from the button and stare at him. It’s what they do on cop shows, right? Stare and wait for the suspect to say something they shouldn’t. He’ll give away what he did if I just wait.

“You don’t believe me,” He drops his head back at the table, and I can see the way he stares at the blade above him. But not like he’s afraid, no. It’s like he’s tired. I guess I would be too, if I had to die and grow a new head every week.

Then it occurs to me. “I’ve never fed you.”

“And?”

“How do you…keep doing it?”

“You think I know?” He almost yells it, like he’s frustrated.

I glance at the button, knowing I’m not doing the single task I am being paid to do. Although I have to wonder what the purpose of it is. Why the repeated beheading? Wouldn’t putting him in prison, solitary confinement, be just as effective? If the big bad government guys could orchestrate this, surely they could just imprison him. It’s not like they haven’t done that before. Even if it’s to keep him from talking, this seems excessive.

“So, you’re just, what, a walking X-File?”

He scoffs. “Haven’t done much walking lately, but yeah. I guess that’s accurate.”

“So why are they doing this? Killing you, repeatedly.”

He shrugs beneath the restraints. “I assume that if anyone found out I existed, I could be used as a weapon. Or they could be able to recreate whatever was done to me.”

This conversation is a little too friendly for me, like he’s trying to get on my good side, disarm me or something. I push the button and go back upstairs.

I want to Google the things he said, but I have no doubts that my internet is being watched. I can’t let them know I talked to…him. I should have asked his name. I know I shouldn’t make this a habit, talking to the man I’m supposed to keep killing, but I’m going to ask anyway.

“It’s Wesley,” he tells me the next week. “Any chance knowing that is going to make it harder for you to push that button?”

I think about how my student loans are already paid off and push the button. “No.”

I think it becomes a game for him after that, to see how many sentences he can get out of me before I kill him. He always waits for me to start the conversation, to ask him something about himself. It doesn’t seem to bother him anymore, that I do. I think at the beginning, it wasn’t fear that made him beg – he knew he would come back – I think it was his way of testing me, to see if I would let him out.

But I won’t. Because I know if I were him, the first thing I would do is kill me. Even if I let him out, allow him into the house with me, he could never really trust me. And I couldn’t trust him.

“You do know,” he says one day after telling me he’s only a few years older than me, “you could just not push the button. Leave me strapped to the table and locked in the room, but there’s no real reason for you to keep decapitating me.”

Sure there is, I want to say, but I know he’s right. “This is what I’m getting paid to do.”

“Well…if your conscience is okay with that…”

“I don’t believe in God.”

“Never said you did.”

I have it good here. There’s not even anything to feel guilty about. Wesley doesn’t die, not completely. He grows a new fucking head and then I cut it off, like fingernails. It’s just maintenance at this point, part of a routine. Once a week: vacuum, wash sheets, wipe down counters, decapitate the man in the bunker, don’t think about where the heads go.

If I didn’t do this, where would I be? Living with my parents and working at some minimum wage job that’s mostly staffed by teenagers? Getting paid the same them despite having a fucking master’s degree?

My fingertips rest on the button.

– Sebs Corrigan