About Anthony Harken: HIT MAN FOR THE DEAD
ANTHONY HARKEN is a drifter, a detective of sorts, and a killer. While he eliminates the most evil kind of people – the unpunished murderers of the innocent – he knows that he is still a murderer, taking human life and operating totally outside the law.
In the world of good and evil, Harken has chosen sides, but in the world of normal, everyday life, he has chosen an extreme and dangerous path. He carries a gun, he kills, and lives detached from a society that has no idea that people like him are even among us.
To be sure, he fills in where the law fails: he is a vigilante. He is judge, jury and executioner. And there is no guarantee that he is always right or that he, himself will not make a mistake someday and dispatch someone who was totally innocent.
Anthony is not the only “hit-man for the dead” out there. There are others.
He is an Inquisitor for the Dark Court of JACK KETCH, the mysterious and ancient overlord of a motley group of avenging killers whose agenda is one of the last modern day vestiges of The Spanish Inquisition.
They too are all out vindicating the wrongly killed. They all use drugs: The Yage, which is the South American elixir that they use to bridge the pathway between our world and the nether-world of the Undead. They travel, they investigate, they avenge the dead.
And then they loot the estate: cash, jewelry, etc; put all the rest of their victim’s shit on E-Bay to sell it off and keep their little murder ring flush and running.
Harken considerers himself an artiste. He is particularly conscientious about the due diligence he exercises in his investigations. He often adds some ironic twist to his hits. He also relishes the pleasure of letting his targets know why they are dying, and he enjoys rubbing it in.
Having lost his soul in a card game three years ago, Harken is trapped in the game he is playing and he is playing the cards he’s been dealt. His darkest secret is that he is on the run from a group called Satan’s Children, (a league of demons, imps, devils and spirits that wander the world seeking the ruin of mankind) and is determined to find his soul, and get it back before they can nab ahold of it. (Each solstice the Devil comes to collect the souls of the lost, sacrificed or guilty, but Harken has outfoxed him and his Children so far.)
A picaresque nomad, wandering the country like a modern day cowboy, Harken likes poker, camping, photography, women, going to movies alone in the middle of the afternoon, killing, cognac, vintage timepieces, irony, Benny Hill and crossword puzzles.
He does not like coconut, speed bumps, puns or drinking from aluminum cans.
HITMAN FOR THE DEAD 