Assassins

          Assassins… by nature we are solitary creatures. Yes some of use hate people - but for most of us it’s by necessity; when we love, those loved ones die. It happens every time; so we stay separate. Locked away in plain sight but unnoticed. I for one work in an office of 350 people. I go out for beers with some of my coworkers; just enough so they think I’m a normal introverted 24 year old guy. The name I use at work isn’t my real one though, neither is the bachelor’s degree in business hanging in my cubicle. My eyes aren’t really brown, and my hair isn’t really sandy blonde. I don’t really have a Boston accent, and the story I tell about the birthmark on my neck is also a lie. Actually, it’s a scar. I appear to be everything people expect when they glance at me and I’m nothing they expect when they look away.

          I’ve been an assassin for 8 years now, making my first kill at 16 completing a job my father couldn’t finish. He was a distant father, but I learned a lot of things by just simply watching him. Picked my first lock at 7, made my first successful theft at 9, and learned how to clean and load a gun by age 11. By watching my father practice in the basement I learned how to fight and throw knives. My father would have been a better assassin if he wasn’t also a drunk… he probably would have noticed me watching him, or at least following him to his “night job” when I started stealing cars at 14. By the time that fateful night rolled around 2 days after my 16th birthday I was already a criminal primed to take that next step.

          But of course one day he did find me out when he returned from his day job early and found me in the basement headphones on full blast, drilling myself on how fast I could load a gun. So for the next year I stayed at home and worked jobs with my dad while he refined my skills; not always kindly. The numerous broken bones and scars were a testament to that. It was on my 17th birthday when that golden rule sunk in… don’t love. A hit had been put out on me; my father found out and couldn’t get home in time. My mother, sisters, and grandmother… all killed. I killed there killer and then I ran and I’ve been running and “working” ever since. My father was killed about two years ago. Not from a hit, but from driving drunk. And so here I am. 24 year old assassin working as a receiving admin assistant falling into the crowd while working jobs in the great city of New York.

          Life was good. Money wasn’t a problem, I was content. Rule number two don’t be happy, it’ll make you soft. But I couldn’t complain until something strange happened and it made me wonder. ‘So what happens when two assassins fall in love?’ Love. Funny I forgot the word and even now it sounds foreign sliding off my tongue. But that’s what happened. I fell in love with another one of my kind, and unlike in Mr and Mrs.Smith I don’t see a happy ending in our future.