Invy's Story-Thing Extravaganza!

[Invictus]

So. I'm an aspiring author, as a couple of you know. This is the prologue of what I hope will be my first published book. I'm finishing the second draft right now, and should be sending it off after the third, in a month or two, I hope.

Brutal, gut-wrenching criticism welcome.



By the shadows.

Have you ever watched a city? Seen the multitudinous crowds, balked at the sheer vastness of the spread of humanity before you? It’s amazing to think of the unfathomable volume of people that clog the arteries of your average metropolis. Thousands upon thousands of bustling, busy men and women jostling past one another to get to their intended destinations. It is a shock to the mind when one realizes that all of these people have their own lives, their own friends, and their own connections. In a way each city is like a fragile spider’s web, strung together by thousands upon thousands of strands, each strand inexorably connected to all the others.

But this web is not perfect, and some strands must be cut, reshaped, replaced. And so the spider skitters in to the equation. It wades in unseen, unfelt through the web before delicately, carefully, plucking a single strand. The strands surrounding it quiver and jump, upset by the removal of their companion. Soon, a new strand springs to being, a new person comes of age, and the web goes on.

The crowd parted before him like a school of fish fleeing from a shark. He carried no visible weapons; he spoke not a word, and touched no one. Unconsciously, they parted. Without knowing why, they gave this strange man a wide berth. The enigma in black slid through the crowd, blending perfectly into the mass of humanity, yet never a part of it.

A child, lost in thought, almost bumped into the man, who simply guided her back into the flow of the city, never once touching her. The little girl looked back; her train of thought derailed, and caught a momentary glimpse into the man’s eyes. She froze, seeing something in his purposeful gaze that the adults around her missed, something which locked her legs and froze her in place, continuing to stare until he was out of sight. The man continued his steady course, unnoticed by anyone else.

On the other end of the street a young businessman left his work for the day. He wore a neatly tailored black suit, a golden watch on his hand, his blond hair slicked back casually. He strode forward confidently as he idly chatted with several friends on the way to his fancy new car. His path, and the path of the black–clad man crossed. For but an instant, they brushed together, nothing but a chance collision, the same happens every day to thousands of people in a city.

Fifteen seconds later, the young businessman collapsed to the ground, a neat hole punched tidily through his left lung. The man continued on, pausing only to drop a small black stiletto into a trash bin, courteously located for the convenience of litter-conscious citizens.

And a single strand falls from the web.


My nephews often ask me what the best part of my job is. There are a thousand different answers I could give them; I could say I enjoy making my own hours, being my own boss, I love setting up meetings and learning new things. I also enjoy the sound of my target’s last breath as it slips past his gullet. I relish the smell of blood, the feeling of utter power as my blade nestles itself gently between the ribs of a damned soul. I love to kill, and I love even more that I get paid for it.

Of course my nephews, and the rest of my family to boot, would likely disown me in an instant were I to say such things. So, to everyone else, I am Jared Black, surgeon. There’s a beautiful irony buried down there, but I’ve neither the inclination nor the philosophical bent to pursue it. The family rarely questions me about my “practice”, and I quietly continue to practice my bloody craft. After all, it’s healthy to do what you love.

Am I evil? Truth be told, I cannot answer that question. I prefer to say that I hold an atypical moral stance on the sanctity of human life. Everyone dies, usually by natural causes. When someone passes quietly on, nobody benefits. When I end a life I, at least, end up fifty thousand dollars richer. It makes perfect sense to me. And, if that seems immoral, think of it in this light; everyone I kill is one less person to stand in front of you in line at the DMV.

The police don’t like that answer though, and I doubt my glib reasoning would impress them very much. I long ago made peace with this unfortunate fact and decided that I would take every action possible to look legitimate. I’ve got a nice building, paid for in cash, with a large sign proclaiming, “Black’s Medical Consultations and Examinations.” Inside is a plus waiting room, furnished with ancient and decaying copies of Vibe. Lastly there is an attractive secretary behind a desk, furnished with magnificent breasts and the brains God gave a tulip.

When I first came up with the idea for my front, I was worried that it would be too transparent. After all; a medical firm with no patients, bills, or files generate negative attention rather quickly. However I was fortunate enough early on to make friends with a certain street-physician named Dr. Jones. The good doctor was licensed and legitimate, but rather morally flexible. He found out early on that people like me would pay a premium for a good back-alley doctor, who could treat them without blowing their cover. Jones ran the legitimate part of his operation out of my office, and was technically my employee. He did just enough legal work to protect against all but the most in-depth investigations.

“Good evening, Doctor Black, no calls today.” She smiles as she greets me every day when I amble into the office. There are never any calls, and never any customers. Sometimes I wonder if she’ll ever catch on, but then I look into those vacant, pretty eyes. I like dependable people and Dora, my secretary, is dependably stupid. Once every few weeks I ponder about giving her an IQ test, just to see how dim a bulb she is, but I inevitably decide against it. There are laws against the mentally challenged working in the medical industry.

Then again, they have the same laws about murderers.

It was a Tuesday, as this particular story opens, and I was sauntering into the office having just finished a rather lucrative job. A young man had recently been made CEO of a small, failing software company. Against all odds, he’d turned things around, and the small, failing software company was a growing, thriving software company. This was good for the employees and stockholders, and bad for the Germanic businessman who had plans to acquire the software company. Three weeks ago Forbes had said the young executive's career had no ceiling. I was contracted to build one, which I did with a nine-inch carbon steel stiletto. I told Dora to hold my calls, just for the sake of formality, and opened the briefcase that contained my fee. There is no smell quite so sweet as the odor of freshly earned blood money.

“Dora,” I said as I idly counted bills, “Your Christmas bonus just came in.”

[Invictus]

Chapter One.

I’m a loner; I don’t really like people. It’s nothing malicious, nothing born of hatred or disgust; it’s just that I simply prefer my own company to that of others. That is likely the reason I never had many friends in school, why I never joined any clubs, and why I entered the lucrative field of assassination.

Most people have severe misconceptions about hit-persons. We’re
usually not vicious, almost never arrogant, and in most cases very
polite. We get paid to murder people, yes, but there’s no need to be cruel about it. That’s just adding insult to injury. Or, to be more accurate, insult to violent death. Killing is our job, like pulling teeth is a dentist’s job. Just because we enjoy our work doesn’t make us thoughtless serial killers. If you know a hit-person, you can be almost certain they’ll never try to off you. Well, as long as no one hires them to. Murder is a commodity of ours, what kind of businessmen would we be if we simply gave it away?

This is the kind of thing I always want to tell people, but I never get to say. As much sense as it makes there’s really no tactful way to bring it into a conversation. Besides, the last thing I want is to bring the cops down on my ass. That’s part of why I’ve written this all down. By the time anyone reads it I’ll be a dead man, and a corpse is beyond prosecution in every state but Texas.

Excuse me; I’m beginning to ramble.

Anyway, back to the story. It was a Tuesday, if my memory serves me, when all this began. I like Tuesdays, they’re so delightfully inconspicuous, and no one ever expects to die on a Tuesday. Think about it; nothing exciting ever happens on Tuesdays. All the interesting stuff happens on Fridays or Saturdays. Sometimes Wednesday gets in on the action, but never Tuesday. That’s why I usually schedule my jobs for Tuesdays. If there was some way to interview the people I kill, I’d like to ask them if the date I chose surprised them, just from idle curiosity.

See, this is why I've never tried to write about my experiences before. I’ve got all the attention span of an eight year old hopped up on acid when I don't have something tactile to occupy myself with. With a gun in my hand and a target ahead of me, I can focus like a laser beam. If I'm planning a killing, nothing will distract me. But as soon as I find myself without a job to devote my mind to, my attention span drops to null. Nothing else seems worth focusing on.

Anyway it was a Tuesday, around noon if I’m not mistaken, when I got the call. I’m going to assume you don’t know much about the lucrative business of killing people, so I’ll go slowly here. Being an assassin is essentially the same as being any other sort of contract employee. I’m like a consultant; my employer calls me with a problem, and I ensure that the problem goes away. A business consultant eliminates jobs to make a corporation more profitable. I eliminate lives to create a profit for my employer. It’s not a perfect analogy; I personally have a much more developed system of morals than your average consultant.

So, my employer decides he needs my services. He finds an intermediary who deals with that sort of thing, and the intermediary (or fixer) sets up a meeting between the employer, and me. I got a call from Aaron, my fixer, asking me if I’d be willing to speak with a prospective employer, named John Smith. I told Aaron that I’d be more than happy to meet with Mr. Smith in three hours at a little Italian place I like for those sort of meetings. I reminded Dora to hold my calls, packed a little .22 pistol in the small of my back, and headed out to what I hoped would be a lucrative meeting.

In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have taken the job in the first place. As a general rule I like to have a couple of months between jobs. It’s wise to keep your head down after, say, murdering a high-profile CEO. But I needed the extra cash to purchase a nifty little rifle I’d had my eye on for some time. It was ex-Israeli military, high caliber, silent as a ghost, with a sixty-grand price tag. I’ll admit it; I had a hard-on for the thing. It was to me what a red Porsche is to a middle-aged stockbroker going through his mid-life crisis.

What, I asked myself, was the risk of taking the job? I was young, smart, and damn good at what I did. So I went to meet with Mr. Smith.

This particular Smith was short, pudgy, and in the death-throes of youth. He had a greasy smile, and oily black hair that was thinner than a bulemic supermodel. Smith gave me a wide-mouthed grin as I walked in, showing off his cigarette-stained teeth. I sat down at the table and ordered nice pasta and some bread sticks. This place was famous for its bread sticks.

“We need someone removed. Three someone’s, actually, they’re-“ I waved him off. This pig didn’t understand how business was conducted between professionals. I gave him the benefit of the doubt and assumed this was his first experience hiring a hit-person.

In a reasonable sort of tone I tried to explain to him that it was polite-and wise-to wait until we’d both had a chance to eat. Fatso didn’t understand, and interrupted me in an irritated, impatient tone.

“Listen kid, I'm not dancing around with you and playing your silly little word games. I can find an assassin just as good who won't act like a prissy little bitch. I don't give a shit about your organizations retarded little customs. I'm paying you good money to do a job, don't make me jump through some fucking hoop to hire you.”

I grimaced, and leaned away from him, somewhat taken aback. This used to be a people business; there were rules, codes of conduct. Nowadays everybody’s in a hurry to get things done. I swear, sometimes I wonder if there’s any craftsmanship, any pride left in this business. Most days I’d have flipped him the bird and taken my leave, hell I almost did that day. But every time I thought about that, the image of that beautiful little rifle popped up in my mind. Humor him; it’ll all be worth it when you’ve got a new toy to play with.

I smiled, nodded, and told him the job would cost an exceptional amount, more than four times my normal fee. I expected him to blanch, and argue me down, that’s why I’d set the price so high. But, to my surprise he agreed. I figured then that there was something more to this job, a tiny shiver of trepidation crept down my spine. Usually extra pay means extra risks. This could end very, very badly. Still, two hundred grand-that’s damn good money no matter the risks.

A dead man can’t spend a dime.

The skeptic inside me piped up, and was squashed instantly by the greedy part of my soul. I told him I was interested, and asked him for details.

“There’s three of ‘em, agents from the Bureau. One bitch, two bastards. We tried to bribe ‘em, but no dice. The names and a photo are in this file, that’s all we got.” I nodded, and accepted the grey folder he produced from within the recesses of his large overcoat.

“They’re headin’ up an investigation into a local business belonging to a friend of mine. This business is totally legit, you understand.”
I nodded and gave him a smile that said, in essence, ‘I totally empathize, how dare the Feds break up your totally legal gambling and prostitution ring.’

“Despite this, these three are starting to seriously hamper my friend’s business. I would like it if you would get these agents to take an extended absence from their duties.”

I nodded again, and told him that I would be all too happy to save his innocent and virtuous friend from the depredations of some evil lawmen. At the risk of sounding arrogant, I’m always amazed at my ability to take in an enormous amount of bullshit without vomiting. Still, the money was good, and I had no particular problem with icing some agents. Mr. Smith and I parted very satisfied with our arrangement.