I crawl to the crest of the hill and slowly raise my head enough to see the other side. The wind blows in my face, brings the laughter of the men in the campsite below, and the smell of their cooking. If I can smell them, they cannot smell me.
Fools. They think their hideout safe and stand too close to the fire. There are no out-guards, only the two armed men who stand and face the fire instead of watching the meadow and forest beyond. No one looks up the hill in my direction. If anyone attacks them, they will be blind when they turn away from the fire.
With slow deliberation and great care, I raise my night scope to check the area below. I avoid the campfire or I, too, will be blind. Five men. There should be six. I listen and I watch. I hate this part of the job. I hate this job. All of it. I want to retire, but in this business, there is no retirement.
Ah, there he is. The sixth man. He walks into sight from behind a rock, zipping his pants. I chuckle to myself. More than one man has lost his life while taking a leak; kilts make a lot of sense! I’m only paid to assassinate the one, but taking all six will be just as easy. Easier, actually, because I won’t have to go down and risk being caught. Collateral death happens.
I lower the night scope, attach, and load the grenade launcher to my rifle, sight on the fire and wait until they are all near it. I do not have long to wait, they are careless, the night cools, and soon all huddle around the fire for warmth. They drink their booze and laugh too loud. The two guards come closer to get food. At least they aren’t drinking. But it doesn’t matter. I aim at the fire. I squeeze the trigger. I watch as six men—six brothers, six fathers, six sons—hurl, in tiny, unrecognizable pieces, all about their campsite. I wonder if any but the wolves and scavengers will find them?
I go back down the hill. I lope at an easy pace to my waiting vehicle. I dream of the home cooked meal that awaits me when I return. I do not think of the six again.
I try to figure out how to retire. I hate this job.
* * *
I walk into the employment office. I tell the sweet young thing behind the desk with the nameplate, Angie, I want retraining. She looks up my record and laughs.
I tell her, for the umpteenth time, I want to retire. She laughs. Again. There is no sympathy in her laughter. Or empathy in her eyes; she is a hard, cold bitch.
She knows she is safe from me. She knows that I, a trained, skilled, and bonded assassin, can only kill those for whom I have a valid, state sanctioned contract. All my contracts go through her. Most all my contracts go through her.
I squeeze the ampoule of poison into her face. The shock causes her to inhale the odorless and fouled air. She laughs, thinks it a joke—a bit of assassin humor. She will die in two hours, probably while at lunch. I turn and walk out of the building. I don’t know why I had the contract on her, or who bought it; all I know is that it was legal and sanctioned and for once I almost like my job. She was a nasty piece of inhumanity. I smile as the door closes behind me.
* * *
The smells of dinner waft through the house. Marie always makes my favorite after a contract is complete—meatloaf, mashed potatoes and gravy. For dessert she’ll have brandy and chocolates. My comfort meal.
I water the flowers in our bedroom—bright, perfumed, and alive. I see movement in the door. It is Marie. She smiles, “Dinner is almost ready.” She opens her arms wide and I walk into her enveloping embrace. God, how I love this woman!
“It’s time,” she whispers and I feel her mouth, soft and yielding on mine, and then I feel the pain and the terrible cold. Marie, also a licensed, bonded assassin, knows I hate my job. I fall to the hard, cold floor, whimpering. Marie holds me in her arms until the pain stops….
* * *
“Angie?” Marie yells, “Angie! Will you help me get this old fart into his bed? He fell out of his chair again, and splattered his meatloaf dinner all over the floor. Call an aide to clean up the mess, will ya? And don’t slip on the chocolate pudding. Shit! What a mess these old geezers make.”
Thank you, Lenora, for this suspenseful example of a short story that fits the classic format. The twist at the end turned the dark science fiction tale into a contemporary piece of humor.
“The Assassin” by Lenora Rain-Lee Good was originally published in flashfictionmagazine.com November 27, 2016. Our thanks also to Farris Hallaj for his composition, “Inside the Darkness.” You can find Farris on YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook.
Another Arrow in Your Editing Quiver
Editing your own work is one of the most demanding tasks required as you ready your manuscript to meet the world. Why? Because the brain sees what it thinks is there.
Count the number of errors in the excerpt above. Most people see the first four immediately, the fifth a little later, and the sixth takes a lot longer. Now read it aloud slowly, using a piece of paper to block out everything below the line you’re reading. The mistakes pop out almost immediately.
After you run the quick-fix spelling and grammar check, bearing in mind that neither of them are infallible, it is time to put on your reader hat. Just taking a quick read from beginning to end will be useful, but you know your characters and the story so well that you will miss most of the errors. You will read what you think you wrote.
Try something new. Take a break of at least a couple of days before beginning, and record as you read. If you don’t have any recording equipment, don’t worry—your phone will be just fine. As you read and listen to the playback, your ear will pick up all sorts of things your eyes miss. Little things like switching tenses or those pesky little words that get missed when you rework a sentence or paragraph. Voice memos work. Try it. You’ll be amazed the number of things you catch.
And if the editing boost isn’t enough, there’s a bonus! You have a recording of your work! Short stories like “The Assassin” can be texted or emailed to yourself or others. (There is a free podcast of this newsletter in the podcast section of Writing Women. The recording was made on an iphone.) If you’re working on a novel, record one chapter at a time. If you trip over their own tongue and have to edit your recording, there are free programs like Audacity and Garage Band with plenty of YouTube tutorials available.
Your recording won’t pass the ACX standards for audio books, but will work well for serializing on your own blog or website. Put a teaser up on social media or your website so people can listen to an excerpt of your book. Want a give-away for newsletter sign ups? Give away a recorded short story people can listen to while driving to work or washing dishes.
You’re the author. Who else will give the exact expression to the words that you had in your head when you wrote the dialogue? Who else will pronounce the unusual names the way you intended? It gives a personal touch your followers will appreciate. I’m recording my novels for paid subscribers. Why not take the journey with us and subscribe now?