Existence Unremembered: An Assassin's Tale

As a paid assassin, I view it as a privilege to be present in someone’s passing, to play a part in changing the trajectory of one life and by association, the lives of many others. These were my thoughts as the angry blast left the muzzle of my gun, carrying despair and the vanity of life in its unalterable path. The woman saw the flash of my powder and a moment of horror registered in her face. I relished being present to witness that moment of realization.

That a nameless woman’s most beautiful act of sharing would be interrupted by a single .40 caliber jacketed hollow point was overwhelming to me. The world seemed to pause, the air to thicken, as she crumpled forward like a marionette with severed strings, succumbing to an irreversible defeat. The surgical entry wound that appeared on her back belied the bullet’s expansion as it came to rest within her.

In that moment, the connection with her lover was severed. His cock stood erect and exposed to the cool air of the plush hotel suite where only moments before it had been cocooned in the warmth of her vagina. The man shoved the the woman's body away and she rolled to her back next to him on the king-sized bed. Did he feel any grief at what had just happened or only fear at his approaching death?

Either way, he knew why I was there and that the task he’d begun with this woman would remain eternally unfinished. Fear must have pushed him into orgasm and his penis began to throb and squirt in vain as the blast of my gun sent a hollow point into his forehead.

Finally, I looked at the face of the woman I’d killed. Her features were almost childlike. Her skin was clear, and she wore little makeup. Her green eyes were opened wide, but they carried the gaze of death I’d often in others. Her breasts were those of a full-figured mature woman in her early 40s I guessed. The mass of her breasts spread across her upper torso leaning slightly toward her dead lover. The horizontal scare of a c-section was barely visible on her lower tummy and her legs spread slightly revealing more than she would have wished.

In those moments of violence initiated long before this night, a web of sorrow burst forth, their tendrils reaching out to ensnare the hearts of those tethered these two humans by bonds of love and friendship I could only have suspected at the time.

Dan, her husband of twenty-one years, was standing in their home, unaware that his wife, Donna, was in the arms of another man, a man whose ties to the underworld of crime placed any person in his association at risk.

Perhaps his wife died in the same moment that he hugged their daughter before she left on a date. Jen at 17, was the embodiment of her mother’s legacy, beautiful and smart. Earlier that same day, her mother had helped her complete a college application. The loss of her mother would cast long shadows over her life for years to come.

Miles away, Donna's mother Emily, was cradling a cup of tea while working on a scrapbook and reminiscing over photographs that chronicled her daughter's journey from carefree childhood to spirited womanhood. The news of her only daughter's death would be a cruel reversal of the natural order, a pain no parent should endure.

In the moment of this woman’s heart stopped, countless others were affected. I was mindful of this though I wouldn’t learn their stories until my sentencing. The reverberations of this woman’s death altered the courses of many lives including mine.

As the victims of my deed stood in the musty courtroom to speak, I thought of the cruel march of time. Time is not mindful of the tragic drama of human death and sorrow. In a hundred years, the world will have turned, and the echoes of these lives and mine will have faded into the silence of history, our stories untold and our existence unremembered.