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This one will probably raise some feathers. I wrote this, in first person, to explore a premise for a longer work.
THE ASSASSIN
I don’t walk in the light anymore. They know that I'm out here, they just don't know who I am. What I am, is not what I was.
I started out in my youth, doing what I'm doing now. It was my temperament that made me perfect for the job. The terror, and unending horror, of Vietnam, did its work on my mind. There was no shock, or post-traumatic syndromes, for me; hell was my home, as it had always been. I reveled in the slaughter and mayhem. It was right, and proper, that there be good guys and bad guys. I was the gunslinger, the one in the white hat, knocking on the door of the Black Pajamas. I was their demon, their terror, and a perfect nightmare. I made the war my personal reason for living.
When I left the leash of moronic Generals, playing at greed and politics, and set out on my own, my world opened up. I walked into the jungle alone. I planned and cvarried out my own missions. I hid during the day. and ravished at night. When I had killed my black soul's quota, I came back to the army. The demon, with waist length hair, and a string of ears around his neck, walked into a rear area camp, asking for a hamburger and fries. He was arrested, after putting three soft, and ridiculous, MPs in the hospital. He knew them for my own, which was the only reason to let them live. An insightful Colonel saw to it that I, that demon, got a hamburger and fries. He avoiding a slaughter.
The Colonel invited me to take a trip home. I was debriefed, and my stories checked out. When all the talking was done, I had spent a year in a quiet and solitary way. It calmed me down, and took the shadow from me. I was no longer a demon. A demon must live, knowing that the light will consume him, and all their deeds must be done as quickly as possible, while the dark still exists. It is a desperate and frantic life, but if you are a doomed thing, it's the only life you have.
I tried to go home. I became lost in alcohol, and drugs. I fought my way up again to the light. God had use for me, and I was redeemed.
When they called me, they said my skills were needed, to protect an unstable world. With perfect irony, my demon skills were now what the world needed. I did that duty, of course, with a new coolness and resolve. The demon was gone but the killing tools remained. All that was needed was a new morality, one that served me first, and my controllers second. I insisted on accurate files on my targets, and I made the choice to hit, or not. If I found that the files lied, I told my handlers that I would hunt them down and kill them. On occasion that was necessary. My code of ethics, and new morality demanded it. I became the instrument of the God of the Old Testament. I became invisible. I faked my death, so that I could make sure no assignments went out that were unjust. Those agents who took those unethical assignments, I terminated. The world could not suffer the unthinking beasts. I would take contracts by drops and proxies. Some agents, I choose not to kill, for when I looked in their eyes, I knew their souls. These few I made disciples. No one knew anymore who was doing the work. They didn't care as long as it was getting done. I took files, and contracts, from all governments, and became judge and jury. The same rules applied for all contracts. If the handler of any country gave me a file that was full of lies, then they, and their superiors, would die.
I soon tired of the method and sought evil on my own, regimes, secret societies, private armies, corporations, and governments, rose or fell at my hand. I became the invisible angel of death and the instrument of righteousness.
There were perks. I was wealthy. I funded medical research and found cures, so that as I took, I gave back. I kept one such cure for myself. I found the remedy for aging and death. The men and women who discovered this panacea, sadly had to die, their research hidden. This was a cure that this poor over-crowded world must not have. What gain society if only the indolent wealthy, and power-mad politicians, were the only ones who could afford such a medicine? And if it were distributed fairly, amongst the teeming masses, how would the earth sustain a sustained birthrate, when no one dies? The answer is, that it could not, unless giving birth was to become illegal. That evil I would not allow. I kept that knowledge to myself, not out of greed or power, but out of necessity. I had unwittingly become what I abhorred.
I am now in my three hundred and twenty third year.
The world has begun to work. No one in power dared do wrong, by a standard that the powerful learned to know well. They feared my retribution, my singular justice. I was their nightmarish myth, a shadow thing never seen, but known. I became the incentive to make the world a better place. I was dread personified, and very much alive in the world. I was the righteous inheritance of the rich, and powerful. Those few, and select, became true servants to the world. The last shall be first and the first shall be last.
I became still and quiet once more, for a while.
They came to stay, not to visit.
They had watched my machinations, avoiding my personal attention, for too long. I knew of them, and their agenda, for most of my live. At first their existence was the fodder of late-night radio, and wild web sites. It was the topic and landscape, of the fringe, and the disenfranchised, of the hopeful, and the lost. Or - of the knowing souls, devoid of faith, or hope, they privy, yet wrapped in secrets, and an inevitable sadness. Such perfidy made them insane and unstable by the knowledge they processed. So many, breathing their last, at my skillful hands, confessed that all the stories were true.
I could not be hypnotized, I could not be abducted, and I was immune to them.
These beings have always thought they would have their way with this world. It was the projects, I funded, that got their tiny nostrils in a twitch. They knew someone would find what I had already found. It was longevity that was the secret to our leaving this big blue marble, and they could not have the human race discover that secret.
They came and live in disguise. They, now live among us, and have found their way to the seats of power.
I have terminated many of their agents over the years, because of their vile meddling. They do not fear me, because they have no souls. They gave them up, when they created their progeny, their replacements, gray soulless husks, grown in vats, from t-cells. The mind of each, downloaded into a new body, when the old wears out. They seek our souls.
The Devils reside with us, and I am still, no longer.
I will teach them fear.
End
ken lehnig(c)2002
www.klstoryteller.com
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Why is doing what you love the hardest thing to do? Is it because failing what you thought defined you would be too devastating a thing from which to recover? If so, we stay where mere accident has left us.
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Palo's Situation
