Empathy(2)

When I called the police the next morning, telling them I got up to find my dad had an accident, they didn’t question my story that he was a drunk, and no one cared enough to argue foul play. The reports said accidental death. Our father was well known for liking the bottle.

Ryan and I moved in with our waste-of-life mother, and if it wouldn’t have been suspicious for both our parents to have accidents in such a small time frame, I would have killed her too. Instead, I gave her money to disappear for days at a time until I turned twenty-two, finished my degree in criminal justice, joined the police force and got custody of Ryan. Then I paid her to disappear to distant relatives.

I took martial arts classes and shooting lessons after that night. I wanted to be able to protect my brother from any threat. I earned extra money through my computer skills to buy Ryan anything he needed and to support our mother’s habit. Ever since I was little I knew computers. I can hack pretty much any network, and I used that skill to earn petty cash from students wanting grades changed, or finding information on people that was kept in confidential files. I worked solely through my computer; I couldn’t risk my identity being compromised. To contact me you had to already know about me through word of mouth, then email one of my many accounts that would go into spam file I never opened, so if someone stumbled across that email account, it looked inactive on my part.

This system also worked for me when I became a contract killer. I can see the sender’s email address without having to open the email. Just having that small piece of information, I can get into their emails, send viruses that clone their hard drives, giving me access to everything they do, which in turn gives me passwords to their accounts, including their online banking. I can find out every single thing about them and their life with one simple address, and if I find them trustworthy and wealthy enough to afford me, I bring up a chat box, scaring the shit out of them. I have two more chats with them before completing the job they want me for. Then I never speak to them again.

I have only a few rules:

One: Never do more than one job per client. Once they see how easy it is to get away with murder they tend to become a little kill happy. They would have me killing the neighbor for playing music too loud if they could.

Two: Never take a job close to home. When people use the term ‘don’t shit where you eat’ well, I don’t kill where I live. It just makes sense.

Three: No one knows who I am, my name, age, what I look like or if I’m even male; which is why everything is done through an untraceable computer.

I make a shit load for my services. I have to be clever not to flash my cash, swapping my funds into offshore accounts and getting a normal job so I look like everyone else. That’s why I joined the police force; who better to teach you how to kill and how to avoid being caught than the police?

My life course was chosen that night when I was eighteen, when I took a life and didn’t feel remorse. When I overheard some rich college kid telling his friend he would pay a million for someone to kill his overbearing father, I knew he was talking hypothetically but I also knew there were people who would pay for someone to kill for them and right then, in that moment, my career path was chosen. It took me six months in the academy, training, three months field training, two years cut loose on patrol and I made detective at the tender age of twenty-five. I’m the youngest detective to ever be sworn in at our department but I’m good at my job. Just like they train me to be a better killer, who better to find criminals then a master criminal?





“MELODY.” THE T.A ECHOES MY name as he sifts through a stack of papers on his desk. He grins up at me when he finds mine and hands it to me. “You write about music with so much passion. Appropriate, really, with your name.”

I offer him a weak smile. The truth is, music is my mom’s passion. I was taught piano and made to have vocal lessons to appease her but I want to go into journalism, do some good, and report real news.

I walk the steps to take my seat next to the guy who I now know as Ryan; it’s scribbled on his paper with an A grade beside it. He always wears dark clothes and eludes interaction by never looking up from his notepad. I’ve attended creative writing for four weeks now and not once has he looked at me. I occasionally brush my leg with his, just to see if I can provoke any reaction from him. It never works. He’s always so engrossed in whatever he’s writing, as if the rest of the world doesn’t exist. My curiosity to know what he writes when in that world of his has made me lean towards him on more than one occasion to steal a glimpse of what makes him worthy of those As, but I still receive no reaction, not even a back off.