CHAPTER 25First thing the next morning, William Henry arrives to take me to Duluth airport. I sit the ride to the airport in silence, staring absently out the window at the passing scenery. I tip William well, then begin my mythical and arduous quest of passing through TSA security. I go through the moves blindly and numbly. Check my bags. Wait in line. Keep waiting in line. Get felt up by the TSA operatives, at least this time it’s a woman, so she doesn’t overdo it on the groping. Thank porcupines for small favors.Sit around waiting for the flight to board. Wait in line as the flight boards. Spend four hours getting hit on by the skeezy businessman I am lucky enough to be sitting next to. Wait in line to depart the plane after arriving in Los Angeles, knowing full well that Skeezy Businessman is taking advantage of being behind me to ogle my ass.Meet the town car driver at the bottom of the escalator, holding a sign for ‘Jasmine DeLaney’—the name my return flight was booked unde
“I love my work and want to start again. You will soon hear of me with my funny little games . . . My knife’s so nice and sharp I want to get to work right away if I get a chance.”—Jack The Ripper.
CHAPTER 1Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.Okay, okay. Sorry, I just hate these stupid introduction things. It always makes me feel like I’m in grade school, again, and I hated grade school. I also hated middle school. And high school. Thank porcupines I didn’t go to college, I probably would’ve hated that, too. I hate a lot of things, incidentally.All right, let’s start over.My name is Sarah Killian, and I am a professional serial killer.No, goddammit, I am not a mother-fucking assassin, goddammit.Sorry. Again. That was my Tourette’s. I just have issues with assassins. They’re jackasses.Every. Single. Last. One. Jackasses.Let’s just say that it’s no coincidence the word starts with two asses, because one ass is not enough for those douche bags.So no, I’m not an assassin. I’m a professional serial killer, also known as a PSK. Assassins are lazy. Kill one terrorist with a sniper rifle from a hundred yards away and then disappear into
CHAPTER 2Zeke calls me at 5:00 in the fucking morning. He likes to do this; calling as early as possible with new assignments just to fuck with me, because he knows it pisses me off. And I can’t do anything about it, since he’s my boss.Even though I know it’s him, since no one else has enough cajones to call me at 5:00 in the fucking morning, I answer the phone. “This had better be Nathan Fillion calling to tell me he’s on his way over to my apartment—wearing his Captain Hammer uniform, fake nipples and all—to take advantage of me in every position imaginable.”“Hello, Clarisse,” Zeke responds.That’s another irritating quirk of Zeke’s. He tries to make himself seem creepier than he already is by impersonating famous movie sociopaths. I suppose that kinda shtick might work on normal girls, but it takes a lot more than Anthony Hopkins to creep me out. Truth be told, if I was ‘one of those girls,’ Zeke wouldn’t need to impersonate Anthony Hopkins to make my skin crawl. Fortunately
CHAPTER 3After mercilessly slaughtering an allegedly helpless stuffed dinosaur until it is nothing but a few shreds of green and purple fabric, a frenzied mess of stuffing, a tangle of wires, and a smashed sound box, I feel much better and I’m able to get a few more hours of sleep.After I’ve woken up, showered, and gotten dressed, I make my way—as Zeke had known I would—to visit my mother, relying on L.A.’s crappy public transportation system since I am currently Porsche-less. Whenever I do make one of these pre-assignment visits, I always feel guilty, because I feel like the prison guards should know me better than they do. If I were a better daughter, the guards and I would all be on a first name basis and they would wave at me all friendly-like whenever I came to visit, not even bothering to check my identification since they see me so frequently.As it stands, however, they are practically strangers to me. I recognize some of their faces—the ones who have been around forever a
CHAPTER 4After leaving my mother, I head to THEM headquarters, located in Chatsworth. The general public is led to believe this is a porn distribution warehouse. The majority of headquarters is actually underground, as they keep the warehouse above stocked with porn, just in case the L.A.P.D. decides to surprise us with one of their periodic raids to determine whether we’re doing any filming on top of the distributing. Gotta love the San Fernando Valley.After I enter the building through the front entrance, using my employee I.D. badge to unlock the door, I pass by the rent-a-cop guard on duty at the front desk—ignoring him since he no doubt thinks I’m a porn star as the rent-a-cop’s are kept in the dark about what the building is really used for—and continue into the back warehouse. At the very rear of the warehouse is a shelf filled with DVD’s. I remove one titled The Horny Games—a porn-parody of a popular young adult book and film franchise in which Pussniss Everbone is forced b
CHAPTER 5I get the call at 5:00 the next morning (that’s two mornings in a row . . . Zeke is so going to pay for this) when my airport transport has arrived. I drag myself out of bed, change into one of my new outfits I had picked out of the suitcase the night before, grab my two suitcases, and leave the house to find a black limo with tinted windows waiting. The driver—an expressionless man in a black suit and sunglasses—opens the door for me and I slide into the back seat.I’m so out of it, I don’t even notice her until she says, in an annoyingly squeaky and perky voice, “Hi, ‘Jennifer!’”I just about jump out of my seat. Sitting next to me, is a tiny little thing—so tiny she could pass for an Oompa Loompa if her skin were orange. Short, blond, well-endowed in the chest area, and I get the very strong impression that she is infernally perky. If she’s this perky at 5:15, I’d hate to see her at any other time of the day. She appears to be in her late thirties to early forties, but
CHAPTER 6We get to Duluth in the early afternoon. After the first hour of our flight, Bethany finally figured out that she was not going to get anywhere with me. Unfortunately, she had someone sitting next to her who actually was willing to participate in her inane babbling, so I still had to listen to her for the remainder of the flight.As we enter the baggage claim area of the Duluth airport, we find our driver, waiting and holding a sign that reads: Donner/Martin. The driver helps us get our luggage from the carousel, and then leads us out to the car—another conspicuously inconspicuous black, window-tinted limo. Since the driver is almost definitely not a THEM employee, and just a hired escort, we do not talk business while he is within hearing range. Unfortunately, Bethany of course finds everything else imaginable to talk about.As we ride through Duluth, I realize I have no idea what our living situation is going to be like. Since I’ve never trained someone before, this is e