Nicky stopped in the corridor of the darkened house and listened. Silence. He would have preferred to hear the sound of the man breathing as he slept, but it looked like his target was a quiet sleeper. The house was dead silent.
Still he waited, listening. "Caution is thy middle name," he quipped to himself. He liked to give himself lots of different middle names and he liked to keep his mood buoyant while he was working; the ease with which he had got past the security system was a fillip to his good mood.
He crept a little further forward.
Nicky was an assassin, a hired killer. He was only in his mid-twenties, but already had two 'kills' to his credit. He killed by stealth, using a small calibre pistol or a cutthroat razor.
He wasn't a big person: a mere 173 cm (barely 5'8") in height, slim build (lithe, Nicky thought) and he moved like a dancer, a gymnast.
This was his biggest job yet; it would be his biggest fee, and he was sure it would move him up towards that aspired top bracket of his profession. He wouldn't fail; 'satisfaction guaranteed', another middle name.
The target was apparently a free-lance journalist. Perhaps he had written something that had upset somebody of importance; and that somebody had hired Nicky.
But Nicky didn't care - "Give me the money, I'll give you the kill."
A neutral observer may have found it amusing to wonder if Nicky would have run if he had known just how far out of his depth he was on this occasion.
Of course, it was probably already too late, but it's a diverting speculation.
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Option Three - an unexpected transition
Short StoryA male-to-female transgender story with a villainous setting. It starts with a grim situation, but with some dark humour (and tongue-in-cheek stuff as well) then moves through progressive change until discovery . . . and happiness.
