"Where is my mind?"

Untitled Part 1

The perks of taking public transport, apart from it being cheap, are the people, each more depressed than the last one. I listen to them sometimes, to their grumbles – always about their horrible jobs and horrible bosses. "Not everyone is fortunate enough to do what they like for a living," they say.

I am not everyone! It feels illegal to say out loud, what I do, but that's because it is.

When a very specific set of people usually have a problem with someone, they bring me in to take care of it – preferably with a bullet.

I would be lying if I said that I don't derive any pleasure from it, I do, and I am not ashamed of it because most of the people I deal with are not people at all. They are different. The people I am hired to exterminate are the ones that live off the grid, people who usually don't have any social life and the kind that you, yourself, will gladly put an end to – if you knew what they have done. These are usually political killings and are the ones that pay the best.

Commoners are rarely targets, and even when they are, they usually have a relatively small bounty on their heads. These are targets handled by freelancers – who do it for a quick buck. These targets are usually like what these people are talking about – cruel bosses, people who are in a legal battle with someone, and so and so.

I say it out loud to these people sometimes about what I do, but no one notices...

"I hope my boss drops dead!" A guy once said to me.

"I'll kill him for you if you like?" I said to him confidently.

"Yeah. Sure!" He sarcastically replied and dropped the conversation about it as soon as I brought it up.

If talking, as they say, is ninety per cent listening and ten per cent reacting, then I almost always happen to be the one doing that ten per cent. And if the conversations ever die out, there is always the ever-changing view outside. Like it or not, these are the perks of taking public transport – the chatty people and the constantly changing scenery. The view outside is great till you pass the fifth station. That's usually where just about everyone gets off and returns to their miserable, little lives. The scenery similarly gets more and more barren and gloomy as we go from one station to the next. The lively view of a living, breathing city progressively starts to fade away.

(2 hours left)

Having nothing to do, I brought out my assignment file and started to go through it. Usually, it looks something like a medical report, with all the necessary information about the less-than-fortunate target listed conveniently. This assignment is a bit different. There's only a handful of the information listed in this file, and that too in a very amateurish way.

There is only a headshot of the man – a black-and-white photograph.

It doesn't seem like it was taken with the man's consent. He is in a very uncomfortable pose as if someone is forcefully taking a picture of him and is only a few inches away from the camera. The picture is also a bit blurry, and the lens flare in it isn't particularly helping, which is fine. And to be completely honest is an improvement on the pictures that I have been given in the past, which are usually taken from CCTV cameras, captured from a mile away.

I am told the target is a writer of some sort. All I have on this guy is his name, location, and the exact time of his death. The plan itself is simple. Enter the building which is next to the subject's building. Go to the seventh floor. He lives in the west wing, so enters an apartment that faces his room and lets the gun do the rest, which is a fairly simple assignment for such an insanely high-value contract.