The Hitman

A Promising Start

I can't feel anything.

No remorse, no love, no fear.

I don't think it matters, to be honest. In my line of work, that's ideal. No feelings means no hang ups after a job. No hang ups means I get another job as fast as I can.

I suppose I was raised this way. If you could ever call what I went through being "raised." I had no mother, no father, only a man that told me to fight for my food.

So I did.

I eliminated whoever stood in front of my next meal. That meal being an apple, a stale ham sandwich, and a water bottle. The man said the harder I worked, the more food there would be.

At that age, I was never sure what was more food. Sometimes it'd be an extra sliver of ham in the sandwich, other times it'd be another apple or vegetable. But food was food, and I was more than happy to get my hands on it.

I can't keep track of who I killed and when. My first opponent was a boy, maybe a year or so younger than I. The man had locked us in a plastic covered room with a pair of scissors, and said only one of us could come out alive. Whoever did got a whole happy meal from McDonald's. The boy fought well, and I came out with more than a few wounds, but I was also the only one to come out.

"Well done, boy." The man said, tossing the fast food bag at me. "How do you feel?" His eyes were practically gleaming with some kind of sick amusement.

"...dirty. But I'm too hungry to care." I had said, digging into the bag like a wild animal.

"Good answer." The man had said, placing a cold hand on my shoulder and pushing me down a hallway. "More food comes to those who earn it, you know."

"I know."

"Do you want to earn more food? Or would you like for me to throw you back onto the streets like a rat? Are you a wolf or a rat, Xephos?"

I guess I decided I liked wolves a lot more than I did rats.

"Good. You may call me The Commissioner, boy. You do what I say and I'll make you a wolf."

I became good at what I did. Killing, he told me, was like an art. An art that I had to master. Anyone has the means to pick up a gun in the same way everyone can pick up a pencil, but few people can draw a masterpiece and even fewer can get away with murder.

Time passed, and I grew numb to the dirty feeling. I only cared about the food I was getting and stopped caring about the people I was killing. I grew older and started killing men in the streets and staging accidents for people to die from. The Commissioner started giving me contracts for people that others wanted to see dead.

"Do the job, and give me the money. Then I'll give you food." He had said, giving me a picture of the man I was hired to kill.

I was never told the details of the contract other than who the person was and how they needed to die. The Commissioner said it didn't matter. The contracts were all the same.

"There's never a 'good' reason to end someone's life, Xephos." He had said. "No matter how you word it, you still killed someone else."

He then looked me dead in the eyes and said, "We are not heroes, Xephos. We are not good guys, and we are most certainly not justified in our line of work."

"Then why kill?" I had asked. There was no bitterness in the question, as I honestly didn't care as long as I got food in the end.

"Because," He stopped to chuckle. "We are not heroes. We are human, Xephos."

If you were expecting a happy story, then I'm sorry to say you will not get one here. You can plead for your life all you want, demand me to find my humanity, but the truth is, this is humanity. Killing for personal gain, uncaring of the emotions and instead caring about the task at hand and how it benefits us.

My name is Xephos, and I am not a hero.