Chapter Five and Final!

This isn't the final chapter of the book, but it IS the last chapter of the book that I will be posting here. After all, I can't reveal too much to the general public! However, if you've become addicted to the story of Thaila and her assainations, you can request to be added to the BSRJ e-mail list and recieve chapters as I finish them.

If you want to be added, comment here or text me with your email address. I will gladly keep you updated on the story!

Anyways, here it is! Enjoy, my darlings.

CHAPTER 5

It’s frigid and smooth in the palm of my hand, giving it a stiff, regal aura. I let my fingertips lightly glide over its surface, striving not to touch the gleaming golden trigger. 

“She’s quite the upscale shooter, and elderly at that. However, she’ll serve you very well on this consequential mission.” Master says slowly as I admire the gun.

 I don’t have any idea what kind it is, but the silver and gold plating on its body mislays my breath each time I look. 

“Who would get such an honor of falling this way?” I ask, my voice quivering in the shock that Master trusts me with his most valuable weapon. 

I hear a few clicks, just like always, and a woman’s face appears on the screen. She looks to be in her thirties, with an oval-shaped face and wide smile to match. Her shoulder-length blonde hangs in waves and her green eyes are sparkling wildly. She appears to be an optimist, one of those types who always finds a diamond ring in the cesspool of life. I snarl slightly. 

“Olvida Jackson.” Master tells me. “She works as a nurse at our sweet Mercola hospital. I believe you can take the honors from here.” 

Still in awe of the gun’s glisten, I slide it into the pocket of my large blue jacket. 

“Indeed, I shall make it a fantastic kill.” I reply darkly, turning on the heel of my sneakers and heading briskly for the door. 

The sunlight blinds my eyes as I step outside. It’s a horrible day to kill, with the world so bright and cheery, spring coming in just around the corner. There is always that gruesome possibility that an innocent eye may oversee the fall of Olvida Jackson. I’ll just have to play carefully, a skill that I am well inculcated in. 

As I saunter through the streets of an average weekend morning, thoughts about Winston Toll and my past begin to cross my mind. I struggle to repress them, but something about the name of the hospital tastes bitter on my tongue. I can’t seem to put my finger on it, so I break into a run, hoping that the whistling of breezy air in my head will point my erratic head in another direction. 

Within a few minutes, a fairly tall building with a tan exterior bearing “Mercola Hospital” in giant red letters comes into my peripheral. My feet shuffle to a stop, my breath coming out in short gasps. The instant that I stop, the glass double doors of the hospital slide open for a shorter woman, walking out slowly and trying to stack the papers in her hands. When she looks upward towards the sky, the sun catches a glint on her green eyes. 

It’s Olvida. 

I walk quickly towards her, letting my shortened breath take over my speech. This should be a convincing ploy. 

“Miss Jackson! Miss Jackson!” I shout, running toward her and waving my hands. “You have to help me!” 

She stops and looks up, concern spreading across her face like an iceberg freezing. 

“What’s the matter?” She quickly stammers. 

“I think that my parents may be...may be...” 

“What? What is it?” 

I grab her arm and try to pull her towards the side of the building. She doesn’t object, quickly running after me as my feet hit the small rocks in the area beside the heating system. Stopping quickly, I turn to face her, trying to keep a look of panic etched on my face. 

“Would you mind telling me what the matter is?” Olvida gasps, raising her hand to push a few strands of moist hair behind her ear. 

“The matter?” I say in a growling whisper, reaching for the gun in my pocket. “That simple matter is your life.” 

Her eyes grow to giant ovals as she stares down into the black hole of the barrel. My finger rests itself slightly beside the beautiful trigger, waiting for the click that will mean the world to me and my potential in Master’s eyes. 

“No! No no no!” She screams, dropping her papers by her typical white nurse shoes. She doesn’t run. Stupid woman. 

I narrow my eyes slightly, making sure that my aim is exemplary as to not waste these bullets I have been honored with. 

“Wait! Stop! I remember you! You...you had purple eyes.” Olvida shrieks, her hands in front of her face. 

I stop, lowering the gun just slightly. Her hands drop to her sides and she exhales in relief, still trembling as she continues to speak. 

“I remember your parents staying here, only fourteen years ago. They had...multiple wounds. It was a ghastly sight, I remember. I was interning here then, and they warned me not to look. When I peered in the window, I saw them breathing their last breath. There was a little girl curled up in the corner, crying. She stood up and ran from the room, outside into the darkness.” 

Now I’m shaking. I lower the gun to my hip, still keeping both hands wrapped around it. Olvida continues talking, faster now, spewing information as her lifeline. 

“The next day, we found the girl outside in the grass, just crying and crying. We brought her inside and tried to hide her from their bodies. Only an hour later, a boy in a dark hood came in to take her. He said he was her godfather, and he had the signatures on paper to prove it. She went away with him, and we just never heard from her again. She had purple eyes, gleaming with hatred for the world. I just...can’t help but remember how sad it was.” 

She looks up at me, pleading sadness in her eyes. I look down at my shaking fingers again, my mouth open in shock. 

No, Thaila. I tell myself. You’re stronger than this. 

Closing my eyes, I whip the gun upwards, aiming it right for her lab-coat-covered heart. 

“You don’t know me. Not a soul who breathes knows who I am and what happened to me when I was a little girl.” I snap. The trigger clicks back. 

“No!” Olvida screams. “Stop! I know where they’re buried! I can help you!” 

“Nothing can help me.” I tell her sternly, shaking my head at her incompetence. 

She chants more nonsense about me, things she says she’s seen. Closing my eyes, I release the trigger. A scream echoes all around the building, bouncing off the sky and raining back down on me, causing me to fall to my knees beside Olvida Jackson’s dead body. My hands grip the rocks beneath me, coating my hands with dust. 

She knew me. She had to know who I was. She knew who they were. 

“Olvida? Are you out here?” A deep voice screams as I hear the doors slide open once more. I seize the gun, scramble to my feet, and dash around the backside of the building. 

Ghosts from the past haunt with a chill

unless we simply change to kill.

Not a soul knows me, this I am sure

for I am no longer that sad little girl

who cried in the night but was saved by the day

when a young boy came to take her away. 

Chapters 3 and 4!!!

*Mild drug references. Don't be alarmed. I guessed.*

Chapter 3

I awake at 7:30 the next morning, the time that I have accustomed myself to wake at each day. Blinking faintly once or twice, I believe that I can hear a voice quietly calling my name. 

Master.

I rise from the bed, easily making my way to the door. The daylight streaming into the hallway guides my eyes into the lair, still dark as it always is. I hear a few clicks of keys, the small burst of air that whisks through Master’s fingers as he opens something on the screen in front of him. 

It’s a picture of a younger man of moderate height, no older than his thirties. He’s smiling and happy in the photo, wearing a suit jacket and red tie, as though he is at some sort of mixer. His thick blonde hair falls over his eyebrows and almost into his pale blue eyes. 

“Is he to die today?” I ask, sure of the answer. 

“Indeed, he is. Winston Toll. He’ll be in the Mercola alleyway in an hour.”

I nod instantly and go to retrieve a knife from our stockpile. 

“But...” Master warns me. “I’ve received word that he looks just a tad different. Some life events, per say, have transmuted him.” 

“Thank you, Master.” I say, returning to the room with a slightly used silver knife in hand. I bow my head to his shoes quickly, picking just a droplet of blood off the blade with my fingernails as I exit into the streets. 

As I walk down the suburban roads, knife safely hidden under my cardigan, I glance at my surroundings. The one-story brick homes, the white picket fences, the stick-thin trees struggling to stay planted in every lawn...it all rings a familiar tone in my head. 

Then, I remember all too suddenly. Mercola was the streets of my youth. 

I can just remember the night, fourteen years ago, clear as a museum-polished diamond. They were screaming at eachother, something silly about my father forgetting to go somewhere important. Neither of them knew that my little fingers wrapped around the doorway, vibrant eyes wide with shock and tears as I watched. 

“You’re a wretched, no-good bastard!” I remember hearing my mother yell, pain cracking her voice as she did. “All I’ve ever had to deal with is your ignorance and inability to give a damn about anything that breathes other than yourself!” 

“That’s not true!” He responded gruffly, shaking to keep his tears locked in his eyes. “I do my best for Thaila, and you know it!” 

“Never a damn thing, never a damn thing!” She repeated over and over, countless times. 

Those are the only words I recall. I remember violence ensuing the screams. It was enough for me to race my three-year-old bare feet down the street yelling, “Help! Momma! Daddy! Save them, anyone!” 

I was desperate for someone to stop the madness. It was then that I ran into a young boy, no more than fifteen, in a large hood walking the streets. He asked me what the matter was, told me to wait there, and faded into the darkness. He didn’t come back to that spot before the police officers found me, scooped me unwillingly into their arms, and carried me back to the house that I had ran so far to get away from. 

By then, it seemed like there were thousands of flashing lights, all red and blue, some white, all blinding. I could just see the face of our neighbor in the window, stern and waiting for something excellent to happen. 

I am instantly broken out of my trance by a low, raspy voice saying, “Ah, thank ya, sir!” Looking to my left, I see a man dressed in a torn black ensemble of clothing, limping away from a man in a cloak who whisks away so quickly that I can’t decipher his looks. 

The man in black continues limping for a few seconds, throws himself down on the asphalt of the alleyway, and takes a minuscule, clear plastic bag containing several grams of a white substance out of his coat pocket. 

I can’t help but roll my eyes at the desperate scene. Clearly, Master hadn’t been deceiving when he said that Winston Toll’s appearance had change. He is a ravaging drug addict. 

Quickly, he dips a paper into the bag, dusting it with power, lifts it to his tongue, and lets it dissolve there. A smile begins to spread across his disheveled face as his fast-moving eyes catch mine. 

“Ay!” He says in a choppy, slurring voice. “Don’t I know ya from somewhere? Your eyes are singing...singing like a birdie to me.”

I’m a bit frightened, but I have to remind myself that he’s only seeing things. My eyes may have turned into a bird for all I know. 

“Never seen you before.” I say sternly, approaching him slowly. 

“You sure? I can remember it, that night! The screaming, oh, the screaming. I called on ‘em, I did. There was blood, everywhere.” 

These things that he speaks of send a chill running down my spine, for a reason unknown to me. Wrapping my fingers tighter around the blade of the knife, I take a few more steps. 

“I can remember it! Ay, how they was fighting! Their little daughter had gone done and run away, down that street screaming.” 

I’m petrified now. He seems to know exactly what the story of my parents fight is, detail for blurry detail, not losing much of it to his hazy mind. 

“You don’t know me, street trash.” I hiss through closed teeth, struggling to keep myself from shaking. 

“Purple eyes...I know you well, sweetheart.” He smirks, showing his grimy teeth. 

I close my eyes, bite down on my lip, and switch the knife through the air faster than I knew my hand could move. A breathless gasp, a thud, and I open my eyes to see Winston Toll, throat slit, a slow line of blood trickling onto the ground from it.

Breathless and panicking, I flee the scene, keeping my teeth tightly on my lip to hold everything inside. Somehow, I feel that Winston wasn’t just hallucinating that little story. 

‘Don’t I know you’ is what he said, 

sending panic through my head. 

Not a soul here knows my story, 

tale that ends in death so gory

of the two I loved the most. 

Now, to horror, I play host.

You don’t know me, sir dead man.

Yet, from your still body, I ran. 

‘Don’t I know you’ is what he said, 

sending panic through my head. 

Chapter 4

By the time I’ve reached the metallic doorway that leads into the lair, I’ve calmed down a bit. Inhaling a long, slow breath, I open the door and step into darkness. Repeating the procedure, I drop the knife to tell Master of my presence. 

“I can ensure you, Master, it was a very simple kill.” 

“Excellent.” He says with his smiling tone, quickly marking Winston’s happy picture with a “TERMINATED” stamp and chuckling lowly. 

I nod to him, as usual, and scramble my way up to the roof to ponder my experiences. Winston Toll...a now lamented drug addict...knew my story. Whether or not it was a figment of his destroyed mind, I do not know. It’s enough to make my eyes, eyes that have seen many a soul die without remorse, shed a tear or two. 

No, no, I tell myself. You don’t cry. Not since the hospital. 

Oh, the hospital. It was the night of the fight, after the lights showed at our house, and I knew my parents were inside the hospital room, fading with their jagged breaths. I could hear beeping, relentless beeping, tracking their slow heartbeats as I sat, knees drawn to my face in the corner of the room. 

“What does it look like to you?” A soft-voiced nurse whispered.

“I can’t say for certain...but I think they may have killed eachother.” A young doctor responded to her, eyes laden with fake sadness. 

I remember not being able to handle the intensity. I left the room, ran outside breathing in short, childish gasps, and found myself keeling on the dark side of the building in grass, staring at the moon and the starless sky. It was then that I heard light footsteps and brown leather dress shoes came into my vision. 

“I told you I’d come back, didn’t I, sweetheart? I tried my best to help you.” 

It was the boy, the boy in the hood. He came back for me. I could only sniffle and nod in his presence, so mysterious and great to my youthful mind. 

“Are they gone? Perished, I mean?” He asked. 

I nodded again, trembling. 

“I’ll tell you what...tomorrow afternoon, I’ll come and get you, get you forever. We’ll do wonders, sweetheart. I can just feel it.” 

I hadn’t the faintest idea of what it meant, but I nodded yet a third time as he tucked his hands into his hood pockets and dashed away into the trees nearby. The following day, he snuck into the hospital lobby, though I don’t know quite how he did, and led me away into a small, nearly torn-down shack in a field on the edges of town.

“It’s not much, but one day, it’ll be much more extravagant. It’ll fit our needs. After all, you’re perfect for it.” 

What ‘it’ was, I didn’t know for years and years. For a long time, we simply lived, him building his contraptions and lairs into the crafts they are today, and me watching his shadowed figure, helping to hold a wire in place when I could. Around the year I turned ten, he took me into the finished lair and whispered, “Show me your perfection.”

It was then that he trained me how to kill for him. I learned everything I now know as he continued to push me forward, calling me perfect all along the way. 

I stop and ponder this for a minute. Perfect. He called me perfect. I wonder, if I knew his true face, all the eccentricities of his true personality, and if he was young and sweet, if I would be in love with him. 

Humorous, really, when I think of it. I doubt I could love a soul after so many have choked at my hands. 

I wonder if I’d love you

if I knew your darkened soul.

But I have lost all emotion, see.

Oh, murder takes its toll. 

Toll...Toll...Winston Toll....

Chapter Two of "Blood-Stained Red Jeans"

Here she is! Chapter 2!!!

The knife, still flecked with blood droplets, falls from my hand and onto the cold, stony floor. It bounces, one, twice with a clang, then shivers at the foot of his brown leather dress shoes. 

I can hear the smile in his voice as he speaks to me from his chair in the middle of darkness. “Excellent, as always, Thaila.”

“Thank you, Master.” I say, bowing my head to him slightly, my hair cloaking my face. 

In truth, I am bowing in reverance to the tassles on his shoes. Though I have been with him since I was a mere child, aged three years, I have never looked upon his true face once. He has always stayed in his chair, shadowed in the gloaming of his lair, only illuminated by the blinking lights of his large computer screen. 

He pivots his chair away from me, slowly swiping his long second finger across the trackpad. The screen gleams brightly back at him, showing the face of Logan Kromer along with a directional map, leading to his location. 

With a slight twitch of henious laughter, Master pushes a button beside the trackpad. A flash of red emits from the screen, crossing out Logan’s face with the words, “TERMINATED”. 

“Add the knife to the collection now.” He says in a slow, droning voice. 

I kneel to the floor, slowly stooping to raise the knife into my hand. I give Master one last respectful nod, then leave the room, struggling not to make too much tumult on the floor as I do. 

There are two wooden doors immediatly ahead of me, one with a long streak of dried blood running down the door. It found its way there from the multiple times I opened it after kills, tossed the weapon nonchalantly into the pile, and quickly closed it. In this juncture, however, my fingertips are clean. I open the door with a heavy push and admire the glint that parades when the light hits the silver knives inside. 

Master believes in keeping all used weapons to ourselves and hidden so that my fingerprints will never be traced to a murder. Yet, I doubt the government even remembers my name, let alone has my fingerprints on a file. 

I toss the kitchen knife into thin air, watching it fly for a second or two. It crashes swiftly into two other knives, sending them flying with a graceful flip. Indeed, I have always admired the smooth curve and graceful ways of a knife. Forcing myself then to close the door, I enter the second room, the one I call my own. 

There’s nothing much inside, just a simple bed and dresser for keeping my few different outfits inside. Various chipped plates, the worn, outdaded China from the 70’s, are stacked in the corner, for the special nights when Master and I eat together. The rest of the food I eat is merely gathered or stolen when time permits. 

A giant hole in the roof, showing the dark, starless night sky, beckons to me, seemingly reaching out a hand and guiding me toward its opening. I open one drawer, sieze my collection of pencils and paper, and climb onto the roof. I can only see touches of the town from here, but it’s enough to inspire the smooth poetry I write.

It’s enough to keep me humane.  

See, I believe the soul can be quieted through a melodious fragment of literature. My fingers work their way quietly around the torn edges of poems I’ve kept over the years, simple poems, yet enough to keep the enraged from going insane, the sick from fading forever. 

With this fresh in my mind, I begin to write a poem about the first thing on my mind, pencil tapping against the roof every few strokes as I write. 

What is for certain? 

Not much, I could say, 

for my wanderlust heart 

leads my mind far astray.

There are times that I wish

for nothing but just

to live normally, for one day, 

to feel true love and lust.

And then, I recall

the things I’ve been told,

that feelings are nothing more

than rich tales of old.

They blind all the smartest,

they ruin the young.

I agree, yes I do,

let these words leave my tongue. 

Chapter One!!!! from "Blood-Stained Red Jeans, Poems As You Please"!!!

This is Chapter One from the novel I'm writing! It's about a girl, a poet, who kills for her "Master", a man who saved her from turmoil as a child. Now, she lives to carry out his will. Tell me what you think and come back for more!!

The doors slide open, acknowledging my presence as my black Vans tap the tiles of the floor. I feel a burst of cold air, see the flash of fluorescent lights in my eyes. Some moronic country music song fills my ears. I can’t help but raise my lip in a snarl. It’s a far too beatific scene for my taste. 

There’s plenty of people milling around the local Kroger at four in the afternoon today. I loop my thumbs into the small pockets of my black cardigan and begin to meander up the magazines aisle. 

He’s in here somewhere. The person I have to kill. 

Master said that his name is Logan Kromer, a taller, brunette man in his early twenties with bright blue eyes and a halfcocked smile. The small GPS chip inside of his iPhone 3S led us to find him in this grocery trip today. So, now I have to find him and make it certain that he never inhales sweet air again. 

 Why he has to fall at my hands, I haven’t a clue. Master always tells me it’s against his Seven Rules. 

Rule #1: Never question Master’s intent to obliterate. The person who must die has done Master wrong, and their name shall never be whispered again. 

I’ve reached the end of the aisle. Quickly turning, I grab the nearest four-dollar romance novel and pretend to be skimming the doltish story. My eyes jump above the page to see a tall, thin man flipping through a copy of this month’s “Men’s Health”. He has wavy brunette hair, stopping short on the back of his neck, and from the looks of his profile when he turns the page, his eyes are a bright and gleaming blue in the reflection of the lights. 

“Logan?” I pretend to inquire after his identity. “Logan Kromer?” 

He lowers the magazine and looks over his shoulder, pieces of his hair covering his eyebrows as he raises them. 

“Yeah?”

“I thought that was you! I feel like I’ve met you...at a party or something of the sorts.” I say with a sly smile, romance novel folded behind my back, my thumb stuck somewhere  between pages 76 and 82. 

“Really? I’m sorry...I just don’t recognize your face. And I think I’d remember eyes that purple.” 

I sigh. My electric, nearly purple eyes always tend to give my identity away. But I can play this vixen game with the younger men. I twirl a strand of my dirty blonde hair around my fingertips and smile. 

“I get that a lot. Guys say it’s like an..Achilles’ Heel for them.” I flash my red lipstick-coated smile, the soft one that typically receives a wink from a man, or a sudden change in attitude from the doubters. 

He smiles mischeviously, and quickly too. I can tell I’ve won him over. 

“You don’t say?” 

“Do you think eyes like this can lie to eyes like yours?”

“Doubtful. You have a name?”

“Thaila.”

His eyes are glimmering now, sparkling with the pizzaz of a newly uncorked bottle of champagne. 

“That’s a fancy one.” 

“Indeed.” I say, trying hard not to let down the mask of my smile. 

I’ve got to find a knife. I have to keep him here for just three minutes, grab a weapon, and dash back to finish this whole ordeal up. 

“Shit!” I say, smacking my forehead and letting the novel fall to the floor behind me. “I forgot where I left my cart!” 

“Oh.” His expression changes to a bit of shocked dismay. 

“No, I’ll come back. Wait here, alright? I’m enjoying our dialouge.” I run off, aglets of my shoelaces hitting the floor with tiny pops as I move. 

The first thing that meets my panicked eyes is a bakery demonstration. The TV above the small kiosk shows a video of vegetables in a pan, grease bubbling all around in the spaces. Just below it, I see a large man dressed in a chef’s outfit. He yawns, placing his large, hairy hand to his mouth, and walks off towards the restroom. 

I dash forward, quickly swinging my left hand at the rack of chopping knives next to his pan setup. Closing the handle in my left hand, I wrap my cardigan around the blade while I walk slowly back to the aisle where Logan Kromer waits. 

Waits to die. 

The instant I see him, he smiles slightly.

“Find it?”

“Oh, yeah. Not too far back, really. It was all too mindless of me.” 

“So, then, Thaila...what do you do for a living?” He asks, clearly trying to disregard my age of seventeen. 

I tap my shoe on the floor once, slowly leaning in to him. 

“I obey Master’s wishes.” I whisper.

The knife sinks into his skin, just below his rib cage. He gasps, eyes widening. I can see my face reflected in his eyes, iced over and malicious, as he falls to his knees, struggling to breath. I look down at my red jeans and see the blood splattered, in one, two dots just above my knee. 

Rule #2: Always wear red jeans when on a mission. The rich color conceals any bloodstains. 

“Goodbye, Logan Kromer.” I hiss into his ear as he falls to the floor, blood flying from him quickly. I dash to one side of the book display, keeping my head down and walking away fast, thumbs back in my little pockets. 

My name is Thaila, and I’ve been trained to be a small town assasin. 

I am the one who hides in the night

waiting to take your life, for your spite

has created the painful cries of my Master.

I run from you, fallen, and hear his sweet laughter. 

16 Ways You Know It's An Only Child!

A new video...basically an autobiography of what I say and do in my time alone. Judging by the laughter of my friends when they saw it, I'd say it's accurate! Enjoy!