I don’t listen to music much anymore. I’m afraid that I’ll hear their names in the lyrics. I used to have nightmares that I now take pills for. I don’t have those nightmares anymore. Sometimes after a job, I think about what it would have been like had I decided to become a teacher. Then I imagine a gun in my hand and a whole lot of people dead.

My friend, So, tells me that for each person we kill in this life their soul becomes a weight we must eternally carry around with us in the afterlife. I think that’s a load of shit. I don’t believe there is an afterlife. The other day I killed a cult leader. Before I shot him he waxed poetic about his spiritual immortality and whatnot.

I know he was just trying to ease himself into accepting death but I let him have it. He told me about the spirit world and how my killing him would result in him becoming more powerful than before. After I shot him I burned his corpse to make sure he couldn’t come back. I didn’t think he could but I had my orders.

My clients are often the superstitious type. The cultist’s name was Manu. He believed he was part alien and thought he could overthrow the British government with a couple of tubs of explosives. He was wrong and now he’s dead. Before him, I was forced to kill a few of his lackeys. They were all very strong men but it didn’t matter.

Muscles mean nothing compared to a gun. I don’t always shoot my targets. It’s just that guns have served my age well. I’m not the assassin I once was. That’s not to say that I’m old. I’m not. Far from it. The thing is that I just don’t feel as spry as I used to some days. Last week I had to kill a woman for the first time in a long time.

She was a lawyer who was going to expose this company for doing something bad. I don’t remember. After I killed her about a week later her fiancé hired me to kill the head of that company. I didn’t mind. As far as I was concerned the whole thing came full circle. I like it when things wrap up like that.

Now the company is exposed and everyone’s happy. Well, say for the dead company head. For the first time in a long time, big money also didn’t win out in the end. It was a victory for the little guy. At long last. The other day I was walking through SoHo when I spied this kid. Normally hitmen have a habit of adopting orphans and down-and-outs as if they were pets. 

They train them to take their place yet reluctantly groan about how they don’t want them living that kind of life. I’d never do something like that. I just walk right by them. I don’t need some protégé dogging my tracks. Killers always complain internally about being alone. I don’t mind it and prefer being alone to worrying about people who are just going to get me killed or wind up getting killed themselves.

That’s the way it always goes. My life consists of getting money, then using that money to do things I enjoy. That includes drinking, eating, sleeping, and screwing. I am a very simple man. I do not require much to get by. The best part is that almost no one knows I exist. The only ones who do have either hired me or know I am coming for them.

The other day I decapitated this guy in the park. I did it with a wire under a bridge in broad daylight. I’m kind of surprised that nobody saw it. I was wearing black so you really couldn’t tell I was covered in blood. I acted like it was hot coffee and everyone who turned my way just kind of passed me by.

The guy was a senator or at least in the running to be one. I didn’t like his face. He looked like a liar and you could tell from the way he dressed. His tie was light blue when it should have been red and his hair was parted to the right instead of the left. He had green eyes which was kind of unusual and thin lips that just didn’t sit right with me.

He did some nasty things with a few children overseas that made his associates a little uncomfortable. They told me it was my job to dish out justice and told me to go nuts. Imagine my surprise when they told me his decapitation was a bit overkill. I was beside myself in shock. That’s the last time I take advice from a client.

Only one other client ever told me to kill someone in any way I saw fit. It was an aristocrat from Chile with long hair who loved the color pink. He had me kill his three drug dealer buddies following his retirement from working alongside various cartels. I hung the first guy, crushed the second, and set the third on fire because I heard he used to torture women for no other reason than to hear them scream.

I hate to hear a woman scream. That’s why I try to finish them off as quickly as possible. The same goes for whimpering. I refuse to kill children. Rain falls on a Sunday afternoon. The day of rest becomes a day of upset. My bullet shatters glass and hits its mark. A pale man hits the floor and his eyes go dead.

I remain motionless to make sure the job is done. No one sees me hidden by distance. My weapon is a powerful rifle and I, its faithful servant. After the hit, I disassemble what I can and discard the rest. Little can be done to hush the rage of emotions within me. It feels good to take a life. Especially one so vile.

Tomorrow I'll take another and on and on it goes. I'll stop when I'm dead. I haven't been dead a long time. Last year an old client sent some of his own assassins after me. As far as I could tell he was trying to tie up loose ends. The assassins he sent after me had gimmicks. All assassins have gimmicks these days.

One of them used a flamethrower. Another had a gun that shot poisoned needles. The third dressed like Clint Eastwood and the fourth looked like a Buddhist monk hauling around a bazooka. I killed them all say for the guy with the gun that shot needles. Jerry, I think his name was. He was actually a pretty cool guy.

After that, I tracked down my paranoid client. He was a fat cat by the name of Arnold Rothe who ran various conglomerates out of his headquarters in Ontario. I killed him using a tripwire attached to a ballistic knife. It was kind of hilarious. There's a man with a long face that's been following me. He has wide eyes and looks innocent but I know he isn’t.

I know I'm not hallucinating because he isn't in my dreams. He doesn't look at me but I know he's trailing me around. I ran the calculations and there's no way we're together as much as we've been. I don't take the subway anymore because of him. He isn't a taxi driver but I figure it's only a matter of time before I'm paying him a fare.

When he isn't around I try not to think about him. I think his name is Dan. His face reminds me of stasis, of not moving forward. I like to believe I'm always expanding in all facets of my life. Dan doesn't like that. I can tell. Whoever or whatever he is, Dan has it in for me. I just know it. There was this point a while back when I was reduced to eating pizza on account of almost going broke.

Nobody wanted anyone else dead. It was a death dry spell that lasted damn near six months long. When I got my next hit that following March I was ecstatic. I had never been so happy about shooting somebody in the head, I went out after and celebrated afterward. Last week I encountered a fellow hitman who doubled as a priest in Boston.

He was known as the Vicar and enjoyed using guns much like yours truly. Unlike yours truly the Vicar used suppressors on account of hating loud noises. The creepy fucker even whispered every time he spoke. I guess his only redeeming quality was the large wooden crucifix he wore around his neck on a string of twine.

He was humble in appearance but you could tell he had a taste for violence. He was an assassin after all and one with a pretty flawless killing streak. There aren't many of those in this business. I heard a quote once about how when you die you should leave this world in the exact same state in which you found it at your birth.

If only it were that simple. For a while, I dabbled in professional thievery but too many close calls ended that career path before it ever really got off the ground. In the end, I wound up in the assassination business right after my father before me and my grandfather before him. I adopted the family alias and got to work at an age younger than any other assassin in my lineage.

One day when I have a son he will take my name and the legend of the fearless killer, Leon Stansfield, will live on forever. At least that's what I hope for. It's a legacy that comes under attack with each new generation. A legacy that always perseveres no matter the age. I went to visit the grave of one of my old mentors the other day and it quite literally blew up in my face.

A failed assassination attempt. Whoever it was wanted me to find them on account of the detonator and note showing up next to me directly after the explosion. That, or I might have just imagined them randomly popping up beside me. I doubt it though. Either way, I wound up on Pier 35 just six hours later, facing down a hot shot philanthropist and part-time vigilante by the name of Lucifer Pierce.

He was a real boy scout who hated hitmen, organized crime, and jaywalkers. I'm joking of course, but on the whole, the guy was a giant pain in my ass. His dumbass brought knives to a gunfight so I filled his limbs with a couple of shotgun rounds and left him bleeding out there on the pier. Relax, he lived, but next time I bet he'll think twice before setting bombs off in my face.

I know things like that are to be expected from time to time, but personally, I've never gotten used to it. See, I can handle getting shot at, but bombs I feel are cheating. Bombings are what you get when the government takes your firearms away. I'm an American. Give me guns any day of the week.

Anyway, it’s a slow night. Normally I'd be out on the town searching for a midnight snack right about now. My excuse for tonight is that it's raining and the nearest convenience store is too far for even me to walk. So I will lie in bed and bitch and moan about how I'm so hungry but too tired to really do anything about it.

The blood vessels in my right eye are killing me. I think it's from all the neon lights in the city and the fact that I'm always looking down a narrow scope. I haven't yet brushed my teeth today and I can feel the ache in my jaw. Truly I am a pitiable pile of a man, lying in tears and waiting for the next job like a rat on the prowl for scraps.

Earlier today I took the bus to Wall Street and back. Along the way, I met a young man who had been an accountant or something of the sort at some big firm for the last six years. As he stepped off the bus, he walked right into oncoming traffic and was hit three times before being pronounced dead at the scene.

I feel like he looked at the end of that whole ordeal. Battered and whatnot. My salad days are over and normally anyone else in my position would be out living it up on some yacht or on a rooftop bar somewhere with company galore. Instead, I'm hunkered down in a SoHo apartment, stuck drinking cheap red wine and watching the rain collect in small puddles on my crappy window sill.

The paint peels along the damp walls and I'm reminded that right now there's no adventure, no excitement in my life. Aside from keeping the family legacy alive, I do enjoy the occasional assassination. I almost hesitate to confess that the career as a whole rarely fills me with a deep sense of accomplishment.

I don't know what I would do without the ability to travel. Staying in one place for so long is so tiresome, I feel prolonged exposure to any one place on earth would surely drive me mad. Perhaps that's why I find myself in this state tonight. I've been moping around Manhattan for so long, I've almost forgotten how beautiful France and India are in the dead of night.

I've almost forgotten about Italy and its sprawling landscapes that always seem to imitate old oil paintings. Now I know they were there first but it doesn't always seem that way. I don't often like being left alone with my thoughts. A killer who becomes stagnant begins to self reflect and too much self-reflection either leads to madness or early retirement.

I want neither. In times like these, I begin to realize how few ties to the outside world I truly have. I only really know a handful of other assassins, a few arms dealers, and maybe one or two information brokers. None of them I know on a personal basis. I'd be a fool not to admit that having so few social ties brings me sorrow from time to time.

No man should be made to feel this kind of isolation. It doesn't matter though. I know it'll only last as long as it'll take for someone to want somebody else in the world dead. Then I'll get a call, or a fax, or a note, and go off to work. And out there I'll kill thieves, and bastards, and boy scouts, and good people all for a shot at feeling human again.

It's a strange game, but it's mine. When it comes to those rare few I have had the pleasure to call my friends, there’s Chesspiece and Action. They're not dead or anything like that. At least, I don't think they are. They're just two of the best bodyguards I've ever had. Aside from Quinn and Epcar, of course.

I first met Chesspiece in Russia. We had both been hired by the mob to take out the last thirteen members of this drug ring that had fallen out of favor with the KGB. We met early into the job and decided to place a little wager to see who could kill the most targets. I won by a single head. That head being the drug ring's big boss-man himself.

Ivan Tarasov, I believe he was called. Chesspiece was understandably pissed, but in the end, after taking my share of the hit money, I gave the rest which he greatly respected. After that, he offered up his services as a bodyguard to me whenever I needed them. All in all, it was a pretty profitable job.

Then along came Action. He was a young up-and-comer in the bodyguard business. About ten years ago he was hired to watch the back of some modern gentleman thief who had made a name for himself stealing from aristocrats throughout Germany. Long story short, the thief got himself shot and shortly thereafter fired Action for his apparent negligence.

In truth, the thief was too flashy. Action knew his shit and knew when to withdraw. He had good judgment and an eye for strategy. I wish I could say the same for the thief who got himself executed three years later after stopping to pose for photos in the middle of a heist. I was sent to kill the thief, known only as Marko, when Action, despite having been fired, came to his aid.

I admired his loyalty and refused the hit to pacify the disgraced bodyguard. After hearing of Marko's death, I went looking for Action who was drinking his sorrows away as most do in this business. I recruited him, telling him it'd be a great way to redeem his pride and he went with it. He's been a part of the gang ever since.

Lucky for me Chesspiece and Action love working together. I almost never hire them for a job separately. In my opinion, they both possess two halves of one brilliant mind. Sure, neither of them are as skilled as I am, but that doesn't mean they don't excel in their own unique fields. Chesspiece's strength is bravery while Action's is loyalty.

Add great marksmanship into the mix and you have a duo that can take on the world. If you haven't heard of me I won't hold it against you. My existence has been a poorly guarded secret for decades. Every now and again, when I pull what the ICPO would call a public incident, the powers that be rush desperately into a scattered attempt to keep my existence covered up.

It isn't hard to wonder why. I am a mercenary, a gun for hire, a soldier of fortune, a hitman, and a damn good one at that. I'd dare say I'm the best in the world if that's not too narcissistic. Rest assured it was not I who granted myself such an inflated title. I only go off of what the newspapers say, and they often say I'm the best at what I do.

Speaking from experience, however, all I can say for certain is that I'm a damn good shot, and I won't admit to anything besides that. I'm not a man of bold proclamations I think you'll come to find. At best I'd consider affirmation to be better expressed through physical action. Too much talking and next thing you know, someone is sticking a gun in your face. 

Unfortunately, as my mother would say, I was born with a mouth and a talkative one at that. And like my friends often say, it's a wonder it hasn't gotten me killed yet, especially in my line of work. When it comes to the assassin's trade one must always operate in secret. Some of the world's greatest hitmen are probably people you know, yet people you'd never suspect.

I could never do that. From the day I was born I craved attention. Sadly my mouth didn't blend too well with my compulsion to kill those who often infuriated me. So, rather than become just another aimless serial killer I fell back into the career of my father and his father before him. That being the career of an assassin.

You know, on the off chance that I wasn't clear about that earlier. Unlike most trained killers I'm not an ex-soldier, nor am I the son of one. I like to believe the assassin's trade is older than war, going back to the time of Cain and Abel. You know, disregarding the fact that that fable was totally made up.

I don't use customized weaponry like some hitmen in the underworld like to boast about. My main rifle is a Barrett M82 with my backup being a Steyr SSG 69. From a distance that's all I really need. When things have to get up close and personal I use a Smith & Wesson 500 Magnum as well as a Desert Eagle with a threaded-barrel suppressor.

Anything else would be overkill. I used to carry a ballistic knife, but after a little button mishap while it was in my pocket I gave the dangerous little toy up. Unlike other assassins, I'm not a brooding, silent, pompous army brat. I've been killing people since I was twelve years old and I'm damn proud of it.

The first thing most clients like to know before hiring an assassin is their preference. Some hitmen won't kill women, others won't kill kids, and some refuse to do both. Personally, I don't care who you are or what you've done to warrant a hit. As long as you are above the age of twenty-one and your name is on the list, your life is mine.

Doing what I do, I can assure you there's very little that can't be done with a loaded pistol. Alas, you can't get by in this profession on just looks and sharpshooting alone. Disguises employed to gain access to your targets are a crucial facet of the job as well. Just one piece of poorly applied makeup, one badly timed term or mannerism, one slightly unconvincing impersonation, and your cover, as well as the mission, is blown all to hell in a matter of seconds.

Let it never be stricken from the record that to be a great assassin you must also be a great actor. Skills as a professional thief or pickpocket wouldn't hurt either, but it's more important that you pull off being able to convince total strangers you aren't who you really are. With this ability to socially and physically manipulate your surroundings you could probably work your way into a lunch appointment with the queen of England.

And no, that's not an exaggeration. So now that you got a decent idea as to what it is I do, I'd like to tell you a little story. It's certainly a weird one, and often times I've been told that it's the weirder stories that garner the most attention and acclaim. I'm going to tell you about the time I was hired to kill the Antichrist.

Or, at least, an up-and-coming United States politician who was heavily believed to be the Antichrist. See, when it came to the details behind this job I have to confess that I was a little fuzzy. Through the usual channels, I was contacted by some shadowy faces who reigned in high positions somewhere in the Vatican.

Now before you ask, the answer is yes, the holy church most certainly has a hand in the dealings of the criminal underworld. How could such an old institution not? Anyway, the target's name was Silas Greene. Ringing any bells? He was that hot-shot twenty-seven-year-old senator from Maine from about a decade back who got into the political race at the ripe old age of twenty-eight.

I guess you could say religious folks always figured there was something off about him. Sure, sometimes his reflection didn't appear in the mirrors belonging to the hotels he used to campaign at. I also believe that once or twice closed-circuit televisions, or CCTVs, caught a long dark shadow trailing him whenever Greene would make public appearances.

To be honest I trusted the word of my rosary-rattling clients about as much as any anti-superstitious assassin would. In my line of work, you travel the world and see a lot of odd stuff, but once you stop to analyze what you're actually seeing, you almost always come up with a logical explanation for it. Alas, most people need something to believe in and so this case just happened to be a symptom of that way of thinking.

I wasn't complaining. After all, it wasn't my brain that was gonna get blown out the back of my head. I was paid my usual rate, ran Greene's schedule by my informants, loaded up, dressed down, and headed to Washington, D.C. to meet with the supposed son of the devil himself. I fixed myself up about five hundred yards from the grassy patch where Greene stood behind a high, wooden podium.

He was fixed outside the gates of the White House, completing some empty promise-filled speech that would have been the perfect conclusion to his trailblazing campaign. I aimed and waited patiently for just the right moment. Inhaling, I held my next breath. The moment the last word of Greene's speech left his lips the lone hollow-point round of my black Barrett M82 ripped through his skull like a bat out of hell.

Greene was dead, the job was done, and I rushed out of there. Needless to say, I was never caught, Out of professional curiosity, I followed the story of Silas Greene's assassination rather closely as it quickly became the talk of the nation. Eventually, it was leaked that Greene was in fact a Satanist. Now I don't mean actual Satanism, which is more akin to Atheism with a little self-aware flare.

I'm talking about that old hokey Hollywood-brand propaganda-type Satanism where folks sacrifice chickens and perform blood rituals to summon demons and shit like that. Apparently, Greene had indirectly been responsible for the deaths of over twelve people via some coven he ran out of Portland, Maine.

Yeah, when the news broke I was able to rest easier knowing mister high and mighty was truly one sick son of a bitch. I never heard back from my clients at the Vatican after the job was done. Usually, I get a congratulations after a hit is taken care of, but I figured they were too good for that.

After about a year or two, public discussion condemning Silas Greene focused less on the fact that he was assassinated and more that he was secretly some twisted Rosemary's Baby kind of Satanist. I'm sure some police force somewhere knew it was me, but after Green's hit, there was no real attempt to track me down.

It was almost like the world had no problem with what I had done which was a weird change up from constantly having to lie low after pulling a job. But hey, it's whatever I guess. Anyway, I hope you found my yarn just a little interesting and sleep with one eye open with the knowledge that once you're in my sights, be you, man or devil, you're as good as gone.

What's the point in killing someone if you don't get paid for it? I usually ask myself this question every time I'm hired to neutralize some rogue marine or psychotic postal worker. Don't get me wrong, I'm not completely oblivious to the fact that some people deserve a bullet in the brain, but the way I look at it, why kill the innocent?

No one ever seems to go after the bastards that matter. Everyone's always too busy killing their neighbor or their ex without a single about how their actions will ripple and affect the world. I've always considered my hits carefully. If I feel a job is either too devoid of morals or just plain evil, I don't take it.

This has, on occasion, led to a few of my would-be hires putting a hit out on me in the aftermath. At the end of the day they always wind up dead and nobody benefits from any of it. I think that's why it's always important to consider your options when faced with a tough decision. Especially when the outcome will affect others.

Setting all that aside, I'd like to tell you about the time I fought the Zodiac Killer. No, I don't mean a copycat. I mean the actual, original, fresh out of retirement, Zodiac Killer. December 20th, 1998 was when I got the call. It was the anniversary of the Zodiac's first double-murder, and my client was, for lack of a better phrase, quivering with anticipation in regards to my arrival.

The San Francisco socialite, Miss Amelia Wainwright, was a looker and a widow and had contacted me through the usual channels. Though Miss Wainwright didn't say how she had come to know of my services, it was clear she was no stranger to the happenings within the criminal underworld. According to Miss Wainwright's account, her husband, Arthur, had been one of the Zodiac's last victims.

Weak evidence caused Mister Wainwright to be ruled out as a possible victim of the killer. After the Zodiac up and vanished in October of 1969, Miss Wainwright spoke of how she flew into a mad hysteria. She confessed to nearly going bankrupt six times in the last thirty years due to exhausting her efforts and connections in an attempt to relocate the serial killer.

It seemed reasonable enough to me. She couldn't explain just how, but deep in her bones, Miss Wainwright knew it was the Zodiac who had taken her husband's life. After I received payment she made me vow to avenge her husband. We shook on it and she broke down in tears as I exited the luxurious study of her seaside estate.

It really wasn't a matter of whether I believed Miss Wainwright's story or not. The only thing I cared about was that I was being paid to take down a legend. After pacifying Miss Wainwright I took to the streets of San Francisco. With the aid of my top informant, Strangelove, I got a fully detailed file concerning the killer's profile, supposed motives, and old suspects stretching thirty years back.

The Zodiac was much like me, a ghost, armed with only an alias and a reputation. I buckled down for the first time in a while, giddy at the fact that this case was more akin to a hunt than just another one-and-done assassination. It didn't take long for the Zodiac to return, and before long it became clear he was sticking to his guns by basically repeating his first string of murders.

Whether he thought people had forgotten about him and wanted them to remember I can't say for sure. All I knew was that the Zodiac was making it easy to track him down and that by July 4th of that following year I was lying in wait in Blue Rock Springs. After weeks spent combing the location of the Zodiac's second attack I finally got a bite.

I had taken on the disguise of a perky young college girl complete with perfume, a clean-shaven face, a nice ass, and papers to confirm my fake identity on the off chance that I was stopped or questioned by police. Against the wishes of the local police department, I wandered the area that night, repeating the same walk for nearly a month in order to easily sell the act that I was a working girl forced to travel long distances by myself.

My character was flawless, and on the night of July 4th, 2000, I came face to face with the Zodiac who stood beneath a streetlamp, brandishing a pistol in one hand and a hunting knife in the other. As he approached me I pulled the first of the six lady guns I had hidden away in my outfit and sent a round clean through his upper right leg.

He raised his pistol to me and fired into the air as I ducked down to avoid the bullet. Revealing my next two lady guns, I shot the bastard in the left foot and wrist, forcing him to abandon his pistol. It was then that he came at me with the knife. Under the streetlamp, I could see the sack hiding his face a little better and peered gleefully into the eye holes cut into it as I disarmed him.

The Zodiac, weaponless, swung at me, knocking away my wig and smudging my perfectly applied makeup. In return, I punched him in the face and felt the crack of spectacles smash up against my knuckles. The Zodiac fell backward into a sprint and darted off into the darkness. I pursued him with superior speed, of course, and took out his other leg with what ammunition I had left.

After bounding, gagging, and throwing the bastard into the back of my truck, I headed off to Miss Wainwright's house with one hell of an idea. Sure, I woke her up in the middle of the night, but on the other hand, I decided to offer her a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I told Miss Wainwright that I had caught the Zodiac and that I had brought him to her to do as she pleased.

She was emotional at first, then after a bit of a late nightcap, she hurried downstairs to the foyer where I had set the killer upon his knees. He had lost a lot of blood from the bullets I had put in his legs, but it was all right. I had cleaners. The only thought on my mind was how amazing it would be to see my client take the life of her husband's killer.

I had been obsessed with the idea for months but had constantly told myself to let the thought go. I guess when push came to shove and everything worked out so well I couldn't contain myself. I handed Miss Wainwright a loaded Beretta 92 and watched as she pulled the sack off of the Zodiac Killer's bloodied, sweaty, swollen head.

The look on her face shook me a little as it was a stare of familiarity. Miss Wainwright dropped the gun I had given her and hurled over in agony upon discovering the killer was none other than her supposedly deceased husband, Arthur. She cried for a good thirty minutes before coming to her senses.

Arthur, nearly as shocked as his wife, struggled to talk beneath the layers of duck tape I had wrapped around his head. I asked Miss Wainwright if she wanted me to untie Arthur, but she just shook her head. She thanked me for my services, asked to keep the Beretta, to which I nodded, and then asked me to leave.

I did after asking if she required any aid in cleaning up whatever it was she was planning to do after I left. She shook her head and I headed out through the garage where I had parked. Just before getting into my car, I heard the Beretta go off. Then, just before clearing the driveway, I heard it fire again.

The next day the papers went crazy with the tale of the San Francisco socialite who shot herself after killing her husband who had supposedly died thirty years previously. I didn't follow the story much after that. I laid low in the Caribbean that summer, wondering if I had done right by my client. In the end, I figured it was best.

Miss Wainwright had to know, and that was that. I'm sorry to say the case was never connected back to the Zodiac Killer, leading many a crime buff to believe he might still be out there even to this day. If I had to regret one thing it'd be not grilling Arthur and discovering just what it was that made him dress up and kill people.

I suppose we could all just go off of that note he sent to the police all those years ago, which, in a lot of ways, draws similarities to the reason behind why I became an assassin. Like me, Arthur said he just found it fun. When it comes to my skills as a sniper the farthest distance in which I was able to hit a target was over three thousand five hundred and forty-two meters away.

That's roughly two miles. As far as being up close and personal goes, to this day I maintain a quickdraw speed of 0.2-seconds, and that's just on my off days. The first time I garnered worldwide acclaim was the day I took the life of North Korea's leader, Min Un-Jong, back in good old 1983. It wasn't even a government request if you could believe that.

I was hired by a billionaire who got tired of hearing about the dictator, I mead leader, all over the news. I myself have never been a big fan of dynasties or monarchies and so I took to the job with glee. I was forwarded the money and no less than six days later President Min Un-Jong was deader than duck soup.

I had thought about doing the job in so many fashions but eventually settled on not using a gun. Instead, I flew toward the country's western border and infiltrated Min's palace with the aid of the surrounding forests and an unprotected sewer system. Once I got in I was able to corner one of the palace guards, steal his uniform, and, using my greatest disguise skills, pose as one of Min's servants.

By noon I had delivered to him a chocolate pastry filled with a tasteless, odorless poison. Knowing Min's insatiable love for sweets, I made sure to make my escape the moment my deadly pastry entered his sights. By the time I made the border Min's palace was in an uproar. I left my calling card, of course, and caught a private jet to Britain out of Shenyang.

With the job complete I thought that was gonna be all she wrote. I was proven wrong of course the moment I was informed that my London headquarters had been bombed. Fortunately, whoever was after me had acted too hastily. The bombing only cost me a couple of million bucks, and in return, it put me on alert.

It was around that time that friends of mine in the CIA began warning me, telling me to disappear for a while. According to them my assassination of Min Un-Jong had thrown the general assembly of the United Nations into a tailspin. As was to be expected, North Korea, in all its terribly corrupt ilk, was providing a lot of more powerful nations with various unmentionables. 

My hit had caused a huge chain reaction that led to a lot of fat cats not getting paid, and needless to say that pissed off many members of the criminal elite. Good, I figured, as I made plans to hide out in the Caribbean. I took on a new identity and covered my tracks damn well as Russia, China, and the United States scrambled to find someone to bring them my head. 

  While in Jamaica I was stalked by two dark-faced rogues in sunglasses and long white coats. I had heard about them through their reputation as the Ferenzi Brothers and knew enough about their dual-wielding shotgun ways to steer clear of the duo long enough to make my getaway. After a long car chase, we wound up boarding a couple of preserved Albatros D.III fighter planes we had stumbled upon at a runway by the shore.

This obviously resulted in a little dogfight off the coast of Runaway Bay that ended in me jumping out of my plane before running straight into the path of my pursuers. They caught on a little too slow and blew up over the ocean, leaving me to doggy paddle in peace back to shore where I thought my troubles were over.

Soon after settling into a hotel by Discovery Bay, and booking a private plane to Cuba, Ivo, my information specialist, called me with a slew of warnings. He said my name was hot and to watch out for mercenaries who had been spotted gunning for me across Europe. I made a second call for a smaller plane and managed to flee Jamaica an hour before my previously planned flight went up in flames.

I think it was about that time that I began to realize the severity of the situation. Over the course of the next two months, I dodged hitmen and battled assassins. In Japan, I faced down a mercenary team by the name of the Filthy Dozen whom all specialized in various kinds of firearms. They all took about a month to track down.

I did them in using mostly well-placed explosives and a slew of disguises so I could operate day to day undetected. I had a few close calls while facing them down, but did manage to live to tell the tale. It was mostly stray bullets and flesh wounds that did me in. By the time I had cut the gang down to their last four members, they eased up off of me, I assume because they began to believe I wasn't worth the trouble.

After surviving them I met up with the legendary Manny "Stone-Faced" Forsythe. He was a one-eyed KGB operative with a rock-hard face and a deadly stare. He was a sniper, about equal in talent to myself, and unpredictably deadly in hand-to-hand combat. He met up with me in France where we engaged in a four-hour exchange of sniper fire along the rooftops surrounding Notre Dame.

I won our little contest after shooting a half-collapsed pillar on top of him, alas no report about his death ever came out. This led me to believe old Stone-Face took that defeat pretty hard and went into hiding to either plan his revenge against me or train to surpass my skills. Either way, a part of me knows he's going to be a problem in the future.

Anyways, after France, I headed to Tibet where, for the first time in my career, I met an assassin posing as a silent monk. His alias was Mu Fanchu and within his murderous arsenal, he incorporated poisoned darts as well as a rice hat with a blade around its rim which he wasn't any good at throwing. Unfortunately for the silent assassin, he wasn't very fast.

This made him easy to gun down the second I saw his silhouette creeping up on me one night in Lhasa. From there I went to India where I was able to lie low for a while in Mumbai. That was, of course, until some cat mask-wearing freak sporting a long red scarf, a dark blue biker's uniform, and two desert eagles showed up blasting away at me.

I had no choice but to steal the vehicle closest to me and flee while this maniac followed me on some souped-up bike he probably had enhanced with nitro or something. We wound up in this warehouse somewhere near Versova Beach where we shot at each other until both our guns were emptied. After engaging in a short fistfight, my masked opponent was shot dead by Ivo who had tracked me down alongside my accomplice, Archie Wolfe.

Fortunately, the two had sought me out to let me know that the oceans of hitmen coming after me would soon be coming to an end. I had either killed or maimed most of them, and as it went, my enemies in the United Nations were beginning to regret ever starting a war with me. Ivo and Archie said that they had surfaced to aid me and that they had been searching for me for months.

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Almost a year had passed at the time and I had actually given no thought to the fact that I cut off all contact with anyone in an effort to remain undetected. It was a strange year, but sure enough, a couple of months later the killers stopped appearing and everything went back to being relatively normal.

The following year, in 1984, Archie and I were out on a little hit in Spain, and that was where I met Stone-Faced Forsythe for the second and last time. He had gotten better with a rifle, I'll give him that much. Unfortunately, old Manny didn't know I had Archie trailing me. As the sniper round flew over Valencia, my sneaky friend snuck up on the one-eyed gunner and took him out for good with a few Walther rounds to the back.

Stone-Face didn't die, of course. He just wound up paralyzed. And with his defeat came the reappearance of the Filthy Dozen's remaining members. Everyone who had tried to kill me the previous year had returned for vengeance, either for crippling them or killing their buddies. The professionals knew it was just business and stood clear while Archie and myself cleaned house, settled feuds, and tied up loose ends.

It was a long and bloody trail that I had made from Zaragoza to Bilbao, but by the time I made it to Ireland, where I had planned to rest for a couple of months or so, I felt my vacation was damn well earned. I'll tell you what though, that wasn't the last time I took out a world leader, and it sure as hell won't be the last.

In less than a month I was balls deep into my next assignment. The picture in the inner breast pocket of my coat was of a man named Oliver Yasuo. He was twenty-four, or so it seemed, and had made a living as a prolific cracksman alongside an ex-mafia hitman and a modern-day ronin. Since my rifle was in the shop I figured a clean kill at close range would do the trick.

He was alone, walking down a series of Tuscan-styled arches that led to a clearing full of cafes overgrown with grape-less grapevines. I raised my silencer to take the shot, and as I did, the target turned to flash me a look of instinct. Ten minutes later we were sipping expressos and comparing adventures.

The following day I told my employer the job was done, but let Oliver walk. He laid low for a while before his next big score one year later and I got off with two million in the bank. This world is a really interesting place, but that doesn't mean anything if you take all of the interesting people out of it.

I don't know what it is, but all the best international thieves seem to come out of France. My most recent target, a man by the name of Émile Marie, had a bounty on his head of over twenty million dollars. It was a good gig and promised to be a quick one too, given that he was publicly parading around the City of Lights without a care in the world.

I'd later find out that this was because he had hired a legion of assassins to make it so that Émile could go about his day-to-day life without catching a bullet or two between the eyes. Unfortunately for him, Aesop was on the job. I saw a couple of would-be assassins fall in their attempts to take out Émile, as not one of them could even get close to him.

That was when I decided to incorporate my greatest talent. Now, I wouldn't be much of a hitman if disguises weren't firmly fixed into my arsenal of skills. To top that I had, over the course of my plentiful career, achieved the title of a master of disguise by press organizations from around the world.

And as we all know, if the news says it's true, then it must be. So, I took distant notes about Émile's daily schedule, set up an apple shop in the market he frequented every week and by the following Thursday sold him an apple laced with enough poison to kill an ox. After he hit the floor, Émile's assassins were called off since their meal ticket had finally been torn in twain. 

After that, I stayed on in Paris, proceeded to take in a lovely seafood dinner, and even hopped on a short cruise to reflect upon how great I was at my job. It wasn’t long before I was back at it again. My next job called for a damn good rifle, so I broke out my Barrett M82 and headed to the heart of Electric Town to put a hole in the head of this Yakuza affiliate who had been fucking over his underlings for far too long.

To be honest the guy was unremarkable and the job was up and done in a matter of minutes. I slipped away into the night and was dining at this funky ramen place no less than forty minutes after the hit. I remember thinking it was weird that the guy I had assassinated wasn't even Japanese. He was Lithuanian.

I don't claim to know anything about the Yakuza or how they function, but I could have sworn that they only allowed Japanese men into their ranks. Anyways, the trip marked my introduction to sake which has replaced red wine as my favorite alcoholic beverage. I wonder if margaritas will replace sake as my favorite if I ever end up doing a job in Mexico.

Funnily enough, I'm headed there next week to lift this ancient spear for a mysterious collector that's said to resurrect the dead. I doubt it, honestly, but still, it'll be nice to have a change of scenery. In another life, I may have been a salaryman or the head of a dairy department in some quiet western American town somewhere, but that would have required me to work.

On the whole, I am considered by reputation to be an outlaw and a lawman. When those who speak of Leon Stansfield voice their disgust, they call me a villain, a monster, a psychopath, and yet my morals couldn't be clearer. Kids are off-limits. Women, unless they pose a major threat to the innocent, have no place on my radar.

The same goes for animals, and anyone below the age of twenty-one, no matter who or what they may be. I believe it is the job of the assassin to possess total logical reason, for to allocate true justice, he who dispenses it must be unflawed in his ability to make proper judgments. At least that's what my grandfather always taught me.

So you see, it is for this reason that there is no way I could possibly suffer from psychopathy. Besides, who can honestly say killing isn't just a little fun? I suppose it was that mentality that had the world clawing at my feet for any bits of information they could gather about me. I was an enigma and that made them love me even more.

In regards to my national origins, I might have been Greek. I also might have been Italian, French, German, or English. The job of the assassin has never been to deliberate, so I guess that's where I differ. On the subject of memories, mine are as jumbled as the winds that gnaw against the brine of the sea.

Orders come down from up high, from billionaires, and politicians, and criminal organizations looking to thin the herd. I get a name, a picture, the time, the place, and get to work for easy money. It lasts a moment and when it's done the cleanup is out of my hands. Sometimes the target sits in a lavish penthouse, other times they hide away in a shack in South America.

Either way, they're usually held up with a greased-up revolver and a mountain of blow nearby. The more interesting jobs take me to places I never even dreamed of going to. In the end, I find a nice little place to lie low in Europe where I drink vintage wine, suck down surf and turf, and lounge to my heart's content.

Thus is the life of an assassin, a hired hitman, a bounty killer, and all those in between the lot. I'll never forget the time I was drugged and kidnapped by one of my greatest enemies, Doctor Fixx. He had a fascination with carnivals and fancied himself an eccentric billionaire, so I guess it's no surprise that when he came into possession of his own island he turned it into a color deathtrap where he enjoyed trapping everyone he didn't like.

We had crossed paths once in 1966 after a quick jaunt through Rome led to me stealing a collection of jewels Fixx was planning on using to fund some laser gun he was building. After the jewels were secured at my hideout in Greece I was jumped by a gang of hooded freaks with poison needle guns and almost taken out of the equation.

After evading them with the help of my hacker and information specialist, Ivo, we were able to track down Fixx on account of his goons having his company's logo on all their weapons. After confronting Fixx in the middle of his mansion, located on a small island just off the coast of Brazil. In the end, I blew up his mansion and believed the maniac to be dead.

Alas, I was wrong and roughly five years later was forced to shoot myself out of a labyrinth of circus-style traps. Finding the control room where Fixx was held up was easy enough simply for the fact that the Doctor was predictable as all hell, choosing to hide within the castle at the center of his island.

Our confrontation ended in a quickdraw which I won, of course, seeing as how Fixx wasn't exactly in his prime anymore. The island didn't have any self-destruct sequence or anything like that, but I did return to land on a jet ski. After about a week INTERPOL found the island and took it over. Just as well, I suppose.

Now, this may be a little off-topic but just bare with me here, cause I feel it needs to be said. To preface this, I would like to state that I am not a very political person. Having said that, I find politics increasingly hard to avoid these days. I don't believe that Donald Trump is the Devil, nor do I believe that he is the next incarnation of Christ like some people I know.

He's just all right. I find that people either praise or curse him way too much. Not too many realize that he's just a businessman who tried his hand at politics and did a decent job. In all honesty, I think Trump is funnier than anything. I like his shit-starter attitude, but outside of that, I don't really have an opinion.

I definitely think people put too much shit on him for the sake of doing it. That and I don't think making fun of someone's appearance counts as slights against their political prowess. If I had to choose a political party I suppose I'd call myself an Independent. This is because I believe in a little of what everybody has to say.

On the whole, I can't honestly support every facet of one organization. This is because I believe they lie just as often as they tell the truth. A political organization without falsehoods is like cereal without a spoon. It just doesn't work and it's a mess to swallow down. My biggest problem with politics in America is how we have this two-party system when more than two political parties exist.

The news always makes it out to be the Republicans versus the Democrats. Elections are treated like games, ending up being little more than popularity contests. The Republicans and the Democrats are treated like sports teams, with no one even considering the other parties. I genuinely wonder what would happen if we threw caution to the wind and elected a Libertarian.

Firstly, I know that would never happen. It's impossible. We are so stubbornly focused on our two-party war that there's no way in hell we would allow ourselves to branch away from it. Even if it was for our benefit. I've seen the stubborn idiocy of the American people firsthand, and it isn't particular to any one party or organization.

Every now and again politicians, and even those faces in the government, are given the opportunity to help their fellow man, and at every opportunity, they do the opposite. It doesn't take a lot to look around and see that the world has become inconvenient. Whenever you owe money the government wants it NOW and they will go through your ass to get it. 

However, when it is you who is owed money, oh... it's no big deal. It'll happen when it happens. No rush, no hurry, no urgency, no care. Too many people are too damn stubborn. We don't like change. It scares us. Yet, isn't that all we get promised every year? Better schools, better laws, better taxes, better roads, better this, better that, better, better, better, change, change, change, change, change.

It kind of gets tiring to hear after a while. The same people who said they loved the chance they took on Trump are the same people who will refuse to give any other political party a shot at the presidency. Trump wasn't a long shot. He had charisma and a no-bullshit attitude backing him. When Mitt Romney ran for president, people bitched about how he'd run America like a company, not a country, and hated him for even suggesting the idea. 

Trump actually did just that and everyone loved him for it. Not only that, it actually kind of worked. Fancy that. Personally, I don't believe the Republican versus Democrat infinity war the media keeps trying to make us choke down. Every other day there's a new development, a new scandal, or new information.

This person leaked this, this county did that, and it goes on, and on, and on. The news died a long time ago. Now, all we have is a poisonous cluster of information junkies, constantly cooking up new bullshit in order to get people hooked. What annoys me is how people will acknowledge the faults of the news, yet still subscribe to it religiously.

People constantly tell me to never believe the media, while in the same sentence praising the news channel who agrees with their political party. It's like a sea of hypocrites, scared to be wrong, but too unsure to be right. Do you ever notice that the crazy shit always seems to hit the fan whenever big hype over an old story dies down?

It's almost like someone's writing this shit? People don't realize that the media is only there to piss you off so you'll go and vote. FOX, CNN, and the rest of them don't give a shit about you. Sad to say, but it's the hard truth. All you encapsulate are some ratings for them. Just the other day I walked in on my father watching FOX.

On the television was a panel of a bunch of people making fun of a politician's appearance. They laughed about it for a good ten minutes, and as they did I felt justified in my refusal to watch the news. Insult hurling and petty gang-ups. So this is what the news has come to? I couldn't get over it. I avoid it at all costs now.

All the news does is get me angry, and I'm tired of being their piggy bank. It doesn't matter if it's FOX, CNN, the Young Turks, or anyone in-between. One is more full of shit than the next, and it's a fact no one wants to accept. I really do believe that the media is just a form of control put in place to distract us from the real problems.

If you're too busy running a rat race you have no time to do the things you want to do. The idea of working young and retiring old I find completely ass-backward. Why do I want to be free to do whatever I want when my knees can't bend and my dick won't work? No one has to guts to say we're fucked.

Anyone who points out the flaws of modern society is labeled edgy or berated. They aren't a team player. They're just an insert-encapsulating-term-here. I have to say, it's a great way to distract the masses from the reality of the fact that they are on a sinking ship. I love empty platitudes and broad generalizations that keep people from actually having to explain themselves. 

Politicians and the media love them too. Hell, it's the backbone of their industry. The biggest crime, in my opinion, that politics has committed against the world is how bad agendas have fucked up movies and television. Everything has a pro-this or anti-that message crammed in on top of poorly veiled metaphors and badly constructed allegories.

I get that this sort of thing has always been around in film and television, but for fuck sake, it was never this obvious, toxic, and forced. I truly believe there are people that don't realize that there is more to life than politics. Society has made it so none of us get a break. We are forced into a world where you either suffer or perish.

Life shouldn't be this way, yet those who are lucky or were handed their plate will say it was all hard work and that we should all be grateful to go to bed hungry, to be beaten by our peers, to lose all of our money, to be denied medical attention. Strange how the greatest country on earth isn't run by the greatest of people.

We aren't a shithole, but we definitely take ourselves too seriously. Our pride and the pride of our people will be our downfall. With generations who are so scared to let go of the past, their attempts to remain relevant only serve to ruin the next generation's future. I especially love hearing about when money goes missing from the United States Treasury and no one has any idea where it's gone.

It's almost like the people who are supposed to be held accountable just aren't. Live in the now. Forget about what Hannity told you to be mad about last night. He doesn't matter. Nothing does say for your tranquility. I don't believe it's going too far to say that Republican and Democrat politicians have been in bed with each another from the start.

Anyone who knows government knows you can make a killing off if pinning large groups of people against one another. The facts are that our food is poison, our taxes are too high, and the world is dying. It's almost like we subconsciously know this and choose to ignore it in favor of small daily bursts of joy.

To be perfectly frank, I think we fucked up society a long time ago and that any attempt to save face now would do nothing to help the system we refuse to break away from. Hell, the brunt of it truly hit me once I found out I had to buy a yearly license just to fish. One of the biggest scams in creation if you ask me.

To go into each and every little thing wrong with our system would take forever, but it's little things like that that add up after a while. When I was younger I used to skip school and work on truly beautiful days so I could go on walks through forests, sleep on fields, and collect rocks in streams. That's what life should be.

Not worrying about a mortgage with a 401K and your social security while calculating your credit score and keeping on top of all your usernames and passwords for all your many accounts. After a while, it becomes too much, yet folks still genuinely wonder why people commit suicide. Yes, that's right.

Suicide. Not self-end. Not the definition of the word. The word is suicide, and it's only getting worse. Unnecessary change after unnecessary change, year after year. In truth, you are never meant to escape the system. It's kind of dystopian once you think about it. You are meant to work day after day, putting into society what you will never get back out.

I believe this is why most young people go to work, or not, and put in their most minimal effort. They have seen where their parents and grandparents were screwed and just refuse to play the losing game. George Carlin once said the American Dream is called as such because you have to be asleep to believe it.

Too many people wholeheartedly believe America's shit doesn't stink. It's delusional. A while back we had this huge influx of people, both young and old, agreeing that things were not what they thought they'd be in America. We had, and have, so many fixable things we could be working on, and yet we do fuck all about them.

This wave was strong, leading many socially conscious people to agree for the first time in a while. Then the elections came. Doubters were called anti-American because it was easier to name-call than to prove their point. All of a sudden we had Republicans and Democrats once again telling us why we should believe them.

That's when the questioning and the self-reflection went silent. News spread, Hillary Clinton ran, and the rest is history. Everyone's heads turned the other way. Epstein was murdered in prison, everyone stopped talking about it. COVID hit like a battering ram, no one knows where it came from. There's this saying I heard a while back that says that whoever controls information controls the world.

That is, without a doubt, the most truthful thing I've heard in the last decade. We rely on the information of those whose job is to lie. Truth in the modern world is a figment of our imagination. Freedom is a figment of our imagination. Lakes, forests, fields, rivers, the right to sport, the privilege to grow food, build your homes, and machines that can provide you with fresh water to drink and run engines and vehicles, all of it is owned, regulated, taxed, monitored, and you get a say in none of it.

The only thing you're asked is whether or not you want to pay that yearly cost in order to do that thing people a hundred years ago could have done on a whim. I suppose at the end of the day politics is just a word meant to encompass the human race's desire to work together, yet our shared inability to do so.

This reminds me of an old job I took because I was bored. I'll never forget the target. It was this kid by the name of Joey Norum. He just woke up one day and went around telling people when they were gonna die. Now I don't know all the facts, but I do know that every death he predicted came to fruition in under the span of a week.

That started scaring the hell out of people, so they called me. It took place in the small town of Canter, Kansas. I was just passing through at the time. I hadn't spent much time in the south and people like Joey Norum are the reason why. Every time I find myself either strolling or taking a job outside any major city I always wind up encountering shit that makes me question what's possible in this world.

I think it was less that Joey was predicting his fellow townie's death dates, and more like he was assigning assured new ones to them. The local preacher called Joey a demon and said he was possessed or some shit. I didn't believe it for a second. I blew his brains out easy enough, and no dark essence rose from the corpse or whatever they say is supposed to happen in movies when you kill the host of a demon.

I don't think there was anything demonic there. I'm pretty sure Joey Norum was just a serial killer with a flair for the dramatic. There's a lot of that these days. Folks passing off murders and manipulation as if they were supernatural occurrences. That's how people like Grigori Rasputin and Aleister Crowley got as far as they did.

Convince people of whatever you like and you'll have them eating out of your hands. Just like cult leaders, they are my absolute favorite people to kill. When you think about it, most people are basically stupid and rotten. I think that's why I've been doing this for so long. It's my own little way of wiping the board clean, bit by tiny bit.

So much of my time is spent appreciating those moments right before I go to bed. It wasn't always like that. I used to enjoy the adventures more. Going to sleep at night was always just a bonus. Now I pass through jobs without consequence. I don't even remember half the people I've killed. I don't much care for modern laws.

They seem to only be in place to inconvenience us. I remember when I used to want to be an average person. Debt used to cripple me. Now no one knows who I really am. Countless aliases on paper get me by while my true identity remains a mystery, even to my closest friends. Lately, I've been slightly more unhinged.

I finally feel the repetitive nature of my life catching up to me and turning me into something dull. The fact that I can adapt and change with the times is what makes me stand out as an assassin. My gimmick is evolution. I don't use invisible weapons, dress like a cowboy, or strictly kill my targets with poisons or blades.

I'll do whatever it takes to get the job done. Anything at all. I got it! I think I finally understand what all this has been about. It's so simple, I can't believe I didn't figure it out sooner. I'm having a midlife crisis. I guess that makes sense. I suppose five decades of doing the same thing over and over will do that to you.

I wonder how many people can say with complete certainty that they remember Leon Stansfield killing the president of the United States all the way back in 1968. That's what put me on the map after all. For the next decade, I was the most wanted man alive before fading into obscurity. It just goes to show that nothing you do makes a lasting impression in this world. 

We're all destined to be forgotten one day. Even me, despite all the good and bad I've done. As a traveling assassin, I have had the pleasure of meeting countless one-of-a-kind individuals. One of them was an old German soldier by the name of Heimlich Von Chokkar. He was so handsome, his blonde hair and blue eyes were said to sparkle in the sun.

He was a tall man with broad shoulders, a thick, muscular build, and an indifferent, yet solemn, looking face. He loved submachine guns and dipping his war medals in gold as a way of decorating his light green Bundeswehr uniform. Upon his hat sat a multitude of various pins and buttons that displayed his love for combat and heavy artillery.

Von Chokkar was a celebrated Soldat, known for his incredible courage, endurance, tenacity, and brute strength. He stood six feet tall and weighed roughly two hundred and thirty solid pounds. In combat he was unmatched, being a master of both Bak Mei and Krav Maga mixed martial arts.

One look at Von Chokkar could tell you that there wasn’t an ounce of fat anywhere on his body. He was a dedicated man. Strict, yet slightly sadistic. He had a love for war and carnage, making him a ruthless tactician on the battlefield. Legends about his strength told of how he had once taken grenade shrapnel to the chest and walked away unscathed.

Another tale told of Von Chokkar being kidnapped by enemy soldiers and locked inside of an iron cage from which he proceeded to chew his way out. It was believed that the man could slightly bend steel, jump six feet vertically, and hold his breath for up to four minutes underwater. His life had been dedicated to the art of war with Sun Tzu being the only idol he had ever worshipped.

In the simplest of terms, Von Chokkar was an elitist of the highest caliber. We first met in Berlin. He was out protecting some diplomat that I had been sent after to threaten. Yes, you heard that right. Not kill, threaten. It was really only one of a handful of jobs in which someone didn’t want someone else dead so I took it out of professional curiosity.

Chokkar and myself had ourselves a nice little fight in this deserted wing of Wissenschaft Frankreich, or foreign consulate building. I used an anonymous bomb threat to clear the building and cornered Chokkar’s diplomat whose name currently escapes me. Chokkar didn’t like that none too much, leading to our little spat.

It was the first time I could not physically best my opponent. In the end, I used a smoke bomb and peeled out of there before backup could drop in. About two years later Chokkar had been promoted and sent after this domestic terrorist operating out of Hamburg, Germany, in a borough by the name of Eimsbüttel.

Chokkar beat me to the punch, leading to another defeat in which I came to the realization that crossing paths with that blonde brick shit-house was a bad idea. After that I just sort of avoided him, all the while keeping a loose ear out for him. He’s just one of those guys I can’t get anything over on and in a lot of ways that bothers me more than anything.

It’s so nice to have the upper hand until you realize you can’t have it all the time and that sooner or later you’re bound to lose your seat to somebody. Reminds me of my uncle. He was always a modest and understanding guy. Very straight forward. He used to be a hired gun. Back when he was alive folks used to pay him big money to escort them around.

He'd survived the war, won himself some fame and there were rumors that he even met the president. Anyways, there was this tale about him that had floated around my family for a while. It took place about a decade before my uncle retired. He got hired alongside some other burly men to keep this young aristocrat safe while they made this trip from Wyoming to Arizona. 

Folks said my uncle figured it'd be another chance to make good cash, so he jumped at the deal. The offer was made to my uncle by a grey old man in undertaker's clothes who found him in a Wyoming bar one foggy night. My uncle was given an advance and an address, which made the job look promising.

The old man said his wealthy nephew, whom he was charged with looking after, had a sensitivity to sunlight, and because of this, he'd be in a covered carriage the whole time. The old feller added that there'd most likely be bandits in pursuit, but that didn't scare my uncle none. He just nodded, figuring that bastard who'd be coming after a sickly youth for a little pocket change deserved a bullet or two in the ass.

My uncle got to the young aristocrat's manor early. Just in time to see the boy's caretaker bolt up the carriage with an iron lock. When my uncle inquired, the old man said his nephew was given to muscle fits and, if left unsecured, would accidentally throw himself out of the carriage with it in motion.

My uncle nodded, obviously doubting the legitimacy of the claim. When the rest of the guards were rounded up they were given horses, guns, and told what formation to keep around the wealthy youth's carriage at all times. All the while the old man rode beside the carriage driver, a strange and quiet spectacled fellow in a heavy coat, top hat, and long red scarf.

The trip was easy at first, so my uncle had explained. He said the first few days were bliss. Things only got uppity the fourth night the group stopped to set up came. The gang was instructed to camp by a forest opening while the old man, the driver, and the young aristocrat made base deeper into the woods.

As night fell and the embers settled and my uncle awoke to the sound of wolves chasing deer. Going off alone, my uncle was afraid a pack of coyotes had surrounded the old man's set up in the woods and charged in to help. Instead, he came across a dead fire and an unbolted carriage. My uncle explored the site and found a slew of small animals that appeared to have been ripped apart and drained of all their blood.

Fearing for his life, my uncle ran back to the guard's camp at the edge of the forest, but tripped over a rock, fell, and was knocked out. When he came to my uncle said he was back at camp with the guards around him packing up their belongings. My uncle saw the carriage, bolted up again, being loaded up as the old man and the driver sat patiently, having awoken before everyone else.

My uncle, seeing everyone was fine, figured he must have had a bad dream and didn't bring up what he had experienced with anyone. Though later in the day he did feel a slight bruise where he'd supposedly bumped his head. With two more days to go on the trip, my uncle was beginning to feel relieved that the job was almost over.

As the group made their way over the Arizona border they were attacked by four surely men on horseback. In the firefight that ensued upon their arrival, three out of the six hired guards were killed before my uncle and the driver, who revealed he was packing a set of expensive revolvers, finished off the last of the raiders.

My uncle and the other guards were permitted by the old man to loot the attackers, but all anyone found were a few bibles, silver crosses, and iron dirks. My uncle pocketed one of the crosses and wondered why four men, so outnumbered and underprepared, would go to so much trouble to knock over a carriage that was most likely not carrying a lot of loot.

That night around the fire my uncle and the other guards concluded that the raiders they'd bested must have been looking to kidnap their young aristocrat and hold him for ransom. At least, that seemed like the most logical reason at the time. The following night the guarded carriage had reached its destination.

That being another secluded manor owned by the wealthy youth. The bodies of the three murdered guards, who had been thrown atop the carriage for the duration of the trip, were taken in by the old man. He told my uncle and the surviving guards that he and his nephew would contact their families and pay for their funerals out of thanks.

The old man thanked the hired hands and told everyone involved that as a bonus they could keep the horse and guns they were given at the start of the journey, on top of their promised pay. My uncle was the last one to get his money. The carriage driver handed out everyone's due while the old man helped his nephew into the manor under the curtain of the approaching night. 

As my uncle took his pay from the driver, he glanced over at the young aristocrat being helped out of the carriage and froze in fear. I heard my uncle recall that he'd never seen such a pale, withered young man before. He was an albino and according to what was passed down, the wealthy youth had eerily yellowish long nails, sharp ears, and eyes as black as those of a shark’s. 

My uncle supposedly used to say he could have looked past all that if it wasn't for the bloodstains he'd quickly spotted around the young man's mouth. My uncle only saw the young man for a few moments, before the carriage driver purposely stepped in front of him, obscuring his view, and thanking my uncle for his protection.

My uncle nodded, and left, never to hear from or about the mysterious aristocratic youth ever again. Now I know what you're thinking, and believe me, I'm thinking it too. But you have to understand, it was a simpler time back then. The age of reason had sunk its claws into everyone, and I doubt my uncle would have jeopardized such a great payday all on the vague suspicion that the man who hired him was protecting a vampire.

Now I always believed this story was bullshit. After all, I've traveled the world a thousand times over and never once found myself up against a vampire. I always thought my uncle just told me this story as a way of preparing me for the madness of the world. An introduction to life, if you will.

That doesn’t mean that the whole story isn’t true. I know for a fact that it happened on account of him having proof. On the other hand, there’s always the possibility that the youth he was escorting believed himself to be undead. I don’t consider that possibility much, but that doesn’t make it unbelievable.

Hell, I’ve met fools who actually believed they were immortal only to drop dead after catching a bullet to the heart. There are a lot of crazy people in this world whose motives and actions often defy description. I believe that’s truly what my uncle was trying to tell me. I’ve met countless men who encompass that rare sort of individuality.

A sense of absolute understanding about the world and the harsh truth that no one like them will ever exist again. It’s the kind of thing that makes you long for the present and damn the future. This, of course, is leading to the introduction of someone whom I have spent a lot of time thinking about. Heimlich Von Chokkar was a German soldier who rose to prominence during the 1970s.

He was so handsome, his blonde hair and blue eyes were said to sparkle in the sun. He was a tall man with broad shoulders, a thick, muscular build, and an indifferent, yet solemn, looking face. He loved submachine guns and dipping his war medals in gold as a way of decorating his light green Bundeswehr uniform.

Upon his hat sat a multitude of various pins and buttons that displayed his love for combat and heavy artillery. Von Chokkar was a celebrated Soldat, known for his incredible courage, endurance, tenacity, and brute strength. He stood six feet tall and weighed roughly two hundred and thirty solid pounds. In combat he was unmatched, being a master of both Bak Mei and Krav Maga mixed martial arts.

One look at Von Chokkar could tell you that there wasn’t an ounce of fat anywhere on his body. He was a dedicated man. Strict, yet slightly sadistic. He had a love for war and carnage, making him a ruthless tactician on the battlefield. Legends about his strength told of how he had once taken grenade shrapnel to the chest and walked away unscathed.

Another tale told of Von Chokkar being kidnapped by enemy soldiers and locked inside of an iron cage from which he proceeded to chew his way out. It was believed that the man could slightly bend steel, jump six feet vertically, and hold his breath for up to four minutes underwater. His life had been dedicated to the art of war with Sun Tzu being the only idol he had ever worshipped.

In the simplest of terms, Von Chokkar was an elitist of the highest caliber. Special Agent Icarus Crane of the FBI was a pretty unique guy. He enjoys tea. Particularly Matcha, Camomile, and Earl Grey in that order. He was born in 1985 somewhere in Maine to a Spanish mother and a French father.

His right eye is blue and his left eye is green. He joined the bureau at the age of twenty-six. He speaks English, French, Japanese, Spanish, and German. He is a Libertarian and an Agnostic. He is a part-time practitioner of the occult and various pseudo-sciences. He enjoys Jazz and literature. He hates loud noises and Italians.

He's one of the only men who has ever come close to killing me. Despite this, I respect him greatly. He's one of those no-nonsense 1950s kinds of agents. A real President Carter type who trusts the American way even when he doubts it. He caught up to me once on a hit in Washington. The job was unsuccessful but it wasn't a total loss.

Crane shot me in the fucking shoulder and I put a bullet in his leg. I fled into the arms of Chesspiece and Action while Icarus chased us all the way to the shore. We lost him along the beach and fled down to Miami to lick our wounds. After that Crane was promoted. The lucky bastard. After that, just like Von Chokkar, I've kept a close eye on him.

Crane is one of those agents the bureau sends out to deal with their dirty little secrets. I'm talking about those human experiment cover-ups that they never like to admit to. Crane's the one who gets sent in to clear out abandoned compounds and deserted testing grounds. God only knows the unholy shit he's seen.

I heard through the grapevine once that he was forced to neutralize over a hundred or so mutated individuals somewhere in the bowels of Louisiana. That's what I heard anyways. Not sure how much of it is true, but I don't put anything past anyone. Where will I be tomorrow? The stale taste on my tongue tells me... Tibet.

I haven’t been there in fifteen years. The last time I was anywhere near there I was taking cues from this monk and his entourage. They all wore yellow robes and folded their hands and played nice in person. On paper, however, they were scheduling hits like it was going out of style. The people they wanted me to kill were always odd, often nobodies, yet always young men and women whom the monks must have deemed unholy or whatever. 

Personally, I think they were running an opium ring out of their temple and just wanted me to bump off the local competition. Anyways, after a while, the head monk decided to start cheating me on my usual rates so I filled him full of bullets and called it a day. I’ll never get that money back but the satisfaction of killing that prick will stay with me forever.

There are plenty of assassins in this business who bring a great deal of eccentricity to the gig. Joel Dwight, Martin Kenneth, and William Reginald make up a literal band of assassins called the Piano Men. Each one disguises their signature gun as an instrument and often take on large hits that occur in public.

Dwight plays the saxophone, Kenneth plays the upright bass, and Reginald plays the clarinet. I have only ever met them once. Jasmin, Jasmine, Jazmin, and Jazmine are a quartet of snipers who are most identifiable by the jade pendants they wear in contrast to their black camouflage attire. The four of them utilize tan fold-up carbine rifles, as well as catsuits made out of a rare altered fabric called Lotus silk that makes them appear transparent while in direct sunlight.

I even know a modern-day ronin assassin by the name of Yotaro. The blade of his katana is a metal alloy made up of diamond and tungsten. His big claim to fame is that there's nothing his sword can't cut. I'm pretty sure that's still true to this day. I am a little surprised he hasn't gotten himself shot yet with all the business he racks up.

Today is just another day in paradise, spent laying low after a hit. I have plenty of safe houses around the world, but those in Naples and San Fransisco are my favorites. Sometimes if I'm feeling safe after a hit I’ll stay in a townhouse or rent out a room somewhere in either France or Japan. The key factor when deciding where to lay low is making sure you have at least four escape routes if the authorities do so happen to tick you down. 

Remaining elusive is as important as staying alive. Escape from prison while possible is usually harder than the movies make it out to be. My hideouts, which I often stockpile with many of my weapons and gadgets, rarely hold anything of personal value. I treat them more like business centers with a television and a bar that’ll keep me busy long enough for the heat to die down.

After it has I change my face, secure a new identity, and go back out into the world until the next job usually finds me about a week later. It’s an excellent system and it's worked for professionals for decades. Over the last fifty years, I’ve been offered high positions in mobs and even assassination organizations.

I never joined because I’ve always preferred to handle my business by myself. Being a part of some syndicate would only complicate things. Next thing you know they start telling me who I can and can’t kill, then they want a cut of my money, and on, and on, and on. Nowadays especially it pays to go solo, and if you’re smart it won’t be a problem.

Even if you step on toes, as I’ve been known to do, it doesn’t matter as long as you’ve mastered the art of making yourself inaccessible. And I have. October is here and it's the coldest it's ever been. I got a job a while back to take out some banker who was carrying around some incriminating Polaroids of a senator up in Indianapolis.

I shot him in the neck, damn near decapitated him, and burned the photos. I charged double my usual fee for the added trouble of destroying items of interest. It was only two photos, but when you're taking out somebody as closely watched as that banker was, every second counts. After all, I had to search his whole suit and its many pockets before swiping the damn things.

I hate inconveniences. And while we're on the subject... why does the weather always have to be shitty on my days off? This is why people kill themselves. Sometimes I genuinely think about where all this is going and if I'm gonna like where it all ends up. Taking the lives of others seems to put you into this frame of mind in which you reflect a lot upon your choices. 

When I was young I didn't give a rat's ass about what I did. As long as it got me ass, fame, and money, it didn't matter who I killed or how. These days I'm beginning to get soft I think. I second-guess every hit and keep taking into account the lives and emotions of my targets. What the fuck is happening to me?

This line of work is about money for blood and that's the end of it! If I don't like it, I shouldn't even be here. Jonathan "Johnny" Johnson is a friend of mine and another Sunday morning regular at this dinner down in New Jersey. He's a hitman, sure, but he's one of those easygoing types. He's a relatable guy who doesn't really stand out and prefers to keep quiet about his line of work.

In the past, I have been accused of being too boastful and open about being an assassin. However, in my defense, if all I have to do to escape capture is throw on a silly disguise whenever I'm in public, why not bill myself as the world's greatest assassin? It's the legacy I'm after. I have no interest in lying low and keeping who I am from the world.

Johnny's not like that. He's content, but he's a dreamer. His dream is to retire someday to a sheep farm in Ireland, marry a red-headed Irish girl, and have kids who will know nothing about his life as a killer. You know, that old chestnut. The funny thing is that I believe in him. I am absolutely convinced he'll be able to do it.

He's practically there already, pushing metaphorical retirement. Johnson knows everything there is to know about me. Even things about my family, which is how you know I truly trust him. The key to any dynasty is information and keeping things bottled up in wait for just the right time. Aside from my true identity, my name, what I look like and so on, I have an archive of secrets that will most likely never see the light of day.

Others, however, I don't regard much as sentimental. The first of these is a confession of sorts, almost one hundred and thirty years in the making. It regards a series of unsolved murders and the mystery surrounding them. Between May and June of 1887, the dismembered remains of a woman's body were found floating along the River Thames near Rainham, London. 

Between September and October of 1888, similar remains were found across Whitehall in Westminster, then by the site that would become the headquarters of Scotland Yard. In June another woman's lone torso was found floating in the River Thames followed by the discovery of the rest of her limbs one week later.

In total there were four bodies, with only one being identified as belonging to a woman by the name of Elizabeth Jackson. She was a prostitute from Chelsea who had been eight months pregnant at the time of her death. Aside from dismemberment, no other cause of death could be determined from the state of the victims.

As it stands, Elizabeth Jackson got the worst of the four. Her left leg and thigh were discovered in Battersea, the lower part of her abdomen was found in Horsleydown, her liver was located near Nine Elms, and the upper part of her body, followed by her neck and shoulders, turned up in Battersea Park.

Her right foot and part of her leg were found in Wandsworth, her left leg and foot in Limehouse, her left arm and hand around Bankside, her buttocks and pelvis in Battersea again, her right thigh at the Chelsea Embankment, and finally, her right arm and hand in Bankside. All this occurred over the course of a week.

These brutal mutilations were dubbed the Thames Torso Murders. Long story short, the perpetrator was never caught. It was my grandfather, the first Leon Stansfield who was responsible. That's a family secret that shakes even me. To put a hundred-year-old mystery to rest, a few London-based aristocrats knocked up some prostitutes way back in the day.

The women tried to use their pregnancies to blackmail the nobles, so my grandfather was called in to cut the four women into a million pieces. According to his old diary, he made their deaths as painless as possible. History is full of little fucked up things like that. It's just something else entirely when it's your family that had a hand in something as notorious as that.

Now don't bother asking me to recite the names of the four vile aristocrats. I can tell you with absolute certainty that my grandfather, who regretted the act of killing a pregnant woman for money, murdered his employers soon after in some fit of justice which rarely becomes us. In the end, the whole ordeal was a cluster fuck of passion, deceit, greed, and regret. 

All those dirty little things humans are made of. You know? The things that matter nowadays have been reduced in choice. All the important stuff is in black and white. When it comes to things that don't matter you're given limitless options. It was Mark Twain that said if our vote mattered, we wouldn't be allowed to do it.

The truth of that put the world into perspective for me at a young age. Doing what I do, I don't bend to the threat of any organization or government. No one can force me to stop or hold anything over my head. I'm alone, but in my solitude, I have ultimate freedom. The laws of this fucked up world mean nothing to me.

I do not consider myself a member of the human race. I subscribe to no culture and do not believe in concepts such as property or rights. There is only decency, indifference, life, and death. No one owns anything, nobody owes anybody anything. It's all a symptom of a system we're too stupid to work our way out of.

You allow the ones on top to run your perfect little world, to reward you when you're good, to recognize your contributions. You are the victim of thievery, all dressed up and made up to look like equality. You give the world your life and get nothing in return. Your time belongs to the world. You own nothing.

We're fools lying to each other upon an isolated rock in the middle of nothingness, and we've convinced ourselves that we matter. We don’t.