At Ad Astra, assassinating business rivals is not only expected, but encouraged. This promotes a healthy and competitive environment in which our more adaptable employees flourish and thrive. And if anyone is thinking of aiming for a position on the board of directors, the message is the same as always. Come at us. We’re ready.
-Chairwoman Nina Ellory, Ad Astra Space Shipping, Passenger, Mining, Acquisitions, Exploration, and Exploitation Corporation.
Alex had a reputation among his friends for a certain level of oddity. Not that they thought he was personally odd - except his apparently close-to-unflappable demeanor - but just that he had all sorts of odd things happen to and around him.
Some of the strangeness was unbelievable if one didn’t know Alex, but all of his friends had seen at least a few of the weird events and so were inclined to believe the man when asked about what he’d been up to lately.
He never told them everything, of course. Some of the events were a little odder than others, and no amount of credibility would stretch that far. Still, a lifetime of strange events and odd occurrences meant that Alex wasn’t completely surprised when the assassin showed up to kill him.
It was mid-morning, but the coffee shop was empty. A ‘Closed for Maintenance’ sign hung on the glass door and, surprisingly, potential customers actually saw and read it and didn’t try to come in, so Alex had been able to work in peace.
Alex was mostly done with repairing the cappuccino maker; a mercurial bitch of a machine that had been alternating between not working at all and spitting hot foam at the user’s face - when he heard the voice behind him.
“So, you’re my target.”
On the dull mirrored surface of the wall Alex, could see a young woman with a fluffy blonde bob of hair. Her eyes were narrowed, and she stared at his back. Alex thought she looked maybe twenty or twenty one, but his guess might have been off on account of being slightly distracted by the fact that the woman was holding a gun.
Inwardly, he sighed a little. It had been a few weeks since the last oddity, so this wasn’t entirely unexpected. Alex looked back down at the machine he was close to fixing.
“One sec, ma’am.” he said, “Let me finish this up, and I’ll be right with you.”
As Alex went back to trying to prize a particularly grime-covered piece of machinery out to clean it, the woman spoke again. “I was sent here to kill you.”
“Oh, an assassin huh?” That’s a new one, he thought. A thrill of excitement threatened to make Alex smile, but he held it back. The woman who pointed the gun at his back frowned.
“I mean it!” she declared. Was that a quaver in her voice?
“Let me finish fixing this for the owner of this place - she’s awful with machinery, and she’s not doing well enough to afford to pay a repair guy,” Alex explained calmly, “We can play in maybe five minutes or so?”
“I-I don’t think you heard me correctly. I don’t care about your boss!” the woman exclaimed, her voice rising in pitch. “So get ready to die!”
She’s not pulling the trigger yet, Alex thought calmly as he continued to work. Aloud he said “She’s not my boss, I’m just helping out. This machine has been broken for, like, a month now. She’s losing customers.”
“I am here to kill you!” the young woman declared, enunciating every word as if Alex were a particularly slow child.
“Mmhmm, that’s fine, but hold off for just a few minutes. It’s not like I’m running anywhere.” Alex felt more relaxed now than he had in days. He never knew exactly what sort of oddity would fall upon him, but over the years he’d grown adept at reading the signs and assessing their danger level. The cheetah someone had mailed him had given more dangerous vibes, and the poor great cat had ended up simply ruining his carpet and comic book collection.
“I…” the woman huffed. Alex heard a loud click, followed in rapid succession by several more. Click, click, clickclickclick. He looked up in the mirror and saw that the young woman had her eyes squeezed shut as she pulled the trigger of the gun repeatedly.
Alex sighed, put down his tools, and turned to face the young woman. She opened her eyes and they widened in surprise. Alex noted that they were the color of the sky on a day that promised snow.
“I’m not very up to date with the whole career of ‘assassin’, but I think you may have forgotten to load that.” he pointed out politely. The young woman let out a gasp of realization and checked the pistol. It took her a minute or so to figure out how, and when she realized that she did in fact have no bullets, a rosy blush started to spread over her pale cheeks.
“Gosh darn it!” she exclaimed.
“I’ll give you a moment to take care of that if you like.” Alex offered. After all, it never hurt to be polite to people who are threatening to kill you.
With an ever-expanding blush, the woman started to search in a belt of many pouches that could have come right out of a Liefeld comic from the ‘90’s. It hung loose on her hips, and with growing dismay the woman snapped open and then shut each of the little pockets.
“I…where did I put…” she muttered, and let out another huff. “I can’t find them.”
“Did you want to go home and get some more? I'll still be here for a while.”
“I’m not leaving here until you’re dead!” the woman declared. The emotions warring across her face spoke equal volumes of reluctance and determination. “I’ll just stab you!”
Alex took a cautious step backward just in case, as the woman reached for a knife sheath strapped to her leg. A leg that was also covered in the thin black fabric of her yoga pants. The woman also wore a light blue athletic top, which didn’t seem like the best gear for an assassin to wear, but Alex didn’t want to judge.
Drawing her weapon, the woman raised her hand high in the air and glared at Alex. Her winter eyes sparkled with what looked like the suggestion of tears. Knuckles white with tension, the woman stepped forward hesitantly.
That stance is awful, Alex thought, and stabbing down like that just gives me a long amount of time to move out of the way. Not that Alex complained about avoiding injury, of course, but this whole thing was starting to give off a vibe of hastily thrown together chaos.
“I worked in a knife-fighting arena once, “ Alex told the woman conversationally, if for nothing else than to buy a few more minutes to figure out the optimal play, “Janitorial work. Messy stuff. Educational. I was only there for a few weeks though. One day I arrived at work to find that the whole abandoned warehouse setting had been replaced with a beautiful park that had hundred-plus year old oak trees growing there.”
The woman tilted her head, not quite listening to Alex’s words, but also most importantly not trying to attack yet.
“It was just one of those things, you know? According to online maps and even a visit to the council the park had always been there. Weird, right? Anyway, you probably want to approach me with your knife held low, and…” Alex looked at the weapon and raised an eyebrow. It most certainly wasn’t a knife.
The woman broke eye contact to follow Alex’s gaze to her hand, where she found that she was white-knuckle gripping a Barbie doll dressed in overalls, its artificial hair frizzed up like a dandelion. She let out a little whine of frustration, and threw the toy onto the tiled floor.
“Gosh DARN it!” she choked back a sob that made Alex feel bad for the woman, “What the heck is going on?!”
Alex was about to offer his theories when the woman started searching in her belt of pouches again, mumbling to herself. He caught the word ‘embarrassing’ which, he supposed, was a reasonable reaction. “Aha!” the woman declared, pulling a rather sad-looking cheap throwing star out of one of the pouches. Someone had looped a set of plastic beads through it to make a necklace. “Oh, fudge!”
“I’m not sure those are very good for killing people outside of the movies.” Alex offered, watching as the woman struggled to remove the colorful beads. She winced and drew in a sharp breath as she caught her finger on one of the not-entirely-dull edges. A bright dot of blood rose from her finger and she stared at it with greater dismay.
“Do you need a band-aid? I think there might be some in the back of-”
“GOSH DARN IT!!” the woman’s eyes teared up. “This was supposed to be easy!” With those words the woman ran out of the shop sobbing. Alex watched the glass door slam, shaking the panes of glass with a light tremor.
“Well, “ he said to himself aloud, “That wasn’t as bad as it could have been.” He considered the event from start to finish and shook his head. “I hope she’s going to be okay.”
Alex took a few moments to collect a small box that smelled strongly of coffee beans from the back room and placed the throwing star, the doll, and the gun inside. A quick spray and wipe with some cleaning supplies got rid of the admittedly tiny amount of blood left behind. He glanced over to the glass door again, and saw the blonde would-be assassin sitting on the steps outside.
Is she crying? A spark of misplaced guilt rose in the man as Alex reassessed the event. Apparently it’s not over yet. That means I might have some time.
He finished fixing the cappuccino machine. It wasn’t that he didn’t care about the stranger who had tried and failed to effectively end his life, but she looked to be right around the midpoint of a crying fit and it was probably best to let her weep it all out a little.
Once the machine was repaired, Alex cleaned up and ran it through a couple of times to make sure everything was working. No hot water or steam sprayed in his face, so Alex felt his efforts were successful. He put his tools away and brewed up some hot coffee in two of the ‘Caffeine Death Of The Universe’ sized foam mugs. Then, searching under the counter he found the bottle he knew would be there.
The owner wasn’t an alcoholic, Alex thought, but he couldn’t blame her for needing a little fortification to get through a day in the service industry. Alex added a generous splash to one of the mugs. He gathered up the box and the mugs, looking outside again.
In the mid-morning sun the young woman was alternating between weeping and gesturing at the sky while shouting something indistinct. Alex added the bottle of rum to the box and walked toward the door.
Okay, universe, he thought, let’s see where this one goes.
*
She had almost cried herself out when Alex sat down beside the young woman on the steps. She didn’t notice him arriving, posed with her head in her hands looking at the concrete path under her feet. Alex put the box to one side and nudged at the blonde woman’s shoulder with one of the mugs.
“Wha-?” she flinched, startled at first and then wide eyed and incredulous when she saw the man she’d tried to kill holding out a truly massive mug of coffee toward her. He was even smiling in a gentle sort of way that made her eyes threaten to start leaking again.
“I figure you’ve had a rough morning. This might help.” Alex waved the mug at her. “Though honestly I think the rum I added will probably help more. I know, it’s not even lunchtime yet, but bar humor says it’s happy hour somewhere in the world, right?”
Gingerly the young woman took the mug and sniffed. Her nose wrinkled at the blended scents of roasted coffee beans and rum. She took a sip, pulled a face, and then took another.
“There we go, “ Alex said, drinking some of his own rum-less beverage. “Do you have a little sister?”
“Wh-what?” the woman blinked rapidly, confused. “That’s not the sort of thing you ask your assassin…is it?!”
“Well you haven’t finished me off yet so I figured I’d ask.” Or even started, he added in his head, but that would have been unkind to say aloud. “I only asked because if you said you do have a little sister she probably played with your, uh, tools of the trade and left some of her toys behind.”
Confusion warred with frustration across the woman’s face, followed by a deep breath inward and a long exhalation as logical, common sense explanations for her ridiculous failures settled into place. “I am going to glare at her so hard.” she muttered.
“A fate worse than death, “ Alex grinned. The woman narrowed her eyes at him and he held up his hand. “Well, probably not my death but that’s not reached me yet so I guess I don’t know.”
The woman took another sip of her coffee - a much larger one, Alex noted - shuddering as its warmth began to spread in her stomach. She looked at Alex’s smile and shook her head slowly. “Why?”
“Why what?”
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
“Why are you being nice to me?” The question came out in such a small voice that Alex’s heart felt for the girl. He decided to be honest.
“Because you look like you’re having a bad morning, “ he said, “And because you didn’t just take a shot at me without speaking to me first. You didn’t try that hard to kill me, and this is going to sound really silly but also because you can’t seem to actually bring yourself to swear even in a highly stressful situation.”
“There’s no reason to swear when there are thousands of other perfectly decent words to use.” the woman said primly, and then blushed. “I mean-”
“It’s fine. It’s cute, really.” Alex said. “So hi, I’m Alex, which you probably know since you showed up here to kill me after all. What’s your name?”
“Sophie- no, wait, I shouldn’t say.” The woman tried to recover, but it was too late. Her eyes started to tear up again. “I can’t even get anonymity right!”
“Sophie? Okay. Nice to meet you Sophie. Listen, killing people is probably, like, super hard on multiple levels. Maybe you’re just not ready for it?”
“I need to be! I accepted the job!” Another long sip accompanied this declaration.
“Who sent you after me anyway? I’m very curious.”
“I…I can’t tell you.”
“Well if you’re still going to kill me once we get you all calmed down again it won’t really matter will it?” Alex said reasonably. The woman tilted her head to the side in disbelief.
“You want to die?”
“Far from it, but it seems like it’s something you really want to do and so once you’re feeling better you can give it another try, okay?”
That may have been tempting fate a little too much but Alex was working on instinct and, if he were honest with himself, the fact that the woman radiated a gentle innocence that he just couldn’t see changing into a killer instinct any time soon. Even in the coffee shop he hadn’t actually felt in any sort of real danger.
“It just seems more random than usual.” Alex added after some silence. “I can’t think of any reason someone would want me dead.”
“I can’t say, sorry. Professional ethics or rules or something. I think it was called the ‘Snitches Don’t Have The Opportunity To Get Stitches Because They Were Gutted And Died Screaming Horribly’ clause. Though I think that was added for levity.” Sophie shrugged and let out a deep sigh. She stared into her coffee mug, which was starting to get low. Alex pulled out the rum and offered a top-up, which the woman accepted wordlessly.
Alex looked out at the street which was rather quiet for a weekday morning. It was probably just a side effect of the odd event - one thing he’d quickly found out over the years was that these things that kept happening to him were never harmful to other people in any significant way. Something to be grateful for, he mused.
“I’m curious; How does someone like you get to become an assassin?” he asked. Sophie gave him a look that had a little defiance in it, and a little unsteadiness as the rum was starting to take hold already. Lightweight, he noted inwardly.
“Someone like me? What do you mean by that?”
“Someone so sweet.” Alex expanded. Sophie’s blush glowed deeper.
“I took a course on it.” she said at last. “There were all sorts of lessons.”
“Like how to dress for the job?”
Sophie looked down at her athletic gear and her mouth twisted into a wry half-smile. “I have an all-black bodysuit that I got from Amazon really cheap.”
“Prime deals. Can’t beat ‘em.” Alex nodded sagely.
“Free shipping, too. But when I woke up this morning the cat was sleeping on it and I didn’t want to wake him.”
“Completely understandable, “ Alex nodded. “So you attended classes on being an assassin. I imagine they were pretty grueling? Lots of sparring and detailed lessons on how best to kill and all that? The final exam was probably a killer, right?”
“No, it-” Sophie eyed Alex somewhat dubiously, “Was that a pun?”
Alex smiled innocently. Sophie shook her head slowly. “It was a correspondence course. Online. Back when everything was in lockdown.”
“I missed that.” Alex confessed. The woman looked at him questioningly.
“You missed three or four months?”
“I was stuck in a cabin up north trying to negotiate a border treaty between the Canadian wendigo tribes and the US sasquatch families. I swear it was like a Hatfield and McCoy mess up there, but I won’t bore you with the details.”
“That’s…” Sophie looked lost for words, as if Alex’s explanation drifted through her brain, found no good way of being coherently processed, and left again just as quickly. She took another heavy swallow of her drink.
“So you took an online course in becoming an assassin. Why?” Alex asked.
“I need the money, “ Sophie confessed. Alex nodded quietly. “Student loans, you know? Four years for a degree that nobody needs.”
“Sorry to hear that, “ Alex said kindly, and found that he genuinely was. He’d never attended college himself, preferring to pop in and out of various trade schools picking up an array of technical skills. Besides, the weird events were hell with any sort of reasonable schedule that needed adhering to. “It leads into the question, how much?”
“The loans?” Sophie chuckled darkly and shook her head, her fluffy blonde bob swaying back and forth with her head movements. “Well they started at sixty thousand, but the interest…”
“Yeah, they like to stick you with that. But I meant how much did you get paid for killing me? I mean, if you did end up actually going through with it.”
Sophie looked down at her mug, frowned, and took the bottle to add more. Her face colored with embarrassment.
“Eight hundred dollars,” she muttered eventually.
Eight hundred… Alex felt a little offended at that. It was a ridiculous sum, speaking volumes about the random nature of this particular odd event. His silence was noticed.
“Sorry, “ Sophie apologized. “Anyway, I probably won’t get it all. You’re still alive.”
“For now.” Alex said brightly. The woman winced and took a long pull from her mug.
“I don’t…I don’t think I can do this.” Sophie muttered into her drink, which was more rum than coffee at this point. Somewhere in the conversation she’d started leaning on Alex’s shoulder, unable to fully sit up straight. “I’m a failure.”
“Oh, don’t be like that. I’m sure with practice you’d be great at it.” Alex encouraged. Sophie sighed.
“You know what the worst part is?” she asked. Alex waited. “I have to call her and tell her I couldn’t do it. And she paid me half up front, too.”
Her. Well, that was a clue that eliminated approximately half of the world’s population. “Do you think your client will be mad?”
“Dunno. I jush…jush…just don’t like letting people down. I’m scared to call.” Sophie confessed.
“Do you want me to make the call for you?” Alex found himself offering. Sophie leaned harder on his shoulder and started to tear up again.
“You’re sho - so - nice.” she sobbed. Alex shook his head.
“I just like helping people who need it. So…”
Sophie fumbled for a while with one of her pouches, having trouble with the clasp. A small bottle of pills fell to the ground and rolled to Alex’s feet. He looked at the label.
“Laxatives?” he queried. Sophie giggled, the rum working its way through her.
“S’posed to be cyanide.” she explained. “Grabbed the wrong bottle I guessh. Guessh. Guess.”
“I guess.” Alex nodded. It sounded about right. Sophie fished a phone out and handed it to Alex, who took it and looked at the battered glitter-covered case.
“You use your regular phone for assassin jobs?”
“G’darn it.” the woman muttered, closing her wet eyes. Alex decided not to push. He opened the phone - which had no lock screen - and pulled up the call history. The last number that had called the phone was familiar to him.
“This just gets sillier and sillier.” he muttered, tapping the screen to make the call, which connected after just a few short rings. There was a muffled click, and then a familiar woman’s voice spoke.
“Is it done?”
“Good morning, Charlotte.” Alex said into the phone. There was a pause, and the woman on the other end hissed.
“You.”
“How are you this morning?
“You’re still alive!” Charlotte replied, her voice sounding somewhere between disappointed, angry, and relieved.
“I seem to be, “ Alex nodded even though the woman couldn’t see it, “The young lady I encountered was very professional and adept-” Sophie looked up at him and raised her eyebrows. Alex gave her a thumbs up. “But you know how things go, right?”
“...right.” Charlotte echoed. There was a crackling sound like static through the connection, and then the sound of chewing. “Mph. One sec.”
Alex waited for a few moments. Charlotte had blood sugar issues, and had to snack occasionally to keep things balanced. When he heard her swallow he spoke again.
“So if you don’t mind me asking, why did you send an assassin after me? I’m not sure how you even found one, but that doesn’t matter.”
“I want my Notting Hill DVD back.”
She wants her… Alex blinked several times as his mind adjusted to the direction this was going. She sent an assassin after me for that?
“I’m sorry Charlotte, “ he replied, sounding regretful. “All the DVD’s from the house are gone.”
“Gone? How?”
Sophie raised her head from Alex’s shoulder, pointed to the phone and mouthed ‘Who?’
‘Ex-girlfriend.’ he mouthed back. Her eyebrows shot up and her winter-gray eyes widened.
‘EX-GIRLFRIEND?’ she mouthed silently, ‘What happened?’
Alex smiled wryly and shrugged, gesturing to the phone to indicate he needed to speak. Sophie shook her head and settled it back on his shoulder again, listening to the one side of the conversation she could hear.
“Well, “ he said into the phone speaker, “Do you remember when you were storming out of the house with a bag of clothes, declaring that you were ‘tired of all the bullshit’ that happens around me?”
“I wasn’t storming, I was striding.” Charlotte said. “Proudly. Because I’m a powerful, respected woman who is reasonable and glorious.”
And you hired an eight hundred dollar assassin to kill me over a DVD, Alex carefully didn’t say aloud. Instead he said “I agree. But as you pulled out of the driveway you clipped that homeless man with your car. Remember?”
“Y-yeeees?” Charlotte drew out the word, the memory returning to her and bringing with it a certain amount of discomfort and guilt.
“Well, once I made sure he was okay I gave him all of the DVD’s in the house as a bribe to get him to not go to the police.”
That was a lie, something that Alex didn’t like to do but felt himself forced to more often than not. The truth was that the ‘man’ she’d clipped with her little Audi had turned out to be a guy named Lorwellion, prince of the elves of the Summerlands. He was on a marriage-quest to acquire ten thousand tales to prove himself worthy of marrying some elvish princess or other. Apparently they put a lot of value in stories.
The elf had smelled of old blood and wild beasts, his voice deep and soft and carrying with it a threat of death. Not death directly to Alex, but just a general menace that radiated from the being.
Alex had given the prince his television, DVD player, and all the movies and shows that he had. Despite having a decent collection it was nowhere near enough, and the elf had been eyeing Alex’s book shelves speculatively. It wasn’t until he’d also provided his Netflix login details that Lorwellion had been able to complete his quest. The next morning a tarnished silver coin of no Earthly denomination was left on his doorstep, so Alex figured that must have done the trick.
Alex wondered what the internet connections were like in the elvish Summerlands - wherever those were - but had stopped using Netflix himself a month or so later when it started recommending movies and shows that, when Googled, had never actually been made despite being readily available to watch. Checking with a friend, it turned out that only his account had access to these strange shows, most of which were quite graphic and alien.
He still paid for the account for Lorwellion and his new wife out of courtesy - and also out of concern that stopping would trigger another event. The whole thing being what it was, Alex was slightly more comfortable lying about it to his ex.
“I see.” Charlotte replied eventually. “So…you don’t actually have it anymore?”
“Sorry. I can order you a new one if you like.”
“I…yeah. Could you?”
“Sure.” Alex shook his head. The damn thing was probably only a couple of bucks on Amazon these days and there was no reason Charlotte couldn’t order it herself but if this was the way the event was going to play out, he’d go with it. “Silly question: How would killing me have gotten your DVD back?”
A long silence traveled across the phone connection. Eventually, Charlotte replied in an uncertain voice. “I…I’m not sure. I was tired.”
“Ah.”
“And cranky.”
“Right.”
“And I’d forgotten to eat.”
“Of course, “ Alex nodded. All perfectly unreasonable, but that was how things went sometimes. “So we’re okay then?”
“...yes?” It sounded more like a question than a definitive statement. Alex took it as a positive.
“What about the assassin?”
“Oh, she can stop.” Another silence, only for a moment, “I’d like my money back though.”
“I’ll take care of it, “ Alex promised.
“Thanks Alex.”
“No problem.” He disconnected the call and handed the phone back to an incredulous Sophie.
“Your ex-girlfriend, “ she said slowly, “tried to have you killed. Over a DVD?” Her words were a little slurred, and Alex noticed that her eyes were not quite focusing on him correctly.
“Property disputes can apparently get pretty heated,” he replied. “But good news: She said you don’t have to kill me.”
Sophie sagged in relief, letting out a long sigh that ended with a hiccup. Alex then mentioned that she needed to give back the money which made Sophie sigh again but this time in disappointment.
“So what’s your plan now?” Alex asked. There was a feeling in the air that he recognized; A sort of ‘epilogue’ sensation was the best way he could describe it to himself and Alex found himself relaxing as well. This particular weird event must be coming close to an end.
“Dunno.” Sophie shrugged. “Go home?” She sounded tired and sad. “Drink more.”
As Sophie’s hand went for the bottle again Alex deftly moved it out of reach. A closer look at the young woman showed that she was more drunk than he’d expected. “I think you’ve had enough for now. It was a mistake to bring out the bottle. Can I get you home? Call you a cab?”
“Home. ‘Slike three hours away. ‘Spensive.” she muttered, closing her eyes.
“That’s unfortunate, “ Alex pondered for a moment. “I could put you up in a hotel? Not a very good one, but at least you can rest for a while. What do you think?”
Alex’s words were met with slow, heavy breathing. He glanced down at the woman leaning on his shoulder. Her mug was empty and she’d somehow fallen asleep in record time. Alex sighed and looked up to the bright morning sky in askance.
The sky was silent on the matter.