The Well-Intentioned Hit List

I write all of their names in a journal, every single one of them. At first, it was my way of holding myself accountable for my actions. I thought that if I was forced to look at all of their names at the conclusion of each job, I would see them, relive my guilt, and have no choice but to stop. When I first began, I thought that I wouldn’t be able to do more than five. It was surprising enough that I did one in the first place, but five would surely be when I clocked out.

It’s hard to pinpoint why I got into the business at all – maybe it was an attempt to help my parents, as if unexplained sums of money could prompt my mother to leave the job that she was aging out of and was slowly killing her. Or maybe it was for my brother, whose crippling social anxiety made it hard for him to get a job, despite how much he needs the money to be able to afford health insurance that covers his diabetes. Hell, the more likely reason is that it was for me, jumping at the promise of financial stability, a get-rich-quick option that would pay off my student loans and cover my own chronic-disease-related medical expenses.

The list goes on, but in spite of all of this adversity, I had never thought that I would sink so low for a dollar, especially with my impressive guilt complex (my parents are lapsed Catholics, you know). And that’s why it’s even harder to pinpoint why I stayed.

***

The first task was the worst, which is why Angelica Brown is written in the shakiest hand of all names that appear in my little black book, the page still rippled from the tears that soaked it years ago.

She was a retired, suburban mother of three and grandmother of two (with even more now). Her house was filled to the brim with trinkets and souvenirs, some from her own travels and some gifts from friends and family, serving no other purpose than as a reminder that she had people who loved her.

Angelica had won $20,000 on a lottery ticket that she bought on a whim from the Mobil Mart down the street, the one that smelled like stale cigarettes and hazelnut coffee, the one where the cashiers knew her name.

She checked her numbers the morning after they were drawn, and instantly called her eldest daughter Caroline to relay what she had thought was good news.

That same day, I received a buzz from a blocked number: a courtesy call from my handler, a prominent figure in the organization that administers the game, that informed me of my target. Angelica would soon learn just how bad her news really was.

***

I haven’t had to worry about my journal taking guilt-induced water damage for quite some time now, and I suppose that at this point, continuing to write the names of those I’ve erased from the Earth is futile, at least in light of my original intent in the action. But I have and will continue to write them.

Why? Because I want to know. Because on the off chance that a glimpse of who I was before I began this so-called ‘career path’ ever resurfaces, I want to feel the consequences of my actions. I want to remember their faces, what their houses looked like, why they had to buy a stupid lottery ticket in the first place and what they were going to do with the winnings they were promised. Most of all, I want to be filled with so many memories of other people’s lives that I forget about the pathetic excuse of one that I live every day.

They say that money has a way of changing people, and when combined with routine assassinations, it shouldn’t be a surprise that I was quickly hardened to the life I lead, but that doesn’t mean those around me were. It was hard enough to know that with the extinguishing of Angelica, I would be taking someone’s parent and grandparent away, but those weren’t the only casualties. In the process, I was also killing my parent’s daughter, my brother’s sister, my best friend’s partner in crime – a metaphorical suicide that I didn’t see the repercussions of, until it was too late.

Which is why I write all of their names in a journal. Every. Single. One.