Time for a Change

Killing wasn't the problem, it was the clean up that bothered him the most. Every time he went through the process, he spent the next three days showering six times a day. Even then he still felt as though the person's soul was somehow all over this body, and under his skin. Each and every time he thought to himself, "This is it, I'm going to quit. I'm getting out of the game." With each shower The desire to walk away grew stronger and stronger. There was only one problem, this was the only thing he had ever been good at.

He had been taught to fight pretty much from the time he could walk. By the time he was ten years old, he was lethal with his hands. By his twelfth birthday, he could hit a target from a thousand yards. He had quite literally been raised to be a killer. While the act itself had never been difficult for him, he had always felt strange afterwards. He had well over a hundred kills under his belt, and he truly felt that there was some small piece of each person he had killed clinging to him.

He had dreams the felt like memories, the problem was, they weren't his memories. With each new kill, he felt another piece of himself being taken over. His skills and abilities had never faltered, but his own memories had begun to fade away long ago. He wondered how long it would be before every piece that he had left of himself would be gone for good.

He wanted to walk away. He had always dreamed of a "normal" life. He wanted to experience love. He wanted to know what a real family felt like. He wanted all these things, but he feared that there wasn't enough of him left to give to someone else. He worried that there would never be something that he would be as good at, as he was at killing. Oh, he wanted to walk away, that much was true. But, for now he stood under that water that streamed out as hot as it would go, and let it pelt his skin. He thought that maybe, just maybe this would the one that washed it all away. Maybe this would be the one that would cleanse him. Maybe this would be the one that finally set him free.