Page 1 of Assassin Anonymous

1

Why is a caterpillar wrapped in silk while it changes into a butterfly? So the other caterpillar can’t hear the screams. Change hurts.

—Rory Miller, Meditations on Violence

Lower East Side, Manhattan

Now

Adrenaline is the ultimate painkiller. It doesn’t last very long. But in those white-hot moments when your gut gets pierced by a bullet, or a knife cleaves your skin, you would be amazed at how little you feel it.

It screws with your perception of time, too. For most people, when pain is screaming for attention like a starving toddler, everything is a senseless jumble of limbs and grunts. The world moves at twice the speed, while you hover above your body watching the mayhem unfold.

But when you’ve been at this long enough—and I’ve been at this long enough—time turns into a thing you can hold in your hand. You can rotate it and examine the angles. You end up confronting things about yourself.

Like why you’re sprawled on a cold linoleum floor, amid the shattered remains of a flimsy folding table, covered in cheap coffee and leftover donuts. You wonder which of your sins summoned the man who put his boot to your chest and sent you flying.

When I woke up this morning, I thought I didn’t need a meeting. Those are the days when I need a meeting. So I dragged myself to the basement of St. Dymphna’s on the Lower East Side. A tiny church, so forgotten it might as well be forsaken, tucked away in the wilds underneath the Williamsburg Bridge.

The details of the meeting aren’t important.

What’s important is stopping this guy from killing me.

He’s that kind of tall where you wonder if he has to duck through doorways. He’s right-handed. Not bulky, but the veins on his forearms are raised like ridges on a topography map. On his left forearm is a tattoo: a single black dot, surrounded by four more, like five on a die. His dark hair is buzzed to his skull, except for a narrow strip of black Mohawk. He’s wearing cargo pants, black boots, and a navy thermal. I recognize the glassy deadness in his eyes because I see it in the mirror every morning. He might be Russian. He hasn’t spoken yet, but the kick, his stance, and the smug confidence read as Systema.

I push myself to standing, careful not to slip on the spilled food. He’s about ten feet from me. He should have tried to overwhelm me while I was down, but he hasn’t done that. Instead he’s sizing me up with a look of recognition and excitement.

I think he knows who I am.

Which means he’s either insane or very confident.

“We can still talk this out,” I tell him, glancing down at the floor. “I’d offer you a donut but we’re past the five-second rule.”

He smiles with the left corner of his mouth and mutters, “Kozyol.”

Russian it is.

As soon as the insult leaves his lips, he comes at me, fast.

Too fast.

He’s so excited about proving something, he’s not paying attention to the floor. Three steps and he lands on a chocolate-frosted donut that causes him to slide forward. It interrupts his flow, which is all the opening I need.

In one movement I bend down, pick up the shattered coffeepot by the black plastic handle, and swing the jagged edge of glass at his leg. I’m hoping to hook it behind his knee and sever something important, incapacitate him, because I need to know who sent him. But also, it’s not like I can kill him.

In this place, of all places.

He jerks back and I miss him by a hair. Same thing on the next three swings. I’m hunting for nonlethal cuts, but he’s that kind of Bruce Lee fast where you see where he starts and finishes but not all those parts in the middle.

Already I’m feeling gassed. My muscles are covered in dust and cobwebs. It’s been a while since I pushed myself. I go for the leg again but swing too wide and lose my balance. He uses his momentum to come back around and put his boot into the side of my head. I move with the blow and combat roll into a standing position.

The adrenaline is doing its job. The pain is outside, knocking at the door, but the disorientation is inside pouring a cup of tea.

I set my feet, ready for him to charge. The glass on the coffeepot is too fragile for it to be an effective weapon, but it’s something. So of course, he reaches into his belt and pulls out a short black switchblade. It looks sharp enough to cut through the hull of a tank.

Another sign of his confidence. He could have knifed me at the start. I didn’t hear him until he was right behind me, which is not the kind of thing most people could brag about.

He’s here to test himself.

---