This little piece was something that came out of nowhere while I was trying to sleep early today. I got up, intending to jot down basic info for it, but ended up spending about two hours doing other things on the computer before returning to get the sleep I still needed.

The interesting part is that this resurfaced a few hours ago as I was trying to go back to sleep.

The caution is primarily aimed at the brief kill scene near the end, but also due to the storyteller's description of the job.

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Ah, it's good to be out wandering again. Yes, my job needs to be done, but that's tomorrow, I have some time now to relive my experiences.

The job? Well, to be blunt, I'm an assassin, a killer for hire; someone sends me a contract and I kill the intended target. I've been doing this for a long time, since 1990 in fact, and I stopped keeping track of how many people I had killed somewhere around the 200 mark.

So you sit there and ask me how I can kill others so easily, without even the faintest qualm?

Well, that's easy to answer, I'm a very amoral person. Rules, regulations, laws, etc., are made for people like me to break them.

As to how I became an assassin, well, I was doing my usual day in college back in late '89 when I was approached by an older male, very distinguished looking; he was dressed in a well-made, expensive suit with a rather expensive full length London Fog trench coat.

We talked for a short while that late summer afternoon and his offer intrigued me enough that I finally accepted it.

The next year was very busy for me, not only was I still taking my college courses, but I was also being trained in the skills I would need. To be honest, I'm not sure how I managed to find the time to do everything and still get about six hours of sleep most nights, but I did.

One of the courses I was taking that year was college level chemistry. This course was one that I quite thoroughly enjoyed, I often asked to be allowed to stay in the lab after the regular classes had ended so i could experiment on one thing or another. I loved it, oh, yes!

It was during one of these after hours experiments that I discovered my special poison, the one I've used on every single target I've killed. This poison, interestingly, is actually a combination of five different and very deadly venoms; when mixed, they make an almost transparent fluid with a very slight viscosity. This combined poison has a half-life of less than three hours, then it will break down into a new form, one that is no longer deadly in any sense. This final form, when magnified, looks rather like the pre-cum from a man's penis just before full ejaculation.

They call me The Ghost, the unseen killer. Police organizations on every continent and in most countries have been trying to catch me since I first showed up on the international assassin scene twenty-seven years ago. They try, but I still walk free, completing my contracts.

The name fits, as I am very nondescript, quite average looking, to be honest. Oh, dear, I really should describe myself, yes?

Well, I'm male, I was born in a ramshackle unnamed town out in the middle of the desert north of Las Vegas, Nevada. The town is so small it isn't shown on any maps that I have seen, no, not even the dreaded Google maps. There's a small lake not too far away from the town.

I'm just shy of 5'9" tall, 175 cm, with medium brown curly hair falling to the bottom of my shoulders. My wide sapphire blue eyes are my only noticeable facial feature, my nose is quite normal, my mouth is neither bow shaped nor excessively wide, my ears are slightly small.

I weigh in at a nice, solid for me 155 pounds, just over 70 kilograms for those folks that like metric measurements.

So... I'm pretty much average for a male, well, with the exception of my long hair, but that's not unusual nowadays, you know.

Now the fun part arises. There are times when I'm doing a job that a female would have a much better chance of reaching the target. So, over the years, I let my hair grow as I've mentioned already, and I can easily style it to look very feminine in just a couple of minutes.

Well, I have to admit that my becoming interested in the skirts and dresses that my mother and older sister wore as I grew up has been quite an asset in my line of work. Thanks to my hair, when I throw on a skirt and blouse or a dress and do my make-up, I look like a woman.

I helped that along when I was in college by using a girl taking an aesthetician's/cosmetician's course to get free electrolysis. What facial hair I had never came in as more than straggly bits here and there, so it looked quite scruffy; removing it made me look much, much better.

I found out later that the straggly facial hair was something that affects roughly one third of the males in my family.

So I am able to present myself as either male or female when needed, and I'm quite happy to wear female clothes when the job requires it.

Okay, now you know a little bit about me, not that I think it will help anyone to understand or comprehend me. I'm definitely not normal.

Well, back to how I do my job. The poison, once it is mixed, is inserted into one or more very small needles. Each individual needle is then placed into a slot in the little device I use to carry them while moving around. The device is quite small, it can be completely hidden when I close my hand over it. It has three small buttons, each with an up or down option. Up launches the needle, down, retracts it from the device.

I'm very careful, it's one of the reasons why I am still in business after more than a quarter of a century. I tend to carry at least three or four of these devices on me at any time while doing a job, each device in a separate pocket, or perhaps in a purse if I am presenting as female.

I'm not sure how many times my carrying more than one device has saved my life. When you must kill fast without being seen, they're handy.

So I'll approach within a few feet of my target and then launch a needle into their neck if they are dressed in full pants and long sleeves, or into their upper thigh or shoulder if they're dressed for summer. In any case, I'll then move close and brush the needle away with a thumb.

If they actually notice me touching them at that point, I'll quickly say that I thought they were someone I knew, it never fails.

They continue on to their office or whatever destination they had in mind, and about ten minutes after the actual attack, the venom activates in the bloodstream. It takes maybe five minutes for it to reach the heart and kill the target, and ten more after that for it to break down.

There is a variation of my poison that is a nearly instant kill, thanks to one added ingredient. I use it when the circumstances require it.

Sometimes, I'll get a contract that tells me to protect someone rather than kill them. These can be quite interesting.

As an example, I had a contract like this about, oh, six months ago. The protectee was an American woman visiting in Hong Kong, she has a rather strong interest in the various kinds of dolls and toys produced en masse in that city by many of its residents.

She had been informed by another English speaking person that there was a rather good shop for these items not far from the docks.

I had been following her for three days, using my rather limited Cantonese language skills and even more limited Mandarin to talk to residents and business people while keeping her in my sight, generally within perhaps ten or twenty feet so I could reach her quickly.

She stopped in front of the store she wanted and started talking to the middle-aged Chinese woman standing in the doorway. Even though her Cantonese was much worse than mine and the shop lady's English was just as awful, they managed to communicate well enough.

I was still watching her and the area around her and that was how I spotted the two that had been sent to kill her. I recognized both of them, they were pretty good, but not even close to my level of expertise, and so I quietly stepped in behind the two, one male, one female.

I knew for a fact that both spoke excellent English, so I whispered to them, "Is it time for you to die, my lovelies?"

Both stopped in their tracks and turned to face me. They knew me enough to recognize me and thus my reputation, both of them blanched.

The male replied just as quietly, "We are doing a job, why are you concerned for a foreigner in our country?"

"Because, my dears, I was contracted to make sure she lives. If you intend to harm her, well... you know how good I am."

The male looked at his female partner, who took her turn to speak, "You can't stop both of us", as she turned and moved toward my protectee.

I pressed a button and whispered, "You're absolutely wrong." One of my fast kill darts hit her in the neck, not far from the carotid artery on that side. She was falling even before she knew she was dead. Another dart was on its way, landing a moment later in the upper shoulder of the left arm of the male. He slumped to the ground, dying less than ten feet from his partner, neither of them having reached their intended target.

As soon as the second dart had been launched, I was off, removing the darts, then moving into the nearest crowd which happened to be only a few shops away. The woman had not known she was in any danger, and a clear message had been sent to those who would oppose me.

It seems I was noticed, though, by the shopkeeper of the store where my protectee was examining several pieces. When I returned to my cheap hotel to grab my bags and check out, I found a note in my mail wrapped around five one thousand yuan bank notes.

The note was relatively brief, this is as close as I can remember it now:

"You save woman, she never know how close she almost die, we do good business. You help her, she help me, I help you."

To this day, I have no idea how that shop lady managed to get that note to my hotel before I arrived there.

So I travel the world, from one land to another, trusting in my skills to get the job done without being discovered.

Oh, my! I have to prepare for my birthday party next week, I'm crossing the line to the fifty and over side.

Perhaps YOU might be my next target? Hmmm... We shall see. Good day to you.