The Assassins' Family Holiday

I heard a click as my mom undid the safety, her eye millimeters away from the lens of the gun’s scope. 

“This is so much better than last year, man that was tough. Waiting around, all of those meetings. What a boring life. Poor sucker. I guess it’s over now!” My dad chuckled. I stood with my back flush against the hotel room wall. My palms, sweaty and sliding on its cool surface. I didn’t know what else to do, but to stay there like spiderman, making myself as unnoticeable as possible, as my parents prepared themselves to kill a man. Most people remember their sixteenth summer on this earth as the time they had their first kiss, or their first time as a junior camp counselor. Me on the other hand? I would remember this as the summer I learned my parents were assassins. Those amazing family trips my friends were always so jealous of? Assignments. How had I not known?

It seemed so obvious now. We would go to all of these cool, fun, places and sure, we’d spend days visiting chateaus or hiking through the Amazon, but then we’d also spend days doing such bizarrely ordinary stuff that I had always shrugged off, thinking it was just a quirk of my parents’. Like the time we went to Monaco and we spent an inordinate amount of time loitering outside of office buildings (found out my dad was stalking a CEO so my mother could garrote him in a parking garage). There was a lot of that. A lot of waiting outside of buildings. A lot of time driving through gated communities at incredibly slow speeds. A lot of binoculars on beaches, sunning ourselves for hours, in the same exact spot, for days. My mom or my dad disappearing at various times throughout every trip. I just thought they liked to be alone. My parents loved each other, you could tell, but they also got on each other’s nerves (and lets be honest, my nerves). I just thought they occasionally went their separate ways to get a break. I didn’t know my parents were… murderers, and that they were sneaking away to kill people.

"Why one at a time?"

“We take turns, it’s only fair.” My mom explained.

So how did I find out? I was trying to sneak out of our hotel room, a suite at a fancy shmancy hotel in the Bahamas (my friends squealed with jealousy when I told them where we were staying, "The hotel room itself has multiple rooms! It's like an apartment, with room service!" and they had oooooh and awwww'd in all of the appropriate places) because I had met a really cute boy (my friend Sammy would have gone nuts) on the beach and he had invited me out. Well, I tripped over something in the doorway (now I know it was a tripwire) and suddenly the lights went on and my parents were standing over me with guns pointing at my head. 

“Annie! We could have shot you!” My mom yelled. 

“Oh my God mom, why do you guys have guns?” I shrieked. My parents lowered their guns and looked at each other, my mom sighed.

“Alright Annie, it’s time we told you about the family business.” 

And now here we are. We have this hotel suite because not only does it have an incredible view of the beach and two bathrooms, both with giant hot tubs, but because it also has a direct line of sight to the Frambuzzi crime family boss’ cabana. He happens to be there right now, changing out of his chinos and into swim trunks. 

“You got him?” My dad asks my mom. 

Click.

“Yup.” And there it is. My mom just killed a man. Again. And me? I’m still backed against the wall because I can't believe this is happening. If I somehow just stay here, frozen, maybe this will not have happened. I can wake up and life will be normal again. My mother takes apart the gun and puts the pieces in the metal suitcase at her feet. “Well, we should get going. Everyone packed? The cruise ship leaves in a couple of hours and I wanted to check out a shop or two first.” My mom smiles at me. “Wasn’t there a necklace you wanted?” I am still frozen. My parents had explained to me last night how my mother’s family had been hired-assassins going back generations. How her father had been a mentor to my father, and that was how my parents had met. How my mother had started learning how to kill people when she was, “Around your age Annie.” How once she had found out, she had taken to it with aplomb. 

Now it was my turn to learn the family business, only I was not immediately taking to it. The more they said, the more I wanted to hide, melt away, run. Both my mom and dad were explaining things to me in rushed, excited tones and all I could think was, this is not happening to me and what would my friends think? “Oh you definitely can not tell your friends.” 

“Yeah, we’d have to kill them.”

“You’re joking right?” awkward silence. 

“Don’t worry sweetie, you’ll be a natural at this. It’s in your blood!”

“Plus you look so normal! It’s a real plus in this business.” My dad smiled, trying to comfort me. Great, my family are assassins AND they think I’m homely looking. 

“Look, after this cruise, why don’t we go to Disney? It’ll be fun, I promise.” I relax a bit and come off the wall. I imagine myself like a window sticker, peeling away. 

“You’re not going to kill Mickey or something, are you?”

“Not this time, we promise.” My mom holds out her hand to me. “Come, give me a hug. I love you.” Pulled into her embrace I can smell her sweet perfume and feel her familiar hair on my face. 

“I love you mom, but I’m scared.” 

“Don’t be scared sweetie.” My dad comes over and it’s a group hug. “We will teach you everything we know. You will never be alone. You will always have us and we will always be there for you, no matter what.”

“Just make sure you never tell your friends.”

“Even the friends I don’t like?” My parents laugh and it feels good. No matter what, they are my parents, and I love them. I will do this for them, for us, because we are family. Plus I could permanently lord this over Sammy, Maxine and Grace's heads, that I was the real Queen Bee. They could never know of course how much cooler I am than they are, but.... they better hope they never make me mad or I might just tell them.