The Smell of Death

 When a person dies, there is no dramatic outtake of breath, or anything significant to mark their ending. They just stop. The air in their lungs, the beating of their heart, the thoughts going through their mind, they all just stop at once. That's how you know you're doing your job right. At least, that's what his master always told him. But it never feels right. It never feels like something that should happen, just because of him.

But there's nothing to be done about it, now. The man under him is dead, and he slides his blade from his heart and out from in between his ribs. A clean job is a complete job. And after ten years, most jobs are clean. He stands up before the blood pools to his knees, and steps back to keep himself clean.

The smell wafts up to his nose all at once. The smell of Death is a lot of different smells, fused into one. It is blood and bone marrow, and gasses all being expelled, tied together with the gut wrenching instinct that tells you to leave, else you'll end up the same way. This is, of course, a smell that a hired assassin would long be used to. It does not make him cringe, or cover his face.

Ah, but memories have their strange way of creeping up on you. The tasks after completing a job are simple enough, after all. Ritualistic, one would say. The mind does have a habit of wandering when it's allowed to. His is no different. The smell of Death is not one that often smelled for most people. And it's not often this strong.

“He should have gotten his stomach looked at,” he mumbles to himself. He methodically cleans his knife in the sink of the same home he had killed the man in. Nothing would be left here. Nothing would cling to his tools, or his bag. His blade would be spotless, and seemingly unused. He had an hour to get everything done, and to set his scene.

No one exactly wants to be an assassin when they grow up. But it wasn't something that he was given a choice of. He was placed with a new guardian due to his sharp wit and coordination. He had outsmarted his birth parents a couple too many times, and they had reached out for help among the wrong group of friends. At least, that's how the story went. If anything else was behind it, he wasn't aware, and he didn't much care.

He had been fourteen when he had taken on his first job and smelled Death for the first time. The person that needed killing was that of a young woman. She had being struck down because of a drunken mistake, and a fetus she had refused to abort. He had hidden under her bed most of the afternoon. Despite how small and lanky he was, it had been one of the more uncomfortable hiding places he remembered suffering through. And whenever he looked back on it, he realized that the wardrobe was right there, and had been plenty more spacious, not to mention it would have allowed him to be upright. But, first jobs were never perfect.

She had gotten home later than he had expected. He remembered the way his heart hammered for the extra hour, and all the 'what if' questions he could think of went through his mind in a blind panic. These days, he had a five hour window before he started to get curious as to where the person was. An hour was nothing. She had probably just gotten stuck socializing with a coworker on her way out the door, or maybe a friend had needed a ride. The possibilities were endless. But he had been so scared of failure back then.

She had finally come in with a huff, the way anyone did when they lived alone in a studio apartment. Her bag got tossed on the bed lazily as her shoes got kicked to the side of the door, which she locked and put the chain on. She almost instantly turned to the bathroom, vanishing for several seconds before coming out shortly after the distinct sound of a toilet flushing. No washing her hands. He remembered thinking that detail was important, and instantly knowing that the thought was only a distraction. Just because you know something is a distraction, does not mean it's not distracting.

He also remembered that it was unfortunate that this whole process had taken long enough for her to have a very slight baby bump when she yanked off her shirt and tossed it into her desk chair. When she sat on the edge of the bed, the mattress sagged above him, crushing his chest uncomfortably, but not quite painfully. In the time that it took her to pull off her shoes, he felt out of breath from the smashed in space. When her shoes were finally off and she stood up, he struggled to silently make up for it. It was around this time when he realized that he should have gone for the wardrobe.

If he had gone for the wardrobe, he'd have been able to stab her in the chest quickly enough that there was no struggle. The blow would have been cleaner, straight between her ribs. She would have died as she hit the ground, not even being sure what hit her.

But a professional is merely someone who learns from their mistakes.

Instead, as she opened the wardrobe to find something more comfortable to change into, the assassin slid out from under the bed. He thought it would be easier to kill someone if you stab them in the back. He thought that if he couldn't see her eyes, it wouldn't be as traumatizing. But his knife hit bone, and bounced back at him. She gagged in pain and fell to her hands and knees.

She never did get to scream. But she tried. He remembered that she had tried so hard to get any sound out as he slit her throat from behind. It was not a clean death. There was blood everywhere, including on him. His clothes and face were wet, and the spray had gone everywhere. And it made painting the scene that much more difficult.

Of course, now, painting his scene was much easier. It was the same scene every time. More of a signature than anything else, he supposed. He turned the body the rest of the way onto its back with a nudge of his boot, careful to ensure that nothing got on his clothes if he could help it. Luckily, this wound had been much cleaner, and the mess was far more contained. He hadn't bothered trying to keep himself clean the first time he'd done this. There really hadn't been a point – he'd been covered in blood already.

He put the arms outward in either direction. Many thought that it was because of some kind of religious stand point. The police believed that he thought these people were being judged by God, or sent to Him. The fact was, he had been told by his master to come up with a signature because they were good for business. He hadn't been able to think of one, so he had just left the body in a t-pose. It had accidentally become his signature, and now it was too late to change it.

Any time left over from cleaning himself and his tools, and setting his signature would normally be spent ensuring that there was nothing for them to find. He'd been doing this a long time. He never took his gloves off while on a job, and because nothing was on him, he could easily walk free. His head was clean shaven, or so short that finding a hair would be nearly impossible. And he, unlike some he worked with, was not one to defile the dead. So he didn't have to worry about DNA coming up over anything. His master had taught him how to keep a struggle to a minimum, and he had always been a good student. There was nothing left to clean up.

On his first job, however, he had a lot of cleanup. His clothes had been drenched in blood, and his hair had been matted with it, too. It wouldn't come out in the sink, he knew. So he'd have to leave it, and make a silent, and unseen escape. The splatter of the blood made it too clear that he had come at her from under the bed. He cleaned the splatter off the wall so that placing a direction of his attack would be that much harder to determine. Then, there was the matter of everything under the bed. He'd spent a long time down there, and he'd had to ensure there was nothing to lead back to him on accident. A caught assassin is a dead assassin.

There had been nothing. Nothing but the fact that he had moved the bed on the carpet, and the imprint no longer lined up with the actual leg of the bed. It hadn't lead to and he had not been caught. They imagined that the bed had just been shifted for some other reason, or had been bumped into. He had cleaned the walls, there was no doubt he had cleaned other things, too. A dead end. But a sloppy dead end, by today's standards.

Back then, he had been younger and more nimble. The door was already locked and chained, and the window could be locked and then latched from the outside. He had managed it somehow. It was fancy, and showing off, and causing a locked crime scene where it wasn't needed. A lot of effort for the sake of saying he could. But teenagers were like that.

Today, he just leaves out the front door. This is a large house, and he had already killed the security system. It had been the first thing he did on the grounds, of course. The whole day is deleted, as though it hadn't started up again after it ticked over at midnight. Machines were such strange things. He doesn't know if he understands the purpose of having cameras everywhere when they could do nothing but sit by and watch the horrors that happen to you. But, rich people enjoyed throwing money around, he supposes.

His car is three blocks away. He had gone through a series of gardens to get here, but there's no need for that now. The sun is almost done setting, and many people are out on walks, with their kids, or their dogs. No one sees which house he came from, because no one cares to see. They have no idea something happened. They have no idea what sort of man walks past them casually. All he has to do is stay quiet, and polite.

His car is a Honda Civic, the plates current and real, though perhaps not legally acquired. He'd change them out tonight when he got home, and then watch them melt down in his home-made kiln. He'd use the metal to make miniature weapons. A man has to have his hobbies, after all.

When he gets into the car, he tosses the backpack into the back seat and starts the engine up. The smell of Death is still in his nostrils. He reaches over to the glove box and yanks out a fresh pack of cigarettes, tearing into it and lighting one eagerly. The sharp smell of cheap smokes always takes the smell away. He doesn't even open the window. He just starts to drive, letting the cigarette ash fall onto the floor of his car. With every exhale, the smell goes away just a little bit more. And when he finally opens the window to flick the butt into the ditch, his shoulders finally unwind.

“Another job well done, or something like that,” he grumbles, coming to a stop at a light. He grabbed the box again, and lit a second cigarette.

It wasn't the life he had asked for, sure. But it suited him.