Assas-son

“Are you joking?? This is a joke. This is a really weird, really bad, really not funny Joke, right?”, said John gesturing to the array of guns and ammunition laid out on the hotel bed.

His parents, Antonio and Heather, shook their heads. Nina, his younger sister, lounged on a chair so big she could have curled up and slept on it. She appeared deeply engrossed in her book and was clearly trying to ignore the scene unfolding.

John took a pause, “But, assassins……….. that makes no sense. I didn’t even know assassins was like a real thing anymore. Outside of a straight to Netflix movie. How long have you both been doing this?!”

Heather spoke first “Oh John, always honey. We’ve been doing this since before you were born.”

“It isn’t your fault son,” added Antonio.

Heather looked at him in confusion, “he knows it’s not his fault, how would it be his fault?”

“Oh sorry! What I meant was your mother and I still love you very much.”

Heather put her head in her hands.

“What?” asked Antoinio, “that’s what they tell you to say!”

“That’s for divorce dear.”

“What is?” asked Antonio. Now completely lost.

John jumped in, “telling your kid it’s not their fault, and that their parents still love them is for divorce dad! Not for when they find out their parents are freaking killers for hire!”

“Oh, we’d never get divorced kid, we’re catholic.”

“Well what a relief that is! It doesn’t seem to be preventing you from happily murdering people!”

“Hey!” said Antonio, “that is way over the line buddy because one; we don’t do it happily, it’s a job, we do it professionally, and two; what we do it not murdering people. We don’t say soldiers murder people, do we? No, what we do is a service, it’s like suing someone but just a bit more permanent. Besides, the targets, they’re bad people. Really bad people, isn’t that right?”

He looked to Heather who hesitated. “Well, mostly yes, most of them are not good people.”

“What do you mean? They’re all terrible,” Antonio said as a matter of fact.

“What about the pair in Bermuda that time?” asked Heather, with a knowing look.

“Oh yeah, man I’d forgotten about that, ugh that was messy.”

“And Prague?”

“Well sure Prague, that’s an exception obviously.”

“And that whole thing in Cape Verde?”

“Ok, ok, you’ve made your point! Look John, most of them are definitely bad. At least seventy percent are unquestionably terrible people who the world is better off without. Besides it’s best to not think of it like that. We are a tool to get a task done, you know? A plumber doesn’t ask; is this a good or a bad blockage, they just unblock the toilet.”

“But dad, how can you be an assassin? You freak out if there’s a spider in the house.”

“Well thankfully the target is never a big spider.”

“’Target’, do you even hear yourself? This is ridiculous. I, I can’t believe this.”

Heather put her arm around her son. “I know it’s a lot to take in champ, but it’ll be ok. So, you really had no idea huh?”

“No, I had no idea that my boring parents were killers, who would ever think like that?”

Nina slammed her book closed.

“How am I supposed to relax with all this blah, blah, blah. Honestly John it isn’t that complicated, Mom and Dad do a few jobs a year and if it’s out of country we get to tag along. It looks a lot less suspicious for a family of four to be going through customs than a group of muscle-bound goons. We get a nice little vacation, they slip away for an evening to get their business sorted, and we all get some sun. It’s good news for everybody. What exactly did you think they did for work can I ask? They’re at home almost every day.”

“Consultants or something like that”

Nina rolled her eyes, “consultants in what?”  

“I don’t know, business stuff.” John said this like it was a completely reasonable assumption to have made and never questioned. Then he was struck by a revelation of sorts.

“Wait a second! You knew about this?” He turned to his parents once more, “you told Nina and not me, what the hell! When were you planning to let me in on all this?”

Antonio fielded this one.

“We didn’t tell your sister she figured it out all on her own. How long ago would you say it was, three years ago? Four maybe.”

“Oh, it wasn’t that long ago, was it?”, said Heather, “two years ago I think, maybe two and half.”

“It was three years ago, I was eleven,” corrected Nina. “Frankly I was embarrassed it took me so long.”

Antonio, satisfied that the timeline had been clarified continued.

 “Right, and we figured well John is bound to catch on pretty soon, but then you just……………..didn’t. And, well, it was just easier to carry on as we were. You’ve always been a bit sensitive, I think you’d be the first to agree with that.”

“I absolutely would not be the first to agree with that.”

Heather stepped in, “sensitive isn’t the right word, that’s not what your dad meant.”

“It absolutely is what I meant,” quipped Antonio.

“No, no, sensitive isn’t the word it’s more like…..”, Heather clicked her fingers as she groped for the word she was looking for, “fragile, that’s it.”

“You know what, that is spot on, I take it back, fragile is exactly the right word,” said Antoinio.

“You’re so right mom, because it’s not just that he get’s hurt easily, it’s that you’re afraid he will quite literally break,” agreed Nina.

Nina and her parents continued to agree with each other heartily, clearly having a collective sense of satisfaction at finding an adjective that they felt fit just right.

John pursed his lips and resisted the urge to adopt the fetial position on the ground, oh they would love that he thought to himself. Looking back now he could see that some things were odd in hindsight. That trip they took to Cuba last year where he’d been woken up in the middle of the night and they all had to rush to the airport even thought they weren’t due to leave for another three days. His dad had said he’d just remembered he’d left the garage door open, and John had taken that at face value.

Now it occurred to him that they didn’t even have a garage.