'Just a simple stab and it's done'. His boss had told him that over and over and over and over. But now, it was the real event. No time for dillydallying, she's coming closer up the path. Regina Everest, head of a company dealing in 'frozen meat'. Really, a sadistic human trafficker responsible for over 120 kidnappings in the Denver area.

The would-be assassin thought back on his childhood, on how he used to mess around with his mates, grabbing a pencil, tree branch or other pointed pieces of playground paraphernalia and pretend to kill each other, waiting in ambush of their victims behind the trees. Just like he was doing now. Waiting in ambush. But this time, it was for real.

The snow started to fall and quickly created a blanket of cotton wrapping the city in a cold embrace. She's coming up the path. It's now or never. He slips out of his hiding spot behind a skyscraper of an oak tree and commits himself to the task. He plunges his knife into her neck, a cold blade of steel slipping through the rosy canvas of flesh like a stone hitting a calm sea on a summer day. The warm cocktail of life oozes out like paint from a bottle, crimson in tone with speckles of blood freezing as they hit the frozen snow, rubies and carnelians on a bed of quartz. The snow around her slowly starts to resemble wine spilt on a white, freshly ironed linen sheet and as the life fades from her eyes, her spirit is dragged down to Hell by Satan's wrinkled, crooked hand, fingernails like obsidian daggers as her spirit is dragged down to fire and brimstone for an eternity of suffering.

He did it. He actually did it. Hundreds of innocent victims saved at the passing of this demonic hellspawn of a woman. Suddenly, he hears a high-pitched shriek louder than the engine of an aeroplane. He turns around to see an old woman dressed in a nightgown bedazzled with cutesy images of little purple sheep running across the garment and slippers doing little work at protecting her feet from the icy chasms of snow. The three buttons are pressed on her phone:

'9'

'9'

'9'

She screams murder into the phone and the assassin takes off into the thick blanket of the night, his deed accomplished, but at what cost? A hundred sleepless nights traumatised by what he did? Life stuck in the four corners of a prison cell? The death penalty? He began to cry like a fire hydrant, tears spilling out of his eyes like a waterfall. In the distance, a siren blares...

He knows he is done for.

Marks:

9/24 for content and organisation (too violent, didn't fit theme)

14/16 for technical organisation

23/40 overall