I'm standing in the yard outside this typical house in Suburbia, USA, with my backpack on my 
shoulders and cold snow seeping over the edges of my shoes.  This is it my first job.  I drop my
backpack to the ground and start rummaging around in it.  I pull out a pistol, a big, matte black,
high caliber deal with a rubberized, textured grip--the kind that doesn't hold fingerprints.  I check
the clip--it's loaded--pop it back in, rake the slide, and set the safety.  As soon as that's taken care
of, I tuck the gun into the back of my jeans, stuff the backpack into the carefully manicured
bushes, and go around to the back door.  The door's unlocked.  So far everything's gone
according to plan.  I smile.  This'll be an easy job.  I walk into the house and am surprised by the
amount of noise coming from the living room.  Walking quietly around the corner, I'm startled to
see a dozen boisterous high school age guys watching a football game.  One of them looks over at
me and says to his couch partner, "Hey man, that your new girlfriend?"  He winks at me and says,
"C'mon in.  You can sit by me," followed by another wink.

I decide he's the first to go after I finish what I came to do.  Without any fanfare, I pull the gun
from my jeans and shoot the guy who's face had been in the photograph I'd seen earlier.  He dies a
quick but messy death.  I turn to fire on the next guy, but my gun clicks--empty.  Shit!  My mouth
goes dry when I realize that I've been set up.  This is NOT going according to plan. The other
guys in the room, who had fallen silent as the gunshot echo faded, suddenly jump up, probably
with the intention of tearing me limb from limb for what I just did to their friend.  I run out of the
room, out the back door, grab my bag, and bolt out into the street.  My heart's going at five
hundred miles a second, and I can hardly breathe, but that's not my biggest worry.  Two thoughts
run through my mind in tandem:  I've been screwed, and These guys are gonna KILL me.

This is not a good day to be an assassin...

And apparently not offing all of the guys in the room was a big mistake.  In retrospect, I should
have just thrown a grenade into the house and ran.  It would have been considerably less messy. 
Then again, there was only supposed to have been one guy, and I was supposed to have had a full
clip.  But there's not a whole lot I can do about that now.  Instead, I'm running from what I
suppose is the local high school football team, and they are most definitely not happy with me. 
One of them hops into a conveniently parked pickup and pulled out a shotgun.  I don't see him
fire, but I hear the bang and feel the shot tear into my side.  Shit!  Fortunately, I was pretty far
away by the time he fired, so I'm not hurt too badly.  But I'm bleeding, and it stings like you
wouldn't believe.

Instead of setting myself up to be run over by staying in the street, I take off into the woods.  The
snow is just starting to melt, and it makes for slippery terrain.  But I'm okay with that--my shoes
have enough traction to deal with it, and I have pretty good dexterity.  The football guys are
hampered by it, though, and start to fade back.

I pause at the edge of a steep slope.  The wound in my side is bleeding like crazy now, and I know
that if I don't do something about it, I'll probably bleed out, which would not be productive.  I
mean, how are you supposed to get revenge on someone when you're dead?

Off in the distance a police siren sounds.  Oh, not good.  I look frantically around.  The snow
details my path all too well, and the occasional splotches of blood make me that much easier to
track.  If they catch me, I'm screwed.  Shit.  But there isn't much I can do, so I decide to keep
running.  Unfortunately, the slope is slick as ice, and I slide unceremoniously downhill and into a
rock.  Hard.  When I come to my senses, it's raining, and I can hear more sirens and, closer yet,
the baying of dogs.  For a moment I feel like giving up, just laying there on the ground until the
police come, letting them take me to the hospital, then off to prison, without a struggle.  But then
I notice that the warm rain is melting the snow, almost like a chinook, and washing away both my
footprints and bloodstains.  If they can't track me...  Yeah.  I'll be free.  

I haul myself up and discover that I'm halfway into a niche between two rocks.  If I could climb
over to one side, I'd be covered and safe.  It sounds good to me.  I hunker down between the
rocks and try to take care of my injuries.  I now have a scrape on my forehead to compliment the
gash in my side.  Great.  Both are bleeding profusely, and I almost run out of bandages before
they're both covered.  By now the adrenaline rush has died down, and I can hardly keep
conscious.  Falling asleep with a head injury would be a bad idea, but I can't help it.  I pass out
with the sound of the dogs running through my head...

When I wake up, it's dusk.  I'm still lying in the crevice between the two boulders, so I take that as
a good sign.  At the very least, it means I hadn't been discovered by the authorities.  For a
moment I'm ecstatic--I mean, I got away from the police!  That's cause for celebration!  But I'm
still hurt, probably badly enough to warrant a stay in the hospital, and I have yet to deal with my
employer, who is at the top of my shit list. There's no one around when I crawl back out of my
shelter.  I think that's as a good sign.  Maybe they've given up on finding me in the woods and
have gone on to bigger and better things.  Here's hoping, anyway.  I climb out, land in a heap on
the ground--my inner ear feels like it's not quite working the way it should be--and get my
bearings.  I'm near the western edge of town where the houses are sparse and well hidden in the
forest.  I realize with a start that I'm not too far from my former boyfriend's house.  In fact, when
we were in high school, we used to hang out on this very rock pile and talk for hours.  My head
must be really messed up for me to have missed that earlier.

I half walk, half crawl down the pathway to his house.  Of anyone I know, he's probably the least
likely to take me in.  But right now, in the state I'm in, I don't really care.  I just want to be able to
lie down somewhere relatively safe and plan ways to make my employer pay for what he's done.

I ring the doorbell, wondering for a moment what I'll say if his parents answer the door.  I needn't
have worried.  He's there, standing in the doorway, staring at me as if I'd died and come back
from hell just to screw with his mind.  I manage a weak smile and say, "Hi."

He just blinks and says, "Geez, you look like shit."  With that he grabs my arm and helps me into
the house.  It still smells the way I remember it, like cedar and Pledge and warm cookies.  A fire's
going in the den, and I see an upturned book sitting on the couch.  Must have caught him reading
again.  He leads me into the kitchen without a word and grabs me a chair.  He starts up the coffee
maker, sets out a pair of mugs, and finally turns a says, "What'd you do this time?"