Casual Friday

Part 2

So, you’re asking yourself, how does one get into this line of work? The answer is that I didn’t choose this career, it chose me. I was what you might call disenfranchised youth, a dumpster baby with pink slip parents, dangling and twisting on a merciless string of foster homes, pediatric mental facilities, and juvenile detention centers. After murdering the heroin dealing foster parents in San Francisco that forced me to be their balloon mule at age eight, I was approached by Bob, the CEO of Human Resources, Inc. He paid me a visit in juvie, while the court mulled over whether or not I should be tried as an adult, and offered me a way out of what was starting to shape up as life in prison with men who would have most certainly made me their community glory hole. The way out was to become one of his new recruits and an assassin trainee. Of course I said yes (duh) and the next morning we were on a plane to New York. I have no idea what Bob did to disgorge me from the jaws of the legal system, and I don’t want to know. Suffice to say that Bob’s connections go deep into the brain center of the people who really run this country. 

It may seem harsh that someone so young would be brought into a cabal of elite killers—and it is. But, when you look at it from their perspective, it makes good business sense. First, interns need to be young to be believed or at least socially accepted as interns. Our retirement age is twenty-five for this reason. Bob felt that after that age people begin to take notice if someone is still an intern—and being noticed in our business is a potential death sentence. Thus, in order for HR, Inc. to get a solid seven to ten years out of us (I started at seventeen), recruits need to start young. Thus, while other kids my age were playing soccer, going to school dances, and rotting their brains with multi-player gaming, I was mastering the pistol course, learning fifteen different deadly martial arts forms, and identifying the myriad of areas on the human body that, with the right weapon application, will yield instant death. 

By the time I was twelve, I was assisting other interns in executing kills. When seventeen rolled around and I could pass as a man, I had my first assignment. And now, at age twenty-five, I am probably the most decorated intern in the history of HR, Inc. Of course, that couldn’t possibly be verified as HR keeps no records of its contracts. However, Bob has alluded to this fact many times and Bob does not blow smoke or sugar up anyone’s ass when it comes to the notches we put on our rifle stocks. Suffice to say that with thirty-four kills in eight years, I am an MVP with Hall of Fame stats. But you can read all about my illustrious career in my new book. That’s right. Lady Gaga and Rush Limbaugh aren’t the only swinging dicks around here that can land a book deal. The Intern’s Handbook, my memoir slash definitive guide to life as an HR, Inc. recruit, is coming out this Spring. And yes, the Hollywood vultures are circling my carcass for a potential movie deal. 

Just to give you a little taste (like any good pusher would) of what life is like as an office button man, I’m going to share with you my first assignment and the most difficult of my career. Of course, it follows that anyone’s first assassination attempt, regardless of training, would present significant difficulties. However, inexperience was not the reason this assignment was so difficult for me. It was a royal bitch because every possible thing that could have gone wrong—even the things I had no control over—went wrong. Murphy’s law became the Magna Carta on this fucker and brought a whole new meaning to the phrase trial by fire. 

So sink into the wavy lines of the TV flashback and join me eight years ago in the Manhattan offices of HR, Inc. That was the year we moved into our posh new digs and Bob was in top form, strutting around with the sword of Damacles up his ass. He had a stellar class in the field taking motherfuckers out like General Sherman, a new round of financing from his star chamber of wealthy power elite backers, and he was about to unleash his prize recruit (me) on the world.