Plouc

Rain stopped to make sure her mother was not floating face first in the above ground pool located between her family’s catty-corner single wide trailers. She was not. She was safely passed out on her back, sunglasses askew, head lodged against the mildly rusting metal step stairs. Even unconscious somehow her hand, like a claw, managed to hold onto the mostly vanquished vodka bottle, its label adrift somewhere in the water. Rain would have been disgusted if she hadn’t been so hot. ‘Plouc’ she spat at her and stomped her way across the sunbeaten grass.

She cut her way through the backyard, a broken section in the chain link fence would allow her to slip through towards mainstreet without walking all the way around the block. Her step father was setting up his cock fighting ring, standing room only and she could hear her step mother reciting her scenes from her favourite movie ‘Miss Congeniality’. The pool, her menagerie of parental figures, her seven degenerate siblings, the ferrets- Muffins and Puffins, the whole damned thing made her sick.

She kicked over two plastic flamingos.

She wished she had socks. Her feet were slick inside of her brother’s combat boots. She’d managed to render them wearable by tying the laces around her calves constrictively tight- otherwise the size or two difference would have made them impossible to wear. Still her feet sounded strange on the cement of the sidewalk but it would have been impossible to go barefoot, a common approach for all of the Ban Jekk clan.

She wanted to go to the library- sit in the air conditioning and thumb through the books. She wished she had remembered how hot it could get before she had gone and got herself excommunicated from the premises. She said the word ‘excommunicated’ out loud to herself. She hadn’t know what the word had meant when Beverly, the dumpy elderly lady who ran the library, had said it to her. But Rain was no fool, she knew when someone was being smug with her. She hadn’t known what the word meant then but she understood it well enough to give old Beverly the bird. Rain didn’t see what the big deal was. So what if she had taken to writing alternate endings in all the romance novels she checked out. She thought all the stories improved by her additions- though admittedly there was never much variation- she always made sure everyone died in the end.

The next most temperate place to sit was the Cone of Cool. A mysteriously resilient ice cream parlor shop in a dilapidated building at the far end of the very short main street. The stupid bells on the door rang as Rain opened it. Four faces turned to her. Rain smiled sweetly. Her heart was black with death. Being the only person in her family who hadn’t broken their nose Rain was, according to most people, rather pretty and she, having almost always had nothing, had learned that often enough a smile would get her what she needed. She found there to be no paradox or hypocrisy in her winning smile and the pulsating knot of wrath and loathing she felt for basically everyone she met. It seemed so natural to greet people and casually imagine their demise in a horrific inexplicable train accident or being struck by a part of falling airplane debris while walking the street talking about the weather.

And then, as if the heavens had opened up and all the shit in the history of eternity had just poured out of the opening, she saw Mary Thompson.
Mary with her perfect blue eyes.
Mary with the gold chain that had her name ‘Mary’ on it as if everyone in the stupid one stop light town did not know who she was.
Mary with her ridiculous flitting bird laugh.
Mary with that unforgivable yellow sundress.

Rain’s eyes narrowed. By the time she snapped to Mary was yelling. The ice cream boy attempting to console her. Mr. Jenkins, the town drunk- which in this town was saying something- was restraining Rain. Rain had a plastic spoon in her hand. Mary Thompson had a red dot, a bruise of the skin on the side of her neck. Rain realized she had just stabbed Mary with the back end of a plastic spoon.

Rain knew then in a flash of divine revelation unlike anything she had read in the stupid books in the library what she wanted to do with her life. Previously she had been convinced that she would become a world-famous cupcake chef but she knew beyond a doubt in that moment that she was meant to be an assassin, murder for hire. She admitted to herself that her first attempted murder had not been performed well, but then again it was only her first attempt.

Rain relaxed, went slack. She was suddenly sad about the idea of having to give up her cupcake dreams but it then occurred to her if she applied her self she might be able to do both, she was certain all for pay murderers needed a cover story. She had been ignoring the rabble of noise, when Mr. Jenkins’ question- the one he had asked for the third consecutive time- got through to her, ‘Jesus girl, why did you stab her with a plastic spoon?’ His voice was all confusion and incredulity.

Rain shrugged.
‘ ‘Cause it was all I had.’