Maybe it’s a bit too early for Scarlatti, the girl thought, awed by the red substance that painted her hands.  Beethoven would have been more suited for this.  She stared at the dead man on the floor as blood pooled around his center.  He lay limp on his stomach, his skin pale from his body’s loss of blood.  His murderer loomed over him, recalling some of his more disturbing features like the feral gleam that had once burned in his dark blue eyes, the unruliness of his greasy blonde hair, the cruelty in his twisted smile - and felt nothing but satisfaction.  Yes, the Moonlight Sonata would fit my mood perfectly.  She squinted at her project as she leaned forward to press her frail fingers against his cold flesh, and suddenly regretted her earlier decision to leave her eye glasses at home.  Her farsightedness was proving itself a hindrance again, and she wanted to see the texture of her victim’s skin.

Three weeks ago she had started this routine, and despite the hardships, it still failed to bore Kadin Nightwish.  She had always been a difficult child, very awkward and withdrawn.  She had failed to make many friends in the orphanages that handed her around like an unwanted rag doll - not quite tattered enough to be thrown away.  She had excelled in activities that involved intricate and creative thought.  Academically, she was a little above average.  Socially - well, she wasn’t.  These were all reasons that a clever detective had set her up with an apartment in uptown Chicago, in exchange for her special services - ministrations that were NOT of a sexual nature, but of a devious one none-the-less.

She was, for the most part, a mercenary.

For a small detective agency that held an unbelievable and unbridled amount of power over most of the world’s justice departments, Kadin murdered those men and women that the regular authorities could not put away for lack of evidence - and she did it with a huge pair of headphones over her ears, padded bowls that blared classical music whenever it tickled her fancy.  She loved those headphones - and the ancient cassette player attached - almost as much as she loved the sight of blood on her hands.

The most interesting part of the whole situation was probably that Kadin wasn’t insane, bloodthirsty, or driven to murder by any degree.  She was in fact, a 19-year-old girl who was content with being manipulated in exchange for a place to live and a job that she could fathom.  No, she didn’t mind the killing, for it never served to hinder her everyday life, and it was better than flipping burgers at the local fast food restaurant.  She never had any reason to regret what she did for a living.

In the beginning, the detective Ander Fox had treated her as fairly as any agent in the department he worked for, and his employers didn’t protest in the least when they learned of Kadin’s existence, nor her occupation.  They were even polite enough to be encouraging.  Apparently, the relationship between herself and Ander was a natural occurrence in their department.  Plainly speaking, it was actually part of the detective’s job description to find people like her to do the justice department’s dirty work.

Kadin was given a new job every other day.  The message that was slipped under her apartment door every other morning was always on a 4 inch by 4 inch slip of white paper and was always organized in the same way.  It read as follows in 12 pt. Times New Roman print:  target’s name, target’s address, target’s relative time of death, and a note that said to burn the message immediately after reading and memorizing the information on the card.  It was as simple as that.

Kadin would memorize what she needed to know about her target, and burn the paper over the sink before washing the ashes into oblivion.  When the time of her victim’s death neared, she would retrieve a butcher knife from a wooden drawer in the kitchen, wrap it in a pristine white towel, and tuck the thing into her purse.  She would adorn her knee-length, dark gray trench coat from the hook on the apartment door, and slip it over her casual attire.  she would retrieve her headphones, cassette player, and a cassette of her choice from a nearby closet.  Finally, she would slip on her flats and head out, locking the apartment subconciously.

An hour or so later, she would exit a city taxicab, don her headphones, slip the cassette player into her pocket, and approach her target’s location with Bach or Mozart blaring in her ears.  

She would enter her designated location, make up some sob story so that the target would let her into his or her home, then stab him or her in the back when he or she wasn’t looking.  It was the simplest thing in the world to shove that hunk of blade into a human body and watch the blood flow from the established wound as the target fell heavily to the floor.  They never died quickly enough though, so Kadin often had to stab them a time or two more, just to keep them from reciprocating.  After all, she was a very small person and not very strong or agile, thus would be very easy to overpower.  When the target was permanently deceased, she would always have blood on her person somewhere.  It was never her intention to have her hands literally bloodied, but a fascinating spectacle none-the-less.  In all her 19 years, she never thought that she could enjoy something considered so atrocious by society with so much fervidity.

Yes, hers was a sad existence, but Kadin accepted it simply because it was an existence.  Often, in times before she had begun this line of work, she imagined herself without a specific personality.  Despite the circumstances she had experienced that would have drastically altered any other person, Kadin remained rather vague.  She lacked faith, opinion, or belief in any one thing or other.  Ultimately, she hadn’t done enough in her lifetime to care very much about life or death.  Killing people was just another space filled on her intangible agenda.

However, just because she didn’t appreciate life didn’t mean she wanted to die.  Her lack of faith didn’t make her an atheist.  Her tired, sadistic existence didn’t make her emo.  Her job didn’t necessarily make her a bad person.  She was simply another human being trying to find a bridge across the river that was life, and if she had to use murder, boredom, and classical music to get there, then so be it.  Kadin would find her own theoretical bridge and cross it eventually, perhaps while humming to Fur Elise and with the essence of her most recent target still drying on her hands.

Back in the presence of reality, Kadin stood in her current target’s apartment and proceeded to locate a sink so that she could wash her hands.  Blood, once dried, was very irritating to scrub off of one’s skin.  She performed the senatorial task in the kitchen sink (after finding it) as her mind wandered to the farthest reaches of the universe, where the stars dwelled in a mysterious darkness.  What she wouldn’t give to be one, a simple twinkle in the night.

It was during this little mind vacation - as she secretly like to call it - that something began to tug at her conscience that was completely and utterly unfamiliar.  Not knowing what the disturbance was or how to react to it, Kadin simply chose to dry her hands on a dish towel and adjust the volume on her headphones.  She smiled marginally as a rather tricky piece by Scarlatti twisted her senses into euphoria, and she easily disregarded the mild distractions of reality.  After all, the girl couldn’t afford diversions, because she had several more things to do that day that couldn’t be pushed aside.

She needed to visit Ander and give him the murder weapon that she had already wiped clean and tucked back into her purse.  She needed to stop by her favorite café and listen to the local artists hammer on a piano like it wasn’t a beautiful, fragile instrument of music.  She needed to stare down the gates of the last orphanage that she had attended with a triumphant smirk on her homely face.

Kadin suddenly grimaced and left the apartment, an unexpected fear making her insides squirm.  It was that feeling - that alien shiver running up and down her spine that was setting the girl on edge, distracting her from everything important.  Quite simply, she quickly discerned that she was being watched.

And she didn’t like it.