This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Published by Second Wind Publishing at Smashwords

Published by Second Wind Publishing, LLC.
Kernersville


Second Wind Publishing, LLC
931-B South Main Street, Box 145
Kernersville, NC  27284

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, locations and events are either a product of the author’s imagination, fictitious or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any event, locale or person, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Copyright 2009 by J J Dare

All rights reserved, including the right of commercial reproduction in whole or part in any format. This book is free for personal use.

Running Angel, and all production design are trademarks of Second Wind Publishing, used under license.

For information regarding bulk purchases of this book, digital purchase and special discounts, please contact the publisher at www.secondwindpublishing.com

Cover design by 
R ‘n J Designs
Manufactured in the United States of America

My twenty-fifth high school reunion was in full swing when I walked through the gym’s double doors. Music was blaring, too many people were talking at once, and I could smell the fear reverberating around the room.
Middle-aged women trying to recapture their youth and popularity, loud-mouthed men still living in the past because their present lives sucked, and everyone was hoping someone else was fatter, wrinklier, or poorer than they were. So many of them were afraid the outer shell would crack and we’d see what real losers the kings and queens of high school had become.
I loved it.
Miss Prom Queen still had her looks, but they were harder and sharper. Years never lie – even with a good plastic surgeon. When she saw me walk in, she smirked in my direction and said something to the same hookers who had hung on her every word back in the day. Once a bitch, always a bitch.
The popular football star who had made my life miserable was now an alcoholic and it showed in his bulbous nose and shaky ex-quarterback hands. 
Tacks in my seat, spitballs, gum stuck in my hair, “Kick Me” signs on my back – those were only a few of the torments he did or instigated others to do back in the day. It wasn’t just me, though; our outcast group was targeted on a daily basis.
There was Julie, the girl with buck teeth and glasses. Frank, who never grew more than five feet. Micah, with webbed fingers and crossed eyes. Albert who was so dirt poor he wore the same clothes day after day. Betty, Denise, Marlene, Adele, Grier, Stewart – the list was long. We were the ones who didn’t fit in with the “in” crowd.
Not too many of the outcasts were here tonight. I saw Julie, Marlene, Betty, and Frank sitting at a table and I made a beeline for them.
“Lookie, lookie, it’s Miss Cookie!” Frank yelled as I sat down. 
“How’s everybody?”
“Good as gold,” Marlene replied as the others nodded in agreement.
On my right, Julie leaned toward me and gave me a quick hug. She had been my best friend in high school, but we’d grown apart when we moved out of town and away from the bad memories.
She had changed a little. Her teeth looked better, or maybe her face had just grown into them. Still wore glasses, but at least the frames were a little more fashionable.
Looking around, no one else had changed much. That said something about our apathy, acceptance, or total comfort in our own skins. As for me, I was perfectly happy to still be a frumpy, overweight girl with straight hair and muddy-colored eyes. My life was good.
It was going to be even better after this night. There was another reason I had come back to the town of my nightmares. Even though I was happy in my life, a part of my psyche was burdened with unresolved issues from my teen years.
Tonight, I planned to address those issues and find the peace my shrink charged me an ungodly hourly rate to tell me is missing from my life. It was his suggestion I attend tonight’s debacle, I mean, festivities. He said I needed to confront my tormentors and resolve the issues I had with them.
“Oh, shit, Walter’s coming over,” Frank whispered in my ear.
I looked and, sure enough, Walter Whittle was coming toward us. Or, rather, toward Julie.
Walter had been Julie’s personal nemesis in school. The worst humiliation happened at graduation.
Walking behind Julie as she was going up to accept her diploma for four years of never-ending hell, Walter had purposely stepped on Julie’s gown, tripping her, and sending her flying backwards down the stairs.
Poor Julie ended upside down with her legs straight up in the air and drawers showing. Big-shot football player Walter didn’t get in trouble, though. His old man and the principal were old football buddies.
Looking past Walter, I noticed a group of juvenile adults snickering. His high school cronies were pointing toward a stumbling Walter as he weaved his way closer to our table.
“Julie, you wearing panties tonight?” Walter slurred before his amused wife steered him away.
Julie turned a stricken face toward me as I told her to ignore him. Her eyes looked dead.
I’d seen that look before. It was me, so many years ago. Every day after school, I’d lock myself in my bathroom, stare in the mirror and promise myself one day, one day I’d get even.
Cold. I’d waited a long time and, as I looked at Julie, I realized I wasn’t the only one.
The evening wore on and on and on. I liked catching up with the people I’d been close to many years ago, but after three hours of listening, I was ready to leave.
As if sensing my restlessness, Frank pointed a finger at me. “You haven’t said a word about what you’ve been doing, missy. Give, or I’ll think you’ve got something to hide.”
“Oh, I’ve been doing this and that,” I said as my fatigued brain tried to remember my cover story. Usually, I’m not in a public place long enough to establish a relationship with anyone, but this reunion thing was a bit different.
As everyone turned their attention to me, I realized I couldn’t wiggle out of this one.
“I’m a statistician for a survey company. Lots of travel, not a lot of money, though. I’ve got some interesting statistics I’d love to tell you all about,” I continued as looks of boredom turned to looks of alarm, “but I’ve got an early meeting and really need to get going.”
After saying my goodbyes, I walked away from the table of former outcasts and past the smirking looks and snarkiness of the kings and queens I was going to kill later tonight.
~~~~~~~~
The deep of night had finally come and I was ready. My work is usually done in the light of day, but occasionally I’ve had to wait until nighttime because of one thing or another.
Until my shrink had opened some of my suppressed memories a month ago, I’d put the past way, way behind me.
The past was catching up with me tonight. Looking back, I realized my formative teenage years, those four years of suppressed rage, had steered me into my current employment.
Twenty-five years with the same company was a record and a prison. I had lucked upon my employer while he was working and saved him from a tight spot he’d gotten in. He had shown his appreciation by giving me a job.
My boss, Joshua, had been impressed with my aptitude for finalizing orders. Yeah, that’s what we call our contract killings. We couldn’t very well claim our unusual business expenses by their real names on tax reports from a company who’s in-office motto is s.a.d - search and destroy.
And I was the perfect killing machine. Frumpy and forgettable - no one remembered the chunky girl in non-descript clothes carrying an oversized bag and a chip of sadness on her shoulder.
I blended perfectly with the normals.
Tonight was my night. Josh knew I was here and, since he had also been bullied as a child, he knew why.
It was freaking cold and I shivered in my black sweat suit. As I slipped to the back of the hotel, the lights in Jessie the Bitch Prom Queen’s room were on.
Good. The better to see you with, bitch.
For a chunky girl, I moved quickly, quietly, and could get into tight spots you’d never think I was capable of squeezing into.
As I slipped through a window I’d jimmied open, the smell of shit hit me like a brick.
Damn. Jessie was face-down and dead on the tile floor of the tacky green bathroom, a garrote around her neck, and her nasty shit bulging in her underwear like a hard-on gone wrong.
As I looked around, the signs of a struggle were evident in the tossed bedding, overturned chairs, and broken glasses. Totally unprofessional and totally nasty.
In surprised shock, I quickly exited and moved with the darkness to the next room on my list, a few doors down. I could see my old nemesis, Theodore, through the blinds, a drink at his side as he sat like a lump in front of a blaring television.
Slipping through another jimmied window, I watched his head slump to his chest and the drink fall from his relaxed hand. Quietly, I dipped a cup of frigid water from ice bucket and walked back to him. I wanted him awake and aware of who was killing him.
Throwing the icy water in his face, I stepped back, waiting for his surprised reaction.
Nothing. He was either dead drunk . . . or plain dead.
No pulse. So . . . it was the latter. Shit. Heart attack, maybe? Or, something more sinister? What the hell was going on?
The scenario played out the same, but with different plots and actors, in the next four rooms I visited. Francine, the insufferable kiss-ass, looked  somewhat constipated as she sat duct-taped to a toilet - she was definitely dead, and like Jessie, stank to high heaven. I didn’t need to know how she’d died; it was good enough to know she’d died without dignity.
Arnold, one of Theodore’s cronies, was rather pale from the loss of blood from an extra-large smile across his neck. His surprised eyes seemed to follow me around the room.
Cici was staring straight at me as I peeked into her room from the outside. I stayed in place for five minutes and she never blinked, never moved a muscle. A spilled drink was at her feet.
Walter and his wife were locked in a death embrace from what looked like a broken javelin. They were shish-kabobbed. As I looked around Walter’s room, I spotted something shiny on the floor.
Bending down to pick up the errant earring, I remembered who had been wearing it. Pocketing the jewel, I wondered how I’d missed the signs of my friend’s madness.
Going back to my own room, I picked up the phone and dialed a room. No answer.
Of course not. I don’t know what I was thinking - the night was far from over and it was not going to end pretty for some of us.
Slipping back out through my own window (thank goodness this place didn’t have a second floor), I went around to the opposite side of the hotel, found a dark spot beside a bush, and squatted there, waiting.
It didn’t take long. A thin figure emerged from a window and I followed it. As if sensing something, the figure kept looking back and I would freeze in the shadows every time.
Closer and closer I crept. Before the killer could break into another room and dispatch another sorry asshole, I grabbed a thin neck in a headlock and pinched an artery, like Josh had taught me. Once immobilized, I dragged the masked assassin into woods behind the hotel.
Time to unveil my emotional twin who was already acting on what I had come specifically to this reunion to do.
Like I suspected, it was Marlene. Who would have thought? Of all the outcasts, she was the one who occasionally bridged the gap between the high-ups and the low-downs. Of all the outcasts, she was the closest to normal.
But, in a way it figured. As the daughter of our tenth-grade English teacher, Marlene caught either abuse or suck-ups (like when a football player needed a better English grade) from the “in” crowd.
I felt deprived. This was supposed to be my night. Securing Marlene to a tree, I went back to the hotel and into her room with a key I lifted from her back pocket.
It was all there. On the desk in her room, Marlene had notebook after notebook full of the most venomous hate I’d ever seen.
The poison was there, along with ropes, tape, and knives. Girl had come prepared for a high-school reunion apocalypse.
Well, who was I to stop her rewarding work? Sighing happily, I decided to carry on and, after finishing a half-dozen more fatal visits, I returned to where I’d left Marlene, tied and bond to a tree.
Still out. Good. Makes my work easier. Although I respected Marlene immensely for what she had done, I was pissed because she took what was mine to do. I had needed the release and she beat me to the punch.
So many questions I would never have answered. She was still out cold when I gave her the coup de grâce and put her out of her emotional misery.
Yeah, nobody - no matter who they are or what their reasons - should steal an assassin’s thunder. In addition to the money, which was sweet, there is a large amount of satisfaction after doing a job.
This night’s work was certainly not about the money since there was none. It was strictly about the satisfaction and because of Marlene, I felt cheated and unfulfilled.
In a way, I was doing Marlene a favor. Life in prison would be unbearable for someone like her and there was no doubt in my mind the police would be looking for her after they read the notebooks of hate in her room.
And, they’d pin the other six murders on her.
Packing my bags, I backed up to the wooded area where I’d left her. Stuffing her long body into one of my handy disposable duffel bags was a challenge, but I was able to do it with many crackings of bones and pushings of limbs.
Yep, the police would have an open and shut case. I was home-free, and, while not entirely satisfied, I was satisfied enough.
Hmmm. I wonder when they’ll hold the next reunion. I’ll be sure to attend because there were a few people on my list who had not shown up.
But, why wait five, ten or twenty years? Maybe, I’ll hold a few of my own mini reunions. Except, I’ll be the only one having fun . . .

J. J. Dare self-published a book for a second grade project. She looks back on that 10 page, A+ success as the beginning of her love for the written word. Career, marriage, children and a divorce have not stopped this author from writing. In addition to penning numerous short stories, Dare is currently working on several novels in different genres.


Other books from J J Dare available at 
Second Wind Publishing
http://www.secondwindpublishing.com/JJDare.html

False Positive: A tale of murder, war, espionage and vast conspiracy. Joe Daniels, thought he had at last escaped his brutal past. His placid world begins to unwind when his lovely wife Beanie is involved in an inexplicable accident that leaves her changed in every way; then ghosts from his past begin to emerge.

False World: The second book in the Joe Daniels' trilogy continues where False Positive ends as Joe continues his mission to destroy those who have destroyed his life. As the world changes, Joe's search for justice takes on a global urgency and he races to find answers before deadly answers find him. The world is not what you see. And neither is Joe.