Assassin's Taboo

[Deciviel]

Chapter 1

The radio of the old �87 Jeep produced nothing but static, and the heat of the glaring sun
didn�t help much either. Along the highway there was little or no traffic. The vast expanse of tar
and sand seemed to stretch for an eternity.
Time moved at a snail�s pace, each second seeming like a minute. The A/C didn�t help
much, as the Jeep was already months overdue for a checkup. The motor underneath the dented,
lime-green hood growled and moaned like a dyeing beast, ready to let go of its life at any time.
The occupants of the vehicle, a black man, a Creole, and two Caucasians (one being the driver)
waited endlessly to arrive at their destination, that is if they would ever get there.
As the hours passed, the sun grew ever hotter as it made its way over the desert,
producing beads of sweat on the faces of the four men. As if that wasn�t bad enough, a night of
heavy drinking and smoking only added to their troubles by producing pounding headaches for all
of them. The gang knew that if they didn�t pull over and rest soon, they would most likely be
facing serious injury, if not death.
The driver turned off the radio (which hadn�t done much to ease the men), and veered to
the side of the road. As he turned off the engine, two of the passengers opened their doors to get
out and stretch, while the other, a young Caucasian male named Tim Morrel, stayed inside and
fanned himself with his hand.
�I don�t think that�ll help much, chief.� said the driver, a man who looks to be in his mid-
thirties, as he looked in the rear-view mirror. �Sun�s hotta� then hell out �ere, and your hand sure
aint gonna make it any better.�
�Better than nothin�.� said Morrel, beads of sweat dotted along his forehead. He leaned forward
and asked the driver, �When d�ya expect we�ll be at Denver?�
�Beats the hell outta me.� said the driver, smiling a bit. He bent down and reached under his seat.
He then sat back up straight, a rectangular glass bottle in his hand. �Want some?�
Tim could tell right away what the driver was holding from its colorful white and green label.
�Well I�ll be a sunuvab***h,� Tim said. �You mean you had that there this whole time, and ya
never offered me any?�
�I woulda thought you�d be sick of any kind of alcohol after last night.� smirked the driver.
�Not when it�s this kind.� said Morrel, a sly smile on his face. If there was one thing Morrel loved
more than anything, it was the sweet taste of Mornigan�s brand Vodka. Morrel reached his hand
forward to receive the bottle, and then sat back in his seat, opening the Vodka and smelling the
intoxicating aroma it produced. �Why you offerin� it to me now if ya thought I was sick of
alcohol?� he asked after taking a long swig.
�Ya looked like hell,� answered the driver. �Thought you could use a �lil.�
�How very considerate.� He put the cap back on the bottle and returned it to its respectful owner.
�You think Ferguson�s gonna go for our proposal?�
�Chief, we�re four hot, tired, hung-over guys with headaches the size of the godd**n Grand
Canyon.� said the driver. �If he don�t we�ll be addin
� �madder than godd**n hell� to that list.� He took the bottle of Vodka, now almost half-empty,
and tossed it back underneath the seat. ��Ay Joe, Mark, come on now! You been out there long
enough! Time to get this stagecoach movin�!�
The two other men heeded his advice and came back into the Jeep. As the men buckled their
seatbelts, they could hear the sound of a motor coming up from behind them. As it got closer, it
sounded like a raging beast ready to gore anything in its path.
�Now what in the hell do ya� expect that to be?� asked Mark, one eyebrow slightly raised.
�Beats the hell outta me,� Morrel responded. �Probably just-� The sound of the approaching
motor cut him off mid-sentence, and within seconds a sleek, black Porsche came roaring past
them. After a few seconds, it turned around and cut its speed. As it slowly drove past, the
windows rolled down to produce two Hispanic men, probably in their forties, wielding 45-mm
rifles.
�Holy s**t!� exclaimed the driver, and all of a sudden everything became wrenched in chaos. The
man on the right began firing at the back of the Jeep, while the other did the same to the front.
The bullets penetrated the glass of the dusty, water-spotted windows, as well as the doors of the
vehicle. The barrage of bullets pierced through the men like knives, blasting through their bodies
and drowning them in large amounts of blood. Once the assault was good and done, the
assailants stuck their heads back into the Porsche and rolled up the windows. As they did this, the
driver, hidden by the tinted windows of the vehicle, stepped on the gas with all his might and sped
the car out of the area. The four men in the Jeep, who seconds before were ready to continue their
venture through the desert, now lay in a heap of blood and glass, their heads hanging lifelessly as
if in shame.

[Voy_Girl]

wow.. that was unexpected.

[Deciviel]

Chapter 2


Xander, a tall, slender man at about twenty-five,
peered out the window and lost himself in thought. No
lights were on in this room, and that�s precisely how
he liked it. He liked to sit alone, in his chair, with
no obtrusions to disrupt his flow of thought. The
radiant light of the sun shone in on him from the
window, providing him with all the light he needed.
Slowly, though, the shadows of objects on his desk
began shifting their positions, which meant that night
would soon be upon him.
On the center of his cedar desk sat a no. 2 pencil
and a few sheets of paper, scribbles and ideas
engulfing the parallel blue lines. Some were readable,
others were just a jumble of letters. Xander didn�t
mind this, though. He could read them just fine. His
penmanship hadn�t changed much since high school, all
those years ago. Thinking about his old alma matter
pained his heart and tortured his mind. It was in
his junior year in high school that he met the love of
his life, a petite young sophomore by the name of
Wendy Deveer.
Whenever thoughts of her crept into his mind, he
cringed and became depressed. For it was five years to
the day that his high school sweet heart turned wife
bashed her brains in with a sledgehammer. He
remembered coming home from work that evening and
finding her disfigured corpse occupying her favorite
blue felt chair. After the initial hysteria resided,
after he had cried and sobbed like a madman with
thoughts of �Why?�, the answer popped itself into his
mind. She had acute schizophrenia and was prone to
severe depression. Whatever had pushed her to taking
her own life was beyond him, and her depression had
passed itself on to him and had remained with him to
this day, even when moved here to this apartment.
He got up from his chair and made his way to the
wastebasket at the corner of the room. He reached down
and picked out a crumpled piece of paper that lay
among the others. He flattened it out on the wall and
briefly glanced it over. With a simple smirk he carried it back to the desk and set it amongst the
others.
Writing was his forte, as well as his passion. A single thought could creep itself into his
mind, and from that one simple thought would stem a poem or short story or whatever tickled his
fancy. At times those thoughts were depressing, and so his writing would be as well. At other
times they would be high-spirited and riveting (maybe even kind of cute), and from those a
delightful romp through the vast inner workings of the optimistic part of his mind would manifest
itself in the form of words and sentences.
While his writing stye was unique, not to mention brilliant as he liked to call it (and at
times he was right), none of his creations ever seemed to be good enough for the big publishing
companies. To the right of his desk, just inches from his radio, stood a file cabinet, filled to the
brim with rejection letters. He even had them organized, too (the top drawer was labeled �Reject.
Lttrs. for poems�; the middle one read �Reject. Lttrs. for stories�; and the very bottom drawer
was labeled �Lttrs. from idiots who don�t know s**t�). With every rejection came a brief but mild
depression, one where he didn�t seem like writing anything. Was he ever surprised when a
rejection letter came? Not really. He knew from years of trying that his hard work and
determination would only be met with failure in the form of a letter beginning, �Mr. Xander
Phelps...We regret to inform you...� It was nothing new to him. He�s seen writers with far more
talent than him get �a slap in the face,� as he calls it. Still, he continues to write, to conjure up
magnificent and sometimes volatile works that could only come from a mind such as his.
He picked up the pencil and erased a sentence from the paper he had taken from the trash.
Turning the pencil so that the lead faced the paper, he wrote a new sentence, one that, to him, had more
�spizazz� to it. It read, �The darkness fades as the morning light settles in.� It was almost
impossible to make out, though, as that whole line was muddled with black from constant erasing,
writing, erasing, writing, and so on.
With a quick glance at the wall clock behind him, which read 7:25, he noticed that the sun
was almost ready to call it a night and return to its nightly slumber. He got up, organized the mess
of papers on his desk, took a quick drink from the glass of water which stood next to his neat
stack of papers, and was about ready to head off from his apartment to a nearby bar, which he
frequented often. So often, in fact, that the barkeep always knew what he wanted, and how he
wanted it. He licked his hand and smoothed back his coarse black hair as best he could, and
then with his shirt he wiped the particles of dust of his glasses. He put his specs back on, and just
before his hand reached the brass doorknob of the white wooden door, the phone back at his desk gave an
unexpected ring.
�Damn,� he said to himself, �Every time.� He went to the phone and picked it up, answering
�Xander Phelps.� After about fifteen seconds of listening to the man on the other end, his jaw
dropped slightly, and he said �When? Who? Oh, my God...my God...no, no, I can be there by
tonight. Yes. I�ll take the next flight out there. Yes. All right. My God...thank you so much for
telling me.� He put down the receiver and said quietly to himself, �My God...dear God.� He
rushed into his bedroom, packed a few pairs of clothes into his old, worn blue suitcase, got his cell
phone, and grooming supplies (which was only a toothbrush and razor), and made his way quickly
out the door, neglecting to lock it.

[janewaykat]

wow its good

[Seven of Nine]

Tr�s bien

[Voy_Girl]

Riveting!