The Assassin by Manakan

Do you know that feeling, when you have accomplished something special? You glow. Your own satisfaction radiates from you. Anyone who saw the man could see it in the way he pulled back his broad shoulders for the briefest moment when he had done it. That was a black night. The night the man was there. The sky coughed in great billows of something darker than blue, ragged clouds tearing on stars. Raw frost decorated the ugly edges of the street. Outdoors that night would have been beautiful were it not for the cold. Icy air clamped over skin tightly like a firm hand.
There was a man there. It wasn’t quite clear whether he was walking or not but he appeared to be getting closer to one end of the street and further away from the other. He could have been just an ordinary man, wearing a dull brown overcoat and black trousers.  The overcoat was buttoned up and covered most of his face, only allowing the bridge of a wide nose and two eyes like blunt green glass to be seen. He was not extremely large but the way he moved, the way he looked, made him frightening. The man stopped and lifted his face to look up at the street. He took in the boarded up flats that melted into the sky as night went on. He took in the lamp posts that poured a luminous yellow glow onto the pavement and the deserted atmosphere hovering in front of his eyes. Then the man began moving his cruel lips very slightly. His brow furrowed deep as he murmured. He continued walking, his big sloping steps killing the distance to the end of the street. He turned down an alley, then out through a gate and directly across a park. Then the man did the strangest thing. He was walking in a straight line and as he came to a wall around a small play park, he did not alter his course. He climbed the wall effortlessly and thudded down on the other side. When he came to a roundabout the man picked up his feet and tore through the obstacle. Wood splintered as the base gave way underneath him. He carried on marching towards a small house just outside the park. His target. His face expressionless. His thin lips were a blank line and his eyes did not stray from the small house.
She could be seen through the window. The small woman in the small house. She looked around 40 years old. She was standing kneading dough at the kitchen table with her weathered hands. Her long, thin fingers were tanned, except for a pale space on her ring finger. Each time she pressed into the dough the muscles on her arms flexed under her jumper. The sleeves of the loose jumper fell down into the dough and she frowned slightly and pushed them back up, revealing a small tattoo on her arm. One black, expanded wing. She leaned over the dough, drab long hair with a seam of blonde roots, fell over her face like branches over a weeping willow. Behind the hair, her features were pleasant but imperfect. Her weary eyes left shadows and her nose was long and thin. Occasionally she glanced up like an antelope at a watering hole. Then she froze. Her body stiffened, listening and her eyes scanned the room. She stayed paralysed for seconds and then slowly relaxed again, her head first then her shoulders dropped and she continued kneading. The movements of her hands were slow and deliberate as the mixture was forced by the heel of her hand. She pushed then folded and pushed… She froze again, this time suspended on the certainty of something being there. Her eyes darted round the room and she caught sight of his reflection in the dark window. A man. Filling the doorway. Behind her. Staring, unfathomable, robotic. In a movement his hand pulled a gun from his brown overcoat. The woman remained frozen, her eyes rapidly searched for an escape but her skin prickled as she put together the reflection, the gun and the presence of him so close. Then she exhaled her acceptance, her shoulders lowered, she nodded and continued kneading.
As the echo of the gunshot vibrated in the air, his gloved hand flicked the light switch, killing the light. He pulled out a plastic bag and put the gun inside. After scanning the dark room, he spun round in the door frame and walked back through the house and out onto the empty back street. The man walked steadily, pausing only slightly to drop the gun into a bin. At the end of the deserted street he stopped under a lamp post and lit a cigarette whilst checking himself from his shoes upwards for spots of blood, although he already knew from experience that the woman’s blood would all have been projected forwards onto the window. The night glittered icily in the acid yellow lamplight. His smoke curled lazily as he took another draw of the cigarette. He strode on unfazed; he was not a man, he was a weapon.