When they told me they had a job opportunity for me, I was ecstatic. I didn’t have a job and I needed one if I wanted to move out of my mother’s house. They said it was a top secret job. Temporary, but high in pay. That made me excited, I’ve never had a job and I didn’t really like the idea of working for some small company just to get a third of my money taken by the government anyway. They said it was a cash paying job, no taxes, no fees, no nothing. That seemed a little strange, but again, I liked the idea of getting what I worked for. I agreed, not even knowing what the job was, I was too excited to have a job to even think of what it was, the skills I would need, the time I needed to be free, et cetera. They told me to meet him at my local McDonald’s. Well, one of them anyway, at 10:00 p.m. on May 20th, 1998.
When I arrived, there was nobody inside or outside the McDonald’s. It was 10:00 on the dot, yet nobody was there. I knew it was too good to be true. There isn’t such a thing as the seemingly perfect job. I was foolish to think it was true. How could I, Jordan Monwell get the job of my dreams in one day. Yeah, it was foolish of me. Well, then why would they tell me such amazing lies? Just to get me to arrive for no reason? “Oh, well,” I said as I pulled out of the parking lot to go home. When I got there, it was around 10:15, it was dark and all the lights were off. My mother must have went to bed, she usually does around this time. I pulled into the driveway and turned off my car. I pulled out my phone for a minute to go on Facebook. I don’t know why I do this, it’s just a habit. I can’t be the only one who does it.
After about 5 minutes of nothing, I put my phone back in my pocket and headed inside. The door was locked, as usual so I inserted the key and opened the door. I already ate dinner, so I skipped past the fridge and headed straight to my room. I flicked on the light switch and turned on my TV. There wasn’t anything good on, and I was a little tired, so I just put F.R.I.E.N.D.S. on for noise and closed my eyes. I woke up at about 4:30 a.m. The TV was off, but that wasn’t unusual, it has a two hour waiting period before turning off on its own. It was pure black, though and kinda scary. I turned the TV back on to see a shadow illuminating in the corner of my bedroom. I turned my head to see a man dressed in all black wielding a suppressed pistol. I nearly shat myself when I saw him.
He said, “Be quiet and nobody will get hurt. We have three other men waiting to execute you and your mother if you try anything.”
I said, “Woah, what? Why are you here? Who are you?”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said aggressively. “We must test you physically and psychologically to see if you’re capable of this profession.”
I was so confused, and I didn’t know what else to say, so I just said, “Okay.”
“Come with me,” he said.
I followed him, far behind but close enough not to arise suspicion. We walked into the living room and I saw two other men, both wearing the same outfit with hockey masks and wielding the same weapon as the man I was trailing. I also saw my mother on the floor with a sack on her head. One of the men had a gun aimed right at her head, only inches away. I instantly knew that these guys weren’t messing around. I wanted to step up and do something but I would get overwhelmed. There were too many, and I didn’t know what to do. I just yelled.
“Don’t hurt her, she’s everything I have.”
One of the other men standing beside her said, “Are you willing to give anything for her life?”
“Yes!” I said. And it was true. I would give anything for her. I couldn’t lose her. I was thinking of different ways I could approach this. I could jolt to the man in front of me and disarm him and shoot him and the two other guys. That would work, except he said there were three other men in the house, not just those two. Also they’d shoot me before I could even get my first step in. They looked ready for anything. Like I was a dangerous ninja or something. But in reality, my only knowledge of guns or fighting in general comes from Call of Duty.
“Would you fight for her?” said the other man standing next to the one with the gun to my mother’s head.
“No,” I said in my head. I’m a little wimp, I couldn’t take any of them down. I’d die in the fight, without a doubt. “Yes,” I said. Shakingly.
He said, “Come here.” And so I did. He pushed me in the middle of the living room, kicking and breaking the coffee table while doing so.
“Hit me,” he said. I didn’t want to, because I knew that what was going to happen next was he was going to hit me back and not stop until I was dead. I just looked at him, wanting to avoid eye contact, but it was a little hard to do that. Saying that I was less than a foot away from him. I clenched my fist and started to count down from 5. I always did this in nervous situations. 5… 4… 3… 2… 1… I swung my clenched fist as hard as I could toward his head. I tried to put all of my weight into the punch, doing as much damage as I could. As I made contact, he fell back about a foot and a half, looking surprised at how hard I hit him.
He said, “My turn.” I ducked in an instant, I already saw it coming, his punches were slow and easy to maneuver around. I dodged three hits before finally hitting him again in the head in the same spot. He fell back again, this time he screamed in pain. I hit him so hard this time, his mask flew off. He pulled out his gun and aimed it at me. I didn’t know what else to do but charge at him and knock it out of his hand.
He tried to dodge me, but he was a heavy man and he couldn’t move very fast. I plowed into him with more force than I knew I even had. It must have been the adrenaline. He fell over and dropped his gun on the way down. I noticed this and took advantage. I dove toward the gun and picked it up.
He said, “Damn you’re fast.” He charged toward me and I pulled the trigger. I shot him in the forehead. He collapsed instantly.
I looked toward the other men and said, “Are you sure you want to f**k with me?!” I didn’t want them to, hell no. I just wanted to seem intimidating. I knew I wasn’t but I had to try in this situation.
“Would you give your life for her?” the man on the left said very eerily.
“Yes! Yes! Just don’t hurt her!” I said, screaming now. He pulled the gun away from my mother and aimed it at me.
He said, very softly, “Rule number one, never give your life for anyone else.” Then in less than a second he aimed the gun back at my mother and pulled the trigger. It took me a second to realize that he just f*****g shot my mother in the head. I just stared in disbelief. I didn’t want to believe what I just saw. But I had to, I just witnessed it.
The other man said, “We’ll be in contact.” They left moments after that. I crawled to my mother and pulled the bag off her head.
I was in too much emotional distress, it was too hard to look at what was the rest of my mother’s face. I couldn’t help but cry. I grabbed the phone and started dialing 911. Before I could even dial the first number, the phone rang. I answered. The voice on the other side was a voice I was not familiar with.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he said.
“What do you want with me?” I screamed in the phone.
“Meet at the bridge in Oak Creek Park in three hours,” he said, then hung up.
“What the f**k?” I thought. Then I looked back down at my dead mother. I had to bury her at least. If I couldn’t call the cops. I kneeled down and picked her up. Blood was still coming from the wound in her head. It was dripping all over my shoes and legs. I opened the back door and spent the next two hours burying my mother. Crying softly the whole time. I went in the garage and put a kiddie pool over the grave to get rid of signs of a burial. It seemed to be the only way. That was by far the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. With all the f****d up s**t these people had me do. This was still the hardest.
It was 8:00 a.m. They told me to meet them in three hours at 5:43. I had less than an hour to get to that park to see what the hell these sons of b*****s wanted from me. Either that, or I could run. But these people seemed experienced and deadly. So that was out of the question. They’d find me instantly. I got into my car, not even thinking of changing out of my blood soaked clothes. I drove very slowly, trying to think of ways to get out of the situation. I couldn’t think of any. It was now 8:40 and I was parked in the parking lot. There was no one else in the park. I was seemingly all alone, but I knew one of those mysterious people were watching me.
I got out of my car and started walking toward the bridge. It was dimly lit by a lamppost on either side of the bridge. I walked up to the middle and rested my arms on the rail. I looked toward the water and saw a dark reflection of myself. I reflected on what had happened a few hours before, and I started to get emotional again. As I felt a tear run down my cheek, a man from behind me said.
“Welcome to the wolf alliance.”
“You sons of b*****s killed my mother!” I said furiously.
“It was a test, and you passed.”
“Why me?”
“You agreed. Going to the meeting place, you agreed to be put through the initiation phase.”
“Initiation phase? Meeting place? Was this the job I agreed to? No. I didn’t want this. What even is this? What is the wolf alliance?” I asked.
“We are a set of highly skilled hitmen hired anonymously on the deep web. We get contracts assigned by the man in charge, Mr. Anderson. We can choose from them and carry them out the best way we can. Oh, and try not to get caught by the police. That’s how we lost our last guy.”
“What the hell… I’m not fit to be a hitman. Back there, when I killed that man-”
“Thank you for that, by the way, that guy was a d**k.”
“Yeah… Anyway, that was just a fluke, I’m not usually that fast or strong.”
“Well, you proved yourself once before. You just need to train your already badass abilities.”
“Badass? I don’t think so…”
“Just come with me, we’ve got some more things to talk about.”
“Sure,” I said with a weird tone, trying to make myself seem unconvinced.
“Don’t worry. I think you’ll like it here.”
Then all I remember was a hard impact on the back of my head. And I fell to the the ground.
“What the f**k, Jarrod?!”
“I saw him try to run, I swear.”
“Shut the f**k up and go over there, you dumbass.”
“Sorry about that, uh…”
“Frank, my name is Frank,” I said still holding my head, which was now beginning to swell.
“Sorry, Frank, Jarrod is new and he’s a bit of a twitch.”
“You don’t say?”
“Yeah, and he didn’t even hit you in the right spot.”
“Yeah, g******n that hurt,” I said in a sillier voice to relieve the tension a bit.
“You guys don’t have codenames? You just call each other by your first names?”
“Yeah, I’m Jeff by the way. I’ve been in the game since before the internet. It was a lot harder to get hits back then. Now, there’s always someone to kill. You’ve come at the right time, I must say.”
“How long have you been here for?”
“14 years.”
“Damn,” I said, “you must’ve killed a lot of people.”
“More than I can remember.”
“How about you, twitch? How many people you kill?”
“Twenty three,” he said with a creepy smile.
“How many you kill?” Jeff said to me.
“Just one. Tonight.”
“Oh, yeah Daniel’s b***h a*s,” he said with an excited tone.
“Can’t say I didn’t expect it. One of you four were going to die tonight, and damn I’m happy it was him.”
“Yeah…”
“So, you ready to see the big man, he’ll give you your first contract before training to see if you’re worth the investment.”
“Yeah, but don’t be expecting anything extravagant, I’m still trying to wrap my head around all of this.” I honestly liked the idea of being an assassin. I thought it might be kind of fun in a way. That’s a little psychotic of me, but we’ve all thought about killing somebody at least once in our life. Only now I actually get to.
“Whenever I can, I’d like to see them, I want my first contract as soon as I can.”
“Right then, let’s get you there.”
“Where is it?” I asked. Almost expecting him to say somewhere in California, the state we were currently in.
“Murmansk, Russia.”
“Woah!” I said, surprised as all hell.
“What?” he said.
“You expect me to just drop everything and leave to Russia just like that?”
“Yes. What have you got here to live for anyway? You have no friends, you have no family… anymore. You are the perfect candidate for this job. Why do you think we singled you out?”
“Well-”
“And besides, you have no choice, your life is now under the big man’s control. Just like everyone else.”
“Well, s**t,” I said.
“Don’t worry, it’s not too bad. You get whatever you want whenever you want. As long as you fulfill your contracts.”
I thought about it for a moment. Well, anything I want does sound like a pretty good life.
“Also, six digit paychecks.”
“Okay, I’ll come. But how are we getting there.”
“Helicopter, courtesy of the big man themself. We told them what you did, and they were very impressed.”
I held a smirk look on my face, “We’re just going to have to put you to sleep before we get there.”
“What? Why?”
“Safety precautions. It’s protocol. Can’t really do much about it. If it were up to me, I wouldn’t knock you out.”
“I would,” Jarrod said crazily.
“Jarrod, I swear to God.”
“When we get on the helicopter, we are going to have to anesthetize you.”
“Guess I don’t really have a choice, do I?” I said sarcastically.
“Yeah, sorry about that.”
We walked up to an SUV, a suburban with tinted windows. Another man got out and held the door open. I got in and he closed the door and went around to the other side and sat next to me. The car ride was silent. I watched as we drove out of town. Passing each road sign I felt my eyes getting heavier. Eventually, I passed out. I woke up to myself bumping around in the back of a truck. The driver had gone off road to a small hut in the middle of the woods. There was a helicopter. I guess this was the spot we were going.
“Where are we?” I said.
“Frank, how you doing, buddy? You know, you snore while you sleep. Pretty loud.”
“Yeah, so I’ve been told.”
“Well, sorry to tell you, but you’ll have to go back to sleep.”
“Oh, well.” The man on the other side of me got out and opened my door again. I stepped out and took a breath of air. The helicopter propellers began to turn and it was getting pretty windy.
Jeff came from behind me and said, “Let’s get you to sleep.” We walked to the helicopter, where there was a bed and an anesthesia machine waiting for me.
“Put this on your head and lay down,” a man with a white over coat said.
“Oh, this is Dr. Harrison,” Jeff said. “He’s our personal doctor.”
I did as the doctor asked, and I slipped the mask over my face and let the gas fill my body. It was a sweet taste. I could feel myself slipping into a deep sleep. Before I was completely unconscious, I looked over to Jeff and said, “By the way, my real name is Jordan. I just thought Frank sounded more badass.”
He chuckled. Then nothing.
