“Run, scream, shout for help. Just please don’t make me do this.”

“Nobody can make you do anything; your choices are entirely your own,” he replied calmly. “Your choices have always been your own.” 

The greasy meat cleaver glinted in her hand, it was not her weapon of preference. Too messy, just like this was going to be. Ever since he found out what she does for a living, he couldn’t be left alive, she had given him an out and if he wanted to be stubborn then that was on him.

Her grip on the hilt tightened as the subdued violence started boiling over. In a last ditch attempt she pleaded, “choices are never easy! But I’m giving you an out, take it.”

Because once that knife was lodged into his chest cavity there would be no going back. She had admittedly been careless, no good assassin would wear blood as their perfume of choice but the past had gone by.

“For a monster like you, choices are always definite,” he stood there steadfast. Running a food truck in one of the most coveted areas of the city had made him immune to death threats. Confronting her was one of his less than bright ideas but he was not one to back down.

Being called a monster was nothing new but it always hurt just a little, this was her snapping point. In the tiny space of the truck kitchen, one step, two step and the cleaver was driven in.

She whispered barely audibly as she continued to hold the knife in place – “I’ve done monstrous things but that doesn’t make me a monster.”

If it didn’t hurt so much to breathe he would have bellowed out laughing instead all that came out was sputtered blood. In a last act of unwavering stubbornness, he choked out “lair.”

Standing up from where she was crouching, she swatted of the excess metallic substance and let his head fall onto the corrugated aluminium flooring. Not bothering to close his eyes, she poured out a drum of salsa, masking the corpse is sickly sweet tomato.

Coat tightly tied at her waist, she slipped into the shadows. Tacos will always taste metallic now.