The First Hit

• Kirsten Hicks, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2019

Everyone’s heard rumours about the dark web. About illegal trafficking sites - drugs, guns...some say that there are sites where you can buy human organs, or even real live humans. And the horrors of the dark web? ISIS propaganda, disgusting sites dedicated to pedophilia, guides to cannibalism. You name it. People say if you think it, there’s a website for it. Some even say that there are pages on the dark web, encrypted beneath layer upon layer of complex code, where you can hire a contract killer, or, less formally, a hitman. When you search for it on the normal surface web, people in online forums will tell you that it’s just nonsense, that you can’t hire a hitman. That it’s all either a scam or cops, because the dark web is crawling with agents from the FBI and CIA. But I know better. I am part of the largest ring of hitmen in the United States, and I was just initiated. I completed my first ever hit. A fourteen year old boy named Lucas Vang. He was born in New York, but lived in the twelfth unit of the apartment block at 2596 Aspen drive, Boston, and was halfway through his freshman year at the John Adams High School. He loved the band Fall Out Boy, had over two hundred and fifty thousand followers between his Instagram and Twitter accounts and YouTube channel, and was a bacon and coffee enthusiast. He caught the bus to and from school every day, and was home alone for an hour before his mother finished work. His father left his mother when she found out she was pregnant, and he had an older half-sister who lives on Long Island. Usually, you can’t order a hit on children under sixteen years. Except for a contract killer’s initiation. Initiation hits are always children, to see if you’ve got the guts to kill, and the ability to cope with killing. All it took was a lock pick, a pair of gloves, a ski mask, a change of clothes and my steel, dragon-hilt dagger. Guess you can imagine what happened. The boy got home from school and didn’t even make it to his room before he fell and bled out, and his mother found him dead an hour later and called the cops. He didn’t see his killer coming. Do I feel bad about murdering an innocent fourteen year old? Yep. Do I regret murdering an innocent fourteen year old? Nope. I have twenty thousand dollars in cash and no evidence that ties me to the murder. All I had to do was burn the clothes and clean the blood off my dagger. The rush of adrenaline I felt when the sharp, steel blade met human flesh? And the excitement of hearing about a fourteen year old social media sensation’s murder on the news? The thrill of knowing I did it, but never getting caught? Stumping the police completely? Worth doing it again. And again. And again.