Ana wasn't like most girls. She was an assassin. She wasn't even like most assassins.

On jobs she always dressed in white, which made for a surprisingly strong incentive to avoid
her victims' blood. Unlike most assassins, for whom it wasn't personal, with Ana it always
was. She didn't like to see her victims as faceless foes, as simply a hit and money in her
purse, because if she did she'd just see them as slaughtered lambs. She liked to know their
names, to see them as people, and sometimes meet them in disguise, get to know them, shake
their hands. She needed to feel the weight of the lives she took, it kept her grounded.
Because, in her line of work, it was easy to forget that the lives she ended had indeed been
lives. It was easy to become just a common killer, with no incentive save a practiced and
compulsive hand. So Ana knew her victims, or at least all of their names, for she'd engraved
each in a bullet, a bullet just for them, then sent it gift wrapped in its casing through their
heads.
But she wasn't always Ana the Assassin, sometimes she was Ana the Student, the
Painter, the Friend. And it was as Ana the Unarmed she walked the street one gloomy
evening, her black hair streaming out behind her like strands of inky night. Just as she neared
a darkened alley, reeking of piss and decay, she heard a noise rise up behind her, the slapping
of running shoes against the sloping concrete sidewalk. She kept walking as if she didn't hear
it for a time, but then the sound grew far too close for comfort and she whipped around, but
not fast enough, for the stranger grabbed her by her silky hair. Her lips parted to shout, but a
calloused hand clamped over her open mouth. She was dragged backward, kicking, and
digging her nails into the leather-clad arms of her attacker.
She smelled the strong offending odour again, and knew she was being pulled into the
alley she had passed. She was half-dragged half-carried past cans of overflowing garbage and
rats that scurried away at her approach. The hand still pressed to her mouth, she was shoved
against the chain-link fence at the end of the alley. Her eyes wide, she beheld the black ski
mask of her attacker, its holes revealing stern lips and wild dilated eyes.
Ana set her face in a snarl and stretched out her arms, trying to claw at her attacker's
neck, scratch at her face through her well worm mask, but the Attacker's reach exceeded hers,
and while Ana's stubby fingertips could barely scramble against the Attacker's clothed skin,
the Attacker's hand could wrap full around Ana's neck, and there her fingers coiled. Stars
danced across Ana's vision as she scraped her nails uselessly against the hand's well hardened
flesh.
"Look at me," the Attacker hissed out the command, and pressed harder on Ana's neck
until she obeyed, staring into the icy blue of the Attacker's eyes with her own, like
shimmering black pools of night, "You're going to look into my eyes, just like that, as I kill
you, because I want to be the last thing that goes through your head."
Just as Ana thought she would fall into unconsciousness, the press at her neck
relented, and the masked attacker reached down into her pocket, and her hand emerged with a
click, baring an unfolded pocket knife that caught the sun's red evening rays, looking as if
blood already glinted off the edge of its blade. Though Ana wanted to thrash against the hand
that still pressed shut her lips, she stayed still and let her eyelids droop, as if the Attacker had
choked the strength from her. Falling for the act, the Attacker let her muffling hand relax, just
a tiny bit, just enough, as she brought up her well sharpened gleaming knife. Seeing her
chance, Ana ducked and her attacker's sweaty palms slid off her lips as she plopped down
into a puddle that was probably more urine than water. Before the Attacker's hand could swift
descend to plant the blade into her neck, Ana's fist went careening up into the Attacker's gut,
wrenching a strangled cry from her wretched mouth. As the Attacker staggered backward,
Ana crawled between her legs. Scrambling to her feet, she ran, her strangled throat burning
with every laboured breath.
When finally, never looking back, she reached her tiny apartment, her heart was
racing and she, for the first time in her life, felt weak. She buried her hands into her hair and
felt like, in her sadness, and anger and vulnerability, pulling chunks of it out. She wondered
what she'd ever done--you know, besides killing drug lords killers--to deserve being attacked,
and she came to the unsettling conclusion that she'd done nothing, that no one ever did.
Looking in the dusty mirror by her bead, she saw the raised purple marks against her dark
skin where her attacker's fingers had dug in. She smelt the garbage juice and piss that soaked
through her clothes, and wondered if she was now a victim, if she now fell under the same
umbrella as everyone she'd ever killed (quite an expansive umbrella, to shade two dozen and
one).
She'd been beaten, shot at, and even stabbed before, but she'd never been the victim,
always the victor, and she wondered where the new title would fir amongst her others; Ana
the Assassin, the Killer, Shadow, White Death, Victor... Victim, right there, she guessed,
tacked on meekly at the end.
Scowling, she peeled off her soiled repugnant clothes and pulled on her assassin's
white garb. Her hand steady, and her mind set, she picked up a slender bullet from the box
beside her bed and breathed in its comforting metal tang. She brought her sharp, handmade
engraver's tool to it. Her skilled fingers traced out a name, one shallow ornate letter at a time.
When she was done, she blew the metal dust from the small pill of death that it would be the
fate of someone very special and unfortunate to swallow. She raised it to the light and
scrutinized the letters and her mind pronounced the name, a name she never said aloud.
She stared at it for several seconds more, before setting it gingerly inside the pocket of
her inconspicuous white purse, where it waited silently like a hibernating snake for almost a
year.
The summer ended, the winter came and went, and spring warmed and dampened the
air before the bullet got a chance to find its designated head.

The assassin was walking unnoticed along a crowded sidewalk. She wore a white
dress, made of a thin silky fabric, white shoes with the barest hint of heels, and a red smile
that hid her straight white teeth. Her dark eyes swept idly through the crowd, when perchance
they fell upon the set she would not soon forget; pale eyes that burned like azure flames, yet
chilled her like ice. Though the freckled face before her was now bare, framed with short
auburn hair, the assassin saw only the black mask, knowing beyond any doubt that it was her
Attacker. They were heading toward each other, and the Attacker's eyes met the Assassin's
for a moment, then slipped away, not even sparing her a second glance. With gritted teeth the
Assassin realized that her Attacker did not recognize her face. Once the attacker passed, less
than an arm's length away, Ana pretended to check her phone (which also was enwrapped in
a white case) and then doubled back to follow her at a modest distance. She followed her for
ten blocks before the foot traffic slowed, into the very neighbourhood where last summer
she'd gained her latest unwanted and unasked-for title. She could be the Shadow now, pull
out her gun and run up and shoot the Attacker without a word, but no, she felt like gaining
another title, stealing the Attacker's for her own. Ana the Attacker, it had a certain ring. The
Assassin tacked up closer and closer behind her, timing her footfalls to match the Attacker's
own. She waited until they neared the alley, the one that had smelled of piss and garbage and
decay, and then she sprung, grabbing the Attacker from behind, mimicking her abducting
manner to a tee. Ana was smaller than the Attacker by a considerable degree, and found
resistance until she pressed the cold metal of her gun against the Attacker's temple, then the
larger lady followed almost limply, allowing herself to be backed into the alley, which had
added the smell of feces to its noxious brew.
"Scream and I'll shoot you," the Assassin warned as she let go of the Attacker and
pushed her away. The Attacker put her arms up and her eyes went wide, this time with fear
and not murderous crazed joy. Ana could hear her short ragged breaths and see her face grow
purple as she went cross eyed staring down the barrel of Ana's raised gun. She was such a
muddy mix of colours, blue eyes with orange hair, a purple face and yellow flats, a black shirt
and grey pants
"Turn around and put your hands against the fence," Ana commanded and, trembling,
the Attacker complied.
Ana fumbled in her white purse and found the long dormant bullet.
"You don't remember me, do you?" the assassin asked, voice calm and measured, with
just the right amount of disdain, "well you tried to kill me, two-hundred-and-forty-two days
past, and if you still don't remember, I'm the one who escaped." She said the last words
harsher than the rest, while her heels clanked against the chipped asphalt and the distance
between them closed.
She thrust a hand at the Attacker and the Attacker flinched.
"Look at this," the Assassin said, her voice rough with the low, long burning boil of
her anger, "What is it?"
Reluctantly, the Attacker opened her tightly shut eyes. "A bullet," she said, with
barely enough breath to push out the words.
"Yes, and can you see the writing in it?" the Assassin asked.
She heard the pattering footfalls of the only witnesses behind her scurrying past; rats.
"Yes," the Attacker said, tilting her head to get a better look, "Oh, please don't kill me,
I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," she snapped, erupting into sobs, but then the Assassin pressed the
cold barrel of the empty gun to the Attacker's head and she sobered at once.
"Read me what it says," she ordered.
"A-Ana, it says Ana," the Attacker read.
"And do you know what that is?" The assassin asked, "It's my name," she said,
answering her own question before the blubbering Attacker had a chance, "And I never tell
anyone my name and let them live."
The Attacker erupted into a fresh wave of sobs as the Assassin made quick work of
loading and cocking her gun. She pressed it to the Attacker's rust-coloured locks and her
steady finger pulled the trigger, silencing the Attacker mid cry as the alleyway erupted with
the echoing boom of the gunshot.
"I just wanted to be the last thing that went through your head," The assassin added to
the Attacker, fast becoming a corpse, as she slipped down into a puddle of garbage water
mingled with her own defecated filth.