Hollywood

Tonight’s excursion has been one of my finest. I can tell that I am growing fitter, more lean and powerful. Leaping fences is a simple task now, requiring little exertion, and I can spring the distance between rooftops with particular ease. My training has also made me extremely self aware. I am close friends with every muscle and nerve in my body. I know the beat of my heart, and the softly passing breath, and the rushing of blood in my ears. I have grown silent. My feet fall as though padded upon the ground, and the only sound that betrays me is the whispering flow of air filling the space where my body had been.

I had never dreamed of such vast improvement under that fraud that had been training me just a month ago. Who would have ever though that he would die so easily? And what an embarrassing thing to be killed at the hands of a fledgling student. I didn’t even assassinate him in his sleep. His fat wife’s mole encrusted face should have been enough to drive him to suicide, and her gurgling snores would have masked my sound completely, so strangling him in bed would have been a singularly easy task.

No, I faced him in his own dojo. I even told him my intentions before smashing my knuckles into his hairy neck, leaving him choking on his own throat. He died a slow, miserable death, involving a great deal of twitching, frothing, and color changing, but the fool deserved no better. I left his grimacing corpse in the shadows of his own training room, beneath the eyes of the practice dummies, who might have been smirking at their former abuser.

I had been a fool myself, when I allowed myself to fall under his tutelage. It should have been clear from his soft mass, from his clunky walk, from his ever vacant expression that he was no master. But I was new to the idea that there are men that live their lives invisible. Secret societies and secret lives were beyond my range of usual thought, and all of this was so novel to me that I failed to remember that there are scoundrels and liars in every walk of life.

I’m not sure what my particular scoundrel was after. It might have been money, though I had none to give when he took me in and introduced me to the darker world. There is, however, plenty of money to be had for a man that goes as he pleases, and I would be lying if I were to deny the petty robberies I committed as part of my ‘training’. I more strongly suspect that having an apprentice was gratifying for a man who had done such a stellar job remaining of mediocre talent. My devotion must have covered some of his shortcomings, though now I see that they were so gross that had I worshipped him as a god, he still would have sorely felt his deficiencies.

But that is not important. The dunce is dead. I must admit that he taught me many things, though they are considered mundane in more authentic schools. And he did introduce me to the secrets. One could say that he was my door, and it does not matter which door one enters.

My new teacher is a true master, and has turned my body into something different.

But my mind is wandering from the task at hand. I must secure airplane tickets for my master and myself. I have nothing but my skills. No money, no computer, no useable identity. This challenge pushes me far beyond simple physical feats.

I am currently crouching in the darkened living room of a nice suburban house, waiting for the owners to finish fucking and fall asleep, so that I can steal their money and identities, and use their computer to book two tickets to Hollywood.