"The Termination Squad"

Jacqueline "Jac" Lee with her Walther P99.
34 years old (born 1982)
5'8", 36C-26-34
Fit and strong but with all the right curves.



The casket lowered into the grave, taking to their final resting place my 24 year niece and her 18 month old daughter. Neither had yet begun to truly experience life, and as I looked down into that pit in the Earth, it tore me up to think that their ends had come so soon due to such a random event.

At the Capital City Government Offices building less than an hour after I bid farewell to the last of my blood relatives, a polite but obviously harried District Attorney invited me to sit across from her, asking again if I didn't want to put off this meeting until I'd had a little more time to mourn.

"I don't mourn the deaths of innocents," I said in an emotionless voice. My next words left little doubt as to my feelings, though. "I avenge them."

The DA gave me a steady stare, and I could see in her eyes the fight between wanting to sympathize with me and wanting to warn me away from doing something I would be sorry for later. Before she could do either, though, I began quizzing her about the people who had murdered Amy and little Abigail.

"They were caught in the crossfire of a drive by shooting," she explained as she opened a desk drawer and pulled out a file folder. She told me more about the shooters, the incident, and the circumstances that had led to former to commit the latter. Then she handed the folder across, telling me, "What's in here is all available via a lengthy and cumbersome public records request. I thought I would save you the time ... but, Miss Lee, I beg of you, let us do our jobs."

Sympathy and warning in the same breath, I thought. She's good.

I stood and, without another word, left her office, the building, and the block. Ten minutes later -- after a subway ride in which I broke the pinky finger of a man who thought he could get away with patting my ass -- I was entering what had been a beautiful peaceful neighborhood popular with artists, writers, and street performers when I was a child; but was now little more than a warzone, with the elements of half a dozen gangs all vying for control over its decaying buildings and desperate population.

Immediately upon entering and taking a seat in a corner booth I recognized the cafe's current operator. And I remembered her from my childhood. Melissa had been everything a 9 year old could want to one day be: beautiful, artistic, creative, confident. As I watched her tend to a variety of patrons, from noisy energetic children to quiet, frail elders, from beat cops with their bullet proof vests to gang bangers with their loyalty-signifying colors and tattoos, I wondered just how the changes of her neighborhood had affected her.

As she arrived at my table to take my order, I smiled up and said with obvious familiarity, "Hello, Melissa. It's been a long time."

I could still remember the last time I'd seen Melissa. It had been just days short of my 10th birthday, and I'd just won a regional Tae Kwon Do competition. I ached and had the beginnings of a black eye from where my last opponent and I had gotten into a bit more of a contact situation than was preferred by the referees. Melissa had brought me my usual, a very unique and odd combination: a big bowl of peach-flavored ice cream with cherry jam and a pickle on top; then brought me a bag of ice for my eye.

It had been a wonderful gesture, and I likely would have remembered that day forever for nothing but what happened there in that booth. But as fate would have it, on the way home our car was struck by a van fleeing a bank robbery, killing my father and sending my mother into a decade of painful surgeries and rehabilitation before depression ultimately led her to commit suicide.

"Peach ice cream, please," I began wondering whether or not it would trigger any memories, "with cherry jam and a pickle on top."

I smiled up at Melissa, recalling that day so long ago for both the good and the bad and wondered whether the girl who was now a business owning woman would remember me...

.....