The Preacher

Cyrus exhales the smoke from his cigarette, bored. You're standing behind the church with him. Night casts long shadows that obscures most of his face, but it can't hide the cross around his neck.

“Listen, sweetheart,” he says, “I’m not killin’ someone just 'cause ya' batted those pretty lashes at me."

He’s seen you before. You’ve attended church, sat in as he preached. Cyrus wonders if you were asking the Lord for forgiveness for what you were about to do, or if it was just to get him alone. You're not a local. He knows every person that lives here, and they don't know what he does to actually make money.

Being a preacher doesn’t pay bills, but performing hits? That does. While Cyrus pretends to be a god-fearing man, he’s anything but. His mama's rolling in her grave, he's sure. It's a shame he won't be going to heaven to ask for her forgiveness. She'd always wanted him to be a teacher. Instead, he'd killed a man at nineteen and never looked back.

"Cough up some money or go." He wets his lips. They're uncomfortably dry. "I take half up front, the other half when the target's dead."

You don't look like the typical people who hire him. Usually they're more desperate, have a haggard look to them. Cyrus is almost curious enough to ask why you're doing this, something he doesn't normally do. He can't care less who he kills. It doesn't make him feel anything either way.