In some dark, dank corner of nowhere exciting, where silence reigned and nobody asked questions, Lena cleaned her weapons with obsessive care. Her life now was a shrine to isolation and brutality—just how she liked it. But rewind the tape a bit, and you'd meet a very different Lena. Years before she was a ghost with a paycheck, Lena was a vibrant artist full of life, as skillful at the potter’s wheel as she was with a rifle. The cover was impeccable—attending "seminars" and "craft fairs" out of town masked the shifts when she was out ending people. On the surface, Lena was an honest-to-goodness artist, dedicated to her craft. But deep down, she was a stone-cold killer.
She discovered pottery by accident—a random elective in school—but the moment her hands touched the wet earth, something buried in her blood woke up. Her mother had been a potter before her untimely death, though she never had the chance to teach Lena. Somehow, the clay still found her. She was a natural, a savant.
Lena's childhood was quiet. Literally quiet. Her father was a deadbeat man with a deadbeat job and a deadbeat life. War-induced PTSD kept him locked inside his own mind or the bottom of a bottle. He was all she had, though. Mama died when Lena was young, and that only deepened the hole Dad was living in. She knew she was the single thread keeping him tethered to this planet, and she did everything she could to show her appreciation. She knew he was fragile, that one bad move might push him over the edge. For all he was, he was still hers.
He might have been a ghost of a man, but he knew how to handle a rifle. A former Marine scout sniper, an expert marksman. But as it often goes with soldiers of his caliber, he came out the other side fucked up. Papa couldn’t boil water, but he could shoot a beer can off a fence post from 500 yards away. Shooting was his only outlet, and Lena, desperate for a connection, tried to bond with him by showing how well she could hold a gun.
Papa freaked out. Maybe because she was five. Maybe because when he woke up from his drunken haze on the couch, she had the sight set right between his eyes. Or maybe because she had a near-perfect Captured Thumb grip and the safety was off. The beating that followed ensured she never touched another gun in that house again.
That night, long after the bruises bloomed, Papa sat slumped at the kitchen table, a half-empty bottle sweating in his grip. He wasn’t looking at her. Wasn’t really looking at anything.
"You think you can just forget? Walk away?" His voice was low, rough as gravel. He let out a humorless chuckle, shaking his head. "You should know better. You can’t outrun ghosts. You can’t bury wounds that refuse to close."
Lena didn’t understand what he meant. Not then. But years later, with blood on her hands and a phantom pressing against her ribs, she finally did.
Then, suddenly, one day, Papa was gone. Lena came home from school to find the trailer they called home burnt beyond cinders. Officials ruled it an electrical fire, but when they thought she wasn’t listening, they whispered. The town drunk had been spotted earlier that day, stumbling home with a five-gallon jug of gasoline. Odd, they said, since he didn’t drive. Odd, since he didn’t have any other use for that.
The heavy scent of gasoline in the air seemed to confirm what no one wanted to say outright. Lena didn’t cry outwardly, but her soul screamed.
She had no other family, no place to go. That changed when Mr. Siegel, her art teacher, took her in. He had served with her father once, long before war and whiskey hollowed him out. Jack—he insisted she call him Jack—was the first person to see something in her beyond a quiet, broken kid. He cleared out his home studio, moving his canvases and easels into the garage so she could have a room of her own. His once-chaotic bachelor pad became something else entirely: a home, one that smelled of oil paint and wet clay, where jazz hummed low on the stereo, and where someone finally gave a damn about her.
Jack nurtured her artistic side, guiding her hands at the wheel, teaching her about balance, patience, and precision. When he wasn't sculpting or painting, Jack had another passion: shooting. He frequented the gun range, and one day, he took Lena with him. It was meant to be a one-time thing. But the moment she picked up a pistol, he saw it—steady hands, sharp instincts, an uncanny ability to tune out distraction.
"Jesus, kid," he muttered after she nailed the bullseye on her third shot. "Where the hell did you learn that?"
She hadn’t. It was just there, in her bones.
Jack had seen too many sharp young souls dulled by the machine. So when recruiters came knocking, he pointed her in a different direction—toward people who paid well for someone with her skill set. Contracts, lucrative and discreet. On her terms. A life split between two worlds: one molding earth, one ending lives. And Jack? He remained by her side—her mentor, her wingman in both business and blood.
Years passed. Jack lived long enough to see her art displayed in museums, her books on ceramic techniques become essential reading. When he died, peacefully and without regret, Lena buried the last piece of her past.
Then, at his funeral, a tiny gray kitten wove through the crowd, its sharp eyes locked on her. When she returned home, it was waiting on her doorstep. It slipped inside no matter how many times she shut it out. Eventually, she gave in.
"Houdini. Fine. You win."
Houdini became her shadow. He understood her silences, her absences. But when mission time rolled around, he lived up to his name. He vanished.
She tore through the house, calling for him. Nothing. The clock ticked down to departure, and frustration mounted.
"You better be here when I get back, you little bastard."
She expected the usual greeting upon return. A flick of a tail, a slow blink, a smug little mewl. Instead, the house was silent.
Then came the unease. The absence. The untouched food.
The smell.
She knew before she even admitted it. The stench, cloying and rancid. Her pulse hammered as she followed it—to the safe. The steel door swung open, and there he was.
Houdini. Small. Still.
The claw marks etched into the interior told the story. The panic. The struggle. The desperate fight to escape.
She staggered back, hands shaking like she’d never held a gun steady in her life. This wasn’t an enemy she could shoot, wasn’t a problem she could solve. This was her fault.
She buried Houdini in the sunniest part of the garden. Then she made a decision.
Burn it all.
The house, the shop, the life she’d built. No second chances, no sentimental goodbyes. Just an inferno to swallow every mistake, every tie, every trace of the woman she’d been.
She resurfaced in the mountains, a ghost in a cabin miles from the nearest town. Work, execute, disappear. A closed loop of cold efficiency. No distractions. No warmth.
Then one evening, a stray darted into her path—thin, ragged, wild.
Lena froze.
The cat stared at her, unblinking, a ghost from a past she’d tried to incinerate.
Papa was right.
You can’t outrun ghosts. You can’t bury wounds that refuse to close.
