RIDDLE // D2

I like to think that I’m a master of faking.

In front of my peers – the boys I’ve come to know as my only family – I’ve given myself the façade of being very easy-going and relaxed, only taking what I’m given and never asking for more. From a very early start I’ve learned to live with the bare minimum and I haven’t changed my ways. I don’t take up much space with both myself and all of my possessions. On the flip side, when no one else is around, I fall into a very dark, depressed trance.

I’m not as good as all the other assassins. I’m not as strong, not as smart, and not as agile; I’ve never once completed a mission whereas everyone else always comes back home with a smile on their face and the news that they succeeded yet again. Don’t get me wrong, I’m really happy for my brothers and their victories but often I compare myself to them. Take Errol, for example: he’s absolutely brilliant and he’s the best assassin of us all but I’ll never be as good as him. Aside from Mr. Nalaar and Cornix, Errol is the one I’m most terrified to report my bad news to. He never fails – in fact, no one but me fails their missions.

I don’t remember anything about my parents. I’ve asked Mr. Nalaar about them a few times but he never said much regarding them – he hinted once that he found me on the doorstep without even a blanket and I would’ve frozen to death if he hadn’t found me when he did. That was my first indicator that maybe my parents weren’t the lovely pair I had envisioned. They didn’t name me, either; in fact I don’t know how I got my name. Riddle. No one told Mr. Nalaar what I was called and he told me that there was not a note left with me or anything so I “was a riddle” for him to figure out. (Not to mention I have a brown eye and a blue eye which also added some mystic aspect to the mystery, he said.) Maybe that’s where it all stemmed from, I don’t really know. But ever since then I’ve lived here and have grown up with these people.

I never took Career training like the other kids my age – I’ve always been enrolled in an assassin program (against my will, really, but I’ve not known anything different) and I’m not very good at it. The others are, though; ever since the beginning they’re the ones that have completed missions and brought a smile to our trainer’s face. But not me. I remember the very first mission I failed and how terrified I was to tell Mr. Nalaar. I felt sick to my stomach and I was shaking like a leaf as I approached him. The frown that came to his face is something I’ll never forget: it’s one of those visuals that just gets seared into your memory like a hot iron and stays with you for life, rising back to the surface at the most inappropriate of times. It’s very painful to remember, and ever since then I’ve failed my missions. Not even a single success. At this point I don’t think that anyone believes I can actually kill a person but I know I can. I just – don’t know what’s stopping me.

The disappointment I felt steadily grew and came to an amount so great that I tried to reach out and find some sort of outlet. The other would’ve quickly found out if I had started doing alcohol or drugs so I avoided those, but I found this little shard of glass with a sharp edge one night on another failed mission and I snuck it home, tucking it away safely in my room until I finally broke down in the early hours of the morning once.

I took that blade to the pale skin of my side, creating railroad-like marks all the way down over the span of a few years. The release it gave me was much welcomed and my shirt hid the marks so no one saw and asked me about them. I still do it – that piece of glass is still tucked away secretly in my room, waiting to comfort me when the dark of the night becomes too overwhelming.

Every mission I still try my hardest but I don’t know what stops me. I train hard and try to live up to everyone’s expectations but somehow I continuously fall short. I put that fake smile on every day and try to fool everyone into thinking that I’m alright; I figure that I compare myself to others far too much, putting side-by-side my successes and someone else’s, using theirs as a model and then pointing out all the flaws that mine has (even if I can’t find something wrong right off the bat I’ll still twist something into making it seem wrong). As far as I know no one knows anything about all this: I try to keep my breakdowns in my room and in the early morning hours when no one else is awake. I try to not let anyone see that all this is bothering me and just bury it deeper and deeper inside of me but I’m bound to explode at some point, right? Maybe then I’ll be able to murder someone and complete a mission, fueled by a rage I’ve never felt before.

Maybe.

Maybe someday I’ll be able to walk up to Mr. Nalaar and smile and confidently say that I’ve succeeded. But until then I'll just have to be determined.