Sarah Killian The Mullets of Madness

1DO WE REALLY have to go through this whole ‘introduce ourselves’ thing again? The only thing I hate more than introductions is repeating myself.Okay, okay. Fine. I’ll do this, though I have to say it would be easier for all of us if you just read my first book.So, my name is Sarah Killian and I am a Professional Serial Killer. DO NOT confuse me with an assassin. I hate those guys. Every. Last. One.Well, except for Mary Sue. She’s an exception. She’s an exception to a lot of things. I’ll get to her in a bit.In a tortoise shell, I work for a secret organization known as T.H.E.M.—the Trusted Hierarchy of Everyday Murderers. T.H.E.M. is clandestinely contracted by private individuals, corporations, or sometimes even the government to complete the dirty work of furtively killing off individuals or groups of people.I won’t bother covering the assassin side of things, because that’s pretty much just the boring, run-of-the-mill shit you’ve seen in every Hollywood movie.

3NORMALLY BEFORE I go on an assignment, I would pay my mother a visit. It’s really just about the only time I visit her, which is one of the many reasons I deserve the award for Worst Daughter of All Time (though not the main reason, by a long shot). However, since this isn’t exactly going to be a long-term assignment, I decide to put-off the visit and go straight to T.H.E.M. headquarters.The headquarters are located in Chatsworth at the far-west-end of the San Fernando Valley, in a building the general public assumes to be a porn distribution warehouse. It takes me longer than it might to get to Chatsworth, due to the fact I have to avoid freeways thanks to my ‘condition.’ See, I have a somewhat rare illness—so rare none of the doctors I’ve seen about it have ever heard or seen anything like it before. In a nutshell, I’m allergic to radar. Technically speaking, it’s not really an allergy—just a hypersensitivity. See, radar has this annoying tendency to send me into a min

5BARELY A FEW MINUTES later, a knock comes at the door. Mary Sue and I both straighten ourselves up, and then I head to the door.“Gene?” I say in my sultriest voice as I crack open the door. Standing in the hall is a man in his late-forties to early-fifties. Thin, wiry frame complimented by wire-rimmed glasses. Hair gone completely grey. Not unhandsome, per se, but not Harrison Ford, either.“Yes—Jessa? May I come in?” he asks—even if Zeke hadn’t already told me as much, I can tell from the confidence in his voice that he is no stranger to the courtesan profession and this is most definitely not his first rodeo. It will, however, be his last.“Of course, sugar,” I respond, putting on a façade of seduction whilst I internally shrivel up in disgust.I undo the door latch, and step aside so he can enter. A look of confusion spreads across his face when he sees Mary Sue—Ming—sitting on the bed.“What’s going on?” He asks, his voice betraying his concerns of being conned.“She

7NEEDLESS TO SAY, rest does not come easy to me. I spend most of the night fitfully tossing and turning. In the few moments I do manage to doze off, I’m woken by nightmares of a zombie Senator Keeley strangling me and moaning in a repeated chant, “Nick says hi . . . Nick says hi . . . ”So by the time Zeke calls me at 6:00 in the morning (the sadistic bastard loves calling me early, because he knows I’m not a morning person), I feel like I would have been better off not even trying to sleep.“Good morning star shine, the Earth says hello!” Zeke says. I’m so tired, it takes me a minute to figure out who he’s impersonating this time. Then it hits me, and I literally face-palm. Willy Wonka—and not the Gene Wilder Willy, but the Johnny Depp Willy. Technically not a serial killer, but definitely a sociopath, and I guess after thirty or forty years of doing this, Zeke’s probably running out of good characters to impersonate.“Cut the crap, Zeke, I’m in no mood today,

9WE TOUCHDOWN IN Nashville at about 9:30 p.m. The flight was relatively uneventful, except for Mary Sue’s incessant spew of verbal vomit. Being confined in a sardine can with this woman for four hours makes me want to suggest that Guantanamo Bay look into utilizing Mary Sue as a replacement method of torture as opposed to water boarding—half an hour into the flight and I was already at the point where I would tell anyone my deepest darkest secrets just for the sake of shutting her up.By the time we landed however, we were both so exhausted after the long two days we just went through that Mary Sue is back to her previous, albeit non-characteristic, complacent and silent state. It’s just as well that T.H.E.M. traditionally arranges transportation service for agents from the airport to their living arrangement, because I don’t think either of us are in a state where we can be trusted to operate a motor vehicle (anyone who points out that my radar intolerance makes me permanently