Heads up.

You spend most of your life just hanging back. Until the word comes down.

You are sent the heads up, although you start to go into a mental preparation, you are still merely coasting along, nothing to be concerned about – yet. You know your mental energy is best preserved for when it is most required. You need the contact details first, the contender, the places and times, etc. You know your prey, their weaknesses, faults. Nothing to really make you try that hard with this job. But better is the unknown enemy, with them you never take anything for granted. You remind yourself of that. It is the simple ones that can trip you up.

Again you go to that place, review your weapons. Looking over them reminding yourself of past events. When these weapons were like extra limbs, requiring not much more than sub-conscious thought from you to react. The precision and accuracy, working hand in hand. Your ability, your gift, your tools, your decision to use all. You check them out, the lines, the feel, how familiar they still are sitting there in your hands.

You know this one could is going to be a lot closer than what you really like, one way or another, the claret is going to flow, possibly for you too. Does the fear of getting hit worry you? Hell no, if it had, you would have been dead in the water a long time ago. Funny thing is once you get over the fear of getting hurt, even death, it doesn’t worry you anymore. Accepting the pain before it happens frees you up to go in with your hits without fear. Lets you take the chances based on fact, not emotion, with far less room for error. Hell at the end of the day, what’s another scar to the collection anyway?

It was late to begin with, and what with your musings, you notice the day’s first light working it’s way through the sky, excellent time for a nightcap. So you sit, on a step facing the approaching day, cigarette in one hand, Glenmorangie whisky in the other, it’s going to be a nice day, you can appreciate that more than others. Because you are there to witness it.