The hitman's gun is knocked from his hand by the foot of an eleven year old girl. A spinning hook kick impelled the beaten man to a wall. He was almost out of breath. It was obvious that he had been taking these hits for a while. His avenger obviously wanted to make a game of it. He begged for mercy as she put a machete to his neck. His last words of pitiful requests were interrupted by the pulling motion of the blade against his throat. The girl let his body hit the ground as she cleaned up her mess.
A tall man in black approached her. "Nice work, Hit-Girl," the man announced, high-fiveing the young killer. In silence, the two worked to dispose of any evidence that could trace back to their true identities.
An abrupt din of laughter stopped them in their work. The voice of low and deep, as well as familiar. The girl spun around to find everything around her covered in flames. She wasn't standing in the fire but she felt as if she was. Her skin was burning and all she could hear where the screams of her father.
A panicked deep breathing breaks the silence of a dark suburban home. A young girl, the same girl in the dream, wipes the sweat from her brow, adjusting herself on the couch. She had been running a horrible fever for three days, left home to wait in misery while her step-father works.
Empty gatorade bottles and apple sauce containers clutter an expensive coffee table, providing a foot rest for the girl. Once she feels better she turns the T.V. on and flips channels.
"South Park? 30 Days of Night? RJ Berger? Seriously, Marcus? Did you have to block these?" she exclaims, being able to find nothing amusing that is also allowed under the parental locks. From the result of nothing else to do, she goes to her guardian's room to find some clue to the unlocking code on the television.
She flips on the light switch, revealing a small room mostly filled with a king sized bed, old fashioned tv and gun magazines. The girl always snuck into his room when he was gone to read his magazine collection. She shuffled through some document laying on his bed, but it was all just some files from a past case.
"What are you doing, Mindy?" a voice said from the threshold. It was Marcus, her guardian, who had just gotten home from a long day at work. She dropped the papers she was holding and backed away, innocently.
"Sorry. I was just looking for a... a, um, book." Mindy walks past Marcus out of the room and prepares to head to her own room until she is stopped.
"Hey, no hug for Uncle Marky?" He says, jokingly, opening his arms. Mindy runs back, squeezing him tightly and runs off.
"Oh Damon, I wish you could be here," he speaks softly, putting away the documents.
The next morning, Mindy awakes, still with a raging fever. She attempts to clean herself up in the bathroom. She has the whole house to herself for the whole day.
Mindy spends hours practicing what Marcus forbid her from. Even while sick, she practices each kind of martial arts she was taught by her father. Mindy wants badly to practice in her costume and with her weapons, but Marcus made her give those up when she swore it was over.
"Aw, fuck!"
Mindy crashes to the floor after landing wrong on her foot from a backside 900 kick. She clutches her ankle, assuming it's broken by the look of the bone. A string of curse words explode from her mouth as she drags herself across the carpet, searching for a phone. Her first instinct is to fend for herself but her being sick leads her to call Marcus.
Ring...ring...ring...
Mindy pulls herself up, confused. Marcus always takes his phone to work with him. The ringing gets louder as she gets closer to his bedroom door. As she hops into his room she smells something fowl but still cannot locate his phone. She turns toward the bathroom, the sound growing louder as well as the smell.
The door creeps open to reveal Marcus's body laying helpless in a bathtub filled with blood. Tears of disbelief blind the girl. She kneels down next to him but he is already dead. Ten stab wounds to the chest, three to the abdomen and a type of cleaning fluid to the eyes, blinding him before he could defend himself.
She took a handle of his shirt in her hand and cried. It was still his pajamas so they must have killed him early this morning, whoever it was. She quickly quit her crying, remembering the day her father died and began to search for any evidence. "Oh my God! Oh my fucking God!" she yelled in agony. "What did I learn?" she clutches the edge of the sink trying to reassure herself. "Don't let anything personal effect you, he said. But what the hell does it fucking matter? He's dead!" she screams at the mirror.
Suddenly, amidst all this angst and pain, the home telephone rings.
Mindy manages to answer, choking back a wail. For a while no one answers back, but Mindy waits. The caller hangs up without a word but calls back a few seconds later. This continues for 30 minutes, each time the caller stays on the line a little less. Mindy yells back at what she assumes is a prank caller.
"If you call again, I will come and find you, you cunt! And I will cut off her fucking balls!"
Still no answer. Mindy glances at Marcus watch still on his wrist. The hour hand points to the four, but it was only about two o'clock and he never has it messed up. The second hand ticks between the nineteen and twenty second mark.
"20?" She looks at the phone as the pranker calls again. She picks up, this time counting how long he stays on. 66 seconds. They hang up and call back. This time 65 seconds. The next time, 64.
"Gotcha, motherfucker. I'm just gonna need to borrow NYPD's call receiver locater..." She hops to Marcus' TV and pushes it across the floor revealing a creaky floor board. She kneels down and lifts it up. A purple wig, leather jacket/pants, plaid skirt and combat boots.