My name's LD. Yep, that's it. L. D. I'm not going to tell you what it's short for, frankly I don't think you'd remember it anyway. I'm a Jersey girl, not the type you're used to seeing on the television, I'm about as tan as a polar bear with a chest size equivalent to a twelve year old boy with fashion sense as sharp as a spoon. I fall into a category of a sexual identity so lovingly called "gender-queer," I don't much care for the label, but I haven't come up with anything better, when I do you'll be the first to know. Biologically all the parts match up, but physically I'm about as feminine as a glass eating contest at a Navy Seal get together. You can find me on such sites as PlentyofFish listing hobbies like: breaking and entering, murdering countless people, looting their dead corpses and taking long walks on the beach. As you can guess I haven't gotten many responses, though the local authorities have taken a particular interest in me. I can't say I'm all too flattered, it's actually kind of embarrassing when your state stalkers chase you down the street with cars that light up like mobile Christmas trees. If there's one thing to say for them, they're incredibly determined! I mean, who wouldn't want me? I'm funny, charming and come with a pretty sweet dowry. Try a couple zeroes, like, five.

My name's LD, I'm an assassin for hire, wanted in twelve states for about seventy five different crimes (each one worded slightly different from the next) and completely... fucked. Not the good kind of fucked either and not even the hey-i-can-get-out-of-this fucked. I mean FUCKED. Here I was, this great assassin (my words), loaded into the back of some moving vehicle without a spark of insight going through my head. I suppose all those synapses and cells were "Out to Lunch."

Now, rather than try to piece together my day, I quietly wondered to myself, "What would they possibly eat? Little grilled cheeses?" I wonder if science has figured out a way to make them. I bet they're delicious. After a moment of pondering how exactly one would go about making such a miniscule meal for the mind, I finally began to put together the puzzle of my life as of now:

1. I was in a car
2. It wasn't my car
3. I don't even own a car

Well, one thing was for sure – there was a car involved. Next question. God I wish highschool had been this easy! That wasn't the question, that was a statement. Here's the question: How had I ended up there? Well, seeing as I wasn't behind the wheel of the car (which was good considering my condition) I hadn't intended driving. I had been passed out in the back seat with my face pressed up against the rubber piecing of the window, no doubt putting an attractive crease in my skin. So, logically, I had either crawled in for a good nap or was placed there by someone else.

Judging by the throbbing pain in the back of my skull, I knew the former was out of the question. So then, who had dragged me into the backseat? And furthermore, where the hell were they carting my unconscious ass?

My initial reaction was the police, after all, there was only room for one man in this outfit. One too many hands on the job and things start to get ugly. So without partners to drive a getaway, a wanted man's next instinct brought me to the coppers. And for one terrifying minute, I thought I had been caught, and that of course was against rule numero uno.

Poor LD, finally picked up by the law, destined to live the rest of her life away behind bars, carving shivs out of soap hoping to stab her captors to cleanliness. Choke on the bubbles you bastards!

For some reason I couldn't quite get my eyes to open and when I finally managed only one of them decided to peel away. It took a long moment for the other to follow and even when both of my eyes were open, if only partially, I could barely make out the people in the car. I think if I were fully aware of the predicament I really was in, I wouldn't have worried so much about being picked up by cops. There are plenty worse things that could have been behind the wheel: a giant cockroach is a pretty good example

– one of the Tremor Brothers is another.

Imagine that - one assassin picked up by three others who had incidentally been assigned the same hit that previous night. And the less intelligent part of me (I won't mention any names here, but it starts with "S" and ends with "tomach") wondered: "Are we going to stop for food?" While the rest of my shouted: "Is this really the time?" And then my brain agreed… with my stomach.

"Look who's up,"

"Ughhuu" is what came out of my mouth. I don't think Shakespeare couldn't have written better words.

I pulled myself away from the window, bringing gloved hands to my eyes as I wiped away the sleep. I guess I couldn't really call it sleep. Typically you remember going, this was more of a got-knocked-the-fuck-out. It was only now I realized the throbbing in my head, a feeling equivalent to what would be felt after a three year old first discovers the musical qualities of a cabinet full of pans. During my sluggish waking stupor I noticed I was still dressed in my "work clothes." Though it wasn't so much a uniform as it was falling into a rack of clearance gear at your local army surplus store: leather pants tucked into tightly laced and buckled boots, flak jacket over wife beater donned with too many pockets and ammunition packs to count* and to bring the whole thing together: elbow and knee pads. Scraped elbows suck more than a bullet I tell you.

I pressed the balls of my palms into my eye sockets, watching the fireworks that crossed beneath my eyelids in hopes that one pain would mask the other. Unfortunately, things didn't work out that way and now in addition to a splitting headache, my eyes hurt. I pulled back, dropping my hands to my knees as I stretched my neck back, looking up to the ceiling with a hearty sigh. I had an amazing urge right then to curl up into a pathetic ball and throw up all over the floor. There was a very good chance the previous night I had foolishly decided to test out NASA's latest amusement park ride: the spinning tea-cups of death, now strapped with rocket engines! The world is still spinning.

"Th' fuck," I finally found my voice, a raspy thing, broken from drowsiness and pain. There were plenty of other things I could have said, "What happened?" or "Who are you" maybe even a courteous warning, "I may very well toss my cookies on the fine interior of your car," but I went with a simple, "The fuck." Eh, it covered the basics. I already knew who they were anyway, well, sort of. It wasn't like we were on a first name basis or anything, just that anyone who was anyone in the business knew who the Tremors were: a couple of tough as shit rednecks with a certain adoration for fire arms and zero common sense. These were the type of guys that could watch a man flail frantically in a puddle of his own blood, partially severed arm flopping like a fish outta water, and damn near piss themselves laughing.

I don't know why they hadn't killed me and honestly I don't think they knew either.

"Have a nice sleep?" the man across from me grinned, snickering along with his brothers as if "Have a nice sleep?" was some kind of hilarious joke and I was the butt of it.

I wouldn't exactly say he was what I expected when I had heard stories of the infamous Tremor Brothers. Generally when you hear such tales your mind starts putting together these images, how you expect a person to be, like when you're chatting with some hot babe online that turns out to be a forty year old man living in his mother's basement, overweight, with bad acne and balding. When I heard Tremor, I literally thought of bears with machine gun arms. But this kid was about as close to bear-like as a ferret was a fish. He lounged in the back seat like it were the most expensive couch, arm stretched over the back of the chair cushion, other bent under his head to keep it from knocking against the window. He was thin, about as muscular as the toothpick he chewed on, with a lazy blonde Mohawk that didn't know which way it wanted to fall and all sorts of things-that-would-make-your-mother-cry etched into his skin. His style of choice included a pair of ratty jeans, a just as ratty wife beater and a set of scratched up goggles. I pegged him for the leader.

"What's going on?" I managed to croak. It hadn't been hard to establish what had happened, there were very few possibilities that could have led me to this road, packed in the back seat of some beat to shit Pontiac that some archeologist had dug up during the excavation of the first ever dinosaur, with three wayward assassins.

Option 1: I had gotten completely smashed before/during/after "work" and made some new friends
Option 2. I fell down a flight of stairs, or,
Option 3: My new friends had hit me over the head with some sort of blunt instrument during the thrill of battle.

I was inclined to think Option 3 was the correct choice here.

"It ain't fuckin' funny, Lester." I think if I had been within some sort of sound state of mind, the sudden gruff response from the driver would have set me on edge. He reached over and landed a solid punch in the tittering passenger's shoulder. It did little to stifle Lester's obvious enjoyment in my pain, causing him to shake that much more violently as he laughed that much harder. I'm not a rocket scientist or anything, but I think I figured out who was the culprit here. Apparently knocking me over the head had been funny as hell.

"I'm Darwin, that's Lester, and Jeeves," the kid sitting in the back with me indicated each of his brothers with a point of his finger.

Lester (the one who had apparently knocked me into unconsciousness) was the passenger seat rider (and if you ask me, a complete moron**). He was a couple inches shorter than Darwin, that or just slouched unhealthily in his seat, and unlike his two brothers preferred being bald. Subsequently he had shaved his entire head save for the patches of sideburns (go ahead and ask me how I think it looks. Stupid***). Today he proudly displayed the tattoos scrawled into his pasty white skin, wearing only a pair of red pants tucked into his muddied army boots. He was still giggling over the hilarity of my splitting headache.

And then there was Jeeves. I know exactly what you're thinking! With a name like "Jeeves" I was totally expecting a sweet old man dressed like a penguin, elegant suit maybe a curly mustache offering me a tray of hors d'oeuvres. Reality was a complete shocker. He was about the height of your average building, with a relaxed Mohawk that during the previous night had been coaxed up into spikes the size of fence posts with a face that said "Fuck. Hate." Ok no wait, those were the tattoos on his biceps. But seriously, I was glad he was behind the wheel rather than sitting next to me.

"Uhgh," I groaned. Now...I could introduce myself truthfully or lie. I doubt that if I chose the latter a couple of trailer park boys would catch it. Then I remembered how we had "met," more like how insert-some-object-here met my head and my face met floor. "LD," we'll go with truth.

"The Spider," Jeeves drawled. I didn't expect my reputation to precede me...I'm not sure that was a good thing. Personally, I wasn't exactly partial to the nickname, I guess I was just lucky the tabloids didn't decide to call me something like "The polka-dotted frog," or anything else just as terrifying.

"I like takin' the legs off dem big spiders," added Lester.

This put a grin like the Cheshire Cat's on Darwin's face and I knew that this had gone from fucked to seriously fucked. And I, once again, found my day becoming a slew of pop quiz questions. 'You are traveling down the road at approximately 280 mph with three trigger happy assassins. One decides he wants to rip your legs off, the second thinks this is a good idea and the third is busy driving the car therefore indifferent to the decision (of course if his hands were free he'd be all for it). What do you do?

A. Attempt to fight them and hope that your one year membership to Planet Fitness pays off (even though you've been coincidentally "too busy" to attend a single day)
B. Talk your way out of it
C. Let them rip your legs off (Eh, legs are too mainstream anyway)

So I thought about my options while they thought about how exactly they were going to go about removing my limbs. Very tough decisions on both our parts I tell you. Now, Option A was definitely out, physical fighting isn't exactly my strong point, the last fight I won was against a bag of skittles. And now you're probably wondering "LD! You're an assassin though!" and I'll say, "Have you ever seen a spider beat a man in a fist fight?" If I could do that they wouldn't be calling me "The Spider" now would they? I'd have some badass nickname like "The Killing Death Machine with Hands of Death" ... still working on it. Point is – I'm not a fighter, henceforth, Option A is out. Option B would have been a good choice, except the last time I tried to talk myself out of something (i.e getting a swirly in the restroom) I actually convinced them further that I deserved one. Other than that though it definitely was my safest choice. So, of course, I went with Option A.

To assert my manliness I reached over and punched the snotty little bastard across from me. Darwin let my little affront slide for maybe a second, before he was lunging across the seat after me. Feeling a bit left out Lester shimmied his way into the back and on top of me, kicking the volume control up to the max with his rush to join the fun. I jammed my foot into Darwin's chest, keeping him at bay as I grappled with his much smaller brother. Jeeves, with no regard for the rules of the road or the safety of us within the veering vehicle, reached in back, groping for anyone he could find, allowing the car a moment to list off to the side and ride on the grooved cement of the shoulder. We were all shouting and hollering, but couldn't understand a goddamned word any of us said over the sound of Trivium's "Like Light to the Flies."

For several minutes that passed at the rate of five years, I fought with the two brothers. I was doing pretty good too...yanno, up until Darwin managed to get me in a choke hold and Lester began attempting to tear my leg from the socket. That was about the time I realized Option B would have been the better choice. I never was a very good test taker. The massive driver slammed his boot into the brake, cutting the wheel to the right and causing the car to twirl about like the most brutal ballerina ever. All five of us came to a stop: Darwin, Jeeves, Lester, Trivium and I.

I squinted one eye, grinding my teeth together as the leader of this ragtag group held me in the crook of his elbow, assertively tightening his grip. "Calm down."

"Get offa me," I croaked, twisting and writhing in my best attempt to make this as awkward as possible for the both of us.

"We ain't gunna hurt you,"

"Bullshit! He fuckin' knocked me out!" I kicked my foot out at Lester.

"Les," he instructed over my shoulder, "Be nice." Lester hesitated at his brother's word, then grinned widely, something much akin to the way a crocodile would. Darwin nodded, "Alright then," I felt the tightness around my neck, and leg, relax and once I had the opportunity I shook him off. I sat up between the two Tremors, rubbing my neck as I caught my breath.

"Man, you fight like a girl. Watcha go an' hit me fer anyway?"

"He was gunna rip my legs off!"

"Ya whine like a girl too," Lester added.

"Like you've ever been near a girl."

"Ey!" Lester made a second grab for my leg.

The driver's side door opened and I felt the car dip to the side with the shifting of the massive man's weight. And like a see-saw it rocked back into place with the removal of it, all the while we continued to bicker in the backseat.

"Have too!"

"Yeah, your mom maybe!"

"We ain't got time fer this shit," Darwin kicked open his door and slid out while Lester and I continued to throw out insults. Jeeves replaced Darwin at the door, reached in, grabbed the back of my collar and yanked me out of the car much in the way airline attendants handled baggage. I gracelessly fell into the dirt, the impact causing my brain to bounce around in my skull, bringing back the headache I'd almost been rid of.

"Let's get the hell outta here."

I lay there for a good moment, unable to get up solely because if I moved I was sure I would throw up everywhere. So, I lay there in the dirt, listening to them shuffle around in the gravel and slam their doors. When I finally gathered the courage to risk the perilous journey of sitting up, I noticed all three Tremor brothers (Larry, Curly and Moe) were in the car and I, not being a Tremor Brother, was sitting outside of said car. This was a perfect example of childhood gender-gation (or segregation by gender): No girls allowed in the Tremor Brothers' tree fort.

And they peeled off without me, tires kicking up dust and dirt as the vehicle fishtailed from side to side before gaining a straight line trajectory, speeding off to some indiscernible tune on the radio. I sat there, watching them disappear down the road and for the first time...I prayed.

Dear God. Let Trivium never produce another album.

*I don't even think I had ammo in any of them. I remember once putting a peanut butter and jelly sandwich into one of the pockets.
**I ask you to please refrain from telling him that. And if you do I will deny it up and down.
***The same goes for this.