text: An Impossible Dream Dreams are scary things. People will sacrifice everything they have in pursuit of a dream. They can both drive people to achieve great things and imprison them in insanity. Some people have dreams that they can follow quietly. Other people have grand dreams that trample over the dreams of others, leaving nothing in their wake. Even after a dream has long since faded away and been tossed into the darkest depths of the mind, it still simmers. And if a dream has completely disappeared from a person’s mind, then they are no longer human, for they have no dreams. \ Ever since I can remember, my family has lived in poverty. I grew up in a small townhouse in the lower south side of Atlanta and was surrounded by gangs, drugs, and violence growing up. Many mornings I would sneak into my dad’s office cabinet and borrow his old Browning High-Power pistol because I was afraid that someone would jump me on my way to school. I never had to use it, thankfully. But I was still always scared. I would never stay out with friends past sunset. I refused to go to the west side of town. I only went out to shop or run errands when necessary. My friends all called me a coward, but a lot of them died before we graduated high school. I imagine that they would be just as careful as me if they had a second shot at life. I shared a dream with everyone who grew up in neighborhood back then. I wanted to leave this life of poverty. I wanted to grow up and become rich and make something of myself. That was my sincerest dream. I was nineteen years old when I found out about the organization. My father had been spending late nights outside of the house and our family was suddenly bringing in sums of money that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise. I begged my father to let me go out and earn money as well, but he adamantly refused-- until the day he lost his job at the hardware store. That night, he packed his bags and departed our house at midnight, and when I begged him to let me come along, he finally obliged. I was inducted into the organization by his recommendation that night. The organization was made of faceless phone numbers. I was assigned an operator who would give me jobs to do every now and then. At first, the jobs were relatively simple. My operator would ask me to deliver a package of drugs to a certain location or help in a looting of some warehouse. They paid me well with each completed job. Eventually, the jobs started to get more dangerous. My father tried to convince me to abandon the job and go back to school, but I refused. I killed political figures, drug lords, rogue agents, and anyone else that troubled the organization. As the intensity of the jobs increased, so did the pay. The first person I ever killed was a young boy who had managed to learn some secrets behind the higher-ups of the organization. I remembered the look in his eyes right before he died--pleading desperately for life. It was the look of someone who knew that all their unfinished hopes, desires, and goals would remain just that--unfinished. He begged me for his life and cried, promising that he wouldn’t use the information against us. I closed my eyes, shot him once, and left him there to bleed to death as I couldn’t stomach to shoot him a second time. I vomited afterwards and I resolved that I would never get used to killing people. I started counting every time I took a life, and eventually it did get easier. I lost track past 100. After every mission I was awarded with thousands of dollars, expensive clothing and jewelry, exotic vacations, and so on. Slowly but surely, my dream was starting to come to fruition. One day my father took a job to kill some important underworld figure and managed to get himself killed in the process. His funeral had all the makings of a somber moment. My relatives gathered around his grave while my mom knelt next to his coffin, screaming at his corpse to wake up. There was not a dry eye during the procession that evening. The whole funeral, all I could think about was how much of an idiot my father was for taking that job. He should’ve known how risky it was. I really couldn’t feel sad over my father dying. I only felt disappointment. I remember thinking to myself how strange it was. But I knew that I was supposed to feel sad and cry during funerals, so I did. But I knew that regardless of whether my father was alive, my dream still was. My phone gently vibrated on the nightstand next to me, flashing a notification about an incoming text. I groggily awoke and read the message. It was from my operator. *Are you available for a job?* *There’s a rogue agent near you right now that is suspected of killing an agent named Edward Nuvelle.* I stared blankly at my screen for a while, contemplating if this job was worth the risk. I generally avoided jobs where my life was in jeopardy too. Another text message. *We can pay $50,000.* I immediately texted back to accept the job and got up to put my clothes on as a drop pin was sent to me of the location of the crime scene. I checked the time. It was 1AM, and I could be back before sunrise. I dawned my black coat and set out into the frigid night. My taxi pulled up to the pin location at around 1:30 AM. It was an extravagant mansion located about 20 minutes from the center of the city. A spiked metal gate loomed over me as I exited the taxi, as if warning me of imposing danger inside. The house itself was ostentatious. It had a large Victorian garden in front of it with immaculately trimmed bushes, well-kept flower gardens, several statues of Renaissance figures, and a giant Lotus fountain at its center, spouting off torrents of water. The grass itself was a bright green and clearly mowed recently. It was picturesque. As I walked through the steel gate, a concrete pathway was laid out for me that cut through the middle of the garden, around the fountain, and straight to the front door of the house. The house itself occupied the size of a football field and was made entirely of white bricks and stucco. It had countless windows and a steeply pitched roof that was sectioned off with different wings of the house. Waiting for me at the front door was a woman in her mid-20s. She was wearing a short red silk nightgown with black lacing around its edges. She had voluminous dirty blonde hair that fell around her pale shoulders and neck like curtains of gold. Her eyes were a shade of deep blue, but they were red and puffy from crying. “Are you the agent they sent?” She said shakily. “Yes,” I said. “And you are the spouse of Edward, Emilia Nuvelle?” She nodded and beckoned me inside the house through the two mahogany wooden doors. “Thank you,” I said, and paused before adding “and my sincerest condolences.” The inside of the house was barren. The floor was an ocean of polished marble tiles while a grand chandelier of diamond and gold loomed over the entrance hall, but there was barely any furniture or decorations. It didn’t feel like a home. “My husband is in the dining room. I left the body untouched.” She said. I nodded and made my way through the entrance hall and into the dining room, where Edward’s body was slumped in a corner of the room. His blood was spread out across the wall and there was a dark red bullet wound to his chest. His face was twisted in an expression of worry. Edward’s tracking badge was still with him, an instrument which documented every human encounter he had over the past 72 hours. I took out my phone and scanned the badge chip. My phone lit up with a list of names arranged from most to least recent encounters. The list of names had mainly documented encounters with his wife and another person by the name of “Charles Nuvelle,” which I presumed to be his son. The two names that stood out, however, were “Yuri LeBlanc” and “Elise Martritz.” I quickly passed along the information to my operator to locate the last known positions of these two names. As I sent off the request, I heard voices coming from the entrance hall. I ran over to see Emilia and a young boy. “Charles! Go back to your room. Don’t worry about Daddy, okay? He’s safe.” The boy was on the verge of tears and instantly turned to me as I entered the hallway. He ran up to me, with tears still in his eyes. “Mr. Agent, is my dad safe? He really is okay right?” he cried. I hugged him and shed tears, patting the back of his head before facing him with a reassuring smile. “He’s going to be okay. Don’t you worry. Now listen to your mother and go back upstairs.” The boy nodded and ran back up the house’s spiral staircase into his bedroom. As soon as he was out of sight, I wiped the tears from my face and asked Emilia, “What I said wasn’t insensitive, right?” She shook her head. “No. I’m sure he was very comforted by your words.” She hesitated, opening her mouth for a few seconds as if she had something to say. “How- how long have you been with the organization for?” “About ten years.” She laughed and said, “Do all agent of the organization have that look on their face?” “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” “You share the same expression that Edward always had. The look of someone who doesn’t care about anyone but themselves,” she said. “I could tell you were faking crying back there. Don’t you have the slightest bit of empathy?” “My father died when I was young. I-” I hesitated. “I cried at the funeral.” She scoffed. “None of you are human,” she said, as she walked away. Her words bit at me. After all, I had a dream, and to chase a dream is the most human thing that one can do. My phone vibrated in my pocket with a text message from my operator. *Yuri LeBlanc seems to be the agent who killed Edward.* *He’s been in the junkyard downtown for the past hour.* *Elise Martritz seems to be an agent who died a few days ago.* I looked up at the room that Emilia had retreated to, and decided against pursuing any further argument. The sky was dark and even the birds were silent at 2AM in the abandoned junkyard. The junkyard itself was just a large field of dirt and gravel with countless broken-down cars littering the area. The cars were arranged in disorder, with vehicles of all different shapes and sizes being scattered randomly about. Some were tipped over on their sides while others were slammed into each other. A couple of yellow school busses lay abandoned in the junkyard too, towering over the smaller cars like giants. The only signs of life were the weeds growing rampantly around some broken down cars that looked as if they had been sitting in the junkyard for centuries. Empty trash bags and lost toys sat still on the ground, waiting for someone to pick them up. I closed my eyes and listened to the silence. Several minutes passed by of listening to my heartbeat until I heard the faint sound of a piece of trash being knocked over. I twisted around to the source of the noise and caught a glimpse of a silhouette running past a group of cars. I immediately took off in pursuit. Once I had a clear view of the figure, I steadily aimed my pistol and shot once. Then twice. The figure shrieked and immediately collapsed to the ground. I ran up to see a young man lying on the ground with two bullet wounds to his abdomen. He was dressed in a dirty dress shirt and pants, clearly having had been in the junkyard for some time now. He looked up at me from behind the threads of his long black hair. “So, you found me,” he said dejectedly. “Yuri LeBlanc. You killed another agent of the organization.” I said. “I’ve been assigned to kill you.” I raised my gun to his head. “Before you kill me,” he interrupted, “I want to ask you why.” “Why?” I questioned. “Yes,” he said. “You don’t seem hesitant at all. I want to know what drives you.” “I do what I’m told,” I said. “I-” I paused. “I have a dream that I must see to fruition. A dream to stand above all others. To succeed in life. To escape poverty.” Yuri laughed. “A dream, huh? I had a dream very similar to yours, once. But... that dream changed. Your dream... it’s very empty.” I lowered my gun. In a raspy voice, he said, “I have a different dream now. And I killed Edward for taking that dream away from me.” “What was it?” \ My name is Yuri LeBlanc. I was born in a black box. I was raised by the uncaring hands of uncaring faces to become just that--Uncaring. As a child, I would waste my days away in a cramped, damp, pitch black room watching shows on an old TV set that just barely illuminated a corner with whatever program it was playing that day. Food was delivered to me 3 times a day, through a little doggie door in the far end of the room. I started the counting the amount of meals I got--1,2,3... I eventually lost track. The first time I was taken out of the room I was brought onto a surgical bed and had several operations done on me by strange men with uncaring faces. Something was implanted in my brain that day. I went back to the black box. A few weeks later I was called in for another surgery where something else was implanted in me. This cycle repeated for more surgeries than I could count--1,2,3... I eventually lost track. The day I was finally done with countless surgeries, I was taken out of the black box and greeted by a very enthusiastic man who told me that from that day forward I would be serving the organization. He smiled at me too, but his smile didn’t reach his eyes. Despite how much he wanted to put on a façade, he was just another uncaring face. The organization was filled with uncaring faces. Day in and day out I would get sent on missions to kill certain people and no one would ever care. I would find some person who had angered the organization in one way or another and I would kill them, and I never knew why. But a lesson had been ingrained in me from birth--I had to do what I was told, without question. So, I did. And I didn’t care. Maybe something they implanted in my brain stopped me from caring. Maybe I had just become desensitized to it after a lifetime. One day, the enthusiastic man told me about a wonderful thing called a dream. It was a desire that fueled men so deeply in their hearts that they would do anything to accomplish it. So, I imagined that instead of killing for no reason, I could kill for a dream. A dream of success. I was seventeen when I first met Elise. She had just joined the organization at the time. She had the most determined, blood-thirsty look I had ever seen when I first met her. Perhaps that’s what drew me to her at first. The first job we went on together, I saw that my evaluation of her was right. She knew how to sneak around, how to operate weapons, and how to do everything just as well as any other agent. Yet, she was unique from anyone I had ever worked with in that she always cried after completing a kill. Every time we got sent on a job together, she would always successfully kill our target. And every time we killed anyone she would always cry afterwards. One day I got tired of wondering why. “Why do you cry after we kill people that you don’t know?” I questioned one afternoon, after she had finished crying from a job. She looked down. “I can’t help it. I know I should be used to it by know, but I just-” she paused. “I just think about the children, siblings, and parents they’re leaving behind when we kill them. And it gets to me. It doesn’t get to you?” “No,” I answered. “I guess I can’t relate.” We walked in silence for a while longer. “Then... If you’re so remorseful for our target’s loved ones, why do you kill them at all?” She frowned. “Because I have a dream.” “I see,” I said. I took more jobs with Elise. We would always discuss each other’s lives after we were done. I learned little things about Elise every day. She loved chocolate. She was squirmy around mice. She wanted to go to South Africa one day. She loved drawing with charcoal. She had a best friend named Cece growing up. She was raised in a small apartment in a dangerous part of a city where she worked hard to support her parents. Her mother was a recovering drug addict while her father was a blue-collar worker. She ended up joining the organization because her parents died, and she resolved to work her way out of poverty. She hated school and her boss was strict. “Are you glad that you left that life?” I questioned her one day. “No,” Elise quickly answered. “My best memories were with my mom and dad.” “But they were-” I interrupted. “I know,” Elise said. “But it was great to have a home to go back to every day. I could come home from a long day of work and my dad would ask me how my day was. My mom would be in the kitchen cooking up something tasty. And we would sit down and have dinner together.” “That sounds exciting.” “It wasn’t,” Elise chuckled. “But...” her voice trailed off. “It was nice.” When she remembered that moment, I saw her smile for the first time. A smile that reached her eyes. Before I knew it, I wanted to spend every day with Elise. I spent every day thinking about her. When we weren’t together, I felt lonely. Whenever I was with her, I felt content, happy even. I started spending time with her outside of missions. Sometimes we would go to observatory and stare up at the stars together--she knew an awful lot about constellations from her time in school. Sometimes we would go to the junkyard and practice shooting bullets into old cars, just to see how accurate we could get our aim. We would rent movies and watch them together. She would always cry at the sad ones. She got scared easily. She would blush every time I called her by her full name. She had the cutest smug smile every time I would treat her to food. She became everything to me. My life was contained in our little moments. And among the thousands of agents I had worked with over the course of my life, she was the only one who had managed to change my dream. Elise was killed by Edward Nuvelle two days ago. The report from my operator read that Elise was working for another organization as a spy, and she had recently been commissioned to kill me. Agent Nuvelle took care of her for me. I didn’t know what to think after I read that report. I felt something break inside of me. I did understand that Elise may have been planning to kill me, but for some reason all I wanted at that moment was to see Elise. Why did I long for her like this? Why did I feel pain that someone who was out to harm me had died? Why did I desire the touch of someone who no longer exists? I collected my thoughts and figured that I may find some answers if I went to Agent Nuvelle’s home. Agent Nuvelle’s wife answered the door for me. She welcomed me inside their lavish home. She told me that she was cooking dinner while her son was fast asleep in his bedroom. They were getting ready to eat dinner together as a family. Agent Nuvelle was seated calmly in the dining room, reading a book. “Yuri,” Edward said. “So, you heard about Elise’s death?” I nodded. Edward’s face was a deadpan stare, showing no remorse over the fact that he had just taken a life. “It is... regrettable that such a promising young agent ended up being a traitor.” “Do you have a dream, Edward?” I said. “Excuse me?” “Everyone has a dream. I had a dream. Elise had a dream. You have a dream. Your wife has a dream. Your son has a dream. Even the biggest, scariest executives of the organization have a dream that’s precious to them, right?” I said. “I suppose,” Edward said, “I’ve achieved my dream of starting a family.” He smiled as he gestured to his wife in the other room. “You have achieved that dream by trampling over the dreams of others,” I said. “Does that leave a bitter taste in your mouth? After all, if someone were to take this dream away from you, you would be very upset, right?” Edward nodded. “You ruined my dream, Edward. So I’ll take away yours.” I then raised a gun to his head, and calmly pulled the trigger. As I left the house, I glanced back to see his wife cradling Agent Nuvelle’s dead body. Their son was still fast asleep in a bedroom upstairs. And I begun to shed tears. *Maybe*, I thought, *I’ve become like her.* \ Yuri coughed up blood onto the dirt beneath him. “You asked for my dream?” I nodded. He managed to whisper out his last words. “I wanted... to tell her that I l oved her. I wanted to text her that I missed her when she would leave me, and I wanted to say welcome back and hug her when we saw each other again. I wanted to watch movies together. I wanted to crack jokes with her. I wanted to argue. I wanted to make up. I wanted to start a family together and have a kid. And most of all, I wanted to leave the organization with her and get a normal house and a normal job.” He grinned and said, “And... It was a silly little dream, but... I thought that I could come home from a long day of work. And... she would say, ‘How was your day today?’... and I would say... ‘It was good.’” He died with a smile on his face. One that reached his eyes. I knelt next to Yuri’s body for a while. Tears finally flowed down my face, for my father who had died so many years ago. And they really wouldn’t stop. &#x200B; \-- Hi guys I'm really new to writing and would appreciate any feedback on this story that I've been working on.