I feel like it is safe to say that every human being past the age of two has at least one secret. Whether it be hiding from your children that Santa Claus is mommy Amazon-Priming gifts the night before or that you seem addicted to writing bad Criminal Minds smut (I forgive you–– Derek Morgan is hot), we all have secrets. And that's okay! It's normal and quite natural to have secrets. You know, skeletons in the closet. Stuff like that.

Unless you're like me, and you have an actual, literal skeleton in your closet.

Now, I did not put the skeleton there. I found it yesterday, hanging like a bony coat between my raincoat and my Hello-Kitty bathrobe. Yes, the bleached bones were together like a science-classroom skeleton.

But I know that it is real. Unfortunately. There were little bits of... ickiness still attached. And I found a maggot in one of my slippers. It was a horrifying moment.

Worse than all that, I know whose bones they are.

This past month, a serial killer has been frolicking about my neighborhood. Killing and then stripping all the squishy bits off of the bones. No one has been able to find said bones.

My mom has tried to keep me locked in my bedroom, she's so scared. She's having us eat our earthquake-nonperishables in case the murderer has decided to poison the grocery store.

But I am seventeen years old, and have a very hot boyfriend. Which means, since I cannot leave the house, he sneaks in through the window.

He's new in town, a dreamy bad boy, yada yada yada. No one cares about that (except for me and my hormones). He came as the murders started up. The night before the skeleton showed up in my closet, he asked me if he could stash a body in my room (I thought he meant his body and I bought condoms!).

And then I found the skeleton. I'm 95% sure that it is the class president.

She has suspension powers, given to her by the principal (she's very persuasive). She caught my boyfriend, Teddy, smoking under the bleachers and suspended him. He was not happy.

After I found the body, I started thinking about the people who died, and their recent interactions with Teddy. All of them were negative. The grocer (Teddy had shoplifted gum), the 7-11 cashier (Teddy had shoplifted cigarettes), the Target clerk (Teddy was a serial-shoplifter, among other serial-esc criminal activities, it seems), all dead.

Teddy has a knife collection. He has hunting experience. He interned at a morgue with his dad (that should have been it for me-- morgues are never a good sign). It seems like he is a pretty obvious suspect.

And now, there is a skeleton in my closet. An actual, literal, very smelly skeleton. I know I didn't kill her, and there's only one other viable suspect.

I'm not sure how to proceed. My mom warned my not to date him, said he was trouble. In my defense, I thought he was trouble in, like, a hot way. Not a murder-y one. Guess I was wrong.

Besides, my friends loved him. Probably because of, you know. His face. He has a really nice face. And abs. And other desirable physical features.

I wonder how morally tainted I would be if I just... ignored it. The skeleton, that is. The secret little skeleton in the closet.

Should I call the police? Turn him in? Does it make me an accomplice if the body (or at least part of it) was stashed with me and I didn't report it as soon as I could? I should ask my mom. She's a lawyer, she'd know.

On second thought, I shouldn't. That wouldn't be a particularly fun conversation.

Should I tell my friends? They're always sending those textposts, the you-know-you're-real-friends-if-you'd-bury-a-dead-body-together ones. I wonder how they'd respond if I asked them to help me bury a real one.

I don't think that'd go over well. They'd probably kick me out of the group chat.

Should I call Teddy then? Ask him why the fuck he stashed the class president in my closet? Would he kill me then? The conversation wouldn't go over pleasantly, and all the people he's disagreed with recently have wound up a bundle of bones. And I'm particularly attached to my skin, thank you very much. I take good care of it. Have special creams and stuff. I moisturize.

I'm conflicted. Normal teenagers don't have to debate over dead bodies. I should watch Heathers. Winona Ryder will understand me.

Update: I watched Heathers. It would be a little truamatizing to have a hot murderer blown up behind you. And I don't smoke. It seems Winona doesn't understand me.

That's a little depressing. I hoped she would.

I've kept my closet all locked up since I found the bones, but I need to change. These pajamas smell a little.

Door's now open. Bones still there. Now everything smells bad, and I found a couple of maggots in my new Adidas. Stupid dead body. I've decided to keep on these pajamas.

I'm flirting with the idea of calling the police. I don't know. I don't know what to do.

You know, I'm going to call Stella. She's my best friend. I've popped her back acne before, so she's kind of obligated to help me hide this body.

She's on her way now. She has skeletons in her closet too (figurative ones, of course).

She'll know how to dispose of them.

If not, I'll have to get Teddy to dispose of her.

I can't get my hands dirty. Scholarships on the line and all. And it isn't like I wanted the class president in my closet. Sometimes you have to recognize situations for what they are and then play your cards accordingly.

I just need to get rid of this damn thing before my mom starts to smell it.

There is a slightly crumpled pack of Lucky Strikes on the central console.

Wind whips through open doors, and a green leafy sea flows beneath the hull. Like a jealous and unpredictable ocean, a blanket of trees forms an ebb and flow that is less than predictable; starbursts of bright orange or yellow are the only sign of jetties and shallows that will tear a ship apart.

The spang of metal on metal reverberates through the airframe as the jungle ocean roils, and a Kalishnikov mist reaches skyward.

Not a word is spoken, and the door gunner does what door gunners do. For a few moments, the sea of trees below is churned; soon, the ocean calms.

Two men, alert, awake, and weary, watch the gunner at work. A third man lies supine on a canvas gurney, eyes clenched shut. He is ashen, gray, fading in and out of consciousness. When he’s awake, he grimaces in pain. Blood pools beneath him, and everyone’s hands are stained crimson.

They are all too tired to speak, too stunned to be afraid, too shocked to care. One of the men seated upright wears a dirty bandage on his left hand, and another where his left boot used to be. “Million Dollar Wounds,” they said. Folks get by fine with seven toes instead of ten.

The other passenger stares at the world with only one eye. Vermilion gauze makes a patch, and he is the resident pirate of this airship.

Ninety mile an hour winds whip through the cabin, but the dying man on his back wants a smoke. He’s come to, and in a moment of clarity, catches the one remaining eye of his companion. With trembling hands, he pantomimes the act of smoking.

There is a slightly crumpled pack of Lucky Strikes on the central console. The G.I. leans forward between the two officers operating the vehicle, and without asking, helps himself and divides the secret booty. Shielding the flame as best he can, he lights up.

Almost immediately, the wind whips away any chance of a good inhale, but he tries, just the same. The cherry flares, glowing brightly and burning furiously.

His fingers leave pink stains on the white paper of the cigarette.

He leans down, gently and lovingly placing bloodstained tobacco between the lips of his mortally wounded friend.

The man on the gurney smiles his thanks and does his best to finish the stolen, secret cigarette before death robs him of his last chance at momentary joy.

After they land, the captain notices his Lucky Strikes are missing. When he finds the pack stuck to the deck, crimson and tattered, he doesn’t mind. He fishes out one of the three smokes he has left.

It’s just another day in Lai Khê, 1968.

"I am not a murderer.

A strange way to start this off, but I feel it is important to get that out of the way. I am not a serial killer, I do not relish in the feeling of blood on my hands, and, god forbid, I do not find sexual pleasure in death.

No, no, none of that describes me or my job.

I am a contract killer. After high school, the realization that I was not actually good at anything came. Unable to get a job, I ended up homeless for a while. I floated between shelters when I could, became a quasi-religious soup-kitchen enthusiast and raider of food banks.

Then, I had the misfortune of I finding out that I was rather skilled with a knife. And a gun. And various other weapons. Which was interesting.

And then I found out that assassin-for-hire was a rather lucrative job market. So, I did what any person with nothing to lose does: I jumped on the bandwagon.

Was it a good idea? No. Did I do it anyway? Yeah. I mean, I was desperate. I only had two pairs of socks. No one realizes how much they love socks until they only have two.

The first time I killed someone was before I stepped into this line of work. It was in self defense. A man tried to rape me, which is not uncommon for homeless folk such as I was. I had a knife which I had stolen from a food bank, and I stabbed him with it. How I felt when I saw the blood bloom from his stomach, when I saw him turn from a person into a thing had no parallel. Don’t get me wrong, it was horrifying. But at the same time, I had never felt as powerful as I did then. The death went unnoticed, which goes without saying. No one has a care for the homeless, especially not law enforcement.

I did a little research at the library (free internet!) and found out how much money killers-for-hire make. And it was a lot.

It should be understandable that I decided to try my hand at it.

I found a website one of the articles had said that the assassins found their work at. I haunted it for a couple of weeks until the library asked me to stop coming, so I moved my operation to an internet cafe (a dying breed). Finally, someone contacted me (@devilmaycare666, which was a little spot-on for my liking) and offered me a job.

It was low-profile, they said. An average Joe that owed some money. He had been warned but refused to pay the loan shark back, and now they wanted someone to take him out. I decided not to tell them that this was my first real time, because I needed the money. The shelters I frequented had barred their doors when they found out I had been stealing from them. I hadn’t slept in a real bed in two weeks, and cardboard mattresses aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.

My first kill was pretty sloppy, but I got the job done. Broke in through a window, found the guy asleep in a tornado of chinese takeout boxes. I wanted to slit his throat all classy-like, like in the movies, but I found it doesn’t work that way. Had to hack through his windpipe, which is as messy as it sounds. I threw up in his bathtub after. Then I stole his cash and socks. It was necessity.

That hit paid for a stay in a cheap motel where I researched the real ways to kill a man. My next hit paid for a nicer hotel, and the next one an even nicer one.

I ended up a proper entrepreneur. I had a skill-set that certain people required, and I marketed that skill-set accordingly. I ended up with some job offers from some mafias (the most interesting way I was almost recruited was a letter in some matzo-ball soup. The Jewish mafia has an odd sense of humor), but I always stayed free-lance. Made more money that way, you see.

And money was all that mattered to me, because I had none for so long. When I fell asleep on my memory-foam mattress, I remembered the asphalt of the elementary school that I slept by. When I had shark-fin soup, I remembered the thin tomato that the soup kitchens offered. When I slid my cashmere socks on every morning, I laughed.

Everything fell apart three years ago. By then, I owned a brownstone in Brooklyn with my ex-model wife and our three Persian Greyhounds. My wife grew nationally-recognized orchids since retiring (we didn’t need the extra income). She knew nothing of my line of work and was happy with that. I am ashamed to say that she was a much of a symbol of wealth to me as my dogs were. I’d never met her parents. I didn’t know her favorite place or food or smell or anything. She had told me she wanted to adopt kids, like Angelina Jolie, and I had laughed. We slept in separate beds. She spent of her time relishing in my wealth, not caring where it came from, and I spent most of my time making more of it.

I was efficient in my killings now. No more windpipe-hacking. I aimed for the jugular, wore gloves, never left a print or a hair behind. Still, the police found me.

They took the prints off of my first hit, linked them to a DUI I had gotten (in my bullet-gray Ashton-Martin, gorgeous). I wasn’t that surprised when they came for me. My wife shed crocodile tears as I was cuffed. The dogs shit all over the hand-knotted kashmir carpet.

In prison, the guards brought me some of the tabloids. My wife, splashed across covers (I didn’t know he was a killer!, etc.). I tore the pages out and used them as toliet paper. She would have done the same. We were both opportunists.

I suppose it’s fitting, me sitting here, waiting for the fatal injection. A sort of poetic irony. After years of fighting it in court, the police linked my prints and methods to hundreds of murders around the country. They missed some, too. I was sentenced to death.

And here I am, waiting to die.

Still, I maintain that I am not a murderer. I did not kill for fun, or for sport. I killed because it was the only choice I had. The blood of those I killed lays not on my hands, but on those who paid me. I am not a murderer so much as a knife or a gun is. I am a tool that was put in the wrong hands.

I suppose it is not my choice to make. Though I believe that I am an innocent, the law disagrees. That’s fine. I guess those I killed felt they were innocent as well."

Noah Lablos, on his deathbed, 16/9/2018. He leaves all his money to his dogs, in hopes that they grow to be as fat and rich as he was.