The Kill Clause

by Lisa Unger

I like to think that Santa and I have a lot in common. First, there’s the breaking and entering. At this, we both have special skills, honed over time.

The other thing Santa and I have in common is a list. I know if you’ve been naughty or nice. In my case, if you’ve been very naughty and managed to anger the wrong people, I may be coming to see you in the night. I know when you are sleeping. I know when you’re awake. But that’s where the similarities end. Santa comes to give. I take.

“Are you one of daddy’s friends?” she asks. “That’s right. Remember, we colored that time?” She nods, looking at me uncertainly. She doesn’t remember, but she’s already learned to be polite, not to offend. They teach us young to please, not to hurt feelings.

Job stress. It’s a real killer.

Depressed implies that at some point you were happy, that there’s an alternate state of being to which you aspire. I’m not sure I’ve experienced that—true, lasting happiness. I don’t know what it looks like. From the outside it seems pretty delusional. But I guess that’s just my skewed perspective on reality.

His foster father apparently thought a good bonding activity was taking him to the gun range. When his talent was discovered by the range owner, Nora got the call. Her network, eyes in unusual places, looking for unusual talent possessed by a certain type of young person. Lost girls and boys with nowhere to go and no one who looks when they disappear—or even cares.

“Did Nora ever tell you about the termination agreement?” Silence was my answer. “The termination agreement,” he repeated as if I hadn’t heard him. “That if you get caught, or fuck up, or endanger the firm in any way, the Company will end you without warning.” “You mean fire, disavow?” “Right. Sure. At the Company, they call it the kill clause.”

But maybe that’s how you feel when you’re a rescue. Anything that’s not harm looks like love.

“Talk to the boss. She knows the big picture. We’re just pieces on her board.”

When I looked in the mirror, I hardly recognized myself. Alice, young newlywed, fitness influencer, wealthy, stunning, a big ring on my finger. Not little Paige, abused child who watched my father kill my mother while I hid in a closet; not the foster kid whose clothes were always borrowed, donated, or given, never her own, who went to bed at night praying that the door to her room wouldn’t open; not the teenager who was emancipated from the foster care system with nowhere to go and was taken in by Maxine just by sheer luck—or where would I have wound up?

“You were good,” he said. “You’re a natural.” A natural what? Liar? Killer? If I’m honest, even on that first night I knew it wasn’t for me. And that was years ago. It came more easily to Julian. We’re all going to die. What does it matter when and how? I had watched the life drain from my mother’s eyes, my father kicking her over and over. Our gazes locked through the slats in the closet door. It matters. Trust me.

Obviously, we were doomed from the start. The very foundation of our relationship was a sinkhole of lies, deception, and murder. Like, literal murder.

We’re company property, Julian told me. Never forget that. She’ll shred you like a classified document.

I’ll be there—with jingle bells on, I finally manage. I fucking hate Christmas.

Maybe that’s what she means when she says she feels like my heart isn’t in it anymore. Maybe that’s just what people say when you stop buying whatever they happen to be selling.

The truth was that he saw what we did as a job, and only a job. He dehumanized targets to the degree that he didn’t view them as people, but I never forgot it—perhaps deeply flawed people, but still human. People with children or lovers, parents or friends left behind to grieve. He refused to ever use their names, avoided any news coverage, and never wanted to talk about a job after its successful completion.

In abuse situations, eventually you will run up against a hard place. You can’t continue under conditions that harm you. So you have to find a way out, no matter the consequences.

I finally understand my mother’s choice. Sometimes you have to hurt yourself to help someone else.

Julian’s repeated calls. His last text: the knife and the Santa emoji. Kill Claus. Fuck.

That’s the condition of childhood. We’re at the mercy of our parents’ choices.

I feel like your heart’s just not in this anymore, Paige. But maybe the truth is that my heart’s in it for the very first time since that night thirty years ago.

“I don’t want to live in this world without you in it, even if you don’t want us to be together,” he says.

“Good job, kid,” said Nora when I rose. She reached over to wipe my tears. “Everything dies.” 58 “But not everything kills.”

For all his flaws, he’s the only person other than my mother whom I ever really loved, the way you love someone because of all their flaws and broken places, not in spite of them.