The Killing Machine (ePub)

"Being a contract killer doesn't require you to have an extraordinary set of skills, despite what you've seen in the movies. You don't have to be a flawless marksman, proficient in hand-to-hand combat, or a master of disguises. I mean, I imagine if you are at the elite level, flying all over the world to take out powerful crime bosses or something, that's a different matter. But the truth is, most people walk around in their lives without any expectation that they could be killed at any moment. If you're a contract killer, all you have to do is walk up and shoot them in the head."

Reese Thompson has a husband and a house and what appears to be a normal life. But deep down, she knows she's nothing but a scab. After she kills a man in self-defense, Charlie appears at her door, offering her the opportunity to work for him as a contract killer. He tells her she was made for this work—and Reese has never felt she was made for anything. She leaves her life behind and begins to work for Charlie.

At first, Reese believes she can be the perfect killing machine Charlie envisions. But the longer she does the job, the more something within her begins to unravel. When Reese commits a horrific, unnecessary, and unjustifiable murder, she leaves her home and begins driving across the country. Charlie orders another of his contract killers, Zain, to follow Reese.

Zain has worked for Charlie for eight years and has none of Reese's ambivalence about the work. But something about the assignment unsettles him—it feels somehow unfair to track down a woman who is clearly bent on self-destruction. When Zain has the opportunity to take Reese out, he instead makes the spontaneous and dangerous decision to save her life, and the two of them head out onto the road to escape Charlie's retribution.

THE KILLING MACHINE is a disturbing take on the road trip novel, a violent and visceral story of two people brought together by their own dissolution. The novella combines the perversity of Ottessa Moshfegh's Eileen with the slyly brutal tone of The Sisters Brothers, in a spare style that evokes Joan Didion's Play It As It Lays.