Martin Blank's Lucky Day

Ironically, the day of the prom had started out quite well for hitman Martin Blank.

He had had no trouble whatsoever getting to Sunnydale via rented car, no trouble at all finding a cheap hotel to rest up at after his long journey, and no trouble at all finding a bootleg CD of the Violent Femmes -- his favorite musical group -- at a local CD store. He even managed to find a nice autographed poster of movie star Minnie Driver, an actress he had always particularly liked because she reminded him for some reason of his ex-girlfriend Debi Newberry.

When he found an old empty church that had a clock tower overlooking the downtown shopping district, it seemed like the ideal place to test the scope on his new sniper rifle. He rushed back to the hotel room with his treasures and returned with his rifle. To his surprise, the church was still deserted but that was okay. He preferred it that way.

Martin hastily climbed up the stairs to the top of the clock tower and started looking at the streets below through the scope of his rifle. He found himself feeling even more lucky when he did this because there in the center of his scope was a naked young blonde girl who looked exactly like his intended target. And she was walking in the company of a redheaded girl whose description matched the one briefly mentioned in the notes supplied by the mystery client who had requested the blonde girl's termination -- an enigmatic person who for some weird reason chose to go by the name of Dee Furst.

Martin Blank wasted little time in loading his rifle and aiming in the direction of the target. When he did so, he noticed that the blonde girl had started chasing something. Then she stopped chasing something -- and stood there looking at something. Wait! Was that a rabbit? Martin thought his eyes must be playing tricks on him.

No matter. The rabbit -- or whatever it was -- was gone now and the blonde girl and her redheaded friend were talking to another blonde girl. This particular blonde girl was apparently able to wear clothes -- which was a good thing since Martin found the nakedness of his intended target to be more than a little distracting. Moreover, this particular blonde girl had also been mentioned in the notes supplied by Martin's mystery client. "Don't shoot this girl," the notes had said. "Otherwise all money due you upon termination of your target will be forever withheld."

What was so special about this girl? Martin wondered.

Then the girl vanished. Martin blinked.

No, wait, he thought. She could not have vanished. Real-life people just don't vanish into thin air. It must have been his imagination -- which was funny because Martin Blank always thought that his worst problem was that he had no imagination. Except for when it came to devising ways to kill targets and enemies.

Anyway, the target was still there so Martin thought that he might as well shoot her right then and get it over with. After all, the faster he finished his assignment, the faster he could collect his bonus and start heading toward his high school reunion in Michigan.

So Martin slowly aimed his sniper rifle in the target's direction, avoiding her distracting uncovered bosom and focusing on her uncovered but less distracting head. He waited until her suntanned face filled the center of his rifle scope, then fired.

It should have been a perfect shot.

As far as Martin Blank was concerned, it was a perfect shot.

And yet the target's head was still intact. Nor did she show any signs of falling over. Indeed, she stood upright as if nothing had happened.

Then the target started to show signs of panic and Martin hastily lined up his second shot. But by the time he fired, the target was no longer in the same location she had been in just a few seconds before. Nor was her redheaded friend.

And even though he fired two more shots at the same location with no problems, he still managed to miss the target. It was at this point that Martin Blank realized that this day would not be such a lucky day for him after all.