A gunshot, a burst of faint scent, she was here.

    The story occurred in Minnesota, 1995. Her name was Laura Lawrence, who used to be an ordinary mom living a happy, relaxing life with her 10-year-old son Josh, but now she got a new appellation “the blonde ghost”. She was really perfect woman with beautiful appearance, slim body, nice job as a fashion designer, cute son and her remarkable long, curly, blonde hair which every woman envied. However, there was an old saying said that no one would live a lucky life all the time, especially the beautiful woman, on who the misfortune was more likely to befall. Laura got divorced with his gambler husband and raised Josh by herself.
    However(however again because life was just such unpredictable), to her surprise, the bad thing still kept favouring her. That was an extremely cold winter night. Although most of nights in Minnesota were as cold as that one, it was the one would never be forgot. A group of strong men broke into Laura’s house, taking Josh away and knocking Laura down to the ground. While Laura was about to call the 911, one of those guys said if she called the police, she would never have the chance to see her son. After getting divorced, Josh was the whole world of Laura and she doted him so much. Due to the instinct of a mother and the extreme fear of the evil eyes of those guys, Laura hanged up the phone. Staring the group of men going out of her house, Laura was even too frightened to cry. After few minutes, Laura started to get the consciousness back and recalled what had happened just now. She kept trembling without making any movement throughout the night.
     That group was called “ The Bats”, the evilest criminal group in Minnesota and even the whole America. The police even could not arrest them. On the next day, the sun still rose from the east, the sunlight was as warm and bright as before, enlightening the white world cover by snow. Everything remained the same, except Laura and Josh’ s fortune. Laura got a phone call in the morning, which was from The Bats. They said that Josh’s father owed them 10 million dollars in a gambling party and he could not afford it and escaped. So there were two choices for Laura to save Josh now: one was to pay that money for her ex-husband, which was an enormous figure for her that she could not afford, too; and the other way was to kill 10 specified people for The Bats. No choice to call the police, if she did so, Josh would die immediately without seeing his mom again any more. Determined to save her son, Laura decided to take the second choice, which may make her an evil but was the only way out.
     Laura went to met the represent of The Bats in a dumped warehouse, without seeing Josh of course. Before she finished the task, she would never get the chance to see him. The man gave her a list of name, the people who were going to die under the gun of Laura. Laura lowered her head, her long blonde hair floating in the wind. Holding the list, she definitely knew, she was holding her new fortune. Poor little Josh waiting for her, there was no way to flinch but keep going.
    Laura got a gun from The Bats. That was the first touch to the most emotionless tool, the tactile impression being so cold which was as cold as every killer’s heart. Life was always such dramatic, wasn’t it? No one could imagine that a woman with such sweet and soft voice and always in elegant dress would be a dark killer on the next second.
    It was time, time for the poor guy whose name “David” was on the top of the list to say goodbye to the world. Actually it was really an enigma that how David would die in a sweet woman’s gun. Holding the gun, Laura was still tangled since she did not know how she could kill a man who was much stronger than her without letting anyone finding out who the killer was. And also, the woman’s instinct to think too much prevented her from acting. She wondered if David enraged The Bats by the same way with her ex-husband, owing too much money and could not return; if he also had a family, a son who loved his parents really much as Josh did; why should someone destroy others’ family after his/hers was destroyed, which was an infinite vicious circle; also, would his wife revenge? Expecting that it was hard for Laura to act, a man from The Bats called her. He just told Laura that “killing was the easiest thing to do, just pulled the trigger and disappeared. No one would find out it was you, I promise.” To motivate her, the man let Laura hear the cry of Josh, who cried and wailed and kept calling his mom’ name. The baby’s cry was always the baseline for each mom. Laura could not bear it any more and soon was determined to raise the gun. She had no time to care about others. If she sympathize  David, who would sympathise her and Josh!
    One interesting thing of Laura was that even when she was performing the task, which meant ending someone’s life, she wore dress and did not tie her hair. She just wanted to make sure that she still looked as graceful and beautiful as before regardless of what she was doing.
    Within a month, Laura killed three people on that list and began to be increasingly sophisticated. But during the process she made progress, her mind gradually changed. The more people she killed, the colder she became, even the more she enjoyed the feeling to kill.
    In the next two weeks, she speeded up and killed two other people. Everyone in her town became too frightened to go out of his/her house because he just knew how many people were killed but had no idea of who the evil killer was. And which was irony was that everyone was likely to be suspected except Laura, who was the widely accepted the most gentle and soft woman in that town. She even did not dare to step on an ant, then how would she kill a person.
    However, the pleasure of ending others’ lives was like virus that rapidly infect each cell in Laura’s body. The evil seed in her heart grew so fast that as if she was born like that, such evil.
    As she was getting progressively skilled on killing, the tasks became more and more arduous, yet none of them had scared Laura and hampered her. She loved the way how blood sprayed out of person’s body, and gradually began to forget her original intention to embark on this road. Innocent people kept living in fear and uncertainty, since the only thing they knew was that that killer may was the most sophisticated one among all who had appeared in their town, even without knowing “its” gender. As if Laura was standing on the endpoint of food chain, people started to call Laura “the ghost” which seemed invincible. However, Laura did not like this appellation at all. She wanted it to be more special and with more feminine element. So, after she killed a person, she would write “the blonde ghost” beside the corpse. There were many women with blonde hair, so it definitely would not make her the target to be suspected.
    Two month went by, Laura had killed 9 person already, which meant that there was only one step to get her Josh back. But actually, the motivation to save Josh had no longer been as strong as to get pleasure from killing. Laura got to the place the last unlucky man was at. She hided herself in a corner and surreptitiously observed that man. He was sitting on a chair with his back to Laura. Although he was wearing a big, black winter coat which made his view of back look stronger, Laura could still figured out that he was short and thin. He just sat here without any movement, which surprised Laura. Would the last task be such easy? She could just take aim at him and hit rate would be absolute 100 percent. But hesitation should never be part of the brain of a good killer; only concentration and determination should be left. With a deafening gunshot, the man fell down. Laura wrote down “the blonde ghost” beside him as usual. But when she took a look at that man’s face, her heart got a so heavy blow that she kneeled down on the ground immediately.
    That was Josh, lying beside “the blonde ghost”. What an irony.