Annie sold most of her possessions to fund her new vocation: she was a born-again assassin.
She took all her books to the bookstore, where they offered her five dollars for thousands of hours of reading pleasure. The book buyer fawned over her copy of The Anarchist’s Cookbook. “Actually,” she said, “I think I’m going to hang on to that one.”
She entered the pawn shop tentatively, like a first-time visitor to a brothel. There, she sold her television, digital camera, and iPod. Although they also offered her an amount of cash not nearly commensurate with the value of her things, she was far happier with their offer of in-store trade for a gun. “If only bookstores sold guns,” she said. Then: “Never mind.”
She went to the used clothing store and attempted to divest herself of interview pumps and little black dresses. The girl with a tiny sparkling gem clinging to the side of her nose like a teardrop apologized profusely for how terrible Annie’s taste in clothing was. “But I bought that here!” Annie said, trying hard not to be That Customer, like the meth-leathered effigy beside her, insisting that chlorine-faded cutoffs were the height of fashion. “Oh,” the nose-pierced hipster said, forming her lips like she was about to ingest a blow-pop. Annie went to the sun-warmed dumpster behind the store and left all her brightly-colored clothing on top of enough cutoffs to clothe a trailer park.
Finally Annie turned to the internet. She didn’t have time for the endless bubble-wrap and feedback dance, so she happily gave a commission to the Sell It For You On eBay! store similar to the one that Steve Carrell had mocked so mercilessly.
Then Annie went hunting.
