Hard Top

Surrounded by darkness outside, a contract killer sits in the middle-range car he’s won on a TV quiz, waiting... admiring what he’s won from the fruits of the depths of his knowledge. His oppo arrives – a woman three decades younger than he. Finding their jobs paling (more ‘bangs’ expected for the same amount of bucks these days), they ponder alternative ways of existing. He thinks of running off with the hostess on the quiz show where he shined as a star for a night. She ponders hitting the road with her new-born, leaving the inconsiderate husband in the lurch. Seeing the blanket of stars, she finds deep meaning in that we were all born of dead stars created billions of years ago. She contemplates which of the two guns offered to choose. In a definitive act of severing connections to this life, she shoots her colleague dead. Now he will return to the stars from which he was created. She exits the car. To the blaze of headlights, we hear her hit by an oncoming car - presumably killed; the sound of a hubcap spinning to a halt.