A Small Series of Snippets

The Beast is a city. About three hundred and five square miles with the tallest sky scraper reaching some eighteen hundred feet. The Beast is dirty, it is hungry, and it is vicious. From it's blackened bay and oily rivers to its bloodstained streets. If you live in The Beast then you must feed The Beast and it is never sated. There are many ways to feed The Beast.

The first option is to steal, the easiest option especially for the children. Small hands and bodies weave through crowds constantly reaching for anything heavy, anything shiny, or anything that has a screen. When they grow out of their small bodies, when their bodies no longer weave through crowds but instead bump into them, they have to resort to new methods.

The second is to have a family. This is a common option for those alone. There are five umbrella families each controlling twenty or so sub families and each plays a role in maintaining The Beast. In the darkest pits, the most shrouded alleys, and the loudest clubs - families run their operations like bees to a hive. Most members only share the blood on their hands rather than the ones in their veins.

Then, there was my option. I liked to consider myself one of the pioneers of this third option. I had a family once but The Beast took them. They're still alive - I wish they weren't but they are. Sometimes I wonder what what they think of me. Do they miss me? Do they remember me? But most importantly, do they fear me? They should. The Beast is starving, and option number three quiets it down. Every bullet has a name, every window - an opportunity, and every skull - a hole.

The wind was picking up, threatening to snatch my rifle off my back. It was a very clear night in the city. Below me the cars lit up the streets with their head lights. Before I went under, the cars used to be bigger and shaped like boxes on wheels. They would shine like a polished mirror and reflect the city lights while they ate up the pavement. But when I awoke, all of a sudden the cars got smaller, lighter, and made of some cheap plastic like material. I will never respect a car with that little metal in it. As I climbed, the cars got smaller and they almost looked like shooting stars as they drove down the streets.

The Beast is a city. About three hundred and five square miles with the tallest sky scraper reaching some eighteen hundred feet. I was climbing one about half that size. I know right? Crazy... how can I climb up so high and so fast without steal cables or some high end government stealth suit? It's pretty simple, all I had to do was die. Or well... more like half-die. Sometimes my heart beats, it is such a strange and uncommon phenomenon that the sudden random thud in my chest wakes me up at night. I don't get tired, I don't feel pain, and I can punch a hole into the side of a school bus. Even though my fingers were showing their bones poking out of their tips I still climbed unbothered. When I sleep the skin will grow back.

My job today is an enforcer who had disrespected one of the girls at a gentleman's night club. The owner also owned the block and did not take kindly to being stepped on. I didn't know the man personally. I knew his uncle V though. V was a good man - good to his boys, good to his wife, and very good at his job. But when it came to me, he wasn't good enough because I'm still here. When I made it to the roof of the building, some fancy hotel that women with real diamond earrings and men with a yacht or two in Newport City's bay go to... experiment, I did what I used to do when I was alive.

I took my switchblade out, started flicking it couple of times. Watching the glint of the blade as it caught the moonlight was satisfying. It was relaxing to do it over and over. The sound also helped me focus a little on the job and I really do believe that all the flicking I do with it warms up my wrist and trigger finger. My other hand reached into my suit's inside chest pocket where I kept a watch. It wasn't anything fancy, made to look like it was sterling and in the past it would catch a pick-pocket's eye. But the decades did it no justice. It was rusted but it still ticked. When I first saw that, I thought it was poetic how time almost killed time, just like how my family almost killed me.

I had ten minutes to set up. The one way street that was below me as I climbed, they are going to drive down it, headed to a place where he was going to share her with his friends, just like he did with the last one. Maybe if they left out a bruise or two, the owner of the club wouldn't have set this up. I don't know how she found me, or knew what I was after but none the less, we struck a deal. A bullet for a window. Too bad the man drove those non metal cars, it probably would save him. That and a roof, bad night for a convertible. The girl is going to signal the car by sticking her right hand out of the passenger side, there will be three bracelets - gold, beads, gold - and a tattoo of a bird on her back hand.

After I put my knife and watch away I brought my rifle into my hands. I felt its grip like it was my own limb. The wind blew my tie around my neck and I had to straiten it.

East I thought.

Bringing my rifle up to my eye, I aimed down its sight and scanned the kill zone. The important thing here was to make it look like an accident, the owner didn't want any blow back from her customers for this but she also did not take disrespect lightly. On the driver's side of the one way street there was a cast iron buck head decor for the O'Brian Gastropub. The buck was big and heavy, made to lean down to overlook the sidewalk. It's leaning face was only held in place by two thick steel cables hooked around its antlers. They were perfectly parallel and screwed into the pub's brick. The angle of it was just perfect for the antlers to fall on a driver in the narrow street.

I set myself up in a good position, the cables were in sight and I could see the spot where his car would be. I practiced a bit, flicking my sights from the spot to the cables a couple of times to commit the action to muscle memory. Whenever I saw him in the kill zone I would be ready. Now all I had to do was wait.