Loose

You and me, he said, we're special. We see through the layers that cloud man's eyes. Through the bull and the waffle, the ego and the title. We see.

His eyes widened, he leaned in, and I struggled not to flinch. I kept my eyes on his even as he leaned in close enough to breathe garlic on me. Eyes like water, trembling with a terrible darkness trying to break through—Mr Herod was no perv, I knew, but he sure was crazy. I could see that.

You don't believe me. Back, he leaned back, his narow frame nearly disappearing into the confines of his leather chair. The room looked huge when he did this, but it was a small classroom, in an old school, with ancient rules. And Herod hated it all: the rules, the school, even the chair that threatened to gobble him up.

But he liked me. So I said, I believe you, sir.

That strange smile played across his lips. The eyes glowed, renewed with an odd energy. Leaning forward again slowly, a slender weird man, he said, Good. Then I have something I want you to do for me. My heart pounded in anxiety. Not a perv. Not a- It's going to seem, ah, inappropriate to ask, but it would please me. Smile, nervous, trembling eyes. Will you?

Will I what. I coughed the words, swallowed my bile.

I want you to kill a man named Howard Whyte, tonight, with your mind.

Howard Whyte was sixty two years old with cancer. When he cycled home to work, he did so with a well-tuned sense of purpose. Years of army training had instilled in him a level of self-discipline that his dad's beatings had damn near pulverised. Killing—soldiers, villagers, children—had hardened him. Civilised life was a breath of fresh air, as fresh as city air can be, and he took deep breaths, and built a store and a family, and lost both to circumstance, and now had carcinogens worming away at his innards. Six months on the outside, said his doctor behind small glasses. I'm sorry.

Those words rang like the bullets he popped at the runners and pleaders, the fighters and bleeders. Bang bang. I'm sorry. No. You're just glad it;s not you. Again, something he was very familiar with. Bang bang.

I sat on a park bench in a quaint square of green grass and withering flowers, watching the old dying man dismount his bike and guide her round the side of the old house. Pebble-dash walls, windows that relfected the world, showing nothing inside.

I knew what lay inside. I heard the cries of those innocents, from his past. Bang bang.

Soon as he disappeared behind the granular walls I darted across. I was in my usuals—t-shirt, jeans, runners---and I carried only one extra item, of which I shall discuss with you later. No-one stopped to stare at me, future-OAP-killer. No-one was there, see.The streets were empty. The wind was high—I felt buffeted by fate,as I slowed and then creeped along the side of the home to the back gate and pushed through gently, finding a garden in disarray. Weeds grew high. Grass had browned and fragmented. The wind stirred the corpses of long-forgotten roses. Thorns remained, drooping. I took it all in while the object weighed heavy in one hand. The other was clenched.

Like the fist that smashed my nose from one side—bang bang—twice it hit me, making my head explode and knees give way. My head bounced off the ground twice—bang bang—white stars popped in my eyes, like those bullets, and...Those kids...

Bang-bang...I'd said it, two words, through bloodied teeth, swollen lips. Those kids. His feet paused, one in mid-swing, and he settled down, stared.

Whaddya know? he grumbled. He leaned over, like Herod, his eyes were different though: splintered with gold, narrow to a point, piercing. Whaddya say?

Feign surprise, I said, laughing, choking down vomit. Those kids.

The war was a long time ago, he shook his head, spittle flying from his grey lips.

Kill him, said Herod, two hours previously.

I showed Whyte the object: The gun, Mr Whyte. I ushed myself to one feet, and to the other. The gun you used on those kids.

No.

Not the war, Mr Whyte. Long after. Just recently. Very recently.

No.

I stole into his thoughts and saw so many children weeping as he used all his anger and despair on their fragile little bodies. Crunch went a bone, at the pubis, as he convulsed, laughing and smashing the child's dreams of happiness away. You scraped the leftovers, burned the bodies. But some lived, and squirmed, like worms, didn't they.

Yes. No!

So you killed the worms, stone dead. Bang bang.

And he screamed and ran inside, and fled upstairs, and I took a hop-skip-jump across space and time and took a peek into his head, just as his own bullet exited the other side. His thoughts zapped away like a cathode ray tube, winking, and blinking, and shrinking to zero. Zipped back to my bruised cranium, the whip-crack of the gunshot tickling my ears. I laughed, then said, Ow. A tooth had come loose.