--Rain--

I led a good life,
Once…
It slipped away and so did I,
Twice…
Caught in the rain,
My blood is flowing down the drain.
Three lives tonight,
Three bullets to fight.
I led a good life,
Had two kids and a wife.
It all fell to tears,
As those bullets hit like spears.
Drowning in the rain,
With a heart filled with pain.
She cried once for me,
She cried twice to be free.
I slipped away,
The rain wanted me to come and play.
Twice I lied,
Once I died.
Aching ears,
Fell for ears.
I led a good life,
Before I was caught,
In the rain…



…I recited this in my head as I glanced out the apartment window. After a moment which seemed to last an eternity I thought ‘This will lay on my tombstone, nothing else.’ Thoughts of death often plagued my mind so I took time to notice every detail about everything I saw, for it was each moment I thought that I was to be subject to the awful fate known as death . . . This was also a way of saying goodbye to something I would never lay my eyes upon, for each night I played the role of god and took another human’s life.

The rain fell unusually hard tonight, I thought, as I took in the night’s effect on the city street just three stories below where I stood. My dry lips slightly parted as a couple lines from my hymn slipped out, “I led a good life once, but I slipped away, into the rain, caught in the killing game’s seductive sway.” Each night I looked out this window, and each night I was plagued by my 'accomplices’ cigarette smoke which always found its way towards me.

We rarely found the need to bathe ourselves, so last nights—at times last month’s—bloodstains lay under our trench coats. The horrid truth of my hell is that I kill others so that I may live. When I slipped away from my wonderful life I became this demon cursed with a blood lust, which causes me to kill without remorse.

“You ready?”

This was a familiar term in my mind, a term that was never welcome in my mind, but always seemed to run through it heedless of my hatred for those two simple words. Those two words burned my mind filling me with dread. I wasn’t ready, I never was, but nonetheless I leave my perch by the window to play what my accomplices called ‘the killing game’.

“Where to tonight, kid?” I asked my accomplice Angel with my trademarked grin playing across my lips. Angel was the youngest of the three of us, so I made a habit of calling him kid.

“We’ll hit some fucker joggin’,” Angel replied with obvious anxiety. He was always the one to fire first, one of our sadistic traditions.

I never did enjoy the killing game, but I held fear in death. Kill or be killed—I chose to kill.

Halo extended his right hand giving me my gun as he joked Angel, “Calm down kid, save it for the action.” Halo was the only true source of happiness in our group, so he never did mind our jokes.

“Thanks, she loaded?” I asked as my beloved fell into my grasp.

“Yep.”

My weapon was truly unique and I loved it solely for that purpose. It was dark red in color, with a black grip. I never encountered a desert eagle, or any other gun, quite like it.

By now we had just stepped outside of our complex looking for our first target. Breaking the current silence the sound of steel hitting cement rang through my ears causing my beloved to raise ready to fire.

A knife was thrown from inside the alley to our right which sparked Angel’s curiosity, and so he ran in, ‘Stupid kid’ I thought while some unknown force caused me to run after him with my beloved ready to tear through the darkness with another one of her tears.

Three gunshots caressed my ears as I turned the corner to see Angel on the ground clutching his stomach. It seemed to rain harder causing Angel’s blood to flow into the street and into the sewer. Again I felt as if though I had died once more. Too many times have I been scared and left a mere shell of the man I once was. Tonight I would redeem the dead with one shot from my beloved, and so I did. I had barely made two steps before my epiphany occurred shattering my dreams of happiness. My beloved became trained on Angel’s executioner, and she quickly cried out 3 tears of silver. Life seemingly moved in slow motion while I watched the executioner’s death.

“Poor kid…” These words barely escaped my mouth before the executioner’s bullet flew through my throat. I fell back landing hard on a puddle of Angel’s blood causing it to swirl upwards in a tornado of tragedy. As I fell back, this felt more so like a fall from grace, for my eyes caught Halo reaching outwards as if though he was attempting to grab at the soul of the executioner. Some minute flicker of probability too, hit him; all three of us had been hit by a single foe, a single reaper. The hard rain fell over my wound causing it to burn, for the last few seconds that I could feel anything at all, just before I faded to black. I closed my eyes and began my road of purgatory, most likely with Angel and Halo…

Angel’s last few seconds of agony produced this sentence which shall forever live in infamy through whichever plane of existence Halo passed on to, “My world is crumbled, my world is here, and my world is you…”