Sub Zero

Cold blood runs through my veins.

You took away every choice I ever made, every choice I ever had, or could ever have. I meant less than nothing to you. Just another notch on your headboard, another trophy to cherish on your mantle. I was already dead in your selfish, narcissistic eyes. Just as dead as the rest of the strangers floating through your narrow, claustrophobic world. My wants, my desires, my needs, and my life paled in comparison to your compulsions.

And now my heart is as cold and dead as yours.

Is that what you wanted? Is that what you see as your mission in life? To rid the world of all of those feelings and thoughts that you can't have? I once believed I could never understand what drives someone like you, but now you've opened my eyes to the bitter light that shines on your shallow existence. And that cold light burns so hot that I've become the fiery wrath of a million tortured gods in the making. You took so much from me, and so much from all the others you saw as the walking dead, but it never filled the hole where your humanity should be.

Cold blood runs through my veins. But it's an iciness so deep that it burns. In the end the only thing that will end this eternal winter is to see you wither in the fires of Hell.

I'm coming for you, but in your selfish existence, you'll never see me coming.

♦ ♦ ♦

The sky is on fire. Late August pollution streaks the sky, turning the sunset into a red blaze.

I watch as he trolls the streets for his next victim in his beat up silver Toyota Echo sedan.

With seemingly no direction, he cruises down one seedy street to the next. The run down avenues of this city teem with life under the setting summer sun. Everybody is starting to come out from the places they hid during the day, welcoming what little relief from the heat the coming night brings. Teenagers hang on street corners in little protective packs, but he ignores them. There is actual strength in their numbers, whether they know it or not. Kids crowd around an ice cream truck, spending the money their parents gave them, but he has no interest in them. Hookers work a few of the corners he passes by, but he wants nothing to do with them. They're too unclean for him, even by his standards.

He chose this part of town because he knows once he finds his target, the rest of the city won't care much about what happens to them. To society, those victims will be just as dead in their eyes as they are to his.

He drives around not knowing he has a passenger. I sit patiently in his back seat. I have all of the time in the world—all of eternity. I've got no place to go. Nobody waiting at home for me. Just like the target he seeks. I can see his eyes in the rear view mirror. Calculating and dead, but always moving, always searching. As close to him as I've become in the last few months I've been at his side, I'll never be able to fully understand what's going on behind those deep green orbs. I may have gained some insight to what drives him, but enough of my humanity remains, that I'll never embrace those urges. I have only an inkling of his darkness inside of me.

But it's enough to do what I have to do. It pushes me towards the brink of an abyss that I never thought to look into.

As dusk gives way to the artificial brilliant illumination of sodium vapor lights and neon signs, I wait in the shadows of the back seat. He lights another cigarette in a long line of chain smoked sticks. The smoke trails out his open window, some of it washing over me, making me long for those days when I could enjoy that habit. I have a lot of longing now and maybe that longing keeps me here as much as my need to see him pay for his crimes against humanity.

Something catches his attention a half a block away, and he casually changes lanes, keeping well within the speed limits and laws imposed by the city and its ruling class. But I can feel the waves of anticipation rolling off of him. He'd like nothing better than to gun the little import to life and quickly close on his intended victim. But he's smart enough to play it safe when needed. He's very smart in the most cunning street wise way.