Year's end
He stands on the balcony looking over the city.
He takes a slow drag on his cigarette.
"It's finally done," he says to no one.
He checks his watch.
"Just a few more minutes and it will be all over."
If there had been someone else there, and they had asked him why he had done this he would have told them he didn't know.
That would have been a lie of course. He knew exactly why he'd done it.
He wanted it to end.
He wanted to pain to go away.
He wanted people to stop hurting each other.
He had tried to reason with them, but that hadn't accomplished anything. No one wanted to listen to reason. They just wanted to keep on hurting each other but they wouldn't accept the blame for it.
It was always someone, or something, else's fault; the neighbour, the parents, society, the Devil, God.
He'd even come close to doing what he'd done tonight once before, but he'd been stopped.
He wasn't stopped by the army, or by one of those do-gooders going around trying to keep the world 'safe'. Oh, they tried to stop him, but they all failed.
In the end it was a man who stopped him, an ordinary man, a wonderful man, His man.
For a while that man let him forget how painful and bent of self destruction the world was. For a while, he was happy.
But they took that man away from him.
Those self righteous do-gooders stole him away.
Oh, it was for the man's own protection they said, after all no one should be with such a monster.
Again he tried to reason with them, and again it was for nothing. They didn't want to hear about how that simple man could keep his anger at bay with a look or a touch. All they were interested in was showing wrong it was.
He tried to rescue him, he tried to save him, but he failed.
The fight was such chaos that no one knew how the man actually died, only that he did die.
The do-gooders were quick to point their fingers at him, after all, if they hadn't been together this would never have happened. Of course it couldn't be their fault, they were the good guys.
He didn't agree with them. Oh, he realized that he had had a part to play in his death. Unlike them, he had never been one to shy away from blame and his massive intellect showed him exactly how the events lead them here. They also showed him everywhere he could have done something different and avoided this outcome.
But as he cradled the dead body against him, the reasons why things ended up this way didn't matter. It was too late for them to matter.
His sanity died with that man.
None of the do-gooders involved in that fight survived his wrath either.
* * * * *
He looks at his watch.
It's almost midnight.
There's a loud 'crack' in the distance and a second later the whole city shudders
He smiles and puts out his cigarette.
The timing is perfect. As the year ends, so will this world.