1992

I walk out of my apartment in the damp and rather dank air of a mid-November day and head towards the end of the road where the cabs gather and the birds flock. The roads are clear this morning, the air crisp and cold and the winter sun blindingly low in the crumpled sky. It’s a Sunday. Some places are opening, others are remaining closed. It’s all quite haphazard. Unkempt.

This morning I counted out a random figure. That number was six. So here goes.

The little oriental woman is washing down the windows of the restaurant that’s located just behind the phone kiosks near the trees. I clip my heels as I walk towards her newly-painted windows and smile at her and she smiles and nods back at me. The windows are shining brightly, without a streak or a hint of dirt. She turns to resume her work as I pull the gun from my pocket and start mine. The single muffled crack thrills me as the bullet leaves the barrel and enters her brain from behind, blowing an instant red cloud of tissue over the upper end of the frames and causing her to pitch forward into the doorway where she had been standing. Just like falling asleep, I think to myself – just a bit more sudden and without all the unpleasant dreams. I do not break my stride but walk on, returning the hot metal object to my jacket pocket and walking up to the crossing where I press the button and wait for the walk sign to illuminate ahead of me. No one much else on the roadway. No one has seen anything.

I come. I go. I take. I give. One.

The phrase is often used; she never knew what hit her. That is, of course, a fallacy. That implies that she is still somewhere in a state of ignorance about what caused her end. Of course, this is not the case. She no longer exists anywhere and hence ignorance and knowledge are things that may as well be applied to stones as her. She is no more. What she used to be is now inert organic material lying in the shop doorway doing nothing. She did not suffer and indeed cannot suffer now; and that lack of suffering and termination of existence means that she is not putting up with any disadvantage due to her sudden circumstantial change, so it is essentially something her family and friends should not care about. I care about it, but then again I have other reasons. She has nothing to get upset about, even if she knew it was coming. I just don’t let them know because, after all, causing fear is not my intention. I don’t want anyone to suffer needlessly. I care.

I cross the road at a brisk walking pace and look at the cabs on the stand. Most of the drivers are reading Sunday morning newspapers, drinking coffee, smoking or chatting to one another about sport, the weather, how tired they are or how tired they will be. I walk past them without engaging at all and turn the corner past the old movie theatre where they drive down to wait at the stance. I keep moving and see one ahead of me with his yellow ‘for hire’ light on. I can only imagine that Sunday morning trade is very slow and that he’s turned up nothing. I can just see his illuminated sign in the bright sunlight. I wave to hail him and he signals, pulls over to the far side of the road and waits for me. I cross over the road to meet him and mouth some words at him. He can’t hear me well, so he rolls down his window. I ask him something about fares. Anything. Just to occupy him. He turns to his left to read the tariff and I blow one through the side of his head. Sometimes I worry about where the used bullets end up. Once I had one clearly ricochet off the front of the target’s skull and come back at me, which made me jump. Mind you, what I have read indicates that cerebral matter slows the bullet down to a great extent, but this not something I am going to rely on too heavily. I mention this because it clearly took some sort of deflection inside him – perhaps from the base of his skull – and deflected upwards and out through the top of his head. He still soundlessly pitched over sideways, though. The engine is still running.

Two in three minutes is close to my record. Speed is the key. Do it quickly and get out. Don’t panic. Walk steadily. Blend. Meld. Melt. Disappear. Reappear.

I was thinking about restaurants again. I always thought about doing an entire restaurant, letting them turn up and find bodies everywhere with no one sounding the alarm. The silence. The carnage. The weird smells. As appealing as this may sound it would be difficult to achieve. For one thing there would have to be at least twenty people there to make it worthwhile. That means crowd control. Then there is the staff in the kitchen to handle. It all means lots of people and lots of ammo – reloads, multiple weapons. Eyes on all sides of your head. Timing. Very tricky. Maybe one day. It would be worth it in the end. But not today.

I have to move quickly now. I make my route across two adjacent blocks and pass through the archway connecting the back of the big hotel to the side street. As luck would have it I hear a door to my left and see two girls with rucksacks step from the doorway to the hostel. One has a map in her hand. Both are quite pretty in an athletic, central European sort of way. German? Italian? Hard to say. One of them produces a map. The other is putting her gloves on. Their last few warm breaths steam in the still, chilly air. I walk past them both and first take out the one on the left, then aim at the one on the right. She turns quickly to me and looks absolutely bewildered, but before she can even begin to grasp what has happened I draw a bead through her left eye that crumples her immediately. I still don’t stop. Three and four. Two to go.

So where to next? I have to do it inside a minute or two. Whatever two unfortunate persons next cross my path will be those who will be added to the list. The homeless are good enough for that. They sleep in solitude and are never missed other than by each other, and even then only in time. Not much sport though. Like taking out rabbits instead of game.

Of course, the biggest problem I face is not in finding targets – they are plentiful – but in the imposition of things like security cameras that makes it hard for me to do what I do, sometimes. You have to be aware, always. Getting caught will not help me in any way. Even being identified or placed will slow me down. And I have to finish this in the scale I set myself. What I do have on my side is the fact that the targets and I have nothing in common – just two passing faces in the street. A glance. A turn. The end. No motive and no witnesses. They’ll never guess. They might string it all together sooner or later and say that it’s all random or free of motive or insane or whatever, but by that point I will have stopped. Or moved on elsewhere. And it’s not nearly as random as all that anyway. There’s a link of course, in a very tenuous sense, but it’s not one that anyone is going to make any time soon.

It’s not rage that drives me – far from it. It’s a calm sort of accepted wisdom that rationalizes what I do, in the certain knowledge that I am changing myself from a man into god almighty himself. That’s all there is to it.

This is my church. This is my work.

Five and six will be around this corner any second now.