Short Bloody Story

Standing on the pier, his hands still bloody, his eyes still filled with tears, he glanced at the moon reflected in the quiet sea. The two men were still after him, his running only bought him some time. Running out of options he looked up...this was probably the only time he's ever talked to God.

He quickly glanced forward...he still had around one minute.

He turned his head back up, facing the sky, he smiled and took a deep breath, to gain some courage. He has always denied God's existence, yet he cursed himself for being a victim of the old cliché: turning to God when we have no other choice...when we see life passing by in a flash and death smiling at us behind it.

Truth is he wasn't looking for redemption. He was looking for a way to let out what he was thinking, to shout out his story to the world, one last time.

"Big man, I'm running out of time...so I'm gonna do this quick. I don't believe in you. But I believe in karma. And talking with you somehow calms me down. I need you to know, it was all about her. If all else fails, it was all for her."

He lost himself in his nostalgic thoughts. His eyes stared at the past, a better life he no longer had.

The two dark figures kept moving, now running towards him with the conviction of a predator that was about to finish off the wounded prey...half a minute...

"She meant nothing to them, but I swear, Big Man, to them, I will mean the world. I can still hear her voice screaming after the first stab. I can see her eyes looking at me one last time, and in quiet desperation, accepting there is nothing we can do to stop it..."

His eyes now burning with a hateful passion, he stares at the men coming towards him and smiles.

"Those are the kinds of things that turn a man into a monster"

He wasn't a fighter. He wasn't born into it, he had boxed in years gone by but now he was a lawyer whose life revolved around his job, whose goals were nothing more than a good life: a house, a family, a dog.

The two men on the brink of confrontation with him were hired goons. They had killed and tortured a dozen people in this town. They had street smarts and the endurance a lifetime of physical violence provides. 

They killed her.

They had no chance.

The flood of energy your body gets in a situation where you have the upper hand, numerically and experience-wise, cannot be compared to the adrenaline rush you achieve facing the two men who murdered your daughter in front of you and are about to murder you.

He moved as if God himself had listened to his words and granted him the power to take revenge. It was over quickly.

Both armed with a knife, they came at him stabbing forward in his direction. A quick side dodge to the first direct hit and an inhumanly strong punch to the stomach brought the first guy to his knees, yelling in pain. Holding on to the weapon-wielding arm of the kneeled man, the enraged lawyer twisted it with such fierceness, you could hear the arm cracking under the forced rotation, dropping his knife into the hand of his attacker.

The second guy was a slightly taller, bald, dark man. He yelled in rage as he sliced his knife sideways, hoping to cut off his victim's stomach. The blade sang as it danced through the air, achieving nothing but a sweet, disappointing metallic melody. A melody no enraged attacker wants to hear. Misjudging his victim's reflexes, the man was caught slightly off balance after his herculean effort to cut open the lawyer in his first motion. On a regular day, a regular man would take this opportunity and run. This man didn't. No fear of death would come between him and his revenge. He managed to incapacitate one, he would be able to deal with this one too. Two seconds off balance were more than enough to throw himself forward against the attacker, with the knife near his chest, stabbing the now astonished and agonised predator in his lungs and quickly removing himself from the dying man's last effort at a swing.

The first goon, now slowly recovering, is put in a position you don't wanna be in - kneeling before a daughterless murderer with a knife in his hand. The lawyer screams out loud as he stabs the bleeding knife into that man's neck, ending his life with a scream of rage. His scream turned to a cry. A desperate, saddened cry to a void pier..." Why me?!" is what must be going through his head...I don't know...I can read lips but I can't read minds.

After all this commotion, it almost saddens me to do what I am about to do. Sadness hasn't been a part of my vocabulary in a long time...you develop such resilience, doing what I do, in this kind of situation, you're sometimes left wondering what is it that still keeps you human. Kudos Mr. Lawyer man...or should I say, Mr. John Trent...you almost made me shed a tear. A quick wind calculation to make sure I don't miss my target and the trigger is pressed. 

What some may perceive as a brief moment is, to me, a slow, beautiful ritual I never grow tired of being a part of. The squeezing of the trigger, the bullet sliding through the weapon's barrel and quickly and precisely hitting the desired target's head. The life that vanishes while the eyes of a freshly deceased man stare blankly at the sky. My apologies Mr. Trent...but I had a job to do.