4

Friends. Sort of.

Every once in a while they call me out to do something or other outside my field of expertise. Keep saying things like "There's only so many of us here, Cauldhame." Of course they're right. There's waaaay too few of us, considering some people are reporting freaking HORDES attacking them (in all honesty, I think they're just exaggerating their importance). We're not a horde. We barely even qualify as a squad.

So, I present to you the good proxies of our fair city (like hell you're getting a name):

Me, Frank: I kill people with a hammer.

The Reverend: I'm not actually sure if this guy's a priest. He's a real weirdo. Looks like someone you'd see playing the piano in a dark room. Not Phantom of the Opera, something like this. You don't want to be alone with him.

Kenny: Kenny... Kenny had some weird fetish stuff going on. So when the Big Guy found him, he must have flipped some switches, because now Kenny is basically an animal. Just this crazed bundle of rape and murder. Leashes are required.

Wake: Sometimes I start to doubt if he remembers all the crazy sadistic stuff he does over the course of a night. We just kind of... find him. In the middle of the road sometimes. Then he tags along, and boy does he add to the team.

Oz: None of us are really in charge, but when Oz talks, we listen. Maybe it's the fact that I actually saw him tear a man's arm off, then drain the blood into his mask, but I seriously never want to cross this guy.

That's the team. Together we cause maybe 20% of the "gang-related" violence in the city. Surprised? Allow me to rant for a while:


In the old days, we had big disasters. Plagues, volcanoes, storms and famine. And you know what? WE STILL HAVE THOSE. These great big problems that wipe out thousands of people in the blink of an eye. The equivalent of entire towns wiped out in an instant, and the crazy thing is, there's still over 7 billion of us. This massive load on the earth, the environment, maybe even the universe. And even when we start killing each other, that number is still going up.

So what I'm saying isn't that I'm a saint for killing people, this grand hero willing to do whatever it takes for the survival of the species, what I'm saying is that I'm doing shit-all in the grand scheme of things. You want to solve a problem, save a few lives? Don't go after me, give your money to some charity fund that will buy people food, try to cure a disease, build better fucking levees. I'm gonna keep smashing skulls in every night for the rest of my life, but I'll never even get close to affecting the world as a whole. Neither will Mister Slender, unless there's some long-term plan going. All in all, it's just not that significant.

Nothing is.

3

Night time. It's the only time there is.

I snap my neck from side to side, visor rendering the world into neat little shadows. It's going to be a fun night. It always is.

I stroll down the block, pausing at the first intersection to pop in my earbuds. The iPhone, God's gift to man. Sleek, portable and versatile. I use it for notes, alarms, music, and of course for phone calls. I might start listening to some Men Without Hats (We walked around in circles singing...), or some Tears for Fears (Could you understand a child, When he cries in pain, Could you give him what he needs, Or do you feel the same...) or maybe some Ministry (A screaming headache on the promised age, Killing time is appropriate, To make a mess and fuck all the rest, We say "So What?", DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE...). Whatever gets the blood pumping.

I wait in an alley, checking the time, the schedules, the habits, the style... And when the right person passes by, I step out.

One step. She's oblivious. Two steps. She hears a noise. Three steps. She starts to turn. Four Steps. I can see her eyes. Five steps. The hammer slides into my hand. Six steps. She sees my eyes. Seven steps. Crunch.

I'm proud of my little tool. I call it a hammer, but it's so much more versatile. One end for smashing, one end for slashing, and a nice sharpened handle for a clean stab to the throat. Truly a masterpiece of modern craftsmanship.

The hammer connects with her face. The nose goes first, snapping, gushing blood onto the pavement. A tiny squeal barely manages to escape her as the hammer continues its journey. The cheekbones go next, caving inwards as the steel goes deeper into her skull. Her eyes pop out from the pressure. Her upper jaw snaps into two as her face is pushed deeper into the hammer's wound. Teeth fall to the ground. Finally, it sinks into her brain, and her body goes limp. All in under a second.

Then comes the tricky part. Sometimes the swing is too hard and I have to give her shoulders a couple kicks to pull the hammer back out. This can take up to two minutes, if I'm particularly unlucky. Then I have to find a place to dispose of the body. Generally a rooftop, if there's an easily accessible staircase. I toss the body onto the ground and strip it, cutting open the clothing and laying it out fully near the body. If I've timed things correctly, it will start to rain just as I'm leaving, cleaning the body and the clothes to my satisfaction. Success.

Then I might go home. Watch a movie. Something nice. Academy Award nominee or the like. Eat some popcorn, unwind, then go to bed.

This is my life.

Now that I know what it's like,

I'll kill them all if I like,

Only time will decide,

No one listened to reason,

It's too late and I'm ready to fight.

So What?

DIE

2

Every day is exactly the same.

I wake up, shower, shave, eat a bagel, then walk to work, my visor in my pocket and my hammer up my sleeve.

I get to the office. I say hi to Frank (it's a coincidence), who lounges at the front desk looking busy and drinking his coffee.

I climb the stairs. Keeps me fit, keeps me in shape. When you do the kind of work I do you need to stay in shape. If you have to get away from somewhere very fast, it's best that you have a good pair of legs to run on.

I don't need to exercise my arms. They get more than enough work on their own.

I wander through the cubicles. I give Liz a brief nod and a smile. She has had the hots for me since that one night... And then the next few... But I digress. Liz is sexy, that's all you need to know.

I finally get through the farm and get to my office. It's a real beauty. Cherry wood desk, slick black monitor, my own printer (might not sound like much, but there's plenty of people here that would donate their left leg for unimpeded printer access), pencil  holders, a Newton's Cradle. Some framed pictures of dolphins.

Oh, now you're wondering about the dolphins. That's my little joke. To everyone else, I've got some cutesy little animals hanging on my wall. Me, I just like the fact that I can display embellished photographs of documented serial rapists and thrill killers and have absolutely no one notice. It's these little victories that help me along

I work. I read, edit, then file. Read, edit, file. Read, edit, file. So on so forth. For the rest of the day. And you know what? It probably pays more than anything you've ever done. Life is wonderful, isn't it? Tedium leads to progress, progress leads to tedium, and the wheels keep on turning.
I mean this in the greater sense. Lots of smaller wheels stop.

Which leads me to after work. I generally stay until seven. Keeps me busy, keeps  me in good status with the management. Lets me do some planning for my other job. Check email. Read letter. Review maps, schedules, habits, tendencies, weaknesses (though there's generally only one I have to exploit, placed directly between the nose and brow) and strengths. Then I pack up. I take the hammer out of the desk and place it back in my sleeve. I walk down the stairs, give a little nod to Frank (no relation), waltz out the door and slide my visor on.

Which is when the fun REALLY begins.
More on that later.

1

I've been working for about eight months. Two jobs, only one with pay, only one with any satisfaction. For the sake of posterity, call me a consequence of the generation of isolation. Where things became more important than people. Eugh, preaching to the choir of course. Look who I'm speaking to: people who, upon discovering they were being stalked by a monstrosity beyond their comprehension, decided to post it on their blog.

Fucking shut-ins the lot of you. Before you realized that mortality meant death, all you could think of was your things and how best to display them. I have the best computer, the best house, the best body, the best mind. But when Mr. Mister came along, it LEVELED OUT THE FUCKING PLAYING FIELD! Shitheads with the brainiacs, freaks with the beautiful, spurned with the loved. And you know what? Each of you could have, at ANY FUCKING TIME, been killed before this. A blow to the head, a car crash, illness; but only now that everyone's dying in the same grand mixing pot, suddenly it's kinship and lollypops for fucking all.

So no, I'm not on your goddamn side. I don't even like any of you. But fuck it all, I'm going to do my job. During the day I'm Francis Cauldhame, advisory consultant motherfucker.

During the night, I smash people's faces in.