Freedom was my first thought when I stepped off the plane. Freedom from what, I could not say, but I was free.
	I hadn't had a rough upbringing. It wasn't rough in the sense that I was poor, or I was antisocial, or I was born disabled. 
	My parents divorced and split before I could remember. My mother had me most of the time, my father took me on weekends. I was an emotional young child. I didn't throw temper tantrums like you'd expect of a young boy, but I cried. Objectively too much. My father wanted to take that out of me in any way he can. At times, it seemed like he hated me, but he always contended that he just wanted his son to be a man. He'd said I spent too much time around women, my mother and his, and that made me sensitive. It made me weak. At some point, I stopped. I stopped feeling, and I lost what was, in his eyes, weakness. I still wanted my future badly. I wasn't depressed. I still loved and liked and enjoyed life but I never hated again. I couldn't hate anyone and events stopped fazing me and I was just always happy, or at least content. For a bit, I wondered what was wrong with me, if I was a sociopath or a psychopath or if anything that was diagnosable was wrong with me, and then I simply decided it wasn't a problem.  It wasn't worth any worry, and it was something I had to accept. Everyone had to come to terms with what they were-whether it was horrible or overemotional or hateful or numb-everyone had to come to terms with what they were in the end. For me, it was numb but not apathetic.
	But when I saw her, I felt I could be more. I felt I could be anything,  but at the very least I could be more than the emotionless husk of a human being I so often felt I was. 
	She had short, even, straight black hair, going down to about the middle of her cheeks. A small bit of her hair was parted from the rest. She was beautiful.
	It wasn't love at first sight. I wasn't sure from the second I saw her that I was in love with her. But I loved what she represented. Here I was, in this country, a massive border separating me from my asshole father and everything else that I didn't want to be a part of or related to. Here I was, ready to let myself start feeling again, where someone telling me I was being too sensitive could be told to fuck off in return.
	It was as if a pain that I did not have had been relieved, a sin that had never occurred being absolved.
	"Are you new here?"
	The question startled me, because it was coming out of the mouth belonging to the face that represented freedom and being away and all of the things I knew I loved. It spoke. To me. Firmly but gently.
	"Fairly," was all I could think to say after being caught off guard as I had.
	It had only been a few weeks, and I'd found an apartment and a decent short-term job. The neighborhood was vaguely similar to that of one of the many I'd occupied during my childhood with my mother. 
	"I grew up here. It's fun, being able to tell the new ones apart."
	The calm, sometimes authoritative manner that I spoke in suddenly seemed to return in full force, with more charm than I was accustomed to. "You know there's no sport in it."
	A hint of a smile crept upon her face, and the feeling of wonder that occupied me whenever I thought about my new life took me by storm.
	"What's your name?"
	"Matthew."
	"Jane." She reached out to shake my hand, and I accepted, making eye contact and with a tight grip as I had been taught.
	"How long have you been living here?" I said, releasing her hand and drawing back. If I was normal, I'd be thinking, 'just be yourself,' but that came easily to me. I never had to remind myself.
	"Living where?"
	
	
	

















	 I looked down and I knew what I would see before I saw it. The thought rang out in my head louder than the crack. Do I run?
	The composed, calm voice, answering my unspoken inquiry.
	"You won't get far."
	I turned around. I saw my assailant, bloodshot eyes, age fifty-five or so. In his reddened eyes, there was a question he needed to ask. He hadn't had enough sleep, and it was clear in the dim light of my apartment that he had made more mistakes in the past few maddening days than in his entire life. 
	"You?"
	"Yes."
	He nodded, relieved. He closed his eyes a moment, and only when he opened him did he look at me. His expression said more than he could've.
	"Would you like to have a seat?" I asked.
	He looked at me warily, then sat on the black loveseat. I rested in the chair closest to me. The bullet hadn't hit anything vital, and it was conceivable that I could survive with proper and immediate medical attention, but he'd made it clear  that I wouldn't be leaving this room.
	He broke the silence. "You know, I knew James. Worked for him."
	I looked him in the tired, red eyes.
	"He was a real piece of shit. I know what he did to your girl. My condolences."
	For the first time since the cathartic moment I shot James, I felt anger. I felt something horrible and awful swell up inside me, and tried to force it, tried to feel anything in what was sure to be the last few minutes of my life. I tried to bring myself to get angry enough to get up and end him for daring to bring Jane up.
	I couldn't.
	"But I knew his other side. Corny, I know, but he was..."
	He trailed off.
	"What was he?"
	"He sure as hell wasn't good at heart. No doubt about that, he was an evil little fucker. But he could be gentle and kind. Could be it was just an act. You ever hear about how power is corrosive?" He sounded like one of those women being beaten, saying that their man really loved them deep down.
	"Yeah." 
	"He was alright before he figured out how easy it was to get power if you did things the illegal way. He was always that gentle kid."
	"Stop," I demanded, "stop. Don't try and pull that shit on me. He killed Janey on the day of her wedding. The day of my wedding. There's no gentleness in that."
	"Janey." He smiled. "He called her that."
	Somewhere in my head, I knew he didn't say it to be malicious. It just slipped out, or he was feeling nostalgic, thinking of James before he was completely corrupted, but I couldn't process that.
	"Motherfucker!" I snarled, standing quickly and braced to lunge at him, but he was with me in a second, aiming his weapon at me.
	"Kid, I can put another bullet in your leg in a second. I want to have a conversation with you, but that don't mean I can't hurt you. This is still a job to me."
	The short, energetic blast of true rage was wonderful, and I was calm and numb again. I sat down without him having to ask me. 
	"Don't apologize. I shouldn't have said that," he said with a note of empathy.
	"What's your name?"
	"Mike."
	"Did you love him, Mike?"
	"He was important to me. I thought I could help him, keep him from corrupting himself."
	"Mike."
	"Matt."	
	He knew my name. Didn't surprise me.
	"What-what job do you have?"
	"I was his enforcer. Simple as that. Started innocently enough, but he paid me well."	
	"Why? Why come here after-" I swallowed "-after he's dead?"
	"Part of what he paid me for. Send a message after his death. He didn't leave what he had to anyone he loved or anything. I guess he just wanted to be remembered."
	"It's not about the money."	
	He looked hard at me. "No."
	I dropped it. 
	I took that moment to come to terms with my mortality. It came to me, then, that everything I have ever feared was related to death. As a child, I feared the dark because of the unspoken idea that out of the shadows would pounce something which would take my life. I'd had ideas, when I was alone and scared and ten or eleven, that Satan would come, with a trident, and spear me through my bed that I was lying on, and I'd be gored and lie there until I couldn't stand the pain any more. And it wasn't Satan or his trident that I feared in those moments, but death.
	And now all that was staring me in the face. Everything I had feared. The darkness. The devil. My father. Doctors. Everything. And I was just to accept it.
	I looked over at Mike, at the remorse in his eyes.
	"Michael, I wasn't the first, was I?"
	A flicker of bewilderment flickered across his face, as if he wondered how I knew, and then disappeared just as quickly.	
	"No," he sighed, "James had enemies. Some of them didn't do it. Collateral,  the heartless fucker-" almost as a term of endearment "-might have called them, and I sat and talked with them just as I did you. I could never explain to you. You've not killed anyone who was innocent. The wonder in their eyes, asking one question: why?  But not you. You didn't react at all. Could've been shock numbing you, but you looked down, and saw it and went 'oh well.' Most people would've screamed when they noticed. You knew I was coming. It had to be you, and if I'm honest, at least now I don't have to kill anyone else." He paused. "The worst is when they want it to end. They can't handle the pain. They beg you. And I did. I had to. For years, I've done this." He paused again. "And my name isn't Michael, asshole."
	The last sentence told me that would be the final emotional thing Mike said to me. My breath grew short, and I prepared to close my eyes for the final time.
	"Mikey, I'm fading."
	He sighed. "I'm sorry."
	He wasn't. He wasn't sorry. He had killed innumerable others thinking them to be me. If he was truly sorry, he would've stopped well before he got to me. But I didn't mind.
	I could at least comfort this old man before I died. "Don't be. I didn't have anything going for me anyway."
	He looked like he was about to say something, then he saw the glazed look in my eyes and knew I would've just tuned him out. He allowed me to die in peace, and for that I owed him, but to thank him verbally would have been to violate the peace he was giving me.
	I asked myself, was it better? Was it better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all? It was. It had to be. 
	The last thing I said before I ended the life of another person was "Motherfucker." I whistled and said "motherfucker" so it would be the last thing he heard. The word would resound as he transferred from earth to wherever I'd be in a few seconds, and he'd know that that was what he was. He would hear "motherfucker" for eternity. But there was more than one motherfucker in that dark alley.
	And there are no happy endings for motherfuckers like me.