Holding Grudges

File V - Part II

Waiting.

It is the most tedious, agonizing part of the hunt—yet, over time, I've learned to savor it. The anticipation. The slow, deliberate build-up to the inevitable. It's a dance, after all. A ritual. And tonight, my partner is waiting for me, even if he doesn't yet realize it. He suspects. I can feel it. Taste it. His paranoia lingers in the air, thick and palpable, seeping into every movement, every glance over his shoulder. He hasn't gone to the authorities—yet. Perhaps fear holds him back, or arrogance. Maybe he thinks himself clever enough to escape what's coming.

Fool.

Even if he had spoken my name, I would not cower. No, I would relish the chase. Crave it. I've followed him for hours, through bar after bar, establishment after establishment, watching him drown himself in alcohol like a desperate man trying to outrun his own reflection. Maybe I won't even have to finish the job—maybe his own poison will do it for me. But no... no, that would be too easy. Too unsatisfying. He is mine to erase, just as his friend was.

And they know it.

The Cincinnati Police Department has had their eyes glued to him for hours now. Watching. Waiting. As if their presence alone could change his fate. Pathetic. They mourn his loss before it even happens, as if his life had any real meaning beyond the lesson it will provide. It's time. I step inside.

The bar is a choking graveyard of stale beer and broken souls, a rotting carcass dressed in flickering neon and the hollow hum of meaningless conversation. Shadows stretch and coil along the cracked walls, where peeling paint and greasy fingerprints whisper forgotten stories.

A DJ spins something upbeat in the corner—out of place, intrusive, like a forced grin at a funeral. Glasses clink. Laughter spills over like the drinks being poured—loud, careless, oblivious. Smoke curls through the air, wrapping around my lungs like a phantom's grasp.

The weight of this place is suffocating, yet somehow, it still draws them in, these desperate creatures seeking escape in cheap liquor and dim lighting.

And in the midst of them all...

Him.

The man I came to kill.

"Scum..."

The word slithered from my lips, barely louder than a breath, yet laced with enough venom to curdle the air around me. The chaos surged, roared, crashed—a symphony of destruction unfolding in violent crescendos. Glass shattered. Voices screamed. Bodies scrambled in frantic disarray. Yet, despite it all, my voice remained a whisper, a razor-sharp bladecutting through the madness.

No one heard. Of course, they didn't. They were too consumed by their own survival, too preoccupied with the pandemonium that swallowed them whole.

A filthy, writhing sea of bodies churned before me, a chaotic mass of sweat-slicked flesh and restless movement, each person absorbed in their own meaningless existence, yet trapped together in this wretched, stifling pit.

The air was thick—oppressive, rancid, diseased. Stale beer clung to my nostrils, mingling with the acrid stench of unwashed bodies, cheap perfume, and the ghost of something charred and long-forgotten in the kitchen's depths. It was a toxic blend, a nauseating perfume of human decay.

Laughter and shouting clashed violently, a deafening symphony of intoxicated fools trying to drown each other out, their voices battling for dominance in this overcrowded hellhole. The floor trembled under the relentless shuffle of feet, a never-ending cycle of bodies pressing, shifting, pushing. Some with purpose, some merely drifting, but all equally repulsive.

I forced my hand into the suffocating grip of my front pocket, fingers wrestling against the stubborn denim, clawing past crumpled bills and lint before they found what they sought. My sunglasses. And something else. Something far more important.