The light that stirs him is blindingly beautiful, a sign that he has survived. A cool breeze caresses his body, whilst a warm glow is spread across his face. It feels peaceful here, wherever he is.
It is the last of such moments he will ever experience.
From the corner of his mouth, he feels a prick, followed cautiously by another. As his lips part to draw in air, an entire string of them dances across the other side. Instinctively, he licks his lips but tastes only liquid metal. Is that...
Laughter?
Then his eyes widen as the fire spreads across his face.
They guffaw cruelly as he sits up, still in a daze over what has happened.. He dares not glance at his reflection but he knows, he knows. The self proclaimed surgeon gleefully asks his patient if he feels cheerier, turning back to his posse as they dole out sycophantic chortles.
They cease when they hear a guttural sound: huh... huh... huh...
hur, hur, hur. There it is again, and it seems to be coming from...
SCHINK! A blade emerges from the throat of Surgeon, showering the remaining two in a spatter of crimson.
Hee, hee, hee...
Pizza Face has enough sense to run after a stunned moment of silence, leaving his colleague to babble incoherently by the sputtering corpse to be. The frantic mourning slowly grows fainter before sudden silence. He looks back, to see that both his comrades have now fallen.
Har, har, har.
Pizza Face dares not turnaround, but does so anyway. Beneath a beam of waning moonlight, he stands. Dishevelled hair frames a face pale white from blood loss. The man grins eerily, and absent-mindedly tries to wipe the blood from his bleeding wounds: his efforts paint a baleful red smile from ear to ear. Their gazes lock, and Pizza Face's eyes peer into the abyssal soul of the man, and quietly resigns to his fate; it is not the lack of sanity in the man's eyes that extinguishes all hope, no, it is the simple absence of humanity. Pizza Face closes his eyes for a final moment's peace.
But even that reprieve is taken from him.
For all his kindness, this his reward? No more; it's he who'll wield the sword!
Root pain experienced in his life, in others, he will amplify
Unchaperoned, the world he'd desecrate; now, blow for blow, with no checkmate,
In dark city, launch the bitter fight, twixt eternal foes: the Knave and Knight.
Last rites are Knave's first battlecry:
AHAHAHARAHAHAHAHHAHAAHAHARHAHAAHAHAHAHA....!
Oh, the darkness in the hearts of Man,
The depths of desperation to which one descends!
YOU ARE READING
The Kindness of Strangers
FanfictionYears before Joaquin Phoenix was considered for the role, I wrote a short story about a friend's encounter with muggers. Unsatisfied with just one ending, I wrote three different ends to the tale, one of which bears a strong resemblance to a certain...
