FootSoldiers

They were all pawns in a game. He had always believed that. Back then however, he had believed that they all played in the game of the creator or whatever thing had created the universe. As he grew older and leaned more towards the lack of existence of such a thing: life was essentially a quagmire of ordered chaos, he had kept that belief but never tried to justify it. Now he knew.

They were all pawns in a game. The game was not played by some god, who was dead anyways, but by men who were more than mortals, here on earth. He knew what he was being asked to do. It was a suicide mission. But that was the whole point, was it not?

They called him crazy, he probably was.

The game, maybe that was a figment of his mind, maybe it was whatever his childhood psychiatrist called it. Delusional disorder? Psychiatric disorder? Pretty self explanatory. Was he? Delusional. Psychotic. Probably.

Pawns in a game, he tapped his fingers on the steel railings, as he waited outside, raindrops tip tapping alongside him. His fingers would tap. Raindrops would tap. Sometimes four in between his next tap, which always had the same tempo. Sometimes just one, sometimes none. The air smelled morbid, foreboding, the sky had been dark for months. 

The game had been on for years, but he didnt know that yet.

He stuck his tongue out, turned his face around, sneered at a little girl passing by. She cried aloud and buried her face in her mother’s coat. The mother took a quick look at him, and hurried along, her face impassive. He stuck his tongue out. The water tasted like gumdrops. Dry, stale.

Darkness blanketed every street and nook and cranny.

The puddles under his feet, there on the pavement, dispersed throughout the road had become a permanent pest.

He tapped and waited. She came out. He recognized her by the feet. Not much more significant, not too different from any others, but he knew. After all, he was her first. The second thing he noticed was the scent. Even in this wet, humid, smelling-of-fish town, even more so after the rains had began, his nose was attuned to her scent. A gust of wind blew suddenly, gloving itself with and then slapping a few strands of her hair onto his face. She barely noticed his presence. He didnt flinch. His heart leapt. And then stopped.

He followed her. She didnt notice. All the way to her apartment, number 1212 North Bengaliya Street. She fumbled in her purse for her keys, hurriedly. He thought for a second that she had felt his presence, as he stood leaning against a house a block away. Just as quickly, he realized it was the rain she was rushing to get away from, not him. He smiled. The rain splashed down all around him. He laughed, she hurried inside, not turning around, her skin crawling, as if some part of her recognized the gleeful cackle. He stood and stared, and slowly walked towards the house. To the door, his hand already coming out of his pocket with a key he had made before he ever got this assignment. Time to die, he thought. He was surely going to hell. But only if he believed in it. Opened the door, didnt bother to close it. It wouldn’t matter to them. And they were all that mattered to him.

She froze when she saw him, she would not move, the light in her eyes fading as he took her one last time. As he cut her head off, and bit her lips off. As he ate her lips, and then her heart, and sat down by the body to wait. The neighbors hadnt heard anything. But they, the ones who encouraged him to do this would have. The police would be here soon. They would call him mad. The police, the media, the people. Maybe he was. They were all pawns.