Please know that this short story contains plenty of gore and violence.
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He knew he was speeding.
He knew he was headed to his death.
He knew that what he was going to do served no purpose. He had a way out of the madness. The callers thought he was dead, shot in the neck and left to bleed in a dirty apartment by a man who, by all rights, was the same as he was. Just another nobody in Miami who got a pink flyer in the mail and thought the money was too good at first. Just another fool who didn't know that he agreed to submerging his life in death and blood under the watch of powerful people who would kill him once he had lost his use.
He knew this didn't matter. The man in the rat mask was dead. Strangled to death by a masked man who had shot down half of Miami's police force because fighting was all he had left in the shell he called a life.
He knew that after all he had done he will never be the same. He will never again be an aspiring college student with a life full of possibilities ahead of him. Never be an ordinary man who lived in ignorance of the crime families that had coiled around Miami and squeezed the life out of the pathetic city over and over again.
He knew that he was broken. His mind had been ripped out and hacked at until all of his innocence and knowledge had bled out and replaced with the screams and the faces of those that had fallen before him. His body had been sliced open again and again, torn until all of his feelings had been taken. His body had been left empty, and he lusted for blood that would never fill him again.
He knew what he really wanted. He had brought so many to their doom that it had to be his turn. The palace loomed ahead in his windshield; An altar to the opulence of the damned. He would meet his end here, for it was all that was left for him. His life was filled with nothing but blood and the one thing that tried to fill a spot in his empty soul had a bullet placed between her eyes.
He knew he was beyond saving. She had thought otherwise. She tried to clean him, show him how to make himself whole again. They were both tainted and broken, but she tried to pull them back together while all he did was keep them apart. All she had gotten for her efforts was a quick death she didn't deserve. All he could do was hope for one as well.
His mind was pounding and throbbing, falling back into the same rhythm that guided him through his massacres. His flesh tingled and ached, pulling him towards the bloodbath that was sure to come. His hands shook, the last sign of regret that was left in his body before he slipped the familiar rubber of his mask over his face.
He walked resolutely towards the glass doors to the palace, drawing the attention of a patrolling thug. The man drew a double barreled shotgun and walked towards the doors, likely to either grab the masked man or just shout at him to fuck off.
His mind throbbed louder and louder as the man stepped closer to him. Whatever bastion of control he had left he used to keep his body still until the right moment…
Now.
He slammed his foot against the door, knocking the armed thug down and leaving him helpless as the masked man fell on him, grabbing his vulnerable head and ramming it against the marble floor. The lost part of the masked man's mind took glee in the gore before it, encouraging him to keep smashing the the thug's head long after his arms went limp and a waterfall of blood and gray matter leaked from his gaping wound.
Doors opened on each side of him as he rose, shotgun in hand. Two hulking men rushed him from each side, hoping to catch him off guard. However, he remained unperturbed. Faster than the two bruisers could react, that masked man leveled his shotgun, shooting the one on his right first and the one on his left second. The shots were not clean. He had blown holes clean through their stomachs, wounds that left them on the ground while they tried to pull their guts back in while they bled out quickly.
He didn't care about their suffering. He knew what kind of men they were, enforcing their imagined power on others while taking their lives and livelihood. Whether they begged for forgiveness or cursed his name was not his concern. When he wore the mask, all of the regret and fear washes away. He becomes the monster they see in him, a soulless creature that leaves nothing but death and destruction in the wake of its mindless slaughter.
He looked at the thug he had taken out first and saw that the man was still alive. The wounded man used one arm to slowly pull himself towards the front door in an attempt to get to what he had thought was salvation.
He made it about halfway before the masked man's shoe crushed what was left of his head.
The masked man slowly stepped up the stairs. The throbbing in his mind was now accompanied by a low hum that resonated with the entirety of his body. It seemed to hum louder as he ascended each step, advancing into a loud roar that drowned everything out. It spoke to him, filled him with a dull determination.
Kill.
He would kill whatever lay before him, no matter what. All he could do now was kill, kill, kill, until he was finally struck down. He would go down in a flood of blood and death, for that was the only end that he deserved. He would not go quietly in a hospital bed or in the arms of a loved one. He would die as every man he had killed would, alone and afraid as death grips his bloody corpse and reaps his tainted soul.
Die. He would die a savage and a murderer. An inhumane, broken, evil maniac who would burn forever in the special spot reserved for him in the deepest pit of hell. Every single moment of his damnation would be spent forcing him to relive every moment of pain and suffering he had forced upon another human being ten times over. He would not be saved, or cleaned, or fixed. He would stay broken and lost forever.
He met the doors at the top of the stairs with a rage he had never brought to his murder sprees. Whoever the man behind the doors before him was, he would suffer. He wouldn't simply die. He would die in the same pain and suffering that he had forced the masked man into. He would feel every bit of misery brought upon by those damned calls. His suffering was the only thing the masked man wanted anymore. His pain would be the only thing that could hope to bring the masked man any hint of peace in his death.
He pushed open the door. Two black panthers flanked a grand desk, behind which sat a man with greasy black hair, his face contorted into a twisted smile that was accompanied with a manic gaze that had consumed his eyes. To the right of the desk stood a woman wearing a tight sports bra and latex pants. She gazed at the masked man behind her sunglasses with a lethal glint in her eye as she idly fingered the handle of a wakizashi that was sheathed at her side.
The man's smile twisted the humming in the masked man's head into a high-pitched whine. This man was broken, but he enjoyed it. He relished in it. He saw the blood and the death and the violence and relished in it. He had seen the same things that the masked man had seen and smiled at it. The woman was no better. She looked down on him, saw him as another target. She had killed and destroyed, but felt nothing from it.
Die.
They would die. He had one last purpose left in his desecrated life, and that was to make sure these two would die.
The smiling man sent the panthers at the masked man, who had no weapon to fight them off. Experience in fighting guard dogs had taught him that fists would do no good. A glint caught his eye, bringing him to a trophy rack that held several large golden trophies. A rational mind would be impressed by the collection. The masked man's mind screamed at him to use one as a weapon. He grabbed the largest, heaviest one and swung it at one of the approaching panthers. It flew back and gave a hiss, one of its eyes dislodged from the socket and blood pouring down the side of its face. The other panther attacked him, only to be met with a backhanded swing of the trophy. The cat coughed blood on to the pristine glass floor and spat out two of its teeth. The two approached the masked man wearily, but their wounds left them weak. They were unable to react in time to the masked man's finishing attacks. One died as the trophy sent its head smashing into the glass in the floor, jagged edges making countless deep gashes in its face. The other died as the base of the trophy smashed the top of its skull and sent shards of its skull into part of its brain.
The woman went in next. She moved fast, hand firmly gripping the wakizashi as she prepared to bisect the masked man in one cut. She was unprepared for the trophy that sailed straight into her forehead, knocking her to the ground and leaving her in a daze.
The masked man didn't give her a chance to get up. He pounced on her and proceeded to smash her face against the glass floor. She wriggled and fought against him, eventually breaking free of his grasp and dragging herself behind a column to escape him. He pursued her, finding her in a fetal position on the floor as she cradled her ruined face. He turned her to the side and found her gaping at him in an emotion he was intimately familiar with.
Fear.
That was good. She would meet death with the fear he had hoped she would feel. He finished her by grasping her head and wringing it to the side in a savage gesture. As her limp body fell to the floor, he looked back to the man at the desk.
He was laughing. His cruel mouth was stretched open, and his body rumbled with the cruel laughter his cruel mind brought him to. The masked man could not hear the sound, for the whine in his head had intensified greatly. all he heard was that piercing sound, the kind of sound that dug into your mind and forced you to do what it asked in order to dig it back out. It asked the masked man to kill the laughing man, a request which the masked man was more than willing to complete.
It was then that the laughing man pulled out two Uzis and proceeded to spray a hail of bullets at the masked man, who had promptly ducked behind the same column the woman died behind.
He did not panic. The mask denied him manic emotions, forcing him into a dull resignation into what he was doing. His gazed turned to the body before him, spying three small knives that were fastened to her belt.
It was rare for him to have a plan beyond smashing in the head of every man he saw, but they came to him when he needed them. Somewhere, the broken pieces of his brain managed to connect enough to give him an idea of how to kill this tainted man.
There.
The bullets had stopped for the briefest of moments, a moment's respite during which the laughing man reloaded. Now was when the masked man struck. He stepped out of the safety of his cover in order to chuck a knife at the man. It struck home, lodging itself deeply into the man's arm and disable it. The laughing man, however, was undeterred, and he fired the single gun he had at the column once again. The masked man repeated his previous movement, leaning out to throw a second knife when the laughing man's clip ran out. The second knife also struck its target, wounding the second arm of the laughing man and disabling him.
And yet he still laughed. He laughed and spoke, but the whine drowned him out. The masked man didn't care what the laugher said, only cared that he suffered. The masked man walked forward with the last knife, thinking of all the ways he could peel back the laugher's skin and show him the fear that death brought to all men.
The masked man's mind stopped when the laugher summoned the strength to lift a pistol to his head and pull the trigger.
No. No, no, no, no, no. It wasn't fair. The laugher needed to suffer, to feel the pain of the men he had killed. He didn't deserve the satisfaction that the mask saw in his face, the crazed smile with which he met death.
The masked man took two numbed steps back. The whine never left his head. His vision distorted, dead men flashing before his eyes. He had seen them before, men who looked like walking corpses sitting at the edges of his vision.
Voices he thought were long gone entered his head. The clerk at the grocery store.
None of this is real, see? That never really happened.
The rooster.
From now on, nothing you do will matter. You will never see the big picture.
The owl.
Who are you!? You are no guest of mine!
The horse.
Oh, you don't know who you are? Maybe we should keep it that way.
They melted together in his mind as he stood, lost in the sea of blood that stormed around him.
Knowing oneself means acknowledging ones actions.
Soon something of importance will be taken from you.
Are you okay, sir?
Why are you here?
Do you remember me?
Do you really want me to reveal who you are?
Do you like hurting people?
The masked man found himself walking up the stairs. He had nothing left but forward. Images pulsated in his vision, scenes painted with blood and horror. He saw his own death, over and over again, scenes that ended with his own brutal murder at the hands of the men he killed. Every single time, he died among the corpses of his victims, another mangled corpse among the bloodbaths he had become so used to.
Dead.
He should be dead. He should have died many, many times. He should be another unnamed corpse in a landfill, without any friends or family to care for his corpse. And yet he was here, walking up another set of stairs, coated in another layer of blood. The floor below him was pulsating to a rhythm he couldn't see. His head was taken by an unconquerable whine that consumed his thoughts. His body moved mechanically, like a puppet being yanked along on invisible strings. Questions floated around him, cracks in the neon haze that brought more confusion instead of bringing stability.
Hurt. Break. Cut. Shoot. Kill. Until now, it had become a myriad of violence that molded together. He didn't think when he killed. He fell into a red haze, a swath of bloodlust where he did brutal things to other men and fed an invisible hunger that only grew as he continued on his road through chaos. He didn't know if it was him that enjoyed hurting others, or something deeper in him that was born from the blood that filled his being. The chicken spoke riddles, but now he knew what the reality was. He had changed nothing, trying to stop blood with more blood. He enjoyed hurting others, and the men he had just killed were merely fueling his own sick pleasure. He had accomplished nothing through his actions. He had merely added to the body count that was already far too high. The haze still surrounded him and the rhythm still pulsed through his body. Nothing had changed.
He reached the top of the stairs, upon where he found an old man in a wheelchair. The room did not interest him, but he was drawn to the other man.
All of his previous sensations faded from him. The haze had cleared. The whine was silent. The ground stayed still under his feet.
The old man studied him. All that the masked man could see was regret in the old man's eyes. The old man spoke softly, filling the quiet that surrounded him.
"Ah, so you're the one causing all the ruckus? What's your business here?"
…
"Actually… why don't we skip the details? I've done so many horrible things… nothing seems to matter anymore, does it? I'm not going anywhere, as you can see…"
The old man's head drooped.
"Just go ahead and do whatever you came here to do."
The masked man saw what the old man was. His eyes were filled with regret. His words were tinged with sadness. Here he was, alone, left in a quiet room with nothing but memories he wished never existed. He was take by the haze, gave in to the voices, and now he was left with the ruins they left him.
The masked man lifted a gun that he wasn't aware he had. It was the same gun the laugher used to kill himself, and now he had it pressed up against the old man's head.
He pulled the trigger. The old man was no more.
The masked man watched the still body for a moment, letting the pistol slip to the ground. He turned and walked over to the balcony outside of the room.
He ripped the mask from his face. No more would he hide.
He watched the city in its filthy galore, the same fetid pool it was since he stared receiving the phone calls. He looked down to see people moving along the sidewalk, going home after a long day of work and play.
Life.
He still had life. He may have lost his old self, but he could still climb out of the darkness. The calls were over. There were none left to kill. None left to deliver him to death. All that lay ahead was life, whatever that may bring.
He pulled out a cigarette and lit it. men and women were pooling at the entrance below, most of them uttering in shock as others called the police.
Sirens sounded in the distance. They were coming to get him. He didn't care. He was done running and hiding from what he had done. The old man was dead. He would take whatever punishment he deserved.
He pulled out a picture of himself that he kept in his wallet. It was him, smiling and posing alongside a former friend he no longer knew. He lifted the picture to the wind and let it fly away.
So this is what the end looks like. Beautiful.