I.

"What do you want with me?"

Incredible. This guy has the nerve to ask me that.

Do you comprehend the situation you're in? Do you know what you've gotten into? Who the hell do you think you are?

I feel my lips curl into a mocking smile—a sneer. It's the only thing keeping me from losing my composure and screaming at him. This asinine lapdog, here merely to appease and protect, tests my patience each and every time I see him. It's a damn shame I have to communicate with him in the first place. The necessity of it, the incontrovertible fact of it all, is infuriating. So I sneer, my head held high, my glance held in deep contempt.

"That," I say, pausing for emphasis, "…will come soon."

I pull away a part of my jacket and show it to him. Tucked there is a gun. A primitive, crude thing, really, but it gets the job done all the same. I see his face tighten. He knows the danger he's in. He knows that I'm in control. I have no qualms with ending him here and now—my only restraints are the complications that would arise if he happened to ooze grey matter. He knows that now. This knowledge is indelible.

He'll wish he knew ignorance.

Hands tucked firmly into pockets, nose upturned against the world; that's what I do. That's what I am.

I hate this universe, just as it hates me. It gives me no quarter and expects none. I oblige, and the universe doesn't acknowledge me. Cold and indifferent to the whims of all of us humans, that's what the universe is. Cold and indifferent to anyone of any place or any time, that's what the universe is. Cold and indifferent.

Except, of course, for her.

The universe bows to her unconscious command, making us—everyone else—her mere and unwilling playthings. She, the self-indulgent bitch, doesn't know a thing about this. She—if only she knew. If only she cared to know. If only she could acknowledge her intrinsic role in the workings of this inhospitable existence. But, then, would she care? Would she change anything? Only to fit her likings. Her reckless desires—she doesn't realize the extent of her wishes.

She simply doesn't know.

For all my bitching, what am I doing? Moping around, putting false hope in the idea that my role in this little play will suddenly change? That the director will happen to have a change of heart? That this arranged script, this series of predetermined activities moderated by the stagehands, will make its twist and suddenly favor me? I laugh to myself, mocking and harsh, as I repeat the exact same rhetoric that has cycled in my head for years now, because that's all that it is. Rhetoric. A campaign slogan.

I'm tiring of standing around. It's a waste of time. I need to do something. Why did I choose to come to this time plane? Now that I'm here, why am I not doing it? Because of the fools! The ignorant ones! The ones that deliberately close their eyes, refuse to take action, delude themselves into thinking that this, this is fine! They sicken me with their complacency. I just can't understand them.

But, I am forced to play along. Forced, because the conditions dictate so. That's just how it is. I'm no fool. I know how to play the game. Compromises have to be made, alliances formed, mutual dislike set aside for barely maintained tolerance. This is the game I am forced to play, all under the auspices of the imperious moderator who tinkers with the players whom she doesn't see, doesn't know. We are all subject to her rules, but they are haphazard. Her unconscious being sickens me. She is the unknowing and sleeping beast.

I will do something. I must. They are all so tragically ignorant. They cannot do it themselves, can they? They haven't yet. Especially in this time plane, far too many relegate themselves to their myriad deities of an antediluvian era, offering their hopes and prayers to this one or that one to answer them and give them some marginal affection above all other men. They ask for favoritism in a cold and indifferent universe. They ask for empathy from an unfeeling caricature of omnipotence lifted from human-wrought pages. If only they knew.

God is a gambling type. Not only does she play dice—the dice are loaded.