Another Day
It was cold.
It was dark.
It was raining.
He was huddled miserably on top of the abandoned apartment block, his drenched shirt and jacket clinging to his body, hampering his movement. His hands, clad only in fingerless gloves, shook uncontrollably, vibrating against the trigger that he was resting his index finger on.
He squinted through the streams of water towards the lit window, hoping against hope to see something, a sign of life...
"Goddamnit! What's wrong with these people? Don't they know I have a job to do? Why can't they die with some frikkin' consideration?!"
Sighing, he let go of the gun, sat back a bit, took out a cigarette, lit it, and blew a stream of smoke towards the sky. It was against policy to smoke on a mission, but he'd been stuck on this roof for far too long now. And who was going to see a bit of smoke through this downpour anyway?
The problem with sniping, he decided, is that there's too much waiting. True, you have the advantage of being a long way from any retaliation. True, you don't have to see the messy results that could –eventually- send anyone crazy with guilt. But the waiting meant thinking, and thinking was just as dangerous as being soaked waist down in gore, cornered, outnumbered, dead comrades all around...
He shook his head. See? Thinking was to remember, to remember was to reflect, to reflect was to judge, to judge was to find answers you preferred to avoid.
"Are we the bad guys?"
He'd asked it once, in a moment of jest. At that time he'd still believed what they did was for protection. For peace. Ending the lives of a few malcontents for the benefit of the rest of society.
"Yes"
The answer, without a trace of irony. How can you go through life thinking you're the villain? He'd started in order to escape a life of drudgery, a life of no point. Being a villain seemed better than being a nobody.
"I guess that's why I'm still here...."
He blew another cloud of smoke, watching the window, the rain, the buildings. Was that a shadow moving across that square of light?
He dropped the cigarette; it went out before hitting the ground. Its thin paper shell was no defence against the rain, and even before his finger had found the trigger it was a soggy mess, dissolving into nothing.
His aim was true. The bullet drove a neat hole through the glass, through the shadow behind it. If it made a cry he never heard it; the rain drummed against the buildings, all he could hear was its steady, merciless, pounding.
He watched through the sight as the shadow dropped down below the edge of the light. It had been a clean shot, through the front of the head, driving up at an angle through the skull and into the brain.
He wondered, as he always did, who was it? What had they done, if anything?
Another day, another death. It would have happened whether he'd refused or not. There were always people willing to be the bad guy, the villain. It was easier than being the good guy after all. Only stupid people took the hard route.
That's the problem, he thought. Only morons and lunatics become heroes, so the villains always win.
He wondered, briefly, if he'd just killed a hero.
Then he was gone, the rooftop was clear, save a few soggy remnants of tobacco floating in a puddle.
