This is like, a short break from my main story im writing, an offnote which popped into my head after watching so many hours of supernatural straight.
It doesnt really have any spoilers, and obviously the world of supernatural isn't mine, however much I would like it to be :)
Read and Review please!
Arrow
Equilibrium
It was a perfectly normal day in a perfectly normal area in New York. It was cold, windy and foggy; a typical winter evening. A non-descript man walked along a dull grey pavement, no-one sparing him a second glance. A security cameras eye swivelled from above the man, catching him on tape for a brief second as he passed the privately owned Swiss bank. The tape would later be filed carefully away with the other thousand that were placed in the store room at the end of every day. There it would stay for six months and then be wiped and re-used. However none of this mattered to the man as he walked on, unaware that for a brief moment in time, he had been seen, observed, and found wanting, all within the space of a few short seconds. His grim face was ingrained in the pixels upon the camera's hard drive. The man could not have known that this brief, unremarkable moment would affect him for the rest of his short life.
The watcher gave what could have been described as a smile, however placed on his sardonic face, the otherwise pleasant motion turned into a twisted parody of the expression that could only be described as a sickly grimace. People say that the idea of an evil man looking evil was a cliché which held very little basis outside of Hollywood movies; in this case it wasn't. Maybe it was the unhealthy yellow lighting that cast weird shadows upon his hallowed face, maybe it was the scar that twisted across his left cheek, maybe the fact that his eyes seemed unnaturally black, or maybe it was simply because he was, in all meanings of the word, evil. The screen upon which his eyes seemed fixated on showed footage from a video camera obviously above a street, freeze-framed on a man's face, caught in the act of frowning, obviously unaware of the camera which had captured his features. The watcher nodded, almost gleefully.
"Bag him."
It wasn't fear that drove him really, just a disconcerting feeling of unease dogging his heels and making his flight home swift. He felt as if he was being followed, but by who and why escaped him. Little did he know it was just chance, not fate, or destiny that led him to his downfall, but the simple case of wrong place, wrong time. The feeling of unease had caught up to him as he had passed the bank not five minutes before. It had been privately owned, he noted absently, then wondered why it mattered. He glanced behind him again, and seeing nothing, slowed his pace; that was his first mistake. A false sense of security settled upon him as the deserted street he hurried down showed no sign of life. He glanced up at the slate grey sky, frowning. "This rain will be the death of me" he murmured, if only to hear the comforting sound of a human voice. He could not have known how right he was.
The gunshot noise was muffled by the heavy rain, or perhaps a silencer; the man didn't know, didn't care as he crumpled down onto the wet pavement; Lying on his back gasping, his hand weakly clutching his shoulder as his blood pumped from the gunshot wound in a macabre rhythm to the beating of his heart. A soldier would have been up and running within moment, it was a painful wound, but not fatal. However he was no soldier, simply a middle aged lawyer who had never faced anything more dangerous than his hyperactive son on Christmas morning. He stood no chance. Consciousness fading fast, his fingers fumbled with his state of the art cell phone, costing him a month's wage, now frustratingly useless as his hands seemed unable to respond to the commands his panicked brain was sending him. Panicking; that was his second mistake, it would also be his last. The shadow loomed over him, the black trench coat filling his vision as the faceless man looked at him, blurred by his fading sight. Finally his fingers obeyed his commands and pressed the three digits.
911...
It connected instantly, the comforting voice of the woman slightly tinny voice echoing out of the speaker was suddenly cut off as the phone was crushed with cold precision beneath the heel of the killer's boot.
John Smith, whose life had been as boring as his name dictated, had been dead the minute his face was caught on camera.
He would not be missed.
Unfortunately for John Smith, death was not swift in coming. It is surprising what the human body can withstand in its natural struggle to survive. He awoke to find himself tied to a chair in a dark room; a cliché in itself, however all clichés have to come from somewhere, real situations that occur. Unfortunately for John Smith, this was one such occasion.
He groaned, "Where am I?"
Another cliché, but a valid question, although all things considered, the real question he should probably be asking would be 'why am I here?' or 'what are you planning?' however being the middle aged and slightly balding business man he was, he asked the most general overused question in the book, and then became afraid when he received an answer.
"You are exactly where I want you to be."
The answer was unhelpful to say the least.
John Smith squinted in the gloom, but could see nothing.
"Who are you?"
"Someone who wants you dead."
John Smith felt the obscene urge to laugh, it felt like something out of a James Bond movie, but this was no joke. "Please..." He whispered, fear trickling down his back like too much sweat. "I'll do anything!"
The answer came back cold and fast, "I don't want anything except you. Dead."
"Why!" the horror of the situation slowly sinking in, there was nothing he could do.
"Equilibrium."
"What?" the man whispered, aghast.
"This world needs balance. I provide it."
"By killing innocent people!?"
"The angels think they can win this war, hunters think they can save people" the man spat the words out in disgust, "But for every man they save, we take one. I am afraid you've been caught in the crossfire to a war that you don't belong in. And Hell is going to win."
The man was left speechless; the so called normal city in which he had been living was run behind the scenes by a madman, and one which he was doomed to die at the hands of.
"Please..." it was a weak, desperate plea that held no true hope in it, John Smith already knew he was dead.
The man answered his plea with a single gunshot, delivered by a Glock 9mm at point black range; it left little of John Smith's features recognisable. In the ringing silence that followed, the man studied the carnage before him.
"It was nothing personal," he told the faceless body, his eyes glittering black.
And the town slept on, unaware of the heinous crime that had been committed in its sewers, the latest in a series of brutal murders that would never be solved.
When John Smith's body was recovered three weeks later in the local river, it was too mutilated to identify, therefore the matter was dealt with quickly and quietly, soon forgotten.
After all, it was just a matter of equilibrium.