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Nobody

He was a brief shadow, a mere outline of darkness on the wall with the peeled off paint, a passing smudge in an alley into which no one would even want to send one eye. So short the movement, and so smooth, that your eyes would not even notice as he slinked through the coldness of the night.

He was nobody. Nobody, because no one had the chance to know him, or maybe even see him. Nobody, because anyone who did get to lay their eyes upon him ended up dead, with no one left to tell the tale.

Then you ask, how does it transpire that I know of this nobody? Well as it happens, I saw him. I saw everything, and I still live, for now. I know that my hours are numbered, and I wait with calm and collected soul for the fate that awaits me, but in the meantime…while I wait for his silent steps and cold blade to reach me, I can fill my time by writing this story.

Why do I do this you may ask? And I answer, what better way to repent for my unholy sins, than to let the world know of the one who isn't a mere shadow on someone's decrepit wall, who isn't a nobody that no one speaks of…as he gets the world rid of the scum that imprisons us and suffocates us all…

And I am one of them…

So here it goes. But before I draw the line on these crumpled pieces of paper with my half chewed off pencil from my pocket, there is one more thing I wanted to explain to you. You may ask, how is it that I could know this man enough to write such a story? All I have to offer as an answer is that what I have not seen with my own petrified eyes, I have filled in using my inborn intuition. You see, I have always been a good judge of a character. Just as I have always known, my own father was the most feared drug lord in town, the worst scum of them all.

That is also the main reason why I was in such a place, even though I never belonged there. I was smart enough to know what was going on in there, yet I was stupid enough to think that I would not be held responsible for being there. Stupid, stupid me. Did I really think that by walking about like a passive observer I would be stripped of all responsibility? What do they call it, a silent accomplice? So what if my father would kill me if I didn't do as he said, I should have been stronger, I should have said no. I should have had a life…

Instead, I was weak. Weak, until I saw this dark angel and his frozen beauty. His cold grace and heart-stopping enigma will forever be engraved in my mind. And for that, I thank him, as I have grown stronger. Stronger, and at peace with myself, as I await his judgement, as I wait to die by his hand. It is the least I can do, to write this story, to remember him. But I will keep this story short. For it won't be long, any time now, when he finally comes…

He let out a deep, tired breath. It was so slow and long, it must have served to banish out the past that hung behind him like a black, thickly woven cape. Such cape was hard to take off. For it was a constant reminder, a constant curse. Indestructible. If only he could reach behind him and rip it off, yet all he could do was to accept its weight and hope it would fade with time.

He turned the corner, not one ordinary soul nearby in the silent, autumn, charcoal night. No one's fear would let them venture into these parts. Yet he was so very close. So close to reaching his inner peace, his only Shangri-La. I could see it. It was in his eyes, a deep, bottomless light dominating the frost that seemed forever settled in them. I saw it from the slightly misty window, a feeble disguise that covered my face, a window of what used to be my bedroom just hours ago.

I know now what it was, the hopeful shard of light, as he crept around the corner, oblivious of the half-interested face watching him from above. There must have been nothing on his mind, nothing but the smell of a crackling fire and the musty smell of old books that would fill his senses with peace after a lifelong war.

Or a lifetime spent in hell. After all, he did look like hell itself.

It was not much his clothes, as they were so immaculate, like a prince from a long lost past. It was the way he wore his face. Like his young, flawless features had gained an invisible crease for every bitter disappointment and every betrayal he had to go through in his untold past. A past, I think, I cannot even fathom, even though I have had my fair share of wars.

I kept watching with learned numbness, thinking over what the presence of the figure in the darkness below could possibly mean. Whether I should tell my father. After all, the assortment of characters I have seen during my short lifespan made this one just one more. Nothing unusual, nothing out of the ordinary.

But then it hit my eye, just a prick of light, the smallest reflection. He had something fastened to his belt, and that something wasn't anything I have seen any of my father's so called associates wear. Nor his usual visitors. And I knew, I had to say something.

Peeling myself off the window, I took a stroll out of the room enfolded in murky black. I liked it dark, it made it easier not to see. Easier to feel that I was alone, and in a different place. Another reason to perhaps not tell my father, he didn't like me nosing into things. The scars on my skin carved by his leather belt reminded me every time. What did I know, he could have got himself a brand new business deal. After all, how could he have afforded this new house? Yet how could I just close my eyes every time? Every time something happened and I didn't even ask why? Sometimes I wasn't sure whether my motives were to protect him or pray for his death. How could any daughter want the latter? What kind of a person did that make me?

I asked that question every time, when I was about to tell him of something I saw, or heard. What was I hoping for? My head slipped through the door and into the light. I couldn't see him, but his thundering voice just happened to spill through the opulent lounge below. He always liked to be heard.

"Where is he! I don't tolerate incompetence! You will get him here now, or tell him the deal is off. And when I mean off, I mean off," I didn't have to see it to know my father made a gesture that I knew didn't mean to cut off one's head. It was usually what he did to ruin someone so that they could not make business with him again. At least that was what I liked to imagine. As he was in one of his never ending foul moods, I decided to pull back yet again.

I didn't know it then, why he came. I assumed my father made yet another deal, as I secretly called them, even though I knew what they really were. I paid no attention, as in this house is all that they were, business deals. Nothing more went on, not inside these thick, old walls. Or in any other house. It was my father's rule.

That is why it was so heavily guarded too, if one could call it guarded; one room after another overflowing with one gob uglier than the other, all so heavily clanking with whatever arsenal they could carry. I wasn't even sure if they were capable of using all those contraptions they called weapons. But I didn't care to find out. They looked menacing enough and that was good enough for me.

That is why I retracted back to my bedroom, only this time to the last window, my cheek pressing slowly against the cold glass, to follow the narrow figure with my half-interested eyes. Just another business transaction, just as father said…

He was now at the rear entrance, the part of the house I liked the most. That is why I relentlessly begged for this room to be my bedroom, as the others preferred to pitch their tent in the front of the house, and the rear was mostly left in darkness. Plus it had a view of the garden, the place where only a handful of goons slinked around with their automatics. But it was where I could see them the least.

In fact I would not have seen the figure passing through the deep, crooked-tree-made shadows, was it not for the somewhat light hair. They were not blonde, at least not from what I could tell at that time, as the trickle of moonlight reaching through the beastly branches played a silvery trick on them.

Seeing the guard with his big gun at the back door come out, I propped my chin on the palm of my hand, waiting for the routine question that greeted all the visitors to the house. I even whispered it in my head…the password. And then I would reply…Bugs Bunny.

Only this time, it was the man with what I established as the silver hair who did the talking. At first, he appeared stunned when he saw the guard, as if taken by surprise, as I took in a full view of his moonlit face. He looked like an angel and a devil in one. The tranquil light he had in his eyes, it evaporated, like a fragile fairy stroked by a beam of the hottest sun. It vanished to be replaced by a smoldering, thick dark smoke.

It startled me enough to blink my eyes, after which it left me with a view I didn't dream of expecting. The guard's head slid cleanly from his neck and rolled to the ground. I didn't even see how it happened, was that what they called in a blink of an eye? The body lingered just for a while, just like my hanging open mouth, then it toppled forth, into the outstretched arm of the silver-haired man.

I could swear I let out a silent scream, I didn't hear anything myself, but he must have. As those eyes rose, they rose to look straight at me. They were so calm, the smoke now well gone, the initial surprise changed into a cold world I would never want to know. He looked at me so assuredly, as if he knew I was there all along. Then, just before I could breathe again, or take in the deadly beauty of his eyes, he averted his benumbing gaze, his attention stolen by something in the garden.

Of course, I have completely forgotten the six men prowling the grounds like armored hedgehogs, and I secretly prayed that he would get away from them. Just run, I whispered when I got back my senses, my closing frightened lips leaving a smudge on the chilly glass. I was afraid, I was so afraid but I could not tear my eyes of the scene unfolding below, as I have never seen anyone do that before. No one dared.

He pulled up the dead body to cover his own as the first shower of bullets pierced the air. How did he know, I am to never find out. As the shots were silenced, like death messengers on air. My father had the sense to request the use of silencers in and outside the house, to draw close to no attention to the newly acquired mansion where he hoped nobody would bother him.

They moved swiftly after the first shots, their shadows moving through the trees shedding their leaves below my window. They reopened fire, and I could see the man's lithe body jerk backwards in response. Oh yes, they used armor piercing rounds, the best kind and the worse. Those little bastards passed through the dead body and I could see them sinking into his torso, blood stains spilling on the pristine clothes, blooming into dark purple.

I told you to run…

My breath hitched but I didn't know what I was feeling. I wanted to be sad, as I didn't want them to win again. They always won, they never let me leave, get out of this opulent prison I hated. Not without my daddy at least. But how could I be such a disloyal daughter to think such thoughts? Yet I would be too numb to care either way, was it not for those eyes; they planted something new in me, something I didn't quite yet ascertain at that time. All I knew was that I didn't want him to die. I wanted them to die.

And for once, someone out there listened.

For he threw away the heavily bleeding man-shield, and instead pulled out something that I caught only a glimpse of the first time round. But before I could protest that the gun was mightier than the sword, well at least from a long distance as that much I knew, he did something I will never forget.

He used that thin sword of his as a personal shield, a fan, it was spinning round with such lightning speed that it swallowed all the bullets like dead flies swept from an old cobweb. Only much more classy than that. When he lowered the sword, a katana as I recognized it from a film I saw, he laid all the shots on the slate paved path, like little soldiers ready to strike back.

If I didn't know better, I would say I was lying, but I am not. As he lifted those eyes again to me, as if wanting to make sure I was watching him. I knew then that it was all for real.

The heavily armed men stopped dead in their confident tracks. The dead leaves ceased moving even though there was still a breeze. I know there was, because it swept through his light hair, letting a curled white strand fall gently into his marble face. Strange how he didn't look like a cold-blooded killer right then, he never did to me.

Then, the blade turned around his arm, I couldn't even follow its path, but it swept those bullets perfectly. What happened to the shells was obvious a few of my shallow breaths later, as the six men froze stupefied, clutching their chests. A wet dark stains erupted on their cotton gray clothes. Then their knees gave way. They fell like statues without pedestals, one by one, like live dominos.

And I silently cheered. I cheered, even though I somehow knew that it would be the end of me too.

At least that is what his eyes, still flattening me to the window, have silently promised. I wanted to ask why, but they turned away as if knowing I would not like the answer, or maybe they were just tormenting me for something I have done – or more for what I haven't done. I will leave you for last, they said. At least, that is what I thought because what else could eyes like that promise? Cold, so cold and deadly. He killed seven men without blinking or speaking a word. I didn't know why, but I didn't care. All I knew was that I needed to see this end. So I run from my bedroom, from my dark observatory, and stuck my head out into the great, brightly lit hall.

I saw my father this time, sifting through some paperwork, an angry face distorting his features. A bunch of gunslingers hung like watchdogs on his every move. I ignored them, I didn't warn them, and instead run quietly along the long gallery into the next room, where I could see the door that led to the rear entrance. It was the kitchen, the door to my father's lair was still closed.

Eight heavily bored servitors lounged around the massive room filled with the scent of meat. Some played with knives, throwing them or digging them into the expensive hardwood, some sticking their dirty noses in the walk-in fridge, some snored with their guns next to their drooping heads; yeah like they could wake up and draw before they got their heads chopped off... I knew I shouldn't think like that, but they did never have any qualms about tying me to a seat or worse, when my father tried to educate me about being a good girl.

So now, I got the best seat in the theatre, crouching just in the corner, behind the curtain of the galleried landing. And I watched the door slowly open. Let's see how they like to be educated.

No one noticed anything, at least not at first. He somehow disguised the creak that usually accompanied the opening of the door, and I was slightly disappointed to miss the stupid looks on their faces as they would all turn their heads to him. Instead, he got the first two way too silently, even guiding their fallen heads to the floor with his gloved hand to muffle the fall. It didn't occur to me until later that he was doing it to make the least mess, nor did I notice amidst the gruesome show that the holes on his chest that should still be there were gone.

As I was busy watching. And then came the fridge. He simply walked past, and kicked the door closed, turning up the cold. Maybe he was leaving that one for later, as a frozen bullock.

Walking on, he slinked behind the solid oak kitchen table, his long coat giving the slightest swish as he rounded the corner. He stood behind the goon that was carving something into the wood for a good few seconds, before the buffoon even noticed.

Looks like the stranger didn't like what the bruiser was doing as he grasped the hilt of the knife, together with the goon's cracking hand. It must have been crushing. I mean, the machete guy had muscles bulging out of everywhere, and this new guy didn't look like much under that long trench of his, yet slowly, without making a sweat, he forced the baboon's shaking hand underneath his chin.

Then the stranger's eyes must have carved something back into the sweating man's mind. He didn't make a peep, his eyes bulging out, face red from the effort, whatever he was trying to do. Then, the knife went straight through his ugly, swollen face. All the way from the base of the chin up through his skull. He didn't peep then either. He was dead.

By then, the three using knives as darts to hit a target drawn up with meat sauce on the pristine white wall turned around. Instantly going to red alert, as they saw most of their buddies butchered, they tossed the knives they held at the intruder in blue. At that point, my heart skipped a beat. I was waiting for him to get a full hit in his satin face. They were so fast. But he was faster, as if he slowed time itself. To me, it seemed like the blades flew right through his face. But then I realized, he simply tilted his white head as now two tendrils of hair dropped into his forehead, and some to the sides, a few feathery clutches falling weightlessly to the floor. The blades hit the wall behind harmlessly, clanking to the floor.

Before their brains could catch up and tell them to reach for some more ammunition, I saw a flash of pale blue light. Like the northern lights. Beautiful, but frightening, like some alien phenomenon. The vapors formed into much bigger knives, three of them, daggers I'd say. Shimmering with frosty retaliation, just like his eyes, eyes that were saying with mocking confidence, you call that knives? No, these are knives! They hurled to pierce their heads dead centre.

It made me satisfied. I will not make any excuses. It just did. This whole place made me bad, and I knew I was bad. I knew, as I was waiting for the last gun for hire to be killed. The one that was sleeping, still. I shifted slightly to get a better view. Damn me.

He got it just as I predicted. The guy wouldn't wake up in time for his own funeral. The lithe katana flashed by the droopy head, leaving it slide down into the guy's own lap. Clean and precise. I wish I could chop cabbages like that, but me and knives didn't mix well. I never knew which one was best for what, so I left it to them. It appears, that they didn't know either.

I expected that far reaching, aurora borealis look from him again. But he didn't look up this time, he went straight for the door to the main lounge. Maybe he knew that I was watching everything now, that I had the best seat in the house. But secretly, I wished that he would, as every time he looked at me I knew I was closer to freedom. The shackles were dropping off, one at a time. Every time he made a kill.

Or maybe he was still tormenting me, knowing that the last shackle to remove…would be the one on my neck.

Still, like a fragile moth drawn to a burning light, I picked myself up from the floor and crept back to dunk down above the lounge. I loved this layout really, it was so easy to see what was going on down below, and to spy.

He opened the door like he was invited to dinner. The best party in town. I thought he almost smiled but it was just in my imagination. Yet again, no one noticed at first. He stopped, raking his beige gloved hand through his fair, shiny hair. He seemed to like them up. It suited him really, but I still liked that one strand hanging down, it made him less menacing. Or was it more? I couldn't quite decide.

He could have just started killing but for some reason he waited. Waited for them to make the first move. Or maybe he got bored because it was too easy. Or he was checking out their artillery. Funny, how every single one of them thought they were above the law, and above everything and everyone else. Even death.

Especially my father's personal dogs, the ten in this very lounge. Always with their big guns; they went to sleep with them, went to piss with them, or even to take a dump. Disgusting really. How could anyone so paranoid be above death? I could never guess.

Damn, I almost missed it. The face my father wore when he finally spotted the man. Utter perplexity and brewing anger. I knew he was already planning a suitable punishment for whoever let that man in. Usually a hole in the head. And if it wasn't anybody's fault in particular, he would just pick someone. There were always enough goons for hire.

They all stared. Waiting for something to happen. I almost sneezed. Damn this cold, where did it suddenly come from? Then I looked back down and I knew. It came from my father, since he spoke.

"What are you doing here!" It was a growl, with an unpleasant arrogant undertone. It usually meant the questionee was soon to be dead. I crouched even lower.

"I could ask you the same question." I couldn't believe it. The man spoke for the first time. And his voice, it was even more terrifying than my father's. It had that silky rich and deep smoothness that could either melt anything or create panic. On me, it had the first effect.

He came for something, but I didn't know what it was. He was waiting to get it. And the goons went into cold panic. This wasn't good.

"Who are you," my father asked, growing a little wearier. He signaled his guard dogs to aim their guns.

"I am the landlord."

I really was melting in that death-promising voice, not even realizing what he had said at first.

It was then that the chaos started. It was then that I heard the shots flying, each being batted back, right back into the centre of their scowling foreheads. His blade would move with such an inhuman swiftness that all I could see were flashes of blue lights, and I heard whizzing of bullets as they ricocheted of places on the walls where there were no antiques or tapestries.

And only then it sank in, that while he had been waiting, he hadn't been bored or checking out their guns, he had been planning their executions in such a way that his own possessions would not get damaged in the process. Nothing like a man who takes a good care of his long collected things. A sentimental soul. I always wondered who they belonged to, as they were already there when we moved in. But my father always said that it was deserted, that the owners were long dead. I thought he knew well.

I always expected a ghost, and maybe it was a ghost who came. But he didn't look dead. More like an angel of death. As he left my father for last, like an angel would. My dark angel.

That is when my pulse started to speed up a little. The worst monster in town he might have been, but he was still my father. The only family left. How could any daughter wish her own father dead?

But then he lifted those eyes to me again. His glove soaking with the blood of the guard dogs, he had the neck of their owner in his steel grip. I knew now that it was like steel, I saw what happened to the buffoon with the knife.

My breath hitched and I couldn't move. Do it already. Do you want my approval? I wanted to shout. Why do you torment me asshole! Because I am a bad girl?

But all he did was keep peering into my eyes. And I saw those enigmatic northern lights again, eternal, engraving forever in my mind. Was it to prolong my agony, or was he searching for something? What did he want? Please tell me, what do you want?

Then, suddenly, he looked away. His hand squeezed harder, and my father's heart stopped beating. Just like that. The most feared boss in town, now dead by one squeeze of a hand. I bet he never thought he would go that way.

The papers lay strewn on the floor, some still floating in the room, probably a shipment of more drugs. Guns lay on the floor, next to their dead owners. All the antiques and tapestries were left in their places, intact and in peace. The world seemed better, and my pulse began to slow down again.

I sat tighter against the wall. I knew what was to come. I was next. The stranger, the landlord, the real owner of this house, he dropped my father's body like it was another useless thing he didn't need. I watched him with steady beat, as he walked out of the lounge, using the door on the other side. The door that lead upstairs, to me.

That is when I pulled out the paper and pen from my pocket. Yes, I did a lot of snooping, and I wrote things down. It was my long lost dream, to be a reporter. Now, I had something worthwhile to write at last. But I had to be quick, as he would be coming soon…

Or so I thought.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I never came back, just as he never came for me. And I never saw him again. I reckoned he didn't want to be seen or disturbed. Why else would he clean the house of all the trash?

Only after two years, as I write this for myself, I finally understand why he let me go.

Each time he looked at me, it was not death he promised, he wanted me to stay away. He wanted me to stay away, because the thing he was looking for was peace. Peace and quiet, and to be left alone. Just like a veteran soldier returning from war, returning to his own beloved home, only to find it defaced by those that he had no desire of fighting in the first place.

But he could still live in peace knowing all he did was to take out the trash that no one else would bother to throw away. And at the same time, this is exactly why he didn't kill me. How could he do what he wanted to do, if he had killed a woman, an unarmed woman. With that last searching glare of his, he must have realized that I was not beyond repair. Only because of him, I myself realized I could still do better. Maybe I had something in my eyes that he saw, just like I saw that light in his.

I don't really know. But now, as I look up to the sky, and see some lights in the deep charcoal night, all I can do is to thank him that he was right. I went on with my life, quite an ordinary life; with all the joy, boredom, sadness, and wonderfulness I could possibly imagine. He put my past into the bin, and I took it out with the morning trash.

But there is one thing I kept. This story. Though I will never let anyone read it, not ever, as long as I am alive. After all, I know that he wouldn't want to be known to the world, that all he wanted was to be left alone in his own home.

So I only read it when I feel down, to remind myself how my life could have turned out. But then I think of him every single day with a shuddering breath. And I know, watching the news, that he was indeed left to his peace…

…I left him to be nobody…

The end