I laughed and squeezed harder. I could feel him breaking, his thrashing increasing but his clawing hands weakening. They slid down my arm slick with blood over and over in a futile effort to push me away. They were weak, and I was so wonderfully strong.

The frantic clicking behind me stopped and I turned my head to watch him, the fool.

The fool had been the first to panic, the first to draw a weapon, the first to shoot, and he was the only one who had not hit me once, having emptied his entire magazine into the side of the metal dumpster I had hid behind with the first one, the original offender, the one who had slammed and groped the girl against the wall.

I hadn't been going to kill the first one, just rough him up a bit while I waited for the police, but then the fool had started shooting, and I had killed for the first time, had snapped the already subdued boy's neck because I couldn't keep him controlled while dealing with the others.

The girl had been terrified and had not even looked towards the ones behind me, the ones who had attacked her. No, she had stared into my eyes. She had watched me kill, me. She feared me.

I was proud I had not hesitated to launch myself around the corner of the dumpster as soon as the bullets had stopped with all the decisiveness, ruthlessness and aggression I had carefully cultivated within myself for decades.

The fool fumbled to release the magazine. I had saved him for last because he had stood there the entire time trying to shoot me with a gun that had no bullets. It seemed he had finally realized his magazine was empty. How long had it taken him, I wondered? How long had I been fighting?

The fool was begging between his sobs as the magazine dropped and he clumsily caught it only to knock it out of his hand with his own hip a moment later when he reached for his hoodie's pocket. I sneered, and the disdain and disgust I felt for him reached a new height. It infuriated me that he could do the correct thing, dropping the empty magazine, while trying his best to do the opposite.

He pulled a fresh magazine from his hoodie, but he dropped that too, and I laughed. I had never been so angry. This fool, this disgusting wretched fool caused the death of his five friends and probably my death too. I had been hit too many times and could feel the coldness slipping in. The fool was screaming, begging for me to stop, but I couldn't, I wouldn't, because I was going to die, and he needed to die before I did or there would be nothing stopping him from hurting her.

The one I had been choking finally went slack and I let him crumble to the ground. The fool didn't try to put distance between us while he inserted the magazine. I approached him before he finished and kicked him in the chest, hard, and sent him slamming into the wall. I stomped on his wrist and he let go of the pistol just like that, and I hated him even more for his weakness. I hated that I would die here, to this, to him and them.

I re-seated the magazine, pulled back the slide, then pulled the trigger experimentally and shot him through the stomach. He screamed. I spoke, "I hope you're enjoying the consequences of your actions." I froze for a moment, terrified by my own voice. It was so cold, so malicious and hateful. I pulled the trigger again and again while he screamed, while I stared into his eyes and waited for the light to fade.

It did. I dropped the pistol and walked back to the girl.

She was crying and terrified. I wanted to say something to her, to help her before I left, but it was becoming hard to think. I understood how experiencing violence for the first time could change a person, especially a person raised in our society surrounded by comforting lies and half-truths. She would never view the people around her the same way. Perhaps she would never view herself the same way.

Even I, after all the effort I had made to know myself, had been frightened by my own voice. Even I, who strove to understand the deepest and darkest parts of myself, had been caught off guard by my own hate. How many hours had I spent meditating, querying myself with all my sincerity and dragging up the darkest bits, forcing my mind everywhere it didn't want to go, only to be caught off guard in the end by violence, the thing I studied most?

For the first time today, I felt helpless. I could only try, could only hope, "Live well and be happy." My voice was weak, and blood bubbled past my lips. I couldn't say more and didn't know what to say even if I could. Would she hate me, would she dream of me laughing while I killed the people around her? Would she hate herself, and my dying moments and kind words and her guilt be her nightmare?

I couldn't know, and I couldn't regret it, dying here. She might not be worth dying for, but my pride certainly was, and it wouldn't have survived had I allowed her to be hurt in front of me by those weak, pathetic, cowardly, subhuman, vile fools.

I sat down and curled in on myself. The light faded and my vision blurred. It was coming. The darkness was coming.

…

I woke up to the sound of sirens. I could feel that I was in a vehicle, an ambulance I thought, and I was strapped down to what I imagined was a gurney.

"He's back!" a voice cried, and a young paramedic leaned over me. He looked both anxious and relieved. "Don't struggle kid," he said, "You took a nasty hit to the head."

I barked a weak laugh; the kid had called me a kid. I wondered if the girl had hit me over the head after I passed out, because I was sure I had avoided any blows to the head during the fight. It must have been quite a hit for the paramedic to mention it but not the bullet wounds. The darkness was coming again, but it wasn't so cold this time. I let myself fall into it.