His dream was so real he could feel it. Smelled a family grilling burgers nearby, glared as the sun beat down in his eyes. Pushing his son on a swing set in Central Park, he felt happier than he ever was during his life. Casey would give anything to make this feeling last forever.
The alarm clock was a piercing screech that brought him back into reality and broke his heart. Covered in blood from the night before, he rolled out of bed and stumbled into the bathroom. His head was slick bald where his flowing hair used to be. Cancer takes your life away before it kills you.
He was scared at first, of death. Scared of what happened after you pass. Do you go to Heaven, Hell, or nothing? Just blackness. A piercing darkness that blinked out your existence in a heartbeat. Thats what scared him the most, the darkness. His life had been hard and bloody, but Casey wasn't sure he wanted it to end.
With time though, he began to except the fact. He was going to die. It become another battle, another stage in life, instead of an ending. Maybe this was the perfect opportunity to do one last bit of good in this world. One last ray of light in this black curtain that veils this city.
He showered to wash off the life blood that had crusted under his fingernails and stained his skin. Sometimes he wondered how many souls he himself had sent into the darkness that haunts him so.
While drying off, he noticed that it was getting even harder to swallow. Fuck it. Not much time left. Doctor gave him six months to live. That was seven months ago. Casey had become ruthless since that day. Killing blindly those that took another's life. Those that raped and robbed, shot and stabbed. Evil will be vanquished by his own form of evil.
Casey opened the pill bottle on the table and threw a couple in his mouth. He chewed them up and washed them down the best he could. They numbed him from the horrible pain, from the cancer, and the loss of his son.
He passed the next few hours looking at photo albums and reading books of death and beyond. As the sun was going down, his pulse rate began to speed, his pupils dilated, his mind focused, he began the nightly ritual he knew so well. Digging in the clothes hamper, he pulled out a white tshirt and slipped it on over his kevlar vest. The gray combat pants he wore had several pockets that held various first aid supplies, street maps, and some basic survival gear. He hid a small straight knife in his steel toe boot. A knee brace supported his left knee, and he had tape around his wrists and a few fingers that tend to get jammed. Scars covered his body, countless wounds that often were sown up himself or by the free clinic a block over. They didn't ask questions, Casey liked that.
Every night he dumped the contents of the worn golf bag out on his floor. Inspecting every inch of the tools of his trade. Couple of old irons that came with the bag, a pair of Louisville Sluggers that have as many scars in them as he does, a few hunting knives, and his trusty hockey stick. It's seen a lot of action, on and off the ice.
Casey Jones looks one last time in the mirror at the weathered, dead face that glares at him. He takes the custom made skull goalie mask off the nail in the wall and tightens it over his head. With his bag draped across his back, and his war mask covering his face, the cursed man flicks the lights off in his apartment and climbs the fire escape to the roof like he has done so many times before. Hell couldn't fathom a demon like the one inside him.