"Have you ever looked into a man's soul? I mean really look? No? I have. I can see everything, bills, mortgage, wife, kids, house, car, job, mistresses, regret, love, deception, all of it, and it's different every time. But you know what one thing I've seen in every man's soul, the one thing that, above all others, recurs each and every time? It's fear. Real fear. Not the fear you get if you show up late for work or get pulled over for speeding in a school zone. We're talking about real fear, fear that a man only sees once in his life, just before he dies. I see it in you, you're afraid. I can't really blame you either. I am an assassin and this is a real gun. It is loaded and yes, you're time is now quite definite." The man said, his shadow looming over the victim in front of him, a thin, disheveled man in his early forties. The man was on his knees, his hair in a mess, his white, business suit wet with sweat, the top button undone, his tie yanked downward to give his neck room to breathe. He was shivering both from the fear around him and from the winter air that bit his exposed and unexposed skin all too equally.

"Please. Don't. I have…" The disheveled victim blurted out, hoping to bargain or beg his way out of the black muzzle that stood only inches away from his face. A man without the means to fight back and without the realization that this was it, he was already dead, he had already given up, and now he was just afraid to face his own decision.

"Fear. It's eating you up inside. Look at you, you're shaking. You couldn't stand if I asked you and you see," the assassin bent a little closer and looked him straight in his eyes through a pair of dark sunglasses, which were utterly useless as it was half past nine in the evening and the sun had set hours earlier. It was winter and the sun had hid its brightness and miniscule amount of warmth long before six. "Fear," the assassin continued, his voice a barely audible whisper that the victim could hear louder than one could hear a subway train. "That makes you human." He finished as he stayed in that pose for a moment before righting himself and taking a step back, keeping the muzzle pointed right at the cowering victim who was shaking even more now.

"Please," the victim began begging. He felt a sneeze come on but he was too afraid to do much except shiver and shake. The temperature atop the skyscraper roof was cold, below freezing and it was windy, much windier than it was on the ground. Dark, ominous clouds lingered above, prepared to make good on the forecasters predictions of snow for the evening and early morning hours.

"Stop begging. It annoys me," the assassin scoffed, the man obliging as if it were rude to annoy the man who would be terminating his life. "There's no use to it either." The assassin said after a short pause, during which he adjusted his glasses, keeping his eyes hidden. "You're going to die. I am going to kill you. I'll tell you what though. I'll give you a chance to pray to whatever God or gods you believe in, whichever you so desire, I could care less at this moment. You see I'm agnostic and my duty is just to dispatch you from this existence. I see no sense in damning you in the afterlife, should there be one. Even if you are damned here."

The man looked at him for a moment and reached back in his memories to his childhood. "Our Father," he began and the man adjusted his facial expression, bowing his head, realization of the situation still not upon him fully.

"A Catholic huh? Good. Let God know. I'll wait." The man prayed aloud, tears coming down his fear‐contorted face. The winds kicked up again, blowing over the pebble lined roof as the moon cast a silver glow on them from a break in the clouds. It was nearly full, its luminescence a comforting sight on any winter night. The assassin began to pace around his victim now, who remained on his knees. He couldn’t do much else though, his hands were restrained with a plastic tie‐wrap, the kind used to secure heavy‐duty wires or anything else. It was tight and uncomfortable but he couldn't escape from it and thus it served its purpose. It was pure execution style, cold and cruel. Aside from this predicament, which was in and of itself an understatement, the man might have enjoyed the wintry night, working late in his office while his wife and two kids, a pair of daughters, were waiting at home, either eating dinner or waiting for his return. It was the latter this night as, eight floors below them, the man's cell phone rang on his desk, the caller ID showing his home phone.

It wasn't uncommon for him to work past eight, even when everyone else in the office left at six. He was something of a big‐shot, not necessarily a big‐shot in the truest of senses but his duties were not discharged to simpletons and peons. They required someone with an education and a level of intelligence not often found in the youth of any company. The phone range eight times and then went to voicemail, "Hello you've reached," the voicemail message began. "Please leave your name, number, and a brief message and I will return your phone call at the earliest possible convenience. Have a nice day." Then came the beep and his wife began, "Hun, give me a call. I hope you're on your way home. Samantha needs some help on her math homework and it's getting late. I fed the kids and there is leftover meatloaf and fries. I have to run out to my meeting with Nancy so I'll see you tonight when I get back. Love you." She hung up the phone and composed herself, taking off a worried look on her face. It was woman's intuition. She felt that something wasn't right and she looked for her keys on the kitchen counter, not realizing that they were in her purse already. It would make her five minutes late for her meeting.

"Done?" The assassin asked when his victim concluded his prayer. Despite being agnostic, the assassin knew that prayer all too well. His victim gave no answer as his breaths floated upwards like the smoke from a cigarette. The assassin's did the same as he reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a long, black, metal cylinder. "You know what this right?" His victim didn't answer. "No? I'll take your silence to be a 'no.' It's a suppressor. Not a silencer like you see in the movies. It's not going to make this silence. That's just Hollywood nonsense. Sure you can have silent weapons but this isn't one of them. It quiets the sound a little, lowering the recoil a little too so I can fire much more accurately, especially at a faster pace. You know a double tap? Well really a controlled pair but let's face it, you've seen Hollywood more than you know about these things. No? Don't watch very many movies do you? Well it's when I fire two rounds, very fast, in quick succession, increasing the chance of killing my victim, you in this case. Sometimes you'll hear my favorite line, 'two in the chest, one in the head,' well that's a good way to make sure someone's definitely dead but, in reality, two in the chest will do. Especially if they are well aimed and trust me, they will be. But you know what my favorite part about this thing is?" He asked as he finished screwing it onto the threaded end of his black pistol. "It gets rid of the muzzle flash. You know that big, bright flame? Yeah it gets rid of it. Nobody will see it and thus nobody will see me kill you because even though we aren't in the line of sight to anyone, that flash, well it's bright and unmistakable. Sorry but this is probably the end for you. Things just aren't looking good for you anymore."

"Please." The victim begged again.

"What did I tell you about begging? Accept your fate, like a man. Stop being a child. Most of them do that, fail to act like men at the precise moment of death. Instead they cower into children. Your fate, this fate, is decided by you. Your choices got you here, to this point in life."

"I have kids."

"Yes. I know. Two daughters. Very lovely. I hope you're proud of them and I hope the last time you saw them you told them how much they meant to you, so they know. They shouldn't have to suffer because of your blunders. There's a final message I have for you, it's from Sid."

"Sid?" The man asked, confused and unaware what message was bestowed for him.

"Don't play dumb. It's too late for that now and trust me, it won't work. Sid wants you to know that you should have kept your mouth shut in the first place rather than keep running it. You were warned and you didn't heed that warning. This is your punishment now and I am now your execution, they being the judge and jury. I can't help you out of this as I'm just the messenger."

"Don't you have any compassion?" The victim had finally "grown a set" but it was too late. He talked to the assassin with disdain in his voice and that was his right, after all. "No. I don't. I see it in you tough but I see fear more than anything else. Fear of the inevitable and I thrive on fear. That's my weakness, my drug. I can't get enough of it. The fear I see in you, that's the drive, that's my heroin. The fear I've seen in them all, that's what makes me enjoy my work. Look into my eyes, c'mon, here," he lowered his glasses and revealed his eyes. "What do you see?"

"Evil. I see an evil man."

"Bold. And you're right. I am an evil man. A very evil man. You know how I can see into a man's soul, how I can see all of those things? It's because I've looked into my own, through my own eyes, just like I did to you and all those other ones and you know what I've found?"

"Evil."

"Not necessarily. I've seen a hollow, empty shell of a man. It's all eroded, my humanity that is. Eroded away. Far away. There's no hope or light, no profound love for anything except the death that I deal. Except the misery of others. Your misery. You know I found more too? I'll tell you what else. Darkness. Absolute, total darkness. And I don't mean that gothic shit your daughter's boyfriend talks about, that's for children, that's nonsense. I see absolute and total darkness, an oblivion of it. I don't see any good at all. None at all. I don't even see fear. So what does that make me? Huh? No good, hope, fear, emotions. None of that stuff. I don't even see a glimmer of humanity left. So what does that make me?"

"A monster."

"Yes. A fucking monster."

"You're sick." The victim said, the tears stopping as he finally grew the courage to insult the assassin in front of him, who seemingly held his life. Realization had finally come to the victim and it was now that he realized, while he couldn't escape the circumstances, for which he did not understand, he could profess some sort of independence or control or whatever it was that he wanted to project at that moment.

"Perhaps. Well you've passed your time. Good bye."

"Stop!" The victim pleaded one last time but it was no use now. The assassin had circled around and was behind the victim. He raised his pistol, suppressor attached, and leveled the sights on the back of the victim's neck, at the base of his skull. The man's plea fell on deaf ears and the assassin took another step back to avoid the inevitable spray of blood that would erupt from the wound and force of the gunshot. With sights in line, the assassin smoothly squeezed the trigger. Milliseconds later, the pistol jolted upwards a little bit as the slide kicked back, ejecting the hot, smoking, empty brass casing that had once held the bullet, which now had left the barrel of the pistol and hit its target. The casing tumbled upwards, into the air, cooling a little as it did. The assassin reached into the air and caught it in his gloved, left
palm, feeling its warmth instantly as he brought his hand down.