A slight breeze gently parts the still reeds. The night is calm and silent, save for the dull rustling of footsteps on the grass. Suddenly, a lean figure expertly vaults over the brickwork of the elaborate garden in which he will spend all of five minutes.
  Watch, as he softly treads through the night, his body a mere shadow among others. A warm glow creeps from a dirty lantern, creating disturbed, flickering shadows on the lawn.
A man wearing slippers, clothed in a dressing gown, pads down the front step of the sprawling country house. A small red dot glides gracefully along the dark walls, unnoticed by all except the man dictating its movements.
And now meet the dictator. His current name is Eric, but tomorrow he could be under any name. He is silent and professional, every last point of his plan covered in meticulous detail. Everything that is about to happen is under his control. He has studied his adversary’s routine with precision, and knows exactly what his victim is about to do. And his victim will die.
See, the flickering dot glides over the furrowed brow of his oblivious foe, and tracks the limping man’s steps. The appropriate moment has come, and our subject fingers the trigger of his jet black Magnum pistol.
The sound of him cocking the newly serviced weapon is at odds with the deathly beautiful stillness of his surroundings. His victim only has time to look briefly confused before a shot rings out through the night, and the smell of cordite fills the musky air…


A shot rang out through the night, hitting me in the chest. Blood sprayed from my skin and my ribs were shattered by the force of the rifle round. The searing agony of my wounds lasted only seconds. And then I knew no more.
I came to in an intrusive white light, my body a prison from which there was no release. I saw an angel standing above me, wielding a bloodied knife on which I realised was my own blood. He wore a mask, and his hair was black and short. As he left, the morphine that had rendered me helpless, a defenceless baby, wore off.
  The swirling mist inside the iron walls of my skull subsided, and I saw I was in a hospital. I could not move, and all my screams were silent and frozen in a matrix of sounds that would never be heard by human ears. I was a machine, my systems run for me by a network of wires. My lungs were pistons operating a rusted and broken system. Oily blood spread through me, coaxing me back from the edge of oblivion I was poised to leap over.
As I returned to consciousness, I decided to keep my eyes closed. I heard surgeons conversing over me, talking of how long I had been aided by pumps and drips. They believed me to have recovered, but to them I was still unconscious. Six months, they told me as I ‘slept’. Six months I had been motionless, and all the time my cells had been working to repair my wounds. They saw I would not return, and were debating when to flick the switch that would shut my life off, just like a child may switch off a light bulb. It was then I saw that I had to act quickly.
As I tore out the electrodes that were controlling my shell, doctors ran to my side. I asked what had happened, and amazed I was not comatose or dead, they told me I had been shot. I instantly knew who it was. It was John, or at least someone who called himself John.
After running several exhaustive tests, the doctors decided I had made a complete recovery. I checked myself out of the hospital, checking the pockets of my recently cleaned jacket. After collecting my money from the reception I walked to the nearest firearm store, purchasing a Magnum pistol with a laser sight, I was told that this pistol could hit a man at three hundred meters, but at the range I would be taking my revenge, I would be able to see the whites of John’s eyes. And he would see me, and know that it was me who would destroy him.
  When I arrived at the bed sit I called home I found the nerve to look at my wounds. They had healed well enough, but left waves of repulsive white scar tissue, my chest a sea that seemed battered by seething tides.
  I wondered how he could have betrayed me during the moment when we were on the verge of both becoming rich. I slept fitfully for three weeks, but realized I would not sleep until my would be assassin had been obliterated. My life would be taken up until I had seen his destruction at my hands. After that nothing else would matter. I may as well blow my own brains out after my new purpose was complete. I had nothing to live for now…

I had been studying his movements for some time and at precisely 12.37 each night for the past week he had received a large looking parcel delivered by a carefully inconspicuous man. He would walk down the step and collect it before walking back into his house, as if he was as unaware as the rest of his neighbours, safely asleep in their beds.
  I decided that would be the moment I struck and shattered his veil of illusions. He thought I was dead, but I would show him, watching his eyes recognize me, before his vision exploded with a blinding flash of paradise. I stole along the suburban lawn of his house, my pistol bumping reassuringly against my thigh.
  I lay in the sweet summer grass, the scent of hospital bleach coming back from two years ago to haunt me. I saw a portrait of my nemesis through my sights. His body was old and frail, his legs unsteady and faltering. The moment had come, and I felt the trigger. I paused momentarily, aimed upwards and fired, my life now undisturbed by damned ghosts of the past.
A shot rang out through the night…