Seven fifty-four six degrees cloudy

Stop right there. Stop whilst I can feel the creep­ing tendrils of new life in my fin­gers, the work­ing week’s first sur­ging and rip­pling in my whitened knuckles. I stop myself. I always do, always. I have to stop myself. I can­not be any other way. If I exist for only one reason, it is to pur­sue my almost reli­gious devo­tion to the art of stopping.

Look­ing down, I see HATE bloodily etched into my clenched left fist, with NONE on the right, not love. Were I the viol­ent kind, I would hit this day between its eyes with hate, hate, hate, before drag­ging it under, into uncon­scious­ness, with the gentle caresses offered by the sooth­ing balm of beau­ti­ful nothingness.

I take my cup of strong cof­fee and the ima­gin­ary cigar­ette I always want to smoke first thing in the morn­ing, and place them both on the win­dow sill. I soak up the unin­spir­ing can­vas of the char­ac­ter­istic Brit­ish cli­mate stretch­ing before me — neither one thing or the other, seem­ingly unwill­ing to com­mit to rain or shine or breezy or still — like it’s the warmest trop­ical sun. And I breathe. And out. And perfect.

These are the oer­fect con­di­tions for abso­lutely noth­ing to hap­pen. Give me my fill of the excep­tion­ally unevent­ful, since it suits me down to the depths of my hid­den, locked-in soul: the place where I hide the key under the car­pet, entombed in con­crete and sur­roun­ded by a pro­tect­ive Escher maze of steel girders.

I stand there, loom­ing over my sky­line, poised for action, wait­ing and watch­ing for the cease­less tide of blanked-out com­muters to appear, as they surge down the nar­row Vic­torian ter­raced streets in a pol­luted ocean of greys and muddy browns. I want to be amongst them as much as I loathe and des­pise them, if only so I could loathe and des­pise myself without any recur­ring guilt. I whis­per to them that I know where they’re going, I know what they’re doing, I know what they each want to be.

This cof­fee is going to my head. The non-existent nicot­ine is rush­ing through my blood­stream, or so I believe.

I pick up my sniper. I remove my spec­tacles so that my vis­ion is free to blur and obscure; so that my aim will be impaired and my tar­get­ing wil­fully indis­crim­in­ate. I shoot.

Yes, I shoot. Again and again, from up high, over­see­ing and over everything. I am shoot­ing. I am rain­ing, rain­ing down. But I am cleans­ing noth­ing. The streets will not flow with blood, and no soul will find sal­va­tion because of my selfish actions, includ­ing my own.

I inhale the scent of burn­ing bul­lets as each mer­ci­less mis­sile rushes to exit the bar­rel. So what if I am on an intox­ic­at­ing killing spree? Who cares? No one can see me; I am anonym­ous. This is my slaughter in the sub­urbs, my killing in the com­muter belt, my hom­icide on the high street. The chat­ter­ing voices of my neigh­bours fill my head, as they are placed under intrus­ive lights and have micro­phones thrust under their noses:

“Oh, he was just quiet and unre­mark­able.“
     “We barely ever spoke to him.“
“He seemed nice enough, and always said good morn­ing.“
     “We would nod when we passed on the cor­ridor, that’s all.“
“You can’t ima­gine any­one think­ing such thoughts.“
     “We were liv­ing next door to an evil, crazed per­son.“
“I never heard a sound com­ing through his walls.“
     “You never know someone, do you?”

No, you just never know.

Then it stops. The people dis­ap­pear under­ground or into red trans­porter crates car­ry­ing their cargo of cattle to the mar­kets. I look at the time, and breathe, and gulp my cof­fee, and breathe, and take a last urgent drug of my non-existent cigar­ette, and breathe. I leave my con­fines to join the rush hour of face­less human­ity, safe in the know­ledge that I won’t have to step over any bod­ies. Then, and only then, I finally stop breathing.