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October 7th, I see the city fall to its knees, prostrate before the wave of depraved humanity that infests her. I walk her shadowed angles, the redeemer of her myriad sins.Â Two men laugh. Fat and content. Soft. Weak. They reek of arrogance. A foul, putrid smell. Like hot dog burps.Â Or is that actual hot dog burps? Must remember to get mask cleaned. Must cut back on hot dogs. A scream echoes in the night. I smile. Work begins. *** Nevermind. Scream was just tires squealing. Been like four hours now and no crime. I walk the alleyways, knee-deep in human filth. Praying for action. A woman jaywalks and I flip her off. Some may call that extreme. Nowhere near extreme enough, I say. She's lucky it wasn't the double bird.

The first bird is only meant to scare. The second? The second one's for real.

She flips me off back. We stand across the street from one another, still but for the increasingly extravagant sweeping motions I am making with my middle fingers. This battle is lost already, she just doesn't know it yet. She will know it. I will tell her. And when she cannot take anymore, when she has been flipped the bird so hard that she can feel its spiteful protuberance within that stinking rat's nest she calls a mind, only then will I stop. Only then will I relent. Two minutes pass. She turns in disgust and leaves. I call it a victory. There is no victory here. Only levels of defeat. *** A child. Innocence soon to be corrupted. He turns and smiles and I remember what it was like to smile. Always false. Every smile like a promise broken. The truth is a grimace. The truth is a growl. The truth is a howl of rage cut dead in the night. He offers me his ice cream cone. I take a lick. It is vanilla.