To poor writer schmucks like me, the city provided an endless bounty of writing material. Cramped in my dank one-bedroom apartment in one of the rougher sections of town, sounds of a city slowly dying wafted through the paper-thin walls as I revelled in my solitude. Two floors down the Mahoneys were arguing again, shouting about nothing. Later on tonight they would have the noisiest sex in the building. Next door, Richard was beating his latest girlfriend. Worthless scum. Gave him a hard-on whenever he pummelled the defenceless girls. I could hear her crying and him laughing. Laughing like a monster, one of the many demons that inhabited this city. I cringed and closed my eyes, but couldn’t close my ears. I turned my attention to outside the grime-covered window where the sirens were yelling and people scampered for safety or for freedom. A firetruck, one of many that usually visit this area at around the same time every night, was hosing down a smouldering car, black plumes of smoke rising up and choking the sky. One of the many vandalisms that would no doubt occur tonight.
The police were invading a building across the one-lane street. They’d smashed the door in after shouts of threats and demands were slung between them and the suspects. Then like ants they piled in, flashlights bobbing like fireflies in their hands. Another policeman would most likely die tonight. One usually did.
It didn’t take long for the gunshots to sing out. I’m surprised they hadn’t sounded earlier, in fact. Maybe people were trying to behave tonight. Or maybe they had just run out of people to shoot. Like thunderclaps they shook me and the pen in my hand. I shivered. Such a horrible sound. A sound to signal the extinguishing of another life. The Grim Reaper no longer visits the dying, bullets do.
Richard was still laughing. Sounds from the girl had stopped. My stomach turned and I threw up on the stained carpet. Nearly every night I hear him beat another girl half to death, and hear him enjoy every second of it. Tonight I’d had enough. This is going to end, one way or another. I stood up and went to my closet, reaching and grasping the cool wooden handle of my Louisville Slugger. My heart was pounding madly in my chest, but there was no way I was backing down now. Too long, too long. I stepped out and walked down one door to number 122. I knocked hard, twice, and waited.
For the first time in who knows how long, all I heard was silence.
Then footsteps, and the door creaked open. Richard was standing there, tall and lean and muscular, built like a boxer. Before the surprise could even register in his eyes, I butted him in the stomach with the handle of my bat. He exhaled sharply and stumbled back, and I walked in, raising the slugger over my head as I went.
Richard won’t be hurting anyone else, anymore.
