PROLOGUE

“I’ve come to kill you.”

He laughed, waved his hand dismissively. He had a way of laughing from his nose, a short, sharp exhalation that threatened to expel the mucus from within. It was humorless, sarcastic. It was also smug and irritating—made all the smugger and more irritating by the holier-than-thou smile it preceded.

“Good one. What do you really want?” He looked me up and down. Confused. Alarmed. But not entirely sure why. “I’m—I’m kinda busy right now,” he stuttered.

“I told you.” I repeated slowly, “I am here to kill you.”

He rolled his eyes and slammed the door. I heard him mumble to himself on the other side, cycling through a list of expletives before sighing and walking away, the floorboards creaking with every step.

That didn’t go as planned.

I knocked again—another sigh, another barrage of expletives. The door swung open and once again I was greeted by the forty-four-year-old Oscar Wilde wannabe, complete with silk nightgown, expensive slippers, and judgmental stare.

He thought of himself as being above everyone else, even though everything he did was for show and everything he said was a lie. He considered himself to be better educated, even though he’d dropped out of school age sixteen to pursue a career in chain-smoking and sexually transmitted diseases. He considered himself more cultured, even though his idea of sophistication was watching Frasier and smoking cigars. He was a mid-forties social worker and failed writer who spent his days penning poetry that nobody read, writing a blog that few knew existed, and spouting nonsense to a negligible Facebook following.

He had a job, but he thought it was beneath him. He was a social worker with no social skills, a man who lived to put others down and only went to work every day so he could wallow in their misery, remind them that he was better than them, and subject them to his abhorrent poetry when they were too stoned, drunk, polite, or repressed to stop him.

He was the epitome of a failure, a nobody, but he was too narcissistic to realize it. Friends were few and far between, frustrated with his patronizing tone; girlfriends left when he asked to be treated like a king. His time was spent locked up in a high-rise apartment, drinking cheap bourbon, getting high, and yearning for the day that his slapdash, puerile poetry would be read by millions, and not just a smattering of emo kids online.

“Look, I don’t know what you want—”

I grabbed him by the neck and pushed him into his apartment, delighting in the feel of his throat in my hand, the way his eyes filled with horror as his fingertips clawed desperately for release. He was weak, feeble, pathetic, and unable to resist. He toppled over, slipping out of my grasp and hitting the floor hard.

It was barely 8 p.m. and he was already paralytic—stinking of cheap booze and stale weed, just like his cramped, two-bedroom apartment. His eyes were glassy, a stupidly smug and vacant expression still on his face.

“What is this?” he repeated, the smugness slipping away as I retrieved a machete from underneath my jacket.

“I told you,” I said, leaning in close. “I’m going to kill you. Now—on your feet.”

“Please don’t do this.” He dragged himself upright, moaning and groaning with each movement. “What is this? Why are you doing this? Please. You know me. I don’t deserve this.”

“I do know you, and you do deserve this. That’s why I’m here.”

He was on his knees now, desperation mixing with the confusion and horror in his eyes. “Please, don’t—”

“No more talking!” I thrust the steel blade at him, resting its razor-sharp edge on his forehead, watching a pinprick wound drip down his face like a solitary tear. “On the balcony, now!”

“What do you want?”

I grabbed him by the collar with my free hand, dragged him toward me, and then pressed the blade tight against his throat. “Let’s not start that again, eh?”

I shoved him away, he staggered, stumbled, and then righted himself, edging closer to the balcony. The sliding door was already open, the cool air wafting inside. A bong rested on a stool next to the open door, smoke billowing out of the top. There was a bag of weed next to it, a scattering of blue pills around it, and a small baggie filled with white powder. He’d been throwing a party, although he seemed to be the only guest. The apartment stank of solitude. It reeked of a day lost in the abyss of intoxication—smoke, alcohol, stale food, body odor.

In the distance, a bonfire raged, the scent of burning wood polluting the air, filtering into the apartment, and conquering some of those unclean smells.

He turned to look at me—his face a picture of horror, tears in his eyes. “What’s this about?” he asked. “I didn’t do anything to you. I tried to—”

“—Shut up and keep walking.”

“Do you want to make me look like a fool, is that it?”

“Do. As. I. Say.”

He swallowed thickly, nodded, and then edged toward the balcony. His gown billowed as he stepped outside, exposing pale, hairy, and surprisingly thin legs. He picked up the bong, turned slowly toward me, and held it out as a peace offering. “Why don’t we just sit, chill, and enjoy a smoke?”

I laughed and he joined me, seemingly clinging to the hope that this was still some kind of joke or drug-fueled dream.

For a moment, the horror faded. His tear-filled eyes almost sparkled in the light. His face creased with a hopeful smile.

“Why don’t you shut the fuck up and do as I say?” I ventured.

“Please, don’t—”

“Turn around.”

“Please—”

“Turn. Around.”

“I don’t want to.”

He regarded me for a moment. A cursory glance. Up and down. I could see he was weighing up his options, deciding if he could take me, charge me, knock me down, and escape.

I stepped closer and gestured with the knife to call his bluff. That was enough to convince him. He slowly turned around, his exposed legs trembling, his voice shaking.

“Climb onto the balcony,” I told him, the knife still ready to attack.

“Don’t make me do this.”

“You have two options: You either take one step forward, or you get a machete in the back of your skull. Your choice.”

He was whimpering desperately, but he did as I said. He climbed onto the railing, only the lip of the steel structure protecting him from the edge and the drop. He leaned forward to look down and then sharply pulled back.

“Come on now,” he said, his voice shaking. “I’ll give you anything. Drugs, money. I have a hooker coming later if you’re into that sort of thing.” He faced me and forced a smile, but it retreated from his face when it wasn’t reciprocated. “Just please, stop this.”

“Did I tell you to turn around?”

He turned back to the edge and the sheer drop below, his short, sharp exhales leaving a thick, smokelike vapor in the air.

“Please,” he muttered again. Shaking his head, fighting a fear that strangled his words. “Please, please, please, I—”

He turned to me again, expecting to see me staring right back, a grin on my face. But I was right behind him, my hands free. “What are you doing?”

“I changed my mind,” I said. “I don’t want to kill you after all.”

“Oh, thank God—”

“It’ll be much easier if you kill yourself.”

I shoved him and he toppled over the edge. His arms swung madly, his hands grasped desperately, reaching for solid ground, stability. But he was too slow, too weak, too inebriated to make that connection. He disappeared into the darkness. Moments later, I heard the barely audible but unmistakable thud of his body hitting the concrete entrance several stories below.

I waited, listened, expected—hoped. There were no further sounds. No panic, no screams, no shouts or cries.

He died as he had lived—unnoticed by everyone around him.

A few hours after I left the building, the human detritus of his scattered corpse would be discovered by a neighbor returning home from the pub. It would be dismissed as a prank at first, a mangled mannequin left by mischievous kids. Eventually, they would realize they were looking at the remains of their reclusive neighbor. The police would chalk it up to suicide following a drug-fueled depressive binge. Everything that the forty-four-year-old loser had spent his life acquiring, from his ornamental samurai swords to his pages of crappy poetry, would be discarded, pilfered, junked, or forgotten about.

He’d always wanted to make a big impact on the world, and in a way, he’d done just that.