Absolute Power Erupts Absolutely [closed]
Victor lingered outside of the bar, a cheap (well, New York cheap) cigarette dangling from his full lips. He hadn’t been back to the city for years—not since the murder spree that had made a media darling into a tabloid terror. There was a certain pull about the city he had once called home, a bustling, gritty liebestraum that twanged the chords of his memory. He had spent a week on the streets, gauging the efficacy of his disguise, wandering the Upper East Side avenues that had been his teenaged stomping grounds. What had started as a quick, sentimental (if he could admit it) trip down memory lane had turned into a six-month metropolitan trek. A few weeks ago he had taken the L down into Brooklyn, where hipsters mixed with blue-collar families, and culled the ancient owner of a broken-down Bedstuy townhouse.
He blew a stream of smoke into the warm summer air. Most of the man was still in the freezer. He should have gotten some of those vaccuum bags. When he eventually displayed the body, freezer-burned meat was unlikely to impress the jaded residents of a city that had already suffered the slings and arrows of his outrageous fortune.
“Hey, Faust, I wanna leave a little early and see Erica, can you take the tail end of my shift?”
Victor turned and nodded at Calvin, a late twenty-something with a fade and meticulously clean sneakers.
“Sure,” he said, cracking his neck and extinguishing the cigarette with the toe of his boot. For a moment, his hands trembled, longing to circle Calvin’s throat, to feel his Adam’s apple push against his palms, his body writhe and jerk and kick. Maybe after work.
Bartending was Victor’s go-to whenever he needed money. It was easy to pick up victims, and drugs, and The Gentleman’s Drink (funny name for a dive, but he liked the inherent nostalgia) let him play his own music. He wondered what his former employees would think to see him here, in jeans rather than slacks, collecting two-dollar tips.
It was dark in the bar, and mostly quiet, only a few regulars lined up in front of the greasy counter. Victor crossed to the sound system and put on Ted Hawkins, waving to the patrons who recognized the new beer-slinger with the short black hair (itchy fucking wig). He got easily into the rhythm of things, and as he slapped yet another lime wedge onto a Corona, the thought suddenly occurred to him that he was—stagnating. This city, this big, beautiful, busy city, full of the filth of undeath, had unwittingly tamed an angry god.
He slammed the beer onto the counter with more than usual force, foam slopping over the rim. Fuck. A familiar itch crawled up the back of his neck, coaxing him, turning his mind towards bloody redemption. He would not go gently into the good night of the city that never slept.
The door opened, and he looked up.
