the heat's relentless but thank god for airconditioned buses !!!
i have the mike thing im here to share the mike thing (ita a wee thing, but it is an introduction and im convincing myself slowly its okay for it to be smol (‾◡◝)
A businessman being chased into an alley must be a very common occurrence in this city, because every single person Michael has excused himself to for running through them barely spared him a second glance.
Honestly, fuck that guy. Michael has him exactly where he wants, vulnerable and unable to escape, tired out from the chase (which he still loses, how embarrassing,). Isolated.
“Oh so, this is it?” The man exclaims, slightly out of breath, resting his hands on his knees for a moment. “I get unlucky one day and get mugged? Is that really how I die?” Frankly, Michael is annoyed under his protective clothing. The audacity of this guy is just phenomenal.
“You know very well you aren’t just ‘unlucky’. You know exactly why you’re a target,” he not-so-calmly explains, slowly losing his patience. “Known bigot, huge racist and harassing women in your workspace with sexual comments and rape threats? Yeah, how unlucky,” he sasses, fortifying his aim at the man’s head.
“You’ve got a lot of nerv-”
Michael rolls his eyes, exasperated. “Oh shut the fuck up man,” and pulls the trigger twice. They land cleanly between his eyebrows and when he hears the clank of one of the bullets hitting the trash can ahead of him he smirks, letting his hand drop, slightly swaying with the weight of the pistol. The man falls with a soft thud on the ground, small spasms moving his limbs.
He waits a moment, watching blood trickle out of the man’s skull to the concrete underneath his feet. The way the blood pool slowly grows is always fascinating. He times it. Five, Eight, Ten minutes. The jerks subside, the blood slows, the man is completely unresponsive. Michael kicks his leg slightly to see. Nothing.
“Fucking jerk,” he murmurs, patting around his jacket for the pistol holder. He triple-checks around for any cameras or sightings, opens a trash can, drops the man’s briefcase inside, along with a printed note that declares the documents [CONFIDENTIAL], and leaves the alley, completely unbothered, confident in himself and his identity.
There are very few things in this world that inspire him. They say, “One who has killed many loses the ability to sympathize”. That's why he doesn’t concern himself with oversentimentality. It isn’t his place to answer death’s call, though. It’s not his trade, after all.
Calm. Crickets rustling in the grass. Birds noisy in their attempts to pilfer food from stone sills.
This planet is filled with animals. For every one good soul, there are hundreds more that treasure wealth and its luxuries above all else. Most people are corrupted. People must bear the burden of their faults. He is prepared to do so, too.
He catches a stray leaf in his hand and crushes it.
The forest grows and withers, then grows and withers. The moon shines and dims, then wakes and sleeps night to night. People are chained to the idea that we’ll have everything we desire when they die. That happiness will follow them to their graves.
The last rays of the sun disappeared underneath the horizon.
Yeah, he’s changed slightly since his teens. He still plays video games, of course, a lot of his spare time is wasted away on his laptop or desktop computer, and the silly jokes and stupid puns are still an everyday staple of his life. He likes to think it's obvious that he’s changed a bit. He’s matured, he’s found himself, he’s leading a- now stable- career with his best friends as a guitarist, and periodically a vocalist.
And he murders people. On occasion.
He isn’t sure how it started, not exactly a memory that he has safekept in a corner of his mind. There isn’t a clear motivator behind him, leading him on to buy more ammunition and better weaponry. Someone could just say, fame got to him.
The first time Michael kills, it wasn’t a well-thought-out choice. He was walking down the street, careless, murmuring song lyrics as his headphones blasted music. He was then pulled aside, near tossed in an alley, presented with a very unthreatening guy, dressed from top to bottom with black gear and holding a knife pointed at him. An attempt at being mugged.
The guy demanded Michael’s wallet, waving the knife around with his hand to somehow threaten him into moving quicker. Michael laughed, asked the guy what he’d do to him if he didn’t. He was extremely positive that whatever he did, this interaction would leave him with no losses, at worst maybe a new scar. There’s a surprised pause, maybe because this mugger, if he’s ever done this before, hasn’t been met with resistence. Michael wasn’t fearless, if anything, but to that dude’s eyes he must have looked something of the like.
The reply, however lame, came along the form of ‘What will you do, what do you know of self-defense, you’re just part of this stupid boyband.’
It was really his fault. Michael isn’t in a boyband.
Surprising himself, Michael managed to take the knife out of the mugger's grip while he was distracted (something about fame, something about people who make pop are softies and pussies, he wasn’t really paying attention) and stabbed him where neck meets head. There was a thrash or two, some cussing, nerve failure, and blood loss, and soon the guy collapsed on the concrete by Michael’s feet. He clearly remembers saying something that had to do with the punk/emo ideals he followed at the time, then taking the bloody knife with him as he re-emerged into the streets.
Could he have avoided killing the guy? Yeah, most likely. He wasn’t in a life-threatening situation really, and he only had a few dollars in his pocket (never again a wallet, he’s been pickpocketed too many times) and he could have walked off scot-free. And yet, he did it, consequences be damned. He really hates when people underestimate him because he’s in a pop band.
When Michael kills again, it's a choice, an action he chooses to take, planned out carefully. It had been a few weeks after his first one, and he just can’t stop thinking about it. It’s borderline psychotic, how often he’d found himself staring at the knife-souvenir, twirling it in his hands and admiring the handiwork on the handle, feeling over the blade with his fingers, cold, sharp metal against calloused fingers.
He’s nicked himself one or two times, and paid dearly when his guitar playing suffered from it, but he always found himself staring at the knife. Tightening his grip around the handle and driving it up in the air with force, just like that night. Trying to hold on to the feeling of seeing that man collapse under him, feeling the other man lose sense right under his fingertips. It was a foreign feeling, but it reverberated inside Michael. He had enjoyed it.
He chased after the feeling again. After a show, he insisted on taking a walk in the city and “Grab some Macca's, it’s been a while.” He stood, back to a brick wall, and waited. For who, he wasn’t sure, but his eyes skimmed over the few pedestrians pacing back and forth in front of him. He didn’t want to just grab some random person, he wanted to find someone who made themselves an open target.
His search came victorious quick enough. A man draws unwanted attention when he cusses out an individual on his right, a gentleman who seemed to be doing nothing wrong but exist. Michael’s target makes a move to lay hands on the other man, and Michael’s hand is found stopping an incoming punch, rather easily might he add (he’s still quite proud of himself for this one). The man goes to cuss, hit, and thrash, Michael pulls him into the alleyway to his left.
“Up for a one-on-one fight, huh punk?” the Target had said, and Michael had laughed, an honest, infuriating laugh. The man rushed to grab Michael, yet he found himself with one hand on Michael’s shoulder, the other hovering over Michael’s face as the small knife is driven to the side of his neck.
The blood splattered, Michael shoved the Target back and got away with a few, tiny droplets of blood on his arm, and few more on his face and collar of his T-shirt. The Target tried to cover the wound with his hands, but being ill-tempered was, in the end, his downfall. His carotid, pulsing angrily on the side of his neck was incredibly inviting for Michael to pierce through.
The Target collapses sooner or later, again at Michael’s feet, and he quickly steps back as the blood pools by the Target’s head. It’s twisted, the grin on his face as he cleans the knife and his face with an antiseptic wipe. But there, Michael felt this satisfaction, a feeling intricate and all tangled together. He felt a rush of emotions flow through him, he felt; satiated. Calm.
Michael really enjoyed stabbing the Target.
Michael Clifford really enjoyed seeing people die by his hand.
OHOHOHOOHOHOHOHOH FUCK YEAH
i love, love, LOVE the easy charm you gave Mike and how he's just,,,, a Threat. the disconnect between Murdering Someone and his Attitude is so sexy of him, i love his nonchalance, he's my Everything (っ˘̩╭╮˘̩)っ
+ i love the detail of him being pickpocketed until he no longer carries a wallet bc,,, it makes sense