Kill Him If You Can

Gershon relished the look in the eyes of his victims as life slowly left their bodies.

Sitting in an inconspicuous corner of the steps leading up to the Lincoln Memorial on this cold mid-November evening, Gershon skimmed through a mental list of all the dying eyes he had ever studied. He preferred to kill his victims at close range, looking them intently in the eyes. This wasn’t some sort of sadistic pleasure for him; it was pure curiosity and a quest. It was a quest for just one lucid moment of pure cognizance in a dying person’s eyes.

The eyes of his victims always divulged a world of emotions. First, there was always hope; hope that somehow, in some miraculous way, they will cheat the inevitable. As that miracle never happened, hope gradually changed into fear; a raw, insufferable fear of knowing that all they ever were, was coming to an end. This realization was followed by pure hate; a sort of inert and quiet hate not for the sake of harming the object of hate in any wayâ€"as that was not possibleâ€"but hate just for the sake of hate alone. And then there was complete and absolute submission …

Gershon stole a quick look at the eye-shaped dial of his wrist watchâ€"one eye that never gave away any emotion. His contact should be arriving any moment now. As he looked past the towering shape of the Washington Monument to the Capitol Building, his thoughts wandered back to his mental list.

He felt lucky for having studied so many dying eyes. However, never once had he found what he was looking for in them: the cognizance that they had lived a lie all their lives; the realization that they had been herded like so many sheep by wolves from amongst them; the recognition of a life lived in servitude and ended in ignorance. Maybe death isn’t the all-illuminating experience it’s made out to be.

Gershon’s reverie was interrupted by a faint rustle of clothes a couple of steps above him and a strong, familiar smell filled his nostrilsâ€"the kind of smoky, metallic smell that usually permeates the corridors of power. His contact had arrived.

“The view never fails to inspire me,” said a voice as strong and as smoky as the smell. The tall man, with an exceptionally well-kept physique for his sixty-something years, sat down a step above Gershon. From the corner of his eye, Gershon caught sight of a pair of immaculately polished boots. “It always renews my perspective on all that we are struggling for.”

Gershon looked around at the dwindling number of tourists running merrily up and down the steps of the monument. “But look at what you are struggling against,” replied Gershon in an inconspicuous voice with an equally inconspicuous accentâ€"something that was an asset in his line of business. “They hardly qualify as competition.”

“Well, that’s because of the success our struggles have always had; success that comes from constant and vigilant nurturing and occasional weeding.” ...