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Violence Is Golden

Posted on July 30, 2007
Filed Under The Stories |

He was high enough above everyone else that no one could see him unless they were specifically looking for him. Even then the looker needed a special eye. An eye with the ability to differentiate the obvious from the not until they had separated all the unnecessary information from the pertinent and were able to see that a man in black trousers and a matching jacket over a white shirt was leaning against the rim of the giant clock that stared out over the street.

He was smoking a cigarette but it didn’t look like the usual nicotine stick conspiring to add gravel to his voice and tease a cancerous cell or two into considering ravaging his body over the next decade or so. And it wasn’t the type of cigarette that brought the peaceful vibe that floated in on the strains of reggae music and the desire to inseminate a total stranger. No this was a cigarette that sparked and sputtered at rest and glowed like the fires of a thousand suns would emanate from its tip when he sucked a lungful of smoke in.

It was that irregular glowing that sometimes attracted people’s attention. Of course when they looked up in the direction of the sudden illumination there was nothing to see. The plume of smoke rising off the tip of the cigarette was too high up to be distinguishable even by the people with 20/20 eyesight. Too many of them lived in a world ridden with pollution and common cigarette smoke to actually have the requisite power in their eyes to be able to see the shadowy figure loitering by the illuminated clock face.

He was the type of fellow who seemed to bring his own shadows with him wherever he went and the average photographer or cinematographer would have found it difficult to explain them in relation to the existing light around him. The shadows didn’t seem to follow the usual rules of light and dark and seemed designed to keep him in a state of dramatic concealment rather than anything else. So when the tip of his cigarette burned bright as he smoked from it, the light did not show his features.

Which was in and of itself a good thing.

He was handsome in a way that would have been deemed illegal all around the world. Depending upon where he was hanging out at any particular time, his features rearranged themselves to approximate the pinnacle of physical perfection for the majority population in that particular neighbourhood. He had been the best looking male in all the colours that were acceptable as definitions of mankind. Most of the time he refrained from revealing himself unless visibility could be more beneficial to his cause than concealment.

He had many names but somehow it made little sense to actually refer to him by any of them. It was easier to use a dated term like ‘handsome devil’ to truly define his looks and inclinations.

He pushed himself off the wall and a small tremor ran down the stone face and liberated itself through the concrete below by making a crack that resembled a forked tongue of lightning. He planted his feet wide and watched the two cars as they sped towards the cinema a few hundred feet away. Like a concert conductor he raised his arms and with just the whisper of a flick of one of his fingers he swerved the car that was slightly in front into the path of the other car. He watched with childlike curiosity as tyres screeched far below him and the metal was crumpled on two previously pristine vehicles. He watched both cars sway from side to side after coming to a stop in the middle of the road. He watched the driver in the car on the left struggle to open his door, fail and bundle out the woman sitting next to him so that he could climb out of her side. He imagined the guy’s ass hovering over the gear shaft and shut his eyes deliberately so that far below him, the man sat down hard on the bulbous head of the gear shaft and felt tears stream out of his eyes as the pain registered in his brain. He was as angry as could be when he finally stepped onto solid ground. The other driver was out of the car as well and swearing a blue streak. The man who had recently been goosed by his own gear shaft arrived within striking distance of the swearing man and punched him squarely in the mouth, causing his opponent to bite his own tongue and experience the explosion of stars before his eyes.

Within seconds they were grappling each other in that inadequate street brawl manner of men who imagined themselves as agile as the movie stars they sought to emulate while truly being no more mobile than a lazy snail.

The man high above them smiled at his handiwork. Fortunately for the people living their lives far below his vantage point, he was on vacation and uninterested in doing anything more than causing enough harm to retain his touch for chaos.

On his left lapel he wore a button that read, ‘Violence Is Golden.’ He jumped off his high perch and was swallowed by the shadows. Nobody would even know he had been there.

On the ground in the meanwhile two men were getting bloodier with every ill-landed blow.

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