<center>merrick

You live in the city
You stay by yourself
You a-find all weakness
Still some people they brand you
..
You move to the country
You live in the hills
You a-find all company
When you check it them-a use spying glass
They want to know all your business

Spy at thy neighbor
Spying glass
</center>

"Merrick. Astor. Callahan. James. Braun," each name was read off in the definitive voice -- the kind that distributed damnation from the safety of a pulpit. The passports were slapped against the cold metal of a table as the filament flickered overhead on its last legs. "Who are you?"

The man that was bound to the chair, did little to struggle against the plastic cuffs that were cutting into his wrists and the tweed rope that ground against the open wounds on his shirtless frame. Eyes were half lidded as the smirk on his face drew wide and dripped blood like candle wax from the corners of his mouth. He gave a subtle shrug as his shadows transformed him into a ghoul rather than a man. The passports were collected again by an elderly man with a suit as he adjusted the signet ring he wore on his right index finger. He moved to hold the battered man's head up as he looked him square in the eye.

"I asked you a question," he growled.

The battered man simply grinned again before he spat blood in the other's face. As the filament died, there was a scuffle picked up on the tape recording of steel chair legs scraping against finished concrete. There was a hiss and crackle that signified one of the lights had been broken before the tape was stopped entirely. By the time the generators kicked on to provide the wall units with the same ominous lighting -- the battered man was gone and in his place sat the man with the broken light shoved through his eye.

His ring was gone as were the passports and in their place on the table a folded note was left along with remnants of the man in the chair's blood. Its script was elegantly scrawled along the page and by the time the insurgents made their way into the room, it was nearly blown to the floor.

Consider this a big, fat, FUCK YOU.

Sincerely yours,

S.B.


Before the men could finish the initials, the building caught fire in an explosion. Somewhere down the road, a man with a bandage on his forehead and gauze around his knuckles, asked for a cigarette from a woman with a full-lipped smile.

The beginning to the end, is always the most boring route.