The Garden

“WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?”

People were beginning to stare. My gaze avoided theirs, for I kept my neck firmly stretched upwards towards the vast expanse of the heavens. I had no quarrel with the other humans forced to endure life.

No… it was not their puny inept behavior that became the object of my anger this unfortunate time. Nor would they ever compare to the idiocy of that bumbling fellow from the sky.

It seemed it was Him who had a quarrel with me, as it had been for as long as my mind could stretch to remember. And every so often, I snapped—as humans tend to do. Every so often I became subject to fits of torment and screamed up at the endless expanse of the domed sky. He never responded. Of course not. He never spoke to me, but I had lived long enough to know it was Him and no one else that caused me this interminable grief.

To understand my position, it is vital that one understands the position by which I came into this dreadful world. Of course, that would require me to understand the position by which I came into this world. And as long as I’ve been running, I cannot remember the exact time at which I befell to this game.

A game is what I have been reduced to calling it. Torture does not fit. No, neither does eternal punishment, or treacherous bargaining. As much as I would love to call this ‘game’ by all those colorful titles, I have no choice but to refer to it blandly less I invoke His wrath. More than I already have, that is.

But it is not my actions that brought me to this position. I am positive it is not my fault I have become burdened by this precarious predicament.

For as long as I can remember, all I have done is run. Run from my friends, my enemies, my family… even my lovers. No one understands what I have suffered through. No one wants to understand.

Standing there, on the streets of Paris, no one understood what I had been forced through. They wandered down the boardwalk and through colorful plazas without so much as a glance at the deranged, feral woman screaming up at the endless blue expanse of heavens. Everyone merely assumed I was another girl in need of an asylum and moved along with their heedless daily tasks.

Well I’ve got some news for you.

I’m not crazy.

I’m not insane.

I’ve just been living.

For endless years.

I’ve been killed.

Countless times.

And for the life of me, I cannot seem to die.

It will never end—not so long as there is a god in the sky and hope on the earth. Not so long as I have sinned for something I cannot seem to remember.

I can never die. I have been alive since the beginning of time—as best I’ve assumed.

My name is Esther Trent. At least, that’s the name I’ve taken this time. Until I outlive every other member on this sunny rock, that is my name.

And this is my long, winding story—with no feasible end in sight.

I glared up at the blazing sun. It had been two hours since my last attempted death—a jump off a tower across the city. Yet here I stood—no bones broken and no worse for wear. Besides my glowering mood, that is.

I yearned to scream again, but feared I would attract the constable’s attention. If there was one thing I did not need, it was another trip to prison.

Instead of continuing my rivalry with the bright orb of light twinkling above the noon-time people of the city—going about their daily tasks without a care in the world—I retreated to the nearest bus station and took a winding route back to my latest home.

I say latest, because my lives have led me across the globe more times than there are countries in the modern world. I lived for a century in England. I spend a good section of time in Jerusalem. I even spent two or three centuries trapped in prison in Egypt after trying to drown myself in the Nile river.

Which goes to show how many suicides I’ve attempted. For millennia I’ve been trying to end my life—to stop this sorry existence and return to Eden to rest at last. I’ve been teasing death since the start of time, practically. Not that I remember as far as God’s creation of this splendid world. I don’t remember my birth, my childhood, my mother or father or siblings. All I’ve come to know is I am old—and I would very much like to die.

The bus dropped me at a shabby apartment in a sadder part of the great city of Paris—hidden in a back alley, away from prying eyes.

August was waiting at the kitchen table when I pushed the creaky front door open—depositing my wallet and keys on the bookshelf near the oak wood door. He smiled at me. I simply shook my head. Augustus didn’t understand. He never understood.

“You’re alive,” he noticed.

“Observant,” I grumbled—relishing in my sour mood.

My expression lightened when I noticed what August was crafting. Photos lay strewn across the table. He was carefully pasting them onto pages of an old book—the only thing I had left to remember. The book had grown so thick with pictures and paintings that we often had to tape the spine together. Still, August found space to add more.

I loved him for it—for he knew as well as I: Each day I lived, another disappeared from my memory.

August saw my sad smile. Bless his soul—he thought I was looking at one of the pictures, not as his gorgeous head of red hair and spatter of freckles across the bridge of his nose. I hated myself for growing attached to August, but I couldn’t help myself. Each time I moved, I found a new object of my affection. Sometimes it was an animal. Sometimes—a romantic partner. Sometimes it was simply a steadfast companion—like August. Each time I moved, my partner in crime would eventually end up dead. And each time without fail I would watch him—always a ‘he’—die, wishing I could join him in the endless bliss of afterlife. And though I don’t know why—every companion had a name that began with the letter A. Augustus, Angus, August, Alexander, Atlas….

August held up a photo. I recognized it—our trip to Pisa from last year. My gaze saddened. “Thank you, Arch,” I said quietly. “You don’t have to do this.”

He shrugged. “I don’t want you to forget me, Esther. When I’m gone and all. Besides, isn’t this something normal people do?”

“I suppose so.” I sat down next to him and began sorting through the endless stash of photos—our trip to Australia, our visit with August’s grandparents, our voyage across Tasmania with his cousin.

August plastered a photograph in the book and flipped to the next clean page. “So I’ve been thinking.”

I chuckled. “I hate it when that happens.”

“We’ve been living in Paris for a while, yeah?”

I nodded slowly. “Five years.”

He tapped his finger on the table. “What would you think about going somewhere else?”

I tried to contain my smile. It was no surprise August had been thinking about this—I had seen the maps and travel brochures in his open knapsack weeks before. I had been waiting for him to pose the question ever since. “Is that so?” I did my best to look surprised. “Well, where did you have in mind?”

Achie’s brow furrowed. He enjoyed taking me places I hadn’t been yet, which was difficult seeing as I’d been alive longer than I could manage to remember. Still, August had surprised me last year with a trip to Pisa. In all my years I had never been to that great city.

“How about America?” He bit his lip and gave me an asking glance.

“I don’t know…” I rubbed my chin, playing along with his little game. We both knew my answer would always be yes. If there was one thing I hated more than being alive, it was staying in one place too long. “Where in America?”

August gave me a knowing grin. I loved that grin—the way his eyes lit up with mischievous humor and the whites of his teeth showed. “How about Vegas?”

Vegas was wonderful. Despite my millions of years of life, I had never seen anything quite as magnificent as the turbulent nighttime blaze of the city. The gorgeous lights and playful scenes. There were things to keep us busy for years. In fact, the entire US was a playground of sights to see and places to visit. For months at a time I would forget about the encumbering weight of my life—forget about forgetting and just live.

When I remembered, it brought on a dark depression filled with suicidal attempts and hard realizations. Someday, I would forget August. I would forget our adventures. How many other companions had I already forgotten? How many more would I forget?

It was bad enough I was already losing my grip on Antonio—my passionate lover during the Renaissance. He had died of plague so many lifetimes ago… and it still stung to feel myself forget. I had to concentrate just to see those dark brown eyes and his faraway gaze.

It was a long time before August and I gave up on travel and retired to the confines of a little cabin in upstate California. August was eighty. His red hair had turned grey years ago and every step he took looked slow and painful. He wanted to stay fit for me… but I would never age. All my life I had been stuck at thirty—an age that neither served to help or hurt me.

And just like every other companion, it pained me to see August age. It hurt me to see him go in this way.

He passed in his sleep at ninety-two on July seventh. I spent the day staring out the window of our small house, watching the clouds shift across the blue sky and breathing in the intoxicating fresh air, all the while fingering a knife in my palm.

“What do you want from me?” I whispered under my breath. I knew He was listening. He was always listening. “Why are you doing this to me?”

August’s photobook lay across my lap—almost doubled in size since that day in Paris. All those years ago, when August was still so young. Now he was gone. I would never see that mischievous grin again. Those green eyes were gone. That spatter of freckles like melted cheese sauce and his kind heart. He was up there, with the figure who tortured me relentlessly. And I was still down here.

My palm shook as it fingered the knife. How easy it would be for any other human to take their own life, and yet I was stuck here without an escape.

I took a breath. “You want me down here?” I muttered. “Fine.”

The knife slipped snugly into a hook in my belt. I stood from the chair and journeyed to the kitchen—sure of something for the first time in centuries.

The matches were easy to find. I eyed the cabin. The log walls. The soft sofas and candles scattered along ornate coffee tables. The marble countertop.

The book of photos lay gently in my arms.

I set it down on the nearest coffee table, next to an unlit candle. My eyes burned with darkened rage and disgust as I meticulously went about performing my plan.

I lit the candle. Its flame burned as bright as my love once had. Now all that was left were faint embers of light too far gone to be relit. I was an empty shell.

The world would feel my pain.

Then, as though it were an accident, I tipped the candle onto the book of photos. The book that held my only connections to the past. The book that held all my pain, my anger, my loss. I let it burn.

I let that whole house burn.

As I walked down that sloping gravel road away from the burning cabin, all I held with me were the dark grieving clothes strung across my back and the small knife sheathed at my belt.

“So,” I murmured, “You want to punish me?” I laughed. All the pain evaporated as I let loose a laugh that rattled the ground. “Well it wasn’t my fault. But as long as I’m here… I might as well convince you whose fault it was.” I spat on the ground. “Adam.” The name came from nowhere. A long forgotten name that surfaced as soon as I thought hard enough for it. “It’s his fault, and you keep letting him die. You keep killing him. At least he forgets. At least he’s not stuck like this.” I spread my arms as my feet stopped beneath me and my eyes fixed upon the smoke-filled sky above. “And where is he now? What have you done with him this time?”

As if in response, a black cat slinked up the road. A red collar hung around its neck. It meowed sadly in my direction and sat before my path.

The collar was much too far away to read, but I knew already what words it said as sure as I knew my own name.

Apex. My next companion. Adam reincarnated.

“This is your fault,” I told the cat. “Why am I suffering for what you did?” My head tilted upward. “This punishment was never supposed to be mine!” My jaw clenched. “I suppose that stupid snake twisted the story.” My arms crossed. “And whose fault is that?”

The cat meowed.

I waited for a response from above. A recognition of my suddenly returned memory. Just enough to know his name… my own name… and the snake. But if He knew, He did nothing to acknowledge it.

I scoffed. “You’re just as bad as they’re saying,” I told the sky. “You want me to be punished? Fine. But I’m done being sad.” My hand wrapped around the knife. “I’m going to make every human on this planet feel the pain you’ve brought upon me for my punishment in his place.” I pointed to the cat. “And you’re going to help.”

The cat purred. I wasn’t sure if he enjoyed the idea, or if he was mocking me. He deserved my punishment, and I had spent centuries by his side—convinced otherwise.

I began my steady pace down the crumbling gravel road a second time. The cat slinked around my heels. As if that made up for what he had done to me. There was no one in this world I could stand to trust any longer. August’s death had shown me that—though I suppose in a sense, he was just as bad as the others. None of them could be trusted. Humans couldn’t be trusted.

Twenty minutes passed. My feet were beginning to get blisters from the walk, but I would die before I used that wretched car.

As I walked, a figure rounded the corner towards me. He was wearing blue, and had a small black gun strapped to his side. He stared up at the hillside, where the fire ate away at my cabin with passion. I couldn’t help but match the fire’s destructive vengeance.

“Ma’am,” the officer said as our paths crossed. “Did you come from up there?”

I nodded. “That’s my house.”

He frowned. “I’m terribly sorry. Do you know who set the fire?”

I palmed the knife. “Why, yes.”

He arched an eyebrow, waiting for the story.

I approached him—watching those soft brown eyes glitter with a hint of sympathy. Misplaced sympathy. My smile widened as I neared him across the sharp gravel rocks beneath foot… and drove the sharp knife into his stomach. He gasped and fell back on the ground. “I did,” I whispered in his ear, clutching his shoulder and watching the life drain from his eyes. A death I had yearned to achieve for so long. A death with so much pain, so much anguish, so much blood. No… I would never die. Everyone I met would die in my place. Until He began to realize His mistake in torturing me. Until He let me retire to His garden once more—with or without Adam. My companion was useless to me—and attachment to him was only part of the endless torture.

The officer’s eyes shut tightly. His head drooped to one side, his blue uniform stained with crimson. The iron wafted into the air, mixed with the grey smoke from the fire above. Chaos. It was delicious.

I stole his gun—and that dark leather holster—and clipped them to my belt.

The cat meowed by my side. “This was your fault, Adam,” I told the cat. “But I’m willing to forgive and forget, if you help my torture end.”

The cat smiled. I didn’t know a cat could smile, and yet it fit perfectly across his furry face. An alliance—to get back at the figure who had wronged us both—whoever took the blame. We would kill every human on this earth until He let us into His garden.

I wiped the blood from my hands, and together, the cat and I wandered down that gravel road.

The town was quiet. A little town, nothing more than a gas station and a hardware store next to an old park that not even the happiest children chose to play at.

People only came down from their cabins stretched around the mountains to gather groceries and fill up their gas tanks… but there was always someone waiting outside the station for their next customer.

A young man. He reminded me too much of August. Though his hair was dark, he had the same lanky posture and the same mischievous grin. He was puffing on a cigarette and knocking his legs against the nearest gas pump. A man with no care in the world—and no right to live.

He noticed me approaching with the cat trailing my heels.

“You lost?”

He must have noticed the blood down the sides of my cheeks. Or perhaps, he saw the red glint upon the cat’s whiskers. Or maybe all he saw were the bloody knife and loaded gun hanging from either side of my belt.

“Is… is everything alright, Miss?”

My eyes shifted up and down the road. No cars for miles of asphalt. No one but the young man and whoever happened to be inside the station.

I smiled dully—my mind occupied by the thought of his blood on my hands. “Everything’s fine.” My hand drifted to the gun. So swift… I had never shot anyone before. Not another human being, at least. Bullets had penetrated my skull—embedded in my brain tissue—cracked bone many, many times. A pain I yearned to inflict on another.

He took a puff from his cigarette. “Well… can I help you, then?”

“Why, yes.”

The cat meowed.

I pulled the gun carefully from the loop in my belt. Its grip hugged my hand like a long lost friend. Like a soulmate from a different dimension. I raised it towards his thick skull. “You could stop smoking those nasty cigarettes.” I pulled the trigger. The sound knocked waves of rippling air across the town and back towards my burning cabin—where not even the fire trucks had dared venture.

That silver bullet penetrated his skull right above the temple and left a sickening hole no bigger than a dime in his head. It spilled blood—but not enough to be nearly as satisfying as I’d hoped. He collapsed on top of the gas machine in a lumpy heap.

I did nothing to discard the body. It was not in my best interest to be discreet or stealthy.

What could anyone do to stop me?

I laughed at the thought. No one could stop me. I had stopped fearing pain ages ago—death would never come to halt this sickening game… law enforcement could put me in any cell they wanted—I would always outlive them. My conquest was inevitable. The cleansing of the human race would serve my purposes alone. Until God brought me back to the garden, I would destroy everything He loved.

It’s true—I hadn’t wronged. I had been punished unfairly. But now… there was no punishment greater than the one I had suffered through. With Adam back at my side, we would destroy the earth we had never truly gotten to appreciate. God would suffer as we had suffered.

“Hey!”

My head turned. An older man was standing outside the doorway of the gas station with a rifle clenched firmly in his hands. “What did you do to my son?”

I chuckled. The cat at my feet meowed. “A rifle?” My smile widened. “Wonderful. I was just thinking I might need an upgrade.”

He bled more than his son. This time, I had the decency to aim for his heart instead of his head. The blood marked my hands and cheeks as the blood of the officer had. And his rifle was soon strapped across my back the way one might carry a stick or a hunting bow. No… a rifle would do me good.

Voices echoed from the hardware shop next door.

I turned to the cat. His lips curled into a smile.

“Fun,” I said. He purred in reply.

Two years passed quickly. I kept myself busy. For the first time since my horrible birth, I felt I had a purpose. And my anger was burned only by the stupidity of humans, my hatred for my creator, and the memories flooding back into my skull.

Each time I killed, days of my life would come back to me as vividly as if I had lived them yesterday. They only served to invigorate me more as I remembered my time in the garden. My conversation with the snake. Adam’s mistake.

That’s right. It was man who condemned humanity. The snake offered me the apple and I refused. Adam took a bite—and when God came down to punish us for our mistakes, Adam and the snake pinned it on me. God took mercy on men and bid women to carry the blame. Carry the children. Carry the lives and wellbeing and emotions of all their families, just as I carried Adam all these years without even realizing it. All the while I never got to forget. Not like Adam did, at least. Memories faded just enough to keep me from—I suppose—doing what I was now. From killing to get my spot in the garden back.

August had been the final straw. I had loved him like a brother. But through all my soulmates, companions, partners… August had been the only one to die peacefully. His death hurt me most of all.

God would pay for killing him.

My death count began to grow. On the first day I killed the officer, the young man at the gas station, his father, and the four inside the hardware store. I got a pistol, a rifle, and an axe.

The first year riddled me with the deaths of four hundred and seventy three people. I received a number of knives, a machete, three more rifles, a blow torch, two matching daggers, and several small handguns.

The machete was my favorite. Or perhaps the daggers. I used them both frequently—their sharp edges brought me the quickest kills with the most amounts of blood. They never dulled much, and they fit the rub of my hand more perfectly than the soft black gloves I acquired off a dead man in Los Angeles.

The second year brought more kills, more weapons, and more chaos to the world. Word of my kills continued to spread throughout the panic stricken country. I suppose that was fair, given I had killed one thousand two hundred and thirty four people by the second year. I recovered a sword, another set of beautiful daggers, hundreds more guns of all shapes and sizes, and even a sniper rifle. Not enough blood, I decided. But good for assassinations.

It was on the eve of the third month of the third year when I received a kill that would stay with me forever. Apex and I were making our way across the border into Nevada. California had grown boring, and I wanted a change of scenery before we went back to making quick work of the terrified citizens of those poor towns.

Nevada was calm. The harsh desert stretched most of the state, and the other half was either natural park or roaring city. We stayed away from Vegas. I wasn’t sure if Apex could remember the dazzling city light, the colorful people, and the lingering joy that twinkled with painful precision through that iridescent night sky… but I wouldn’t bring him back. August’s death still stung like a fresh wound, even after years without him by my side. After so long spent with him… it would never be the same.

So we traversed the parks. I fed Apex handfuls of breadcrumbs and peanut butter, but ate none myself. I could not starve. I had not eaten since August’s death, nor would I eat until I was back in the garden. Apex didn’t seem to mind the extra contributions.

Across my back was the sword. Sharp, clean, and deadly. At each thigh was a dagger—their blades jade and their edges thinner than glass. Simply touching them would prick blood from the most calloused of hands. My ankles held throwing knives—a gift from an old friend in San Francisco. The heels of my black leather boots also held blades—small, but as deadly sharp as the jade daggers. A vial of poison was concealed in a pouch near my belt, along with the pistol—the only gun I carried with me. A sign to remember where this all began.

I wore black. Only black. Another symbol to remember August. And to keep Apex close to me. His coat was as dark as my jacket and his claws as sharp as my blades. I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect companion.

We were wandering the trails at the entrance to a state park when a young couple approached us. The man didn’t seem to notice my black clothing or the obvious blade across my back. He strolled up to my figure and asked my assistance in taking a picture of him and his girlfriend. No one else was around.

I complied. It was so rare the victims asked me for harmless favors. It was always ‘spare my wife’ or ‘tell my mother I love her.’ Why would I do either—pray tell—if my mission was to kill every human on this barren rock?

The camera was warm in my hands. The skyline behind them was twisted with orange and red in the sunrise of the fall morning. The man—his spiked hair drifting with the soft draft of wind whistling through the scene—wrapped his arm around the girl.

At the moment his hand connected with her skin, she seemed to flinch for the briefest second. My hands lowered the camera.

No normal human could have seen it. I only saw because I was accustomed to human flinches. To pleas, and fear… and especially flinches in pain.

There are three distinctive types of flinches. Fear is the obvious one. The unexplainable urge to run or flea when something sharp or hot carrines towards your fragile skin. Often classically conditioned from those who abuse or mistreat others. A child is likely to flinch by the hand of a parent who has hit them one too many times.

Pain is the second. Similar, but not the same. Pain is when a hand gets retracted from a burning surface or a sharp object because human skin is much too fragile to burn or cut. These flinches keep people alive—much to my dismay.

And the third is merely reflexive. When someone has the urge to move while sitting still, and they flinch ever so slightly because their desire to run is great. These flinches often occur in sleep or when one is drifting off to sleep. These flinches I rarely see. Only in the victims I kill as they slumber.

This girl did not flinch from reflex. She did not flinch from pain—though her boyfriend’s arm may have been a touch cold. She flinched from fear.

I did not take their picture.

I shot him swiftly. A quick end he surely did not deserve, but a quick end to dull the pain seeping into his companion’s broken heart.

Apex meowed sadly as we stared at her broken figure cradling his lifeless corpse.

I shifted. “Did he hit you?” My voice was soft.

Her sobs broke the air of silence. She lifted her head to me—her eyes brimming with tears. “Why….”

“Did he hit you.” My gaze was hard and my lips pressed firmly together. She knew the answer as well as I, and my question was nothing more than a lingering thought growing dust in the rising sunlight.

She let his head fall softly to the ground. “I…” She made no attempt to finish, but her tense movements said enough.

“I couldn’t let him live,” I told her. There was nothing more I could hope to explain. She didn’t understand. No one understood.

She wiped the tears from her eyes. Her hair was a soft brown that glistened in the morning sunlight now streaking above the treetops. “Who are you?”

“I—” Not once had my victims asked that question. “My name is Eve.”

“Are you going to kill me too?”

I glanced down at Apex. His eyes were sad and far away. Not once had I felt sympathy towards my victims, but this young lady had experienced pain in ways she never should have. I could feel a deep empathy, which made me hesitant.

Apex meowed. It was not a question, but a statement I knew deep down to be true. Still… I did not want to kill this woman.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked her.

She bit her lip and stared at the body of her dead boyfriend. “I have nothing left to live for,” she told me. “I would be grateful for an end.”

Apex gave me a sharp nod. I cocked the gun, but did not make an attempt to raise it. “What’s your name?”

“Melissa.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-three.”

I nodded thoughtfully. “Melissa,” I said. “I have been alive since the dawn of time. I have seen civilizations grow and watched cities collapse just as quickly. I have traveled across the globe, searching for a way to end my seemingly interminable existence. Now, in the last two years, I have set out to kill every human I stumble across for redemption against the God who wronged me.” I gestured at my cat. “He has been my only companion.” My hand shifted against the grip of the gun. “I’ve committed the worst crime a person can commit.”

Her hair glistened in the light. There was fear in her eyes and her knees trembled. I pointed the gun. “But there is one thing that humanity needs to know.”

A single bullet fired, embedding in her skull. “I never ate that apple.”

Time since first kill: Twelve years, eight months, three weeks, two days, sixteen hours. Current number of kills: Three million, eight hundred sixty two thousand, six hundred forty four. Favorite weapon: The jade daggers.

Apex had graying hair and was blind in one eye, but my faithful companion would never leave my side. He ran as fast as I and scratched as hard as ever.

I found myself in New York. I never took a plane, but instead carved a path of death across the center of the US and marked the trail with the blood of my victims and the tears of their families.

I was no stranger to the news. My face was posted across every telephone pole and in each store window. The problem was: They didn’t know exactly what I looked like. I suppose I looked like everyone—a generic face with brown hair and brown eyes, and a skin tone that was neither light nor dark nor tan. I was simply another face in a sea of people.

And my newest scene was New York City.

There were so many in this vast city I couldn’t dare choose my first target. I let the crowds push me through this city of winding roads and crowded subways and dirty streets until an unassuming bystander caught my eye.

I pulled him off into a dark corner and made quick work of cutting him up and hiding the body. In a larger city like this I had to be careful not to draw too much attention to myself, lest the police find me before I managed to make a dent in the massive population.

The next victim, I did the same. She screamed—but I put my hand over her mouth and slit her throat.

I tugged a third man into yet another alley and shot him in the stomach, watching in delight as he bled out on the hard pavement—before I noticed the body.

It was groaning softly below a fire escape hatch between two apartment complexes a little ways down the same alley. A dumpster blocked the end of the alley.

He showed signs of struggle—blood smattered against his thick brown hair and dripping over his right eyebrow. A fight, perhaps. A gun was clutched in his hand. I scooped it up, delighted, and found it contained not normal silver bullets, but golden ones. Golden bullets.

I pocketed the gun.

Since he was already injured, I finished the job. This man deserved to suffer no more than the others, and it was another life to check off my list.

Then I heard the sirens. With two dead bodies in the alley and nowhere to run, I began to panic. What was I to do? Where was I to go?

My eyes shifted to the fire escape. Maybe….

But it was too late. Four policemen came to me with guns drawn and radios chattering away from holsters on their waists. “Freeze!” One held their gun at me. His expression shifted from determination to disbelief as he recognized my black costume and hard smile. “You’re that killer from the news!”

I spread my arms. “Guilty.” Law enforcement didn’t scare me. The only trouble I saw here was that the intervention put me behind schedule. I had people to kill. Places to go.

“You’re coming with us,” voiced another.

“Am I?” I chuckled. “Do you know how many policemen I’ve killed over the years?”

A third cocked his gun and scratched his head. “Say… how old are you? These murders have been happening for twelve years and you don’t look a day over thirty.”

I laughed. “Oops. I guess my secret’s out.” I took a step towards the guards. “I’ve been killing longer than I’ve been of age.” Another step. Another gun was cocked. “And those are just the murders you know about.”

Their arms all trembled so bad I almost felt sorry.

Almost.

“Take another step and I’ll shoot,” one warned me.

“Right. Sure.” I took another step forward and held out my arms. I was ready for the painful punch of the bullet. It would feel refreshing after so many years without a proper attempt on my life.

The gun fired. I waited. I waited for far too many seconds, before my head turned to follow the bullet’s trail.

If this was the intended target or not, I felt the pain hit me harder than any bullet. More than a freight train. More than a ton of bricks or the impact of cement beneath a building. More than the shock of a toaster in a bathtub or a knife to the skull or a trash compactor or a steam roller or a medieval torture pit or any sort of death device that could have killed me had I not been invincible. For that horrible bullet—that awful, terrible, dreadful bullet—hit the heart of my lifelong companion.

I watched in horror as my beloved cat fell to the ground—dead as a doornail. Dead—as August and Antonio and all the others were. Dead—as my Adam was.

I killed them. I slaughtered the four officers in a blind rage.

Then I fell to the ground and wept. I wept bitter, hot tears that stained the pavement and burned like acid to the touch. So much pain… when would it end? When?

I had killed millions. I had endured torture for centuries… and this God that everyone loved so dearly never thought it good enough to end my suffering. Would I stay on this water soaked rock until it burnt out? Or would….

I picked up the gun in a trembling hand. Could I finally put an end to it? Had this finally been the sign that it was over? With Apex dead… would I finally be free to go back to the garden?

It was as though I could feel the call of Eden above my head—a solid warmth brushing through my hair and kissing my forehead. After all this time… I was finally going home.

I cocked the gun a final time. In a cold fist with white fingers, I held that gun up to my temple.

I took a breath to steady myself. “Please,” I spoke to the alley. “Please… let this be the end.”

The gun fired.

I woke, hours later, lying on the blood soaked cement of the alley—a dead cat and six bodies of men strewn around me. Still far from the garden, and still very much alive.