done with a cause
a reaper's last visit · 03/12

Artful with precise location, a perched body upon the cafe's stool lurched forward. Reading. Browsing the news paper he fanned open. Its front page pressed with headlines that held no interest. Its inside, the creased page unfolded to seek keywords and a sign. One eye scanned to and fro like a digital reader. Scaling the inked markings until bold type leapt outward in three dimensions. ‘Famed Bay Area Novelist Found Dead at 58’, was his cue of a job gone correctly. The minor headline wasn’t enough to make the front page, pushing importance to the next best place. For those who received their news through the tube of television or digitally through digital devices, he made sure that a reach through smart phones, tablets, and open laptops, had the page pulled up. Front in center. Slowly occupants in the café had faces stuck on bewildered. Just to the table a feet from his own, a patron lifted his phone to the sky, then over to a passing barista, asking about the troubled WiFi connection.

This person was suddenly confused and moved from the table to seek out the next table's occupant. In a fury of confusion, the entire cafe, and their users of their devices started to mumble in unison. Working like the boards laced with parts mined from developing countries, zeros and ones dictating the programing that called for properly working functions, and he sat back flipping through the paper as semi-madness ensued. The gasps and awws released like a bus coming to hiss at a stop. Extending and echoing from every corner of the room. Fine tuned to lock into each sound, the same courtesy was extended to the murmuring whispers of laptops, mobile devices, and their tablets, digitizing echoes processing. He heard it all, spoke with them in a way that created a buzzing hiss in parts of his hearing. The magnitude at which articles and news clips managed to be brought front and center on browsers simultaneously, was a feat either to be proud or fearful of.

Details piqued the security of fear before it turned to an insatiable disgust. Overlooking the details on his own, words in black told the story of a middle aged unsuspecting and beloved writer among a community of literature bound people, being the subject of or closely held some involvement in illicit trafficking of young women. Details through investigative resources and combined efforts were the gist but the royal icing on its cake, came at the hands of who seemed unbothered by the display shared through the room. By his own hands, a face fell twisted with an impactful sending straight to the hell where ilk like his own never flourished. It wasn’t the moniker of Nathan that took the course of fulfilling a contract but the covert operations of the lurker tucked away in part of his shared consciousness

Scowling up by his arm being tapped, immediately a sight of the past blocked his temper from becoming a tested minefield going off. One after another, figments of three quieted shots burned through the exact air. Closing off its deafening cries as brain matter painted the walls and ceiling in a way that rivaled Picasso. In and out. Leaving the rest on an easy escape for the clean up come at the surprise of proof in the form of months of study. Taking the word of former survivors that managed to find their way to the surface and then in returned, aided by a wife's resources to find their way back upon their feat. Video entrusted upon a storage device and images splayed along the castle's flooring, was a scene embarked by exclusive context of one published authors muscled ways through networked influence. Rather than being the only one, the Web that had been woven wasn’t closed by his closing but only split further.

A never-ending splicing of people, places, and tools of power would continue down this road that even enforcers of the law had a difficult time nailing a permanent halt to. The chains of power was merely a symptom that funded a larger monster at its head. Taken it out by the neck was a task built for others if the attention was kept there. While advocates and those in place used footsteps to cover ground to save and build shelter of sorts along with the hands available to hold who either lived the life or had a way to guide out of it, there were the silent ghost figures to do the real dirty work. In an expose of sorts, the credit went in the wind as long as a different cycle commenced. For the adoration of money and that of a woman who by extension of like minded peers, bankrolled the effect of someone else's house and dominoes tumbling down. A pro's status was only as tainted as allowed, and by the parting of one eye, while patchwork kept one shield from the Cafe's lights, saw the ruckus erupt at both entrance to the exit.

Summoning the devices to reroute particular processes caused a flicker in his own mental capacities. Doing so at a level that was novice at best but with practice, what was deemed a fractured imperfection, would become a well oiled machine ability. His conscience was less than perfect and muddied by plight of part of his own doing and of factors that cause the bleak disruption in the first place. In the middle of information being passed, shared, and uploaded, the blink expression had a multitude of meanings. Diving deeper behind its surface was tangled webs of questions and actions brought on by those same questions. Sharpened sight lasered in on the dark words again with the given dedication of not leaving the most important information of the scene he left behind. Steps took him from moving in and out of sequence with what breathing to not breathe meant.

A road traveled many a times and had more mileage to cover. Possibly soon. Perhaps a month away. Whenever it came, whenever the call to wipe out a problem, he would be there. Fully prepared and aware of the consequences that sometimes never spared the meat of one's soul. His was soured and in being so, made the steps a little easier to walk. The whole bite less difficult to digest. And coat more fitting to wear. As the place was at best in disarray, he took his leave from the table. Newspaper opened on the creased page. A draft took it to the next page, as he sauntered through the disruption caused. An opening door was not only an exit from a frame of small and portable computers alike but the business who's occupants entrusted a place to accomplish tasks most done in the comfort of homes or offices. Mentally hacking closed up one loose end in a discreet departure. He tightened up on his steps, thudding across the sidewalk until a clearing was given to blend right in along the populous herding to their next location.


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