“Want to beg for your life,” the homicidal man asked the Monk.
The Monk remained cross-legged in his domicile, unresponsive, his eyes closed, the expression upon his ageless face serene.
“Okay then.”
The homicidal man struck him down, took the Monk’s remains to his at-home lab, made him into one power pill, and consumed this pill with water.
“Here I come, world.” He was now powerful enough to kill for eternity, undetected.
Time for another victim. This time a woman. The cold, dark alley was ideal. But the woman he lay in wait for didn’t appear, though he knew her routine like the feel of his nighttime pillow. A man appeared, bypassed him, oblivious. The homicidal man went home. Chose a parking garage and tried again. Intended victim caught a stroke of luck, changed course. Instead the same man, half in the shadows, appeared.
Am I being watched, the homicidal thief thought, his face sweat-slicked, his heartbeat on a steady uptick. He slipped into the night, once again undetected.
Chose an alley again. Whoever showed up would be his victim, woman or man, but he hoped for the woman. No such luck. The same man, again.
The man bypassed him, the thief screamed out in a rage, charged at him with his knife, tackled him onto the cold concrete.
“No, please, please!” the man begged as the homicidal thief raised the knife. He saw…
Dark eyes. A weary, prematurely lined face. A deeply receded hairline. And enough fear in the man’s wet gaze to drown all the armies of ancient Rome.
The homicidal man’s heart-tightened, the knife fell from his grip, and he clenched his chest with one hand, leaning sideways until he fell onto the wet gravel, dying.
He didn’t notice his intended victim — didn’t notice that it was the same woman he’d intended to kill — run off, but instead the same monk he’d struck down, now in the dark alley with him. His red robe, his crossed-legs, his bald head, his ageless face, his closed eyes. The Monk’s eyes slid open then, and bore deep into the eyes of the dying, homicidal man.
The force of the Monk’s gaze hit with a power a million times greater than what had hurt the homicidal man’s heart, burned him total from within, purified him, then merged with him.
All was different.
All was the same…
