Death's Reckoning by Will Molinar Page B

southeast side of town. It was near an old cemetery.
    The building was a shared structure. It had the loose affiliation of a shanty town as some people called it. It was two stories tall with a flat roof. On the roof was a collection of tents and haphazard lean-tos to keep off the inclement weather.
    The awakening ghoul stayed on the other side of the street, watching the man crawl up the stairs. He could see him through a breach in the stone wall, crumbled masonry lying about in a pile on either side of the street, and the man stood on the edge of the roof, to relieve himself.
    The man wobbled back and forth on his feet, blind drunk. Giorgio thought he might pitch off the edge and fall to his death, robbing him of his personal kill. But then the fool finished and stumbled to a clump of blankets. He fell to his knees before unconsciousness claimed him.
    Giorgio waited, listening to the sounds of the night, the chirping of crickets, the breeze rustling leaves. So calm and so peaceful.
    He could sense the warm bodies in the building, felt the pulse of their hearts, smelled their stink. These were his people though he’d been lucky enough to escape their woeful life with an honest trade. The Thieves Guild had given him a skill set that others coveted, given him a different way to live. The thieves had worked for their necessities.
    Now it was gone. The merchants took it from him, dismantled the thieves’ way of life. They were the true power in the city. He reached inside his cloak and thumbed the merchants’ guild insignia Cutter gave him to influence the dock masters. They’d listened to him, used him, and threw him away when the canon fired. All his hate, all the rage siphoned from the arena bubbled up within.
    The entrance of the building smelled as bad as it looked. Feces and urine spread in equal measure along the walls. The stink didn’t bother him in the least. People, no more than motionless lumps with ratty blankets covering them, lay on the floor.
    They snored and shifted as he stepped over them then. He walked up the lone stairway, a wooden, crooked makeshift construction that couldn’t have been a part of the original design. It hugged the shattered wall. Someone had written some indecipherable scrawl on one section in an unrecognizable language.
    The roof was colder than it appeared. A tar like substance that felt like pebbles and viscera mixed in equal measure spread in loose patches about the surface. Tents flaps snapped in rhythm to the wind. The clouds were thin, allowing moonlight to illuminate the scene. It was gorgeous. The scattered masonry, the slumped bodies, the glistening light, all that entropy combined to stir his ghoulish heart. This was the point of life: to end.
    A groan alerted him, and Giorgio tensed, but the man was asleep. Perhaps a nightmare stirred him. Perhaps some physical condition caused him pain during sleep. Part of Giorgio’s remaining humanity went out to these people. They hadn’t been lucky enough to be born with quick fingers and light feet.
    Doubt filled his mind on the job at hand. The hate, rage, and hunger abated for a moment. This man was vile. The world would be a better place without his continued existence, but there was better prey. Men more worthy of his time and coming death, men who deserved it more, to be sucked dry and left hollow.
    He almost turned, but the man cried out in his sleep from across the roof. It was too much. The anticipation over the last few days, the connection to his beating soul, the desire to have that energy, wicked though it was, overwhelmed his willpower. The man had accosted women, lied, cheated for money, yet he lived in these squalid conditions even though he could afford better. None of it made sense.
    This waste of humanity should suffer for his apathy. Enough was enough. Giorgio walked over to him. The slob’s feet were exposed under the ragged blanket. His untended nails looked scratchy and diseased. His face was more horrid up