Michael looked down on the city from his open apartment window. The night air had a crispness to it that filled him with a strange, dark energy. Cars sped past his building, carrying hundreds of people to their lives... to wherever it was that humans with a social life would go to on a night like this. The noise from below wafted slowly up to his ears in muted tones. Nearby, someone had turned their stereo up.... Humanity.... He thought to himself. In all it's entirety, when it's all said and done, is just a quiet murmur in the grand scheme of things... to be lost and forgotten in the infinite realms of time.

A tall man, with short dark hair and deep blue eyes, Michael was a struggling artist and writer in a large city where the local shops and strips had an overabundance of people just like him... all struggling to have their works shown... approved... accepted by a public that would never know the depths of emotion and strain which pushed the brushes and pens in their hands. Jobs were slim for people in his line of work... for it took a certain breed of customer to truly appreciate the stylistic art which grew from these steaming streets.

Out of the corner of his mind, Michael could hear a light continual beating... slightly faster than his own heartbeat. He glanced down and noticed his hand tapping the window sill gently, yet repeatively, with his newest purchase. He watched as the dark metal reflected the streetlights... moving smoothly in his hand as it rapped out the steady cadence on the wooden sill. A breeze blew through the old screen and he turned his face to it, closing his eyes as he stopped his tapping. Tonight....

For once, there was a calmness to his mind... no images... no thoughts... nothing but the certainty of what was to be. The handgun felt cool and light in his hand as he turned away from the window and faced his small living area... canvases strewn around the floor. Some were blank, awaiting the next muse to strike him in the dawn hours of the night... others were alive with swirling colors and gashing shapes and forms... his madness... not many of those pieces ever sold. People didn't want to hang trauma on their walls... they wanted photo-realistic, or vague watercolor, depictions of peaceful countryside scenes... rustic hunting lodges... calm still-life's... loyal animal portraits... or... even simplistic geometric modern art... not the madness that leaked from his brushes.

His mind chuckled in it's freeing decision. Tonight, he would fly... over the stars.

Michael had always wanted to fly... held forever by the caressing wind... to leave it all behind... to leave himself behind. The handgun slowly raised in his arm... an unheard command issued by his own mind.

He stopped as a trash truck barreled through the street and shook the building. The noise... he was so TIRED of the NOISE and the LIGHTS and the HUSTLE and the PEOPLE! Always with him was the constant flurry of MOTION! He closed his eyes and swayed as an invisible string seemed to snap within him. All the rage and fury inside rushed to his throat and he screamed a deep roar. "NO MORE!"

He was panicked in that instant. Where had the calmness, felt only a second ago, disappeared to? It had left him... as all things surely did in this life. In it's place was the swirling chaos of his muse, demanding he pick up the brush and paint. "Not tonight." He gasped out loud, clutching his head in his hands.

The muse became angry... filling his head with images and thoughts. "NO!"

Michael roared again, dropped the handgun, and ran at the nearest wall... hurling himself into it. Landing on his side, he stared back at the blank section of wall... it seemed to laugh at his petty plight in it's stubborn, unmovable attitude. The rage built again. "Damn you!"

Standing, he attacked the now smirking wall... punching and kicking at it's unfeeling surfaces. The paint began to chip and peel... suddenly, his hand erupted in fiery agony as it disappeared between two of the wooden stud boards behind the sheetrock and plaster.

Michael laughed through clinched teeth... triumph shining in his eyes. "There! You see?! I WON! I won, damn you!"

The wall silently refused to acknowledge him as sounds of falling plaster chips faded from his mind.

"Still... you refuse to give in...." Michael looked around the room for his handgun.

"...I admire that in you... I really do...." Finding it, he chambered a bullet, flipped the safety switch, and leveled the sights at the wall.

"...but, you must learn that there is a time to stand... and a time to give in...."

A smile touched his dry lips. "Guess which this is."

He fired into the chipped plaster, sheetrock exploding and falling to the floor in all directions. He fired again and again and again... counting as he went. "Five! Six! Seven!! EIGHT!! NINE!!!"

...there were ten bullets in the clip... one left. He paused in place, gasping for air.

The gun continued to point at the crumbling wall, slightly shaking as adrenaline coursed through Michael's veins. Holes riddled the wall's surface of cracked paint, plaster, and sheetrock. Michael could see the internal stud boards within... somehow appearing as old, splintered ribs... ripped from within the confines of the wall into the coolness of the night air. Everything was suddenly so quiet as he gasped in a hungry breath. So quiet... as if the world itself held it's breath.

A pounding noise startled him. He could hear people running up the stairs... voices yelling... sirens off in the distance.

Another shaky breath was drawn in... they disappeared... the noise meant nothing anymore.... It couldn't hurt him.

so quiet....

Outside, two police cars pulled up in front of a building... alerted by calls of a man's screams and gunfire. The air was crisp tonight as the light from an upstairs apartment shown through an open window and onto the street far below. Cars, which would normally speed past without a second thought, were now stopped and re-routed around the block. Sirens and flashing lights began to contain the area. Voices within the building called out to a man to open his door. The jingling set of master keys fumbled as they tried to unlock a door. There was something ominous in the atmosphere... everything seemed so quiet....

so quiet....

*a breath*

so --

*BANG*