It was a sick moon with stars strewn across the sky like diamond teardrops. There were already crickets, and frogs, the scurrying of the newborn in the brush, and other sounds of dawn in springtime. Kenji wondered why a night like this could not be left to love.

Kenji covered the fifty yards to the body, taking in the moon, the stars, his life, the law, the jail cell, the publicity, the whole panoply of what-ifs that encompassed both capture and escape. He played it through his mind first one way then the other, careful to give equal time to the possibility of failure. It was bad luck to assume a win.

The photographer lay flat on his back in the middle of the road, his sport coat looking tattered. To Kenji’s horror, the body still moved; there were strange breathy gurgling sounds pouring through frothy blood that looked black in the moonlight. Oddly, or maybe it wasn’t odd for bohemian photographers, the man wore denim jeans and a white t-shirt sporting a heavy blood stain that in a well lighted photo would have made a dramatic statement.

The clip of his pistol was empty. He waited a moment and realized the wheezing and choking could go on quite some time. Obviously it was a lung shot that missed the heart. Immediately he knew that he had made a mistake, and he knew that to escape his mistake he needed to control his mind. Justice lay in his own consciousness, not in the sovereign state. Kenji would make his own justice. He walked away until the choking was a whisper.

This man’s death dragged on. Walking back, Kenji decided that he was strong enough to partake in this man’s death.

“Help.” The man was trying to talk. Looking down to find the camera Kenji couldn’t escape the sight of the seizing body, head thrown back, mouth gaping, “Help me.”

For whatever reason, he felt nothing. He yanked the camera over the man’s head, cursing as the photographer tried to push out the word ‘help’ through cups of blood.

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