Obliged

And despite everything he told himself later, it was the sight of red on green that finally changed his mind.

Something grey and livid curled and uncurled inside of him as he gripped the cash in his bleeding palm, staring at it with pallid eyes and grinding teeth. In one or two naturally jittery movements, he looked away from his prize and shoved it into his front pocket. There was no backtracking from this point on, for – at that moment and no sooner – he had changed his fundamental morals, inhibitions and beliefs, all for the sake of fear-drenched greed. He could not be reasoned with.

The blood in this palm had become sticky and brown, a russet-cherry orgasm, dark and crimson and sluggish as it dribbled across his hand; the hand on an innocent bribed, an effortless criminal. The air around him felt thick and constricting, made even worse by the nearly-palpable evil musk of his suborners.

One would never assume that malevolent fangs and claws were a part of their demeanors. They were merely a trio of people – people and nothing more, for there was nothing more to say about them. They blended in. There lay not a single discernable hair of wickedness on their heads, and yet, in the comfort of an abandoned bathroom in the dead of midnight, they proudly wore their true colors on their chest.

The innocent victim glanced around the tiny room; peculiar, gruesome instruments adorned the floor; hunks and shards of mutilated men dotted every surface he could fathom; twin toilets, decrepit and gloomy, yawned to reveal a murky stew of brain matter and skull fragments. But the boy was not sickened, for it was his masterpiece, his unintentional epitome of guts and glory. The dollar in his front pocket told him this. The glaring face of George Washington, stained red-brown, told him everything he would ever wish to know.