It’s a taste. It doesn’t make me a monster. I keep it confined to the digital world.

Under no circumstances would I ever, ever act on it.

Not even if I went to a foreign country where such things are overlooked. Encouraged, even.

I was this way even as a boy. I’ve simply gotten older and they haven’t.

I would never use my work computer. My phone is encrypted.

Most of the members of those groups are like me, acting out a fantasy.

It’s harmless.

Never print out anything. Not even the stories.

I would’t tell anyone. Are you crazy?

You think New York is expensive until you go to any other city in the world. They are all expensive. London is the worst. It’s old, too. You don’t realize how old until you find yourself there without money.

Poor have lived in London for a long time, long as the city has been around. There are ways of doing things, a structure. It might look like chaos to an outsider, but there rules and laws in play, a strict hierarchy.

And like all laws, you never know what they are until you break them. By then it’s too late.

Damn. Gutshot.

I didn’t think he’d have the balls. I was sure he was just flashing the piece, making himself feel like a big man. Shows you what I know.

Bleeding bad. I can still move my legs, but it makes all the muscles hurt.

The flash, and then like a punch in the stomach. Everything inside me all turned to blood. Motherfucker. I didn’t think he’d have the balls.

I gotta get me a gun. I’ll cap his bullshit ass.

I gotta get me to a hospital, I guess.

I’m cold. Maybe I’ll rest here for a little bit.

Some smarty always flapping his gums about how there are bodies in the lake, how on a spring day just after the ice melts you can dive down and see ’em in the dead trees below the surface, skeletons wrapped in rotten cloth, trapped in the branches, waving like they’re still alive and want to be rescued. Hell, kids sometimes say bones wash up on the beach in the height of the summer season. One kid said a skull, but he wouldn’t show it to anyone.

Kids go missing every year in towns all over. This place is no different.

The city at night. Junkies, whores, a third shift worker done with the factory and looking for eggs and bacon to line his belly so he can curl into backwards sleep, the day outside unable to pierce his blanket-draped windows.

The rattle in the dumpster might be rats or men.

They share a common purpose, and even desperation, though if you are honest you must admit the rat is better equipped.

The man, though, possesses a wisdom that will only have value at the end of the world, an end he hopes for with vehement repetition.

A Mantra.

A prayer.