2005

Walking through desolate streets dragging the ragged shirt through the melted snow behind him, the Minotaur didn’t think too much about the last few weeks. Things had started nasty and turned steadily worse, but what the hell was he to do? That’s how things always went. No reason to reminisce.

His hand was dripping blood down the pantsleg of his torn but expensive suit, and he absentmindedly wiped it on the naked skin of his back as he passed an expensive window overflowing with bright colors and computer-enhanced bodies.

From behind bullet-proof and lobotomized plastic smiles mocked him with their serenity, and he couldn’t help smile himself at the irony of it all. Maybe if he’d seen it earlier or approached it differently. Or maybe he’d just read the whole situation wrong from the beginning and there wasn’t actually anything he could have done.

Damn. There went his mind again. Not thinking was a firm belief dithering quickly into a shaky promise, and from there a dark road lay ahead that would have him muttering to himself in the gutter before daybreak if he didn’t shut it down.

He stopped at the harbor edge watching his ragged breath hang in the air before him. The sweat that had rolled from his chest in a steady stream as he had let himself loose, had long since steamed off him in the freezing air and he could suddenly feel the freezing cold shutting down his nerves, making him drowsy as he came off his adrenaline high.

He floundered and sat down on the dirty bench that had seen so clean in the bright sunshine of a few weeks before. Nothing was ever what it seemed. All he could do now was wait.

ILLUSTRATION: Riqo in London photoblog