"I told you I’d find you, you son of a bitch."

"Wh… What? W-who are you?"

"You don’t remember me? Ha! Isn’t that ironic? If only it were the other way around. Oh, you would’ve really lucked out then."

A man was lying on the ground, grasping his head. There was blood running down his fingers. A man stood above him. He was holding some object. What object, you ask? I can’t tell you. I couldn’t see anything in that alley. It was getting dark, the buildings were blocking whatever light there was, and I wasn’t trying to pay attention to little details like that. We had finally found him, you know? The one we’d been searching for. Oh, I tell ya, I was scared out of my mind. Or was I? Maybe I was excited. Or maybe I was just really anxious about the entire situation. To be honest, I don’t really remember.

Anyways, we had finally found our man. It wasn’t too hard. A bit of asking questions here… A bit of snooping around there… In a city this messed up, a little bit of cash can get you far. Nah, it wasn’t hard at all. Nobody cared what we were doing. They were all hiding in their homes, too scared to come out. As long as the questions we asked didn’t relate to them, they were glad to help us. I guess they were willing to do anything to get us out of their hair. And to be fair, it’s not like what we were doing was completely unwarranted. We had been betrayed. We deserved some revenge. Actually, this is all beside the point. Let me get back to the story. What were we talking about? Oh yeah, some guys in a dark alley.

The man was on the ground, holding his head tightly. There was blood dripping down his fingers. His skull had been bashed in pretty hard. To be honest, I was surprised that he was still conscious. I guess he was pretty dizzy, because it didn’t look like he knew where he was. He looked around for a few seconds, and as soon as he saw the man with a weapon standing above him, he bolted. Well, “bolted” is kind of an overstatement. What I meant to say was that he picked himself up - slowly, I might add - and stumbled a few feet before falling back down. The blood was really coming out of his head by then. It was kind of hard to see, given all the rain that was washing it away. Oh yeah, it was raining pretty hard. Did I already tell you that?

The man tried to get up again, but he was down for good this time. The guy who had been standing above him slowly walked towards him. He had a grin on his face. He seemed to be enjoying this a bit too much. Me? I was scared out of my mind. Or was I? Maybe I was excited. Wait, did I already mention this? Anyways, the man on the ground was definitely unconscious by now. The man with the weapon stood over him for a few seconds. He just stood there, staring at him. I wish I could tell you what he was thinking, but even I don’t know. Nobody knows what goes on in that crazy bastard’s head. He stood over him for a few seconds, and then he went off. He swung the object at the guy’s head. I heard a crack. He did it again. I heard more cracks. He kept doing it; more times than was necessary. Finally, after his little rampage, he was done. He was still standing over the man – well, dead guy now – and was breathing heavily. He turned to me and said something. Damn it, what was it that he said? Oh yeah, I remember now.

We were all in a small room. I think it was a basement or something. There was only one light; a little bulb hanging on a long wire in the middle of the room. There was a small wooden table directly beneath it. Everyone was gathered to figure out our next move. We decided that it’d be best to suit up for war. We knew the other guys were doing the same thing, and we weren’t about to let them win. We all threw our money on the table and counted the total. We must have had five thousand dollars there. Actually, maybe it was five hundred. I’m not too sure.

There were a bunch of people in the street. This wouldn’t be too hard. Oh wait, what am I talking about? Sorry, I skipped a part. We all decided that it was best to lay low. There was no reason to draw attention to ourselves at this point, so we agreed to just act normal and not raise any suspicions. A few guys took most of the money and said that they would handle the financial part for us. Things were getting rough, and we felt like we might need some firepower to finally end this thing. Some of the guys were against giving up their money, but I’ve gotta be honest; I was glad to do so. I can never keep track of my money. I emptied out my wallet and gave them everything I had. See, look. Oh, wow, turns out I’ve got some twenties in here. I guess I didn’t give them everything I had after all. Whatever; I’m sure they had enough.

Our meeting ended and we left the room. We were leaving in small groups when we saw a large crowd gathered in the middle of the street. We knew that this was a good opportunity for us. The guy I was walking with randomly stopped and pointed at a guy walking away from the crowd. He said we needed to follow him. And so we did.