Catharsis sat in the dark, pleased. The police had just finished a last sweep through the apartment.

The demon’s most recent roommate had been, honestly, spectacularly unsuccessful in his endeavour. Barely got his finger to the trigger of his weapon before he was stopped. A few injured, enough to face long jail time. The lesser fiends that hunted such low-hanging fruit would appreciate the fresh meat. Another demon might have assisted the man to a little more success. The sorrow of lives lost would provide many others new weaknesses to prey upon. A real tragedy leaving scores of bodies might sustain a company of fiends on the sorrow, the misery, and the fresh anger. The one ultimately responsible cared little for that.

No, Catharsis found the irony too delicious, a man moved to the point of mass murder discovering himself just as incompetent at that as his soul-numbing office job. Rage pointed nowhere and now unspent as well, left to turn on itself. If he was lucky, the man would burn out. If he wasn’t, the hate would consume him until it found some means, any means for pointless release. A last act of truly senseless villainy putting his teetering soul beyond the brink, consigned to torment.

But that too was little concern to the creature smiling in that darkened room. For a fiend, Catharsis was odd to not dwell so much on the very goal of their work, indeed the only reason fiends prowled the mortal realm at all. No, already darkling mind was looking ahead. The tenant before last, having committed suicide in that very bedroom whose corner the fiend occupied, delayed the arrival of the next victim for some time. Ah, but Catharsis remembered the despair when that one, with only the slightest nudge, realized there would be no one to read a suicide note if he wrote it.

This last almost-terrorist would be less than a hiccup to business as usual for the city apartment complex. Catharsis could expect a new room-mate soon this time. Which way would this one break? Despair and anger had grown more common. Catharsis felt greed, but even more jealousy the most fun to encourage. Well, it mattered little. Catharsis was secure in that apartment thanks to means no human would look for. The next one through that door would have weakness to exploit, same as they all did. A human in Catharsis position would be rubbing hands together with the gleeful anticipation.