The first time is an accident, a cheap thrill. That’s what he’ll say. No one ever asks anyway. He stands perplexed a statue fixed at the monument of his crime.

Cargo blinks a drowning man coming up for air. His fingers twitch around the handle of his ill-gotten weapon. The knife clatters to the pavement.

Blood rests on his tongue, a swift corrosion eating away at coherence.

A different high, more like a new low. This cannot be escaped.

He wets his lips. The essence of iron resting like shards of splintered wood in his throat.

Cold calculation that had earlier steeled his resolve and gripped him fled. The taste of blood lingered like Earl gray after a long sip in his mouth is all that remained. Cargo is still seeing red, specks of DNA are trapped on his glasses, bugs in a spiders web.

Annoying. He shakes his head. Evidence to the event that has just transpired surrounds him, from the visible, to the itch under his skin that he just can’t shake out.

Cargo carefully maneuvers the glasses off his face. His hands tremble slightly with each swipe of the cloth. The surface of the glass just won’t wipe clean. Imperfection stares back of him as he desperately runs the rag over the cracks. Good thing I brought a spare.

He blinks and looks away and slips the broken glass into his coat and pulls out the case. The world blurs and the breath he takes is shaky as his hands. Cargo’s eyes catch again on the knife discarded on the ground. The knife, which suffers from much the same fate as the rest of him, the steel shining weakly under flakes of rust brown. Dirty.

Previously, the blade had shone, glistening a bright silver against the backdrop of an inky morning. His attacker's drab clothing offering little protection against the sharp blade.

It was a small matter with his training to take the thing from the figure, now on the ground looking like a bad excuse for medium rare steak. Not much of a struggle when from the looks of it the meat came tenderized. They hadn’t been trying very hard if this was all they sent to face him. Pitiful.

Once, when he was younger, Cargo had read that to allow for the survival of the plant a few limbs needed to be trimmed off. That’s what he’s doing trimming the garden of the world.

Weeding out the weak giving allotment to the strong. Aunt V. had ruffled his hair and called him cute when he’d informed her. All in a day's business. He wonders if she’d do the same now.

The resistance of the corpse to his blade at first was mildly irritating. No, he’s twisted, warped like a tree growing up against the fence of society. And Cargo? Cargo had set him free. Had taken away the tedious doldrums of his daily life and purified the air he might have otherwise consumed, emptied the space he would have wasted. Really he ought to be thanked.

He bends down to search the man's pockets, snags the wallet. Obviously not a stamped. Casually he rights himself, and adjusts the bag at his shoulder. His knuckles are white where he grips the bag strap the dirty gloves are shoved in the bottom of the satchel. That’s fine it’s all going fine. Nothing to worry about.

Footsteps sound from the front of the alley!

He jumps, startled and freezes tucking the knife behind his back like a sheepish schoolboy.

Because standing in front of a corpse and trying to hide it is going to make him less guilty looking. Cargo’s heart stutters a beat. His palms grow clammy around the straps. Quaking, he clasps them together. Frame tense as a spring, he stares at the knife.

 The footsteps recede and he learns to breathe again. Cargo relaxes his shoulders, adjusts the strap of his bag one more time and swoops down to grab the blade and tucks the knife away with the gloves and leaves.