Just Another Cold Night..

Owen leaned back on the "Dirtty Beeeerz Malt Liquor" billboard. With a heavy sigh, he pulled out his blue plastic box of home made cigarettes and personalized silver lighter. Owen didn't start smoking because he thought it was "cool," but rather because he didn't really have the energy to jump from rooftop to rooftop every night with little to no sleep. And since he was who he now was, Owen thought it best to steer clear of coffee shops in his ripped gray hoodie and tattered jeans. He didn't care about his torn shoes, they were Chuck Taylor Converse All-Stars. They were common enough that he didn't need to hide them.

Owen popped a cigarette into his mouth and lit it. He tilted his sunglasses up so that he could see the cherry of the cigarette, making sure it was lit. Owen breathed in deeply, feeling the nicotine fill his lungs and give him some quick, cheap energy. He hated it. But he loved it. Owen sucked down the cigarette within 5 minutes and looked down into the streets.

It was an unusually quiet night for Owen. Earlier in the night, he stopped a couple of robberies and a possible rape. It was funny, he thought. Why do they continue to do it? He had been doing this "hero thing" for a little over a year, taking over where his master had left him.

Ah, Master. Owen often imagined his old master jumping from building to building, beating up loan sharks and tying rapists to stop signs...naked. He had been disgusted by them, and found some kind of hilarity leaving them tied to stop signs in the nude. Especially winter. Master often told Owen stories of how he would teach the rapists lessons in humility. "How brave is a man who needs to attack to for sex?" Owen's master would always say. Owen didn't see the humor in it. That is, until he met his first rapist.

He remembers the night like it was yesterday. Owen was jumping building to building when he looked into an alley and saw a man tossing a poor young boy around. Well, he wasn't that young. The smaller one was 23 years old, the larger one was 46. Owen dropped into the alley and made quick work of the violent 46 year old. And while the offender was laying, pantsless, in the alley, Owen thought about his master, took out his duct tape, and taped him to a one-way signpost. The 46 year old's manhood flapped in the cold December wind, and Owen chuckled.

Owen was chuckling when he noticed the sun coming up. He figured he could get a quick nap before work if he hurried home. He began running back when he heard sirens. Its never that easy, he thought...