A man stood alone,smoking a cigarette a few feet away from a pool of vomit and another former man,who lay in a pool of his own blood.

As Joe inhaled the smoke, allowing the nicotine tinged fumes to burn away the unpleasant taste in his mouth, he stole a glance at the man on the floor. A man who had shared his name. A man with a family to support. A man who would no longer go back to enjoy a warm hug from his wife or a wet kiss on his cheek from his young son. Quite pathetic if you thought about why he had thrown it all away.

A few hundred thousand dollars. That was all it took to tempt a man into gambling with his own life. The man's name was Joseph Fitzgerald. He was a nobody. Just a random accountant. One who could be trusted to make money disappear from the pesky feds and then reappear almost magically in the right accounts. He was quite a magician when one thought about it. He'd just gotten a bit too greedy. He wanted too much, too quickly. Now, he lay dead. Quite a modern day Icarus. One fateful decision to fly too close to the sun and he was nothing but a red blot on the floor.

Joe understood the value of decisions. Hell, even his 'nick name' was the result of one poor drunken choice. He had been young and foolish when he suddenly realized that the name he had was not the best one for him. He had run down a list of poorly chosen names before he happened upon 'Sable_Tights' and now that was what everyone called him. It didn't matter that he hated it. It didn't matter that he had been 17 when he spent barely a week insisting on the name before realizing what a stupid cunt he sounded like. He was now Sable_Tights. Whether he liked it or not was irrelevant. 

He exhaled, slowly. Trying to blow a ring of smoke but failing miserably because of the gentle wind that was blowing slowly down the alleyway where he stood. He knew he should leave soon. It was only a matter of time before someone showed up and called the cops. His employers might be too powerful to be touched but Joe knew he wouldn't be spared if he could be nailed to a murder rap. 

Yet, he couldn't leave. Not just yet. He needed to stay just for a few more minutes. He'd just made another fateful decision after all, one that would hopefully have a better outcome than the previous one he had made. He'd decided to become a proper member of the line of work that his family had decided to forsake...ages ago. They had always been around but on the fringes, not doing much. Just living off the earnings of much better off friends. He knew he could have done the same thing. He had always thought that is what he would end up doing. Just be another leech.

His father had been one. Quite a gifted one at that. He could convince everyone that he was actually making an effort to contribute to the world but he was just a bit too happy with a sedentary lifestyle to ever contemplate doing anything else. Joe always saw through the lies his father said and he often wondered how the others, people infinitely more powerful than he ever thought he would be, could be hoodwinked. Maybe they knew. Maybe they just didn't care. He would never know.

It was a couple weeks after his eighteenth birthday that his father had keeled over. A heart attack,apparently. Now he was all alone in the big house. His father's friends would send him money from time to time, same as they had for his father. He could live quite comfortably off it. Hell, he could live quite lavishly with it. He'd done exactly that. Drinking, smoking, gambling and sleeping away the money away. He was content, or so he convinced himself for a couple of years.

Finally, he'd woken up from a night of drinking and partying with a girl draped all over him. As he walked over to the kitchen to make himself a cup of coffee, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. He looked the way he had always looked but he couldn't help but feel a sense of anger at his reflection. He did nothing to deserve this life he was leading. He realized at that moment, that he couldn't be just another leech. He had to contribute. He had his breakfast, roused his playmate and sent her home and then took a long shower before he walked over to the home/office of his father's oldest friend. A man who was the second in command in Brooklyn. A man who his father always spoke of with a great degree of warmth.

He remembered walking into the building and spotting quite a few familiar faces. Boys he had grown up with were now men. They 'earned' their own keep while he had been one step above a beggar. Not any longer. He remembered walking into the actual office. He had stood outside until the man called him inside. He had assumed that Joe was here for some more money and he offered apologies for his busy schedule before extending an envelope in his direction. He hesitated for a split second, knowing that the odds of coming back from this were not high.

"Nah, I have enough money. I came here to see if I could work for you"

His voice had come out a bit too high. Well, a LOT too high. Quite a high pitched shriek. Something a woman might utter when confronted with an arachnid. Not something a man would ever utter. As he stood there looking at anything but the man standing in front of him and silently cursing himself, he heard a soft laugh.

"Of course you can,kid! Just show up tomorrow."

That was all there was to it. He now worked for the mafia. He had practically skipped his way home. He was moving up in the world. Now he would show them all.

How wrong he was. How pathetically wrong he was. The work he had been given was nothing glamorous. Deja Vu, in addition to it's various criminal enterprises ran quite a few legitimate businesses. One of them was a small flower shop. He was put in there as a 'supervisor'  in case any trouble arose. What trouble could arise in a fucking flower shop, he would never know. Yet, he kept at it. He initially walked there daily, then drove there daily, sat there at the shop doing what little he could do to help the horticulturists. Finally, once he was done, he would collect the Family's share of the collection for the day and then go to the HQ and turn it in. He usually went right home but sometimes he would stick around for a beer with fellow associates. It was one of the most irritating experiences in his life, listening to them talk about all the stuff they were doing. Shaking down business, running brothels, robbing banks when the most excitement he had was when the Godmother had come into the shop to buy a few flowers. He kept at it,though. Probably the first thing he had persisted in. 

It was one of these days when he reached the HQ when he heard raised voices in the corridor. This was the first time he had seen the Godmother angry. Quite sight to remember. Gone was the woman who sniffed the flowers at the shop and graciously thanked the pseudo owners. She was the Boss of a large organization now and she was in the process of screaming at her Right Hand.

"Three hundred dollars just don't disappear! I want the bastard found! I want him dead!"

Joe sidled up to another associate who stood there, seemingly not sure what to do. When asked, he informed Joe about an accountant...some Mick accountant who had run off with the Boss's money. As he listened to it,Joe couldn't help but feel a warmth spreading through him. This was his break. This was what he had to do to get ahead in life. Once he found the little bastard and killed him, he would get something better to do. 

He didn't return home that night. He went to the home of the accountant and kept an eye on it. He knew Mr. Fitzgerald would want to make sure his family was intact and maybe he would come back. Maybe he missed them. Maybe he left his favorite pair of pants behind. Joe didn't care. He wanted him to come back. He wanted him to come back so badly. This was the only lead he had.He got back at the crack of dawn for a quick shower and a change of clothes and to retrieve his father's old gun. A work of art, the gun had been handed down for quite a few generations. As he took it in his hand, feeling the cold weight in his hands for the first time, he felt a sudden surge a adrenaline that threatened to make him drop the gun to the floor. He swore, cursing himself for being such a little girl and then shoved the gun into his waistband before going to his 'day job'.

He hardly came back home for a week after. He spent his days catching a few hours of sleep and 'supervising' and he spent his nights prowling the streets around the Fitzgerald home. He was on verge of despair, sure that the bastard wasn't coming home, when all of a sudden he spotted a slight man standing opposite the home. There was something about the way he looked at the home that convinced Joe that he had found the runaway accountant. As he turned to leave, Joe followed him.

He followed him right across town as the accountant got into a taxi and Joe followed him in his car. Finally, he got out of the taxi and walked into a small dilapidated apartment building. Joe stood outside, waiting until he saw the lights come on in a third floor window. So....that was where the bastard was hiding. As the taxi trundled past him, Joe got out of the car and stealthily made his way to the right home. As he drew his gun, he realized that the gun was probably a bit too loud for this setting. He decided to go with a knife instead. He drew his old hunting knife, took a deep breath which showed him just how nervous he was and he kicked the rotting door down. 

The first thing he saw was the slight accountant sitting on a mattress and lighting a cigarette. The moment he saw Joe, he jumped to his feet and almost instantly started to beg for mercy but suddenly he seemed to see something in Joe's face. He punched him in the face, quickly and forcefully and bolted. 

Joe fell back as he tasted his own blood. The salty, metallic taste seemed so alien to him. He was dazed for a brief moment before he gathered himself and ran after his quarry. As he exited the building, he saw that the little thief was running into an alleyway. Joe proceeded to draw his father's gun and run after him. He felt the adrenaline threatening to overpower him but the thought of never having to listen to a forlorn young man thinking about how many roses would woo his amour was all that helped him keep his dead. 

He stood as steadily as he could before taking aim at the rapidly disappearing back and shot. The recoil surprised him. He should have practiced a couple of times. He cursed before taking aim again and shot again. This time, maybe it was fate, maybe it was a guardian angel but he hit. The middle aged accountant went down in a pile and a rapidly spreading red spot appeared on his back. Joe raced to his side and once he saw that he had done his job, he rapidly felt the desire to empty the contents of his stomach. He took a couple steps, dropped his gun to the floor, uncaring if he damaged it before throwing up violently. He swore loudly, cursing himself for thinking a knife would have done the job and for being such a shitty shot. Then he cursed some more. He cursed his father for not showing him any other way of life, he cursed the gods for being such heartless bastards and mostly he cursed the man who lay dead for being a greedy cunt.

He had taken a life now and there was no going back. He needed a smoke. He needed to calm himself. He removed a pack of cigarettes from his coat, extracted his lighter and lit himself a smoke.

....now that he had returned to the present and had literally let his entire life flash before his eyes, he felt calm. Oddly calm. Maybe even a bit too calm. He could feel a sense of clarity. This is what he was meant to do. He wasn't ready to be a sheep. He was a predator. He wanted to take what he wanted, consequences be damned. He let out a loud sigh and stamped out his cigarette and gingerly walked back to where he'd let the gun fall to the floor. He picked it up and shoved it back into the waistband of his pants before starting to walk back to the apartment. He needed to recover the money after all. Yet he felt he couldn't leave, so he turned around and addressed the dead man.

"Why the fuck did you have to be such a greedy cunt?"