Contradistinction

I've just learned something very interesting.  Something very interesting indeed.

Time to pay a visit to a good personal friend of mine.

Return

You may be wondering where I've been the past two weeks.  To be perfectly honest, I wish I could tell you.  Precious time has been wasted, slipping out of my hands into oblivion.  Simply put, I seem to be suffering a mild but of amnesia.

The last thing I remember is stalking the Target in a large city.  Her parents were talking animatedly about visiting the paternal grandparents, and she was walking between them, holding tightly onto both of their hands.  I couldn't help but think at that moment how safe she must feel, surrounded by her parents, unaware that the Hunter was stalking her.

...or so I thought.  As I began to quicken my approach, she suddenly stopped, whirled around, and glared at me.  I was overcome with grief in that moment; I felt as though I'd been punched in the heart (symbollically speaking, of course), and was forced to my knees even as I began to weep openly.  At this point, I was still roughly fifty feet from her, further than I'd been in our first encounter.

Everything else had stopped.  Completely.  Birds were suspended in mid-flight.  People had stopped in mid-step.  A ball was in the process of bouncing out in front of a car, a little boy chasing it into the street.  The car coming would never see the child around the large van that was parked along the side of the road.  In the opposite direction, a kid wearing a hooded sweatshirts had been paused mid-drag on a cigarette.

In the middle of all this, the Target approached me slowly.  My body was still convulsing with sobs, so great was the grief pounding down on every fiber of my being.  She crouched down to look me in the face, her head cocked.  She, too, looked as though she were going to cry.

"This is how She feels for all those people you killed."

She shook her head.  "You're only fueling the Knight's fire."

I'll be burned away like my victims, I finished in my head; I'd heard this speech before.

But she simply patted me on the head, murmured something unintelligible, and skipped back to her parents.  As soon as she grabbed their hands, time resumed:  the birds flew on, the kid in the hoodie continued smoking, and the driver clipped the poor child as he ran out to grab his ball.

I should have called it a day, but I didn't.  I was angry.  How dare she make me weep?  So I rushed her and grabbed ahold of her arm.

Then I blacked out.

I woke up several hours ago.  My head has been throbbing off and on, and I can't flex the fingers of my right hand without feeling pins and needles of pain all the way up my arm.

I believe I may be way over my head.

Sub-Mission Complete

Target 1 - Non-issue; parents died in car accident
Target 2 - Non-issue; family killed attempting to protect Target
Target 3 - Non-issue; family killed in housefire
Target 4 - Two parents (48 and 42) and one brother (20); eliminated
Target 5 - One parent (32); eliminated
Target 6 - Two parents (both 38) and boyfriend (16); eliminated
Target 7 - Non-issue; father killed in car accident, mother and brother dead of alcohol poisoning
Target 8 - Two parents (43 and 40) and three siblings (8, 10, and 17); eliminated
Target 9 - Non-issue; family killed attempting to protect Target
Target 10 - Non-issue; mother/brother murdered by father, father died in jail
Target 11 - One parent (40) and girlfriend (16); eliminated
Target 12 - Two parents (50 and 48), step-father (49), three siblings (16, 18, and 21), step-brother (12), and boyfriend (25); eliminated
Target 13 - Non-issue; genuinely uncaring parents
Target 14 - One parent (39); eliminated
Target 15 - Non-issue; genuinely uncaring parents
Target 16 - Two parents (both 35), two step-parents (36 and 40), one step-sister (16); eliminated
Target 17 - Two parents (47 and 38), one sibling (13); eliminated
Target 18 - One parent (42) and one sibling (15); eliminated
Target 19 - Two parents (54 and 56), two siblings (25 and 21); eliminated
Target 20 - One parent (58) and seven siblings (18, 21, 24, 28, 30, 32, and 34); eliminated
Target 21 - Non-issue; parents died in car accident, sibling taken to abusive foster home
Target 22 - Two parents (48 and 47); eliminated
Target 23 - One parent (49), one step-parent (50), one step-sibling (20); eliminated
Target 24 - Two parents (30 and 43), one sibling (5); eliminated
Target 25 - One parent (67), two siblings (25 and 26); eliminated
Target 26 - Non-issue; mother died in childbirth, father commited suicide after Target's death
Target 27 - Two parents (40 and 47); eliminated
Target 28 - Non-issue; family killed by Father (exposing incident)
Target 29 - Two parents (62 and 60), wife (25), child (2); eliminated
Target 30 - One parent (51), boyfriend (21), roommate (19); eliminated
Target 31 - Two parents (70 and 72), husband (32), two children (1 and 3); eliminated
Target 32 - Non-issue; parents died attempting to protect Target
Target 33 - One parent (34), sibling (14), boyfriend (15); eliminated
Target 34 - Two parents (46 and 49), two siblings (12 and 16); eliminated
Target 35 - One parent (53), one step-parent (50), sibling (23); eliminated
Target 36 - Two parents (57 and 51), two siblings (28 and 18), girlfriend (18); eliminated

As you can see, I've been busy.  I've been on the move since my last post, and am now posting from the home computer of Evangeline Reynolds, the last 'knight' candidate to be eliminated, and Target 36's girlfriend.  With that business out of the way, I can now focus on Target 37 more completely without worrying about some 'hero' recruited by her protector.