2. While You Were Sleeping

Notes:

So I wrote this in the middle of the night and edited it later. The idea was to have him speaking to the children with music in the background, but I didn't feel lyrics would touch on what I wanted to say because the moment really is the only part in the entire story where Guy Baddington shows any kind of tenderness as himself, rather than as his alter ego, Papa Alphonse, which he's created to take care of the children. 

Note to Jesse: Piano. Don't care what else the fucking song has, so long as it has a piano in the background and symbols on the drums.

--------------------------------------------------(spoken word)

Science begins with a spark, ends with a release. Heralded by mechanics, the draw of the hammer, clicking as springs set, once, twice, the point of the hand, the follow through as the wrist aligns with the barrel, and the caress of the trigger. It's all too easy. The springs unlock, the hammer falls, and there you have science. It sets off the primer, ignites the powder, mounts the pressure behind the bullet and sends it down range in a cloud of burning chemicals, and it doesn't stop there. Physics are involved. Physics and biology. The skin parts, the bone gives way to the force, and it's on to the soft tissue. It expands as immense kinetic energy bleeds off into it, forcing it apart, drilling a channel through it, tearing it to shreds. The neurons don't even fire. The brain doesn't even know it's been bisected and then smashed against the walls which cradle it. And then thats it. It's done. A second has passed and in that second, a human life has been snuffed out with no great ceremony, save for the one unseen. Eons of biology, centuries of mechanics, decades of chemical research, all leading up to a mere second, rendering all of it moot. The big bang indeed.

But now I have you. The three of you, so innocent. I apologise now, for it's my intent to rob you of the very thing which I marvel at now as you sleep, though there was no question as to whether I'm the villain, was there? In return, I leave you the world and all the affection that I cannot give you. For you shall be loved by millions in place of me, and yet, I know already, it will never do.

I set you up for failure as I set you up for glory. C'est la vie.