[color=ed1c24][b]The Crimson Shade[/b][/color]

Time: 8:44 P.M.
Location: Housing District, Housing Sub-division, Mountain City

Night has fallen over the rocky city, and a cold, bitter wind blows across the streets of a small neighborhood, one of many, tucked into the folds of the great metal colossus. A creeping shadow walks the streets, unnoticed by the people. He is known as the Crimson Shade, and he is on the hunt for blood. 

Crimson Shade is an assassin garbed in black, and his target, a middle aged man, living quietly alone in a house to hide from the cops for his embezzlement and various money laundering schemes. Crimson’s client is a scorned ex-lover, vindictive towards a man so consumed by greed, that he married her simply for her money. She was heartbroken from the ordeal, and now, Crimson was going to return the favor. 
      
	Crimson Shade leered around to make certain no one was watching, and hopped gently over the backyard fence, barely ruffling the grass beneath him as he landed, despite carrying a variety of steel blades. He crouched, scanning his surroundings, and had acquired sight of the target past a closed window, whistling whilst washing some dishes. Perfect. Upon seeing that the coast was clear, Crimson sprinted quickly, yet softly, across the yard. He changed his tempo on the back porch, taking his time to walk slowly and deliberately across the wooden floor as he approached the back door. He nudged the handle ever so slightly, to determine that it was locked, a good defense against rookie burglars, but Crimson Shade had plenty of experience breaking into places.  From his coat he produced a Swiss Army knife, one of the tools being a lockpick he used to unlock the door. Now came the tricky part, opening the door without alerting the target. He slowly opened the door just enough for him to squeeze through, closing the door behind him. The target did not notice, and Crimson walked around to the back of the kitchen with impunity.

The stage was set, the Crimson Shade inching himself little by little towards the unsuspecting target, his muscles taunt with giddy anticipation, like a panther ready to pounce. He draws two daggers hidden in his sleeves as he gets ready to bury his steel into the flesh of the man. Then, with the speed of a ravenous cobra, Crimson Shade leapt forward, and with needlework precision, plunged his right dagger into the back of the man’s heart. All the surprised man could do was give a suffocated gasp as his blood waterfalled down his back from his vital wound. Before the man could utter another sound, Crimson Shade wrapped his left gloved hand around the man’s mouth, while his other hand thrust the blade further into the man’s heart. As he held the man, he whispered softly into his ears. “Shhhhhh.” As the man’s the life drained, he began slumping backwards, his descent slowed by the hands of the Shade. He stared into the gaze of the dying man’s eye. Though the Crimson Shade wore a black hat and a black cloth to cover his nose and mouth, he wanted the last thing the man to see to be his eyes, he wanted to stare straight into the depths of his soul, and see what kind of a man he truly was in his last moments. He said his parting words for the middle aged man as he laid him gently of the floor: “It’s all over now. Let the emptiness take all your pains away. Embrace sweet, blissful, oblivion.” Within a matter of seconds, the Crimsons Shade sees the life drain from his target’s eyes and feels the last beat of his ruptured heart. 

       Once the Crimson Shade completed his kill, his body jolted with aliveness, and he laughed with maniacal enthusiasm at the murder he just committed. The man was completely powerless before him, and he reveled in how flawlessly executed his plans and actions were. To him, it was a marriage of mathematical precision, and animalistic brutality. The Crimson Shade withdrew the bloodied knife from the man’s chest and gingerly licked the blade. He took his sweet time admiring the tingly tinge of iron and the viscosity of the red ichor. He then helped himself to the cash from the now deceased man’s wallet his front right pocket. It then occurred to the Crimson Shade, there was no use leaving a body just to lay there when it can make a statement. He leaned the body of the man against the sink, carved out what was left of the shriveled heart, and placed the tattered organ into the man’s pocket where the wallet used to be and place the wallet into the body’s chest cavity. Poetic Irony at its finest. 

The assassin began washing the blood off his knife using the available dish soups, humming a jaunty tune, unphased by the gravity of the acts he has just committed. “You know, if you had been more faithful to your wife, you would have died in a much …..[i] warmer [/i]embrace.” He jived coyly to the corpse. After he washed all traces of blood from his weapons and himself, he decided it was time to leave his signature calling card behind; a red rose. The rose would let the client, and indeed the whole world, know that it was the Crimson Shade, or the "Rose Killer" as they say, who killed him and immortalized his crude matter into a work of art. He stabbed the rose into the dead man’s chest cavity, the work was finally complete. The Crimson Shade grabbed whatever bleach was lying around the house and doused it all over the ground floor so as to cover up any genetic material, even dogs have trouble sniffing past it. 

With his tracks thoroughly covered, the Crimson Shade went back the way he came in, locked the door, and faded into the night like a phantom. He is going to return to his estate within Mountain City, and from there await the “news” of his handywork.