Impassive, he walked down the familiar stone path from the cottage to the beach. Unthinking and past feeling he descended the 39 steps and took unerring steps across a kelp strewn beach towards cold November waves. He hardly noticed the commotion coming down the beach, as his eyes fixed on the cascade of colors erupting on the horizon.

However, when the young woman stumbled into him, sending them both to the briny sand, he couldn’t help but notice. If he felt anything it was a slight perturbance at his designs being incidentally thwarted. She was mumbling, incoherent and frantic, not that he was trying to understand. Why care?

An approaching goon, really no better word for a heavy browed, muscled thug, gave him reason to care in the form of a shiny revolver, glinting orange in the dying day’s last light. He growled something, who knows what. The gun stayed pointed in his face as he got to his feet. And finally he felt. It had been some time, but he knew that feeling. The feeling was rage.