A/N: Hey everyone! This is my first story on so please give me some feedback. Constructive criticism is welcome. Enjoy!

Young, handsome policeman Paul Kelsey remembered sitting in the mud one day after school, with the rain on his head, and the kids who had pushed him laughing at him and pointing. One said to another that Kelsey was just some little Mary who liked men and didn't deserve to even be born. That had stung Kelsey the most. He had always been bullied, since he was small, and nice to everyone, and of course the bullies hated that. For whatever reason, bullies hated good things about people. So, they took it upon themselves to torment the poor Paul Kelsey, since he was good-looking, small, and smart, and didn't want trouble with anyone. So, Paul decided that he was going to end the abuse, right there in the mud.

As the bullies laughed, Paul got up. One asked him what the fuck he was thinking, and moved to push him back down. Paul just remembered feeling hate, his eyes hard, and he grabbed the bully's arm and just threw him down face-first into the mud. The others looked at Paul as if he wasn't of this world; they were shocked. Paul picked up a good-sized rock that was coming out of the rain-saturated earth nearby, and he brought it against the head of another bully so hard it split his skin, and he fell to the mud. The last held out his hands, begging for mercy, but of course Paul drove the rock right into his nose. Paul remembered crying on the inside as he brutalized the laughing, mocking, pathetic assholes who had tormented him for weeks, killing his chances of making any friends, since everyone else was afraid to talk to a boy who was marked by the "terrible threesome". Well, these kids were going to be lucky if they could even walk, let alone bother him ever again.

The rock went down on the hand of the first bully, and he shrieked as it cut his skin, causing blood to mix with rain. Paul picked up the bike belonging to one of the bullies, and he brought it down repeatedly on the first. He didn't stop until he thought he was dead, and then he stopped. He then kicked them. He kicked them all. They were all crying and bleeding, and wailing for their parents. Paul looked back on that day, and was horrified by what he had done to those bastards. Other kids had come over, and they were stunned. The bullies were all muddy and bloody and miserable. When Paul was finished, he just left, and he left knowing that he would never, ever let anyone fuck with his life again.

While he was horrified by his actions, even at his young age, he knew that the old him was dead. As he grew and matured into a man, he began to classify the characteristics of the old and new Paul Kelsey. The old Kelsey was nice, but weak. His ambitions were stunted by the pain inflicted on his mind and body by the "threesome" who, by the way, never bothered anyone again. They had tried, but they had gotten beat up again by kids who had witnessed Kelsey's example on that awful, rainy day. No one was afraid of them anymore, due to Paul's heroics.

Kelsey, meanwhile, resolved to never let anyone get in his way again. He excelled in everything he wanted. He developed into a handsome teenager, and any woman he desired, he got her, or else forgot about her. He never dwelled on anything. If he could obtain it, he did. If he couldn't, he cut it from his life, and the search for new goals began anew. Anyone who fucked with him either got a fist in his face, or got ignored entirely. His parents missed the nice, open, friendly Paul, and they mistrusted the ambitious, quiet new man that he had grown into. He kept everything inside now. If he lost a game of baseball, no amount of discussion could keep him from sitting alone in his room, brooding over his defeat, and nothing could keep him from playing 200 the next game, for no matter how long it took for him to win again.

When Kelsey joined the police force, those that knew him knew that he would not settle until he became police chief. Kelsey was an excellent patrolman. His arrest record was stunning. He was brutal on those that committed crimes; so brutal that he got a lawsuit brought against him by a criminal who had sustained a split skull after being assaulted by Kelsey's heavy flashlight. Kelsey did not care. His captain got him off the hook, since the criminal who had tasted the flashlight was a dealer, and had once dealt marijuana laced with rat poison to his niece, and it had nearly killed her. Kelsey was a detective in no time, and he had once taken on the legendary crime boss Marion by going after his lieutenant, Billy Sky. Kelsey ended up being shot six times while leaving his apartment for work, but of course Kelsey had not died. His desire to live kept him from dying. In fact, once Kelsey got well again, he trailed Sky to his favorite watering hole, and he emptied his Beretta clip into him as he stood chatting by a brunette's stool. After Sky lay riddled on the floor with his men gone out the back, the bartender lifted his head from behind the counter.

"Jesus Christ!" he said. "You know who the fuck who just shot?"

"I know who he was," Kelsey said.

"Well, Christ!"

Kelsey threw the spent clip out of his police issue, and slapped in another. He turned to the glowering men still seated in the dim bar, and he smirked at them. "What goes around comes around. If anyone here is Marion's fuck buddy, be sure to tell him the next time you're underneath him that, by killing his girlfriend Billy Sky, I have now made sergeant."

Some said that Kelsey was on a trip to the graveyard. Some said that Kelsey was soulless. Some said that he was not human. Whatever they said, they could never sum up what Paul Kelsey truly was. What he liked gave people hints: he enjoyed women, wine and his job, so long as he was always moving forward with it. He had refused a priest as he lay suffering in the hospital bed after Sky's men had pumped him full of slugs in front of his apartment.

"Why do you refuse me, my son?" the priest had asked.

"I'm not your son," Kelsey said. "And God is not my father."

"I'll pray for you."

"And I'll have sex for you."

Paul Kelsey had little friends, and even the ones he had, he never looked them up. He would go out, meet a woman, take her out a few times, take her home, and make long, passionate love to her. The women would fall in love with his cavalier outlook on life. He felt that he should share his philosophy on existence with someone, so it was usually with the woman he had just made love to.

"Why are you so alone?" Anne asked. "Don't you want kids?"

"Not really. I don't think they figure into what I want to do in life."

"What do you want to do?" Tonya asked, keeping a hand on his bare chest.

He shrugged. "Succeed."

"But, should success be the only thing you care about?" Julie asked.

"Yes, I think so. It is so important, since we only live once, and I want to make sure that I did everything possible to be the best I could."

"Don't you believe in the afterlife? Don't you believe that there is more to life than this earth, and its temporary pleasures and existence?" Cheryl asked. He had enjoyed her, since she was such a goddamn intellectual, and he enjoyed hearing her stuffy, highborn voice. It was so upper class.

"No. I believe in the here and now."

"What would happen if I killed you right now, and you never made police chief, or whatever you want to do?" Amy asked, climbing on top of his body. She put her hands on his throat. All he did was smirk smugly.

"Then I would die."

"When does it stop? This ambition?" Lisa asked.

"Never, really," Paul said. "I can't stand to lose, and if I stop moving, I lose."

"What will become of your success when you die?" Tammy asked. "Eventually, you'll die, you know."

"It'll fade out, probably."

"But isn't the pursuit of success a hopeless cause, then?" Sheila asked.

Kelsey shrugged. "Others go after hopeless causes, like when people dedicate their lives to Christ and all of that, never drinking or having sex, since they think that if they indulge in these behaviors, they will cause them to be impure in the eyes of the Lord or something. Or, others commit to hopeless causes, like when people run planes into buildings, thinking that it will put them in paradise with Allah and shit. Still others live lives of monotony, working silly desk jobs for thirty years, meaninglessly eating McDonalds night after night, getting fat and purposeless as their kids grow up, smoking marijuana behind their backs, and then expecting a free ride through college, while their parent's social security is given away to those who don't contribute to it. Then, the Christian, Muslim and middle-class slob alike will all die, and experience nothing. The Christian will find no Lord to hug after years of stifling chastity. The Muslim will find no Allah to walk with after running his plane into the Twin Towers. The middle-class slob will find no rest and enjoyment after years of work and boredom and lost dreams." Kelsey nodded to himself. "Yes, other people do stupid things as well."

"You're really thoughtful, you know," Kim said. "You have a lot of depth."

"People misunderstand me all the time," Kelsey said. "All I do is live. I have confidence in my life and direction, and it bothers people who don't."

"I love you," Dayna said.

"I'm sure you do."

Kelsey would often take individual women to the top of the Millard Towers building, whose skywalk was open late into the night, and he would take them up there when the moon was out, it's image shimmering across the restless Atlantic Ocean. He would show them Archgate City from the top, and they would hold his strong body, and he would sweep his arm toward the estates of Rockwell, and the factories of the West End, and the projects of Worton, and the condos of the southwest, and the magnificence of the miles and miles of highways and homes and triumph over nature that was America's largest city. "You have to wonder what life is like for everyone out there, because right now, we are above them. We are perfect."

"Perfect," she repeated.

"How many men are alone in bed, hoping for the company of a woman? How many men are cheating on their wives, while their children are sleeping peacefully in cozy beds? How many men are dreaming of being CEO's, or living rich in France, or playing pro Baseball and making crazy money, but they are stuck in the rut of the 9-5 grind, doomed to a life of middle- class obscurity and hopelessness, with nothing to look forward to but increased income taxes and countless burgers at fast food places?"

"I don't know," she said. "Lots."

"I will never be mediocre. I will never wish for anything. I either get it, or I move on, and not want it anymore." He shook his head, and he looked up at the moon as the summer night breeze rustled his hair. "I can touch that moon. We are so close."

"Let's do it," she said.

"Never be obscure. Get what you want out of life. Never be afraid to live. Don't be like the millions who sit prostate in pews, fearing a God who has no power beyond what they gave Him when they wrote the Bible. Never get caught in rush hour, sipping cold coffee as you anticipate another long day at the office. Let the zombies out there do it. Let them do it, and think that they are living life as they do it."

"I've never met anyone like you."

"That's a shame."

"How'd you get this way?"

Kelsey looked out onto his city with the idealistic eye of one not crushed by reality as of yet. He was young and strong and he knew nothing but success. He would never be pushed into the mud again, and if he allowed himself to be, he knew that he had lost his struggle against the world. "I just realized that life is not the Hell that everyone has made it out to be."

"What about the millions who are born mentally retarded? Or what about the millions who are born into poverty, and they die when they are only two years old? What sort of life can they expect? There has to be something more than this."

"There isn't."

She looked at him, keeping close to him. The city was all around, and when it wasn't city, it was the night sky, and the stars. "But how can you be so sure?"

"Life isn't fair. Those that are born paralyzed, retarded or whatever you want to call it, all they have been given is a shitty deal. Those that are born beautiful and smart are given a greater shot at life. That is just how things are."

She looked onto the world from the top, and she felt scared. "I don't know. That just seems so awful. It seems so unfair."

"Life is."

"There is a Heaven, where no one is paralyzed, and everyone has a fair shot at happiness," she said, adamant. "There has to be."

He grinned. He never felt more alive. "Now you understand the mind frame man was in when he invented God, and Heaven, and all of that. It was man's way of giving the peasant hope when he or she endlessly tilled the field under the brutal sun, caught up in a grind in which there was no escape, their only consolation coming from a well-intentioned lie of peace after death." He sighed, as if he felt sorry for them. "If only they knew that their infinite labor was the only life they could ever expect, they might have thrown down their plows, and gone off to some field and just made love for hours, finding some enjoyment while they lasted. But alas, they, like their counterparts today, are caught in the same grind, with the same lie giving them false hope. The priests and clergy today are definitely well intentioned. I'll never deny them that."

"Maybe those in Heaven are looking on you, and lamenting on how misled you are," she said.

"Maybe," he said. "But I am alive now, and that is all that is important."

"Hold me," she said. He did, and they stood together on Millard Towers, and if they could both freeze time, and keep their perfection together forever, they would. However, they couldn't, and they eventually got out from under the stars, and went back down to the streets, with everyone else in the world.

When Paul Kelsey was gunned down again, this time with all of the shots hitting him in the head, he was missed by those who knew him, and not given a third or fourth thought by those that didn't. His mother left a flower on his grave, but she didn't come back for it, and it eventually withered and died. They were like his ideals that way, but if Kelsey had been asked about them the minute before his death, he would have said that they would have lived forever. He was aware of his mortality, but he had never thought about it that much, at least in a sense that he and his ideals would die on the same day.

God was merciful at having him die young. Kelsey could have lived past his fifties, having never reached the office of police chief, and having prostituted himself to the daily grind that he railed against. Instead, he died at the height of his confidence in himself, and he never saw the days approaching when he would sit, alone in a recliner, his only companion a warm beer. He would sit and recall the memories of when he had not been fat, and when he had stood on Millard Towers exhorting his philosophies on the young, willing ears of his beautiful women.

Paul Kelsey had been remarkable in his own way, but in fifty years, he was entirely forgotten.

A/N: What do you think? Review!