Okay, this is just a interesting one-shot I decided to write and, personally, I think it kicks ass. I may actually write a story about it later on, I like it that much. Anyway...it doesn't need much of a description besides this.

00

The Judge

The young man chuckled, shuffling through the candid photos in his hands. Perfect, every one of them perfect...yes, they belonged in his album. They were some of the best ones he had ever taken, he thought with a smile. Those darling children...nobody would ever see them like this again. He was, in esscence, their God, their entire world...yes, the day had been quite successful.

A soft pat on his door pulled him from his reverie, and he dropped the pictures in surprise. A visitor...who would be visiting at this hour? It was, after all...he looked at the digital clock hanging sadly on his wall. It was three o' fucking clock in the morning. Whoever it was, they had better have a damn good reason for being there, and disrupting the triumph and pleasure of his day's work. Bastards...but he couldn't afford to lose his 'nice neighbor' persona, not when he was not nearly finished or satisfied. With a sigh, he pasted a cheerful smile on his face and walked to the door. He never looked through the peep hole...what was the point? The neighborhood he lived in didn't need everyone to check their spy glass, and, besides, he liked to be surprised. He opened the door, and beamed at the shadows.

"Hello, how can I..." his vocie dropped down to nothing when he saw who stood outside his door. Fearfully, he clutched at his chest, his entire body shaking. No...it couldn't be...this creature couldn't be here for him. No...this creature of the ruby eyes and hair of sapphire blue couldn't be here for him. No, it wasn't possible. No amount of self reassurance was capable of calming him, however, and it was with shaking hands that he slammed the door in the calm, golden face of the creature. He locked the dead bolt, the chain lock, his four-thousand dollar lock and alarm system, and it was only when they were all being used that he breathed a simple sigh of relief. Thank god...that was almost too close. Now there was no way that that...thing could get inside his appartment. No way.

He nearly had a heart attack when he felt the heavy, gold hand on his shoulder.

"I take it, then, that you know why I am here, Mr. Andrews?"

He shook his head, watching as the creature drew a long bladed sword from his side, the metal gleaming in the soft, red light of his dark room, and Mr. Andrews whimpered, covering his head as he imagined the steel cutting through him. It wasn't his time, it wasn't his time...he had so much more to do!

"No! It isn't fair!" he cried, but it was if he had said nothing, for he heard the thing advance despite his protests. It reached out a hand to touch his shoulder again, to calm his mind, but he shook it off with a squeal, backing up quickly and tripping over boxes of photos and cameras. He scooted away from the feet of the creature, breathing quickly, trying desperately to buy time, any time, so that he could escape, or call for help. Anything but the fate this creature had for him.

"I know what you are, creature! Do you hear me? I know what you are!" he screamed, voice high and terrified, and he covered his head as the blade was raised. He prepared for the worst, but it did not come. Finally, he looked up through the windows of his trembling fingers.

The creature paused, sword raised in consideration as he looked at the terrified young man whimpering out his protests and his claims from his position on the floor. He probably thought his screams could be heard...he was wrong. Nobody would hear his last sounds, nobody would know of his death until early morning. He wanted mercy. He tightened his fingers around the handle as a blink of the past, a flash of his mistakes, and he considered lowering the sword, hearing his words. Showing mercy. He raised his arm higher. No, mercy would not do anyone any good. Mercy only made it more painful when the time came.

-

Laughter echoed throughout the alleyways of the streets of Atlantis, the laughter of a pure soul and a golden heart. It came nearer, closer to the creature, and it was like an actual living thing. He let it wash over him for a moment, breathed in the carefree sounds like he was a deaf child. If he was human, he supposed he would feel remorse about what he was about to do, but he felt nothing except cold fury and hatred. He was made to feel nothing, do nothing but he was supposed to do. He could do nothing but pass judgement.

Silently, he raised his sword as the laughter turned the corner.

-

He lowered his blade slowly, considering the young man's words. No mercy this time...but he was just as capable of humoring someone as the next thing. And, besides, he was running a few minutes early.

"Tell me then, Mr. Andrews, what you think you know about me? Speak quickly, for you are running out of time."

The man couldn't believe his luck. The creature was listening to him? Maybe, just maybe, he wasn't dead after all.

The man's lips trembled, but he spoke bravely. The creature wondered if he had let the children he abducted and raped for his own enjoyment speak so boldly before they met their fate.

"You are a soulless being, a dead thing. I have seen things like you before...those who cannot eat, sleep, or bleed, who cannot feel anything but the hatred they were created to feel. They are incapable of mercy.

-

The boy, for he couldn't be much more than twenty, came to a halt in front of the creature's blade, the laughter dying on his lips. His gray eyes widened, saddened and wise. He knew why he had come. The creature's arm froze, shook, seeing the innocent face beneath a fall of stark white curls. So young...but his creator told him this man had been judged guilty. He did not question his creator. Nonetheless, his body rebelled against the action he knew he must perform. Kill the boy, end his existence...these words were whispered across his mind.

"Are you going to kill me?" No matter what amount of bravery he tried to show, the boy's voice shook, and the creature's will diminished more, until his blade lowered, his weak arm not able to deliver the blow it should have. Let another pass judgement on this boy, for he could not.

He made to turn, to leave without another word or action, before he lost all of the rage he had been born into. He was surprised when he felt a light hand, a warm hand, thin and delicate, flutter hesitantly across his shoulder, and he heard the soft words of the boy brush him. Words spoken to him.

"Would you...would you like to have dinner with me, sir? Are you hungry?"

The creature turned to look at him in surprise, at the innocent boy who dared to laugh, and who risked looking at him like a man instead of a creature. He opened his mouth to answer, but his voice would not come. It had been so long since he had spoken to another...he didn't quite remember how. Surely words could not describe what he was feeling? Unsure, he simply leaned in, the gesture hesitant, and pressed his lips to the corner of the boy's mouth, wishing, wishing...he didn't know what he would wish for if he could, but he got the vague feeling that he would wish to die, to cease to exist. He couldn't explain it, not at all, this feeling of warmth in his normally cold body, a body crafted of metal turned to skin. Perhpas it was the fact that the boy never pulled away. Perhaps it was the lingering, barely noticable touch of heat that stayed on his lips. The warmth of a human. No, but humans were for killing...and yet here he was, accepting food he couldn't eat and wine he couldn't drink, from a boy who shouldn't still live. But somehow, he didn't think this boy deserved death.

-

The creature sighed and snapped the leg of the man easily as he tried to escape through the window of his apartment. Always escape...no one would accept death anymore, no matter what their crimes said. With a sound of mild exasperation, he pressed the heel of his boot on the column of his throat, watching as the man tried in vain to shift it. The creature could kill him easily with just a little more pressure...but no. This man was...amusing. There was no point to killing him yet.

"Not capable of mercy, you say? Perhaps not...what else can you say for one such as me?"

The man swallowed a shaky breath, tears forming in his eyes. The creature wanted to kill him simply for that...tears could not move him, and it was foolish that a human so corrupt and evil could think that tears would have any effect on him. Tears were a waste of salt and water, a pathetic human device that worked only on other humans, never on a creature like him.

"You are not capable of anything other than hate. You were created by God to serve man, but you went mad, your entire race, and you turned rabid. You shouldn't exist...you should have died."

The creature sighed, and twisted his heel slightly, feeling the flesh undreneath tear and squirm.

"Strike two, Mr. Andrews. You have one last chance to say something true."

-

"You were created by Erebus? Made of jewels and gold?" asked the boy, a young, tender little thing named Teshi Aminia, with a hand under his chin. He had quizzed the creature restlessly about his orgins, his life before, everything that could ever be learned, seeming to have an endless fasination with a creature who had been about to kill him moments before. It was puzzling to the creature...nobody other than his creator had ever wondered about him, other than trying to find a means of which to kill him. There were none, of course, but try they did regardless. Fools. Teshi, however, was different.

"That is correct, young one. Any more questions before I am forced to judge you?" The creatures voice was blank and resigned, but Teshi simply smiled at him.

"Sure, a few more things. Are you...are you sexless? I'm sorry to ask, but you seem like a young man to me."

"I am designed to appear and act like a human male of about twenty five. Anything else?"

"Yes...just one more thing and then you can terminate me, I suppose. Why do you judge? Do you even know the people who you eliminate? How can you judge someone you don't know?"

The creature opened its mouth, and paused, considering. To every other question, the creature simply answered the way he had been told. But this question, however...

"I don't know."

-

The man shifted away from him, gasping. One last chance...yes, at least now he knew he couldn't be wrong.

"I know something else about you. You cannot love."

The creature sighed, as saddened as someone like him could ever be. Incapable of love...no. He could love, perhaps deeper than anyone else ever could. Without another sound, he pulled the sword from his belt and touched the man lightly on the shoulder. As simple as that, his heart exploded, the obvious signs of a natural heart attack. Silently, he fell to the floor, dead and still. His time was over...and his doubt of the creature's ability to love had only made it come faster.

-

The creature looked at the body of Teshi in heartbroken horror. No...it could not be...but the knife wounds on his body cut through the assurances of the broken creature. It swallowed against the lump in its throat, tasting the cold metallic taste of liquid gold as the skin under the creature's fingertips cooled. Dead...his Teshi was dead.

He choked back a sob. The only person to ever see him as a tortured human instead of a creation of a madman, the only person he could ever love. His beloved Teshi...what had happened? Only two months together, two months of happiness, and it was like it had never been. Nobody but him remained to remember...but, oh, how he remembered...

-

The creature left the apartment silently, without regret or care of what he had done. Another worthless waste of space and air disposed of, as he had done forever. Another one gone from this earth...just like Teshi. The creature shook his head, and sighed as he slipped out of the apartment complex where Mr. Andrews lived. There was a time for remembering, a time for moaning over the creature's lost love...but it was not now.

He was, after all, running late for his next appointment.

00000

I don't know what this is, really. But it has potential, in my opinion...