The Cynic

Prologue

The rain fell from the sky in droves, as if someone had set up a system of fire hoses over the city and set them to full blast. A solitary figure walks in the rain.

He limps on one leg and his breath comes in short huffs, as if his exertion was such that it took every effort he had to force his legs to move. He was blatantly close to death. His face was pale and stretched over the bones in his face like a latex mask. It was all the observer could do to notice the youth of this individual. He was in his teens, but he looked in his eighties.

He burst forth into the police station, water dripping endlessly from his overcoat.

“I am a dead man. A walking dead man. And it was my school that killed me!” he proclaimed weakly to the various clientele and personnel of the station, where he promptly dropped to the floor, unconscious.