And they ask me: why do you like to break things? Why do you desire to foment chaos? To spread damage? To bring about misfortune?

And to them I say: What is misfortune but the wrong view of randomness? On what side of your goals do these conditions lie?

To expect good luck is to invite despair. To believe in fate is to swear by dreams. You lie to yourself with good nothings and set boundaries in the hopes that the chips will fall where they may, preferably fair, but in your favor. And that is insanity in unfiltered form, when ignoring the fact that the sure thing of all living things is the end of that living.

So if the only absolute is death, then why quibble and whine about the nature of the finish line? What does it matter how and where and in which pretty place a soul meets its ruin? The petty desires of those everyday itches — to gain, to prosper, to purchase, to copulate, to explore — come into conflict with another, and now we have a fight on our hands, a truly interesting circumstance, unburdened by mistaken ideas about right and wrong and lucky draws.

Oh, but you say moral relativism is evil. Evil! As if there exists in the flimsy rules of society, the delusions of religion, or the ambiguity of God the universal measuring stick for virtuous behavior.

We (and by "we" I mean "they") live in the same way as an exchange between two rival wolves, between them transmitting a wordless conversation — Do I kill you? Or will you kill me? — overlayed with danger, yes, but undergirded with intent. In that moment, in every crucial breath, the same question of possibility is asked, regardless of petty morals.

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Would you save a drowning man from an ocean, knowing they would only jump off the docks to try again? Would you deprive him of freedom, tying him down to succumb to the madness of inaction? Or would you teach him how to swim, how to keep himself afloat among the primordial forces conspiring to sink him, to rob him of heat, to sic upon him teeth and stingers and suckers and blood?

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A teenage boy flees into the night, watching his house burn behind him, his family and wealth and bloodline extinguished like a match smothered in mud. A tragedy, a difficult situation, a period of turmoil…but what would have become of him otherwise, if it wasn’t for me? He would have just been another spoiled brat among thousands of other spoiled brats, existing putridly soft, untested by the rigors of reality-hard competition.

All right, maybe that last part was a little fibby. But don’t make the mistake of letting one little fallacy compromise the entire truth. I may not have entirely planned this for his well-being, nor his state of mind. His benefits from his losses might just be byproducts in the grand experiments I run every day in this grimy city, in this imperfect world. I just want to see where the finish line is, and how it comes to be drawn in the sand.

Do I kill you? Or will you kill me?

Are you entertained yet? I hope to be.

If the boy could see me now, he’d see me smiling. Thinking of juicier plans. I do not seek utter annihilation for him. I believe in fighting chances. He may hate me for this — hate charged with the heat of a thousand suns — and I have factored this loathing into all the decisions I have made.

Oh, well…on to the next thing. The next life to destroy.