There was screaming going on, coming from up ahead past the next intersection, and then gunshots, three of them, but Gary Benton kept walking straight forward. Nothing was going to stop him. A man came crashing out of a third story window and landed right in front of him, and he turned and walked around the tangled heap. Gary's limbs were pretty stiff, and he'd never been much of a runner, with his heart and all, but he was keeping a good pace, and he'd get there - oh yes, he'd get there.

A car was on fire, smoke billowing up from the body, flames licking the heated air, and Gary spotted a man across the intersection pointing a shotgun and shouting at an old woman in a powder blue dress.

"I'm tellin' you, Grandma, I don't wanna shoot - just get back now!" The old woman was leering, she swatted the barrels away from her just as the man pulled the trigger, and now they were wrestling. Gary didn't care who won, he just kept walking.

He stepped right over broken glass and a woman bleeding and gasping, unable to speak. An SUV blared past him until a delivery truck hit it right in the driver's side when it tried to swerve away and flipped it over. The delivery truck just continued barreling on down the street but a big bald man stepped awkwardly down from a stoop and went up to the SUV. He pulled open the front passenger door where a woman was screaming bloody mercy - the driver was already caved in and bleeding profusely. The big bald man simply pressed his meaty thumbs down the woman's throat and began pulling. Gary didn't stop, not even when a rifle bullet from an unknown location blew the bald head into meaty chunks. This didn't do the woman any good, the headless giant pulled her lower jaw clean off while taking a few more rounds in the back. Gary didn't look back - he was on a mission, a mission from... not God. More important than that.

Asshole Dave. Asshole Dave had a last name but Gary Benton didn't ever use it, at least not in his head. Asshole Dave had spent years making as big of a fat stinking mess as possible for Gary at every conceivable level in return for that flimsy little slip of weekly pay Gary needed to keep the lights on and the tap running. Asshole Dave who had once made Gary stay all night to reconcile the orders summary against the stock reports and then left the results sitting on his desk for two days before losing the damn thing and THEN telling Megan that Gary hadn't "gotten off his fat butt and gotten that report for Corporate yet". Oh, and what about when Gary's sister had made him that special bacon and whipped cream topped vanilla cake for his birthday - there were no cameras in the break room but that last piece he saved was not there an hour later and Asshole Dave's breath had smelled like bacon and heavy cream, oh yes it had. Asshole Dave had given him bad shipping labels more times than he could count, and always managed to blame it on the guys on the floor. Then there was the time Gary saw his phone buzzing from Asshole Dave's line, but when he picked it up it wasn't his sugarfloss and sunshine boss, no, it was a disgruntled customer who started off with "I was just on the line with a man who said you are the one I need to talk to," before going on an escalating tirade on exactly what he thought about their service - Gary wanted to just hang up on the guy, but he had ordered $27,000 worth of refrigerators, half of which had apparently arrived broken so Gary had to sit there, cheek in his hand and listen to it all. Asshole Dave, who hit on Gary's girlfriend at the company picnic, ordered him to do things he was already doing, pelted him with water balloons in the parking lot on a cold Spring morning as an "April Fool's joke", farted by his desk, bawled him out three times a week, and continually stole his stapler even though it was labeled "Gary's - Don't Take". Asshole Dave, mispronouncing his name on purpose, saying things like "Binton, make this grid look like we didn't overspend," or, "Banton, this fridge is so big, even your fat ass could fit in it," or, "Bonton, get Rhonda to get those freezer units inside before it rains" - Gary had tried to explain to him that the boys had spent the entire morning staging those hundreds of freezer units outside for the shipment happening <u>that</u> afternoon but Asshole Dave cut him off yelling, "If you're too lazy to get any work done around here, I'll do it!" as he stormed out of the office.

But all of that paled in comparison to the Big Day, Judgement Day, the Day of Days. Gary had been photocopying tax documents like nothing special was about to happen. He had had some heart problems here and there, and the chest pains had become more persistent so his doctor had put him on medication. Two pills turned to four turned to seven, but it seemed like it was getting better. His girlfriend had warned him about his diet but he told her he was doing exactly what the doc told him and everything would be fine. But suddenly, standing at the copier, everything was not fine. In fact, Gary had never felt more un-fine in his whole life. He felt hot and cold at the same time, and somehow very, very empty. His chest was constricted, he couldn't breathe, and one of his legs started giving out so that he had to lean on the copier to stay upright. He was terrified, like the whole world was gone from under his feet, like it had tilted and he was slipping away off its surface. He tried calling out, but couldn't make a sound. And there was Asshole Dave, on the phone, not thirty feet away, yelling at a salesman about some rewards program. Gary tried holding onto the copier, but his legs were gone and his arms weren't going to last long. The last thing he saw before he slid to the floor was Asshole Dave, in profile, looking slightly down, yelling and pointing in the air with his index finger. It was fifteen minutes before Shirley walked in and saw him lying there and started screaming, and by then, Gary was dead.

And now here he was. 628 Denue Ave., Lindel, OH 44842. He had seen the address on the pay stub every week. Now he only hoped Asshole Dave hadn't moved. The house was fairly big but rather shabby, with peeling clapboards and a porch covered in litter. There were two trucks parked outside, one he had never seen before, obviously broken down, but the other he recognized. Good, that meant Asshole Dave was home.

The sky had darkened on his trek and the first few droplets of water started coming down. Gary tried the front door but it was locked. He looked at the window looking onto the porch and then hefted one of the paint cans lying around right at it. The paint can bounced off, but then Gary found a brick and that did the trick. He lifted himself over the window frame and cut himself on the jagged edges, fluids now leaking out of the cuts in his skin. No blood, there was no blood left in him to bleed.

The lights were out inside, and what was left of the day's sunlight was barely coming through the windows, revealing junk and battered furniture, the dust and gloom washing everything in brown and gray. The place was a piece of shit. Now where was the Asshole?

He heard movement further in, and began walking in that direction. "Who's there?" he heard called out, in the voice he could never forget. Gary may have been grinning, but he remembered the leer on the face of the old woman on the street and was sure, sure that was how his face must look now.

The hallway turned up ahead, and just at that point Asshole Dave swung into view, both hands on a pistol held straight out in front of him, just two feet from Gary. Asshole Dave froze, the look of stunned impossible recognition in his face, and in that moment Gary knocked the gun right out of his hands. Asshole Dave snapped to, and punched Gary as hard as he could in the chest, but Gary didn't even flinch, instead he landed a haymaker right in the center of Asshole Dave's face. Asshole Dave didn't wait another moment, but turned and ran through the door behind him.

Gary followed to find a kitchen, with an island and narrow spaces between counters and appliances, and Asshole Dave grabbing a large knife from a tipped over knife block.

"Not another step, you, I mean it!" Asshole Dave said, but of course Gary kept stepping, stepping right at him. Asshole Dave looked panicked, siding to the left, looking around at his options, but then Gary was right on him, and Asshole Dave swung with the knife. Gary caught his arm with his left hand and the knife blade with his right - it cut through fingers, more old fluids oozing out, and Gary wrenched the knife out of his hands and in the same motion brought it down into Asshole Dave's shoulder.

"MOTHERFUCKER!" he bellowed, trying to grab at the knife handle, grappling with Gary for a moment, but then he pushed away and turned stumbling toward the other door. Gary picked up an unlabeled tin can - maybe beans, it had some weight - and chucked it right into the back of Asshole Dave's neck, causing him to stumble face-first to the floor. He grabbed his foot, but Asshole Dave reared it back and landed a kick right in Gary's stomach. This didn't do much good, but Asshole Dave kept flailing his foot blindly, and caught Gary in the side of the knee and now he was down, too.

Asshole Dave spun over and tried to stand up, but Gary was right on top of him, digging the knife in - Asshole Dave's screams and blood were like drinking water after months in the desert. Gary tried to pull it out but Asshole Dave was struggling against him, and they were arms and legs, hands and fingers, red fluids and yellow. Asshole Dave managed to gain some leverage, and they had turned so that they were both on their side, and once again he tried to get away, but Gary caught his foot and sent him back down to the floor.

He bashed him in the small of his back with a rolling pin, then the side of his ribs and then his wounded shoulder - Asshole Dave was barely whimpering now. Gary grabbed him and spun him over, laying a heavy blow to one side of Asshole Dave's face, then the other, bones cracking, he pounded his face with that rolling pin, breaking it apart, flooding the floor with blood, pulling back his arm again and again until that face was turned completely to mush.

Gary opened the back door and dragged what was left of Asshole Dave outside into the rain. He found a shovel in the back of the broken-down truck and started digging a hole. The rain was really coming down now, the ground was turning soft and wet and the digging was easy. It was time now to return this Asshole to the mud he came from.