Rocketman

There was a bicycle path they made to keep the pedestrians safe but it was a shorter one so the walkers took to it quickly, defeating the purpose of it all. The bicycles remained on the walking path and the walkers took whichever they wanted.

I was on the walking path this time, and I couldn't help but feel the beads of sweat down the back of my neck. It was getting hotter and there was a reason for it.

Three weeks ago I was locked in the room with him. There was a decision to be made and I had requested one of those long meetings to get things done once and for all.

What went in the room wasn't something to be proud of, and I won't say that I'm not at all to blame for the state of things now.

I'm disappointed with myself; I should've ended him right there like I was telling myself to when I closed the door behind me.

He was a genius, and I was the guy who made the world remember his name. It was two years ago when I sat next to him at the bar.

He was a waste of a man - shoulders thrown over by the weight he had put on his own back, mumbling about being a danger to the world.

He wasn't calling for attention, but my eyes were on him. There was just something about this guy that made me want to know his story.

How wrong was I to have not walked away. As I looked up the sky, bright red tentacles from the approaching fireball reaching out slicing the sky into shattered pieces of a crimson mirror, I wished I had not asked for his name.

Steward Griffin.

It will be a name we will all know to fear, but for now he sits dejected and lost, waiting for an old trusting fool to stumble into his deranged reality.