The Time Traveller sat at the bar and watched the city burn through the plate glass window. The snooty establishment was empty, its occupants fled many days before. He had made a martini—shaken, not stirred—and lit up his favorite cheroot. A hard lifetime’s work was finally done, and he basked in the simple pleasures. The horizon swam with incandescent needles shedding great globules of burning steel in a dreamy haze. Infiltration, notoriety, fame, then betrayal. He held no qualms about what he did. He stared down the horror in their faces as the bombs fell and he walked from the city on a ruined road in his best suit. They came at him from the crumbled buildings and he shot them point-blank, with all the emotion of putting an animal to sleep. He was an agent of chaos, no hard feelings, baby. It had to be done. He stopped to smell the roses, even as they wilted from the hellfire at his back. Now, on his plush seat, he considered his options, fingering his white collar and spangled the red air with blue smoke rings.
vignettes 