Liberty, he mused upon the word. It was a perfect word, far better than the word, freedom. Liberty, his liberty, encompassed his soul, body and actions in a beautiful way and, as he thought those thoughts, he stood almost at the cliff's edge watching gulls skim water while waves rose and fell, spume white against grey.
He's experienced liberty for many years, an anonymous man now living a quiet life in a non-descript town. He spoke to no one. Smiled, yes, but never uttered a word. His mother often told him he had his father's smile before slapping that smile from his face.
Shy, he'd recently overheard a neighbour's description of him. That neighbour, a pert young mother with long blonde hair, on a few occasions, had tried to make conversation with him but he pretended not to have heard. 'I think he's deaf,' she'd said to another neighbour.
'Why do you say that?' the grizzled old lady asked.
'Well, he wouldn't just smile if he'd heard me, would he?'
Oh yes, he smiles. In his dreams he smiles while his hands are around her pretty little neck; a pale neck, soft and pliable. In his dreams, she begs him to stop. But of course he's unable to. He needs to see her life force diminishing second by delicious second from those pretty blue eyes.
Now he sways, groans thinking about his ultimate need; a compulsive need he's satisfied over the years in different towns in different counties. He doesn't retrieve keepsakes from his blonde, long haired victims for he knows that after the act, he can dream, dream about those intoxicating minutes for months ahead until the dreams dim. Then he starts again.
At the corner of his eye, he sees a flash of red and turning his head, watches a young woman approaching. She's wearing a woollen hat, but it doesn't conceal her long blonde hair dancing about her shoulders.
Beside her, a small, brown dog prances, the kind of dog that could be stamped upon. Squished. It's an innocuous little dog that would flee as soon as he shouted BOO! But of course, he wouldn't.
The young woman is getting closer,cheeks blushed by a frisky cold wind. As she draws nearer he smiles but she averts her gaze. Now she's passing him by but her dog stops, growling.
'Ruby!' calls the woman but the dog remains standing its ground, staring at him, gurgling that peculiar warning while its hackles stand like stiff points along its spine.
'Ruby!' the woman calls once more and her tone rings with fear. He smiles despite feeling a trifle disappointed that her neck is concealed by a red scarf.
But, sniffing the air like the dog itself, he can imagine that soft pliable skin under his fingers and her pulse lessening, lessening until it finally stops.
The woman retreats backwards and still smiling, he takes a step towards her but with sudden and surprising speed, the dogs runs at him, leaping up as if on elastic and he, with arms flailing, trying to keep balance, totters backwards, attempting to grab the scrawny creature's neck.
But, at that last moment of ferocious intent, he tumbles backwards to silently fly out into space and then plummet down to the rocks below.
The woman, taking a tentative step to the cliff edge, peers over, smiling down at the broken figure lying like an abandoned scarecrow on black, jagged rocks. Then, with a sigh, she calls to Ruby and continues her walk.