The footsteps were getting quieter.  

The lights had gone out just moments before Alan had loaded his gun.  Luckily he had been at that house a hundred times before, and almost memorized the floor plans exactly. The night wind was brisk, and the only sound he heard now was the whistling of the gusts dancing through the curtains.  The footsteps behind him had ceased, and he took a moment to assess the situation.  His breath had shortened into quick bursts, cold sweat dripped off of him.  His eyes adjusted to the darkness, and he quickly swept the room.  It was clear.

Alan fell to the bed behind him and let his muscles go limp. He closed his eyes tight and attempted to regain any sort of sane thought.  He had been on the defensive for six weeks, six weeks of what he could only describe as Hell.  Every day was a fight for life. Though he used the term life loosely.  This was no way to live.  Alan had read comic books as a kid - he remembered thumbing through the best of the best in superhero stories. Spiderman; Batman, Fantastic Four.  They were his escape. Though fiction, he always thought a life so adventurous would be just what he needed.  Though in his adulthood, he’s learned adventure is a bitch.

He wasn’t a superhero - but he wasn’t a regular man either.  Months before he found himself in constant danger, Alan Thomson fell victim to his own mind.  Now, without a chance to change the past, he is stuck with a life he created. 

He reflected there on the bed of his decisions.  The horrific demise Of his own being.  A single tear trickled down his face, and before it hit his chest he was shook by a blast from the front of the house.  His muscles tweaked, and he grabbed the gun again that laid next to him.  His finger wrapped around the trigger, ready to fire - but more importantly; ready to kill. 

As he burst to his feet, Alan felt the rage in him provide strength. His fatigue gone, his fear replaced by aggression.  He forgot how powerful it made him.  The chemical reaction of adrenaline doubling in his veins, his powers coming to life with each intoxicating moment of danger.  It was this that kept him alive, it was this that also kept him a monster.  He needed danger to live, he needed to kill - to stay alive.