Damian’s mind is a torrent of wild thoughts. None seem to stick in his brain as he paces. His hair falls in a dark curtain around his head, his face is pointed, and his eyes are an alert green. He has had so many plans, so many grand schemes for power. 

Now, his time for scheming is finished, replaced by panic, by fear, by thoughts of how to salvage what he already has. The newspaper lies open on his desk, the headlines blaring, ECONOMY STILL CRIPPLED, HOOVER ISSUES NON-INTERVENTION STATEMENT!  

Damian grabs the paper off the desk and strides down his stairs, crumpling the paper as he goes. He pauses on the bottom step, a single moment of hesitation, then continues on. As he reaches the door, he flings it open and steps onto his porch. He wrings his hands together and retreats into his thoughts. He has still not managed to get his thoughts together and clutches his head, now having developed an impressive headache. He sighs and walks to his car, a relatively new Ford Tudor. 

As he pulls out of his driveway, he checks his mailbox. There are two letters in it, one from his work, and one from… He doesn’t recognize the name on the second letter, so he decides to open the first letter first. He breaks the seal gingerly, so as to be able to reuse the letter’s casing, and pulls out the slip of paper. As he reads, a vein in his neck throbs. 

“Fired. I have actually been fired from a job,” he says. He starts laughing and doesn’t stop for a full minute. He rips the letter to pieces.

 Damian opens the second letter, and as he reads it, this time, there is no laughing. He drops the letter in disbelief. The letter is from the company that had sold him his house a year earlier, and he has been informed that his house has been foreclosed by the bank. 

Damian pulls the car back into the garage of the house that had been, until a few minutes ago, his. He could go to the food line. He could go beg on the streets. Doing either of those things might keep him alive. Damian is not that person. His pride eclipses all else, even a chance to keep himself alive. This slump, this depression is ruining his life. “Roosevelt, fix this?” Damian asks himself in a grating voice, “I don’t think so.”

Damian flings the door open and starts down to his basement. He looks at a picture of himself and his late father on the wall. His father’s eyes, once a source of inspiration for him, are now nothing but a source of pain. Damian touches the picture and pushes. The picture rips down the middle, revealing a small storage unit. He opens it up and removes the red sticks of dynamite inside. He tucks them gingerly into a cardboard box and walks up the stairs again, every step a new burden. 

In his kitchen, Damian unfolds the foreclosure letter again. Come to the attention of Damian Nod that his house, as a result of lack of payments of mortgage, has been foreclosed upon. If you have not yet left the premises by 4:00 pm on May 18th, 1932, you shall be removed. The words ring in Damian’s head. He will not be condescended to buy a two-bit banker. Today is May 18th; he does not have much time. 

Damian takes the dynamite and sets it around the house’s back. He lays a trail of gasoline with his car and walks out the front gates of his home, into the city proper. As Damian walks, he thinks. His father had been a thief, a liar, and a cheat. It was only when he tried to rob a bank that he met his downfall at the hands of a Chicago Typewriter. The one useful thing the man had done for Damian was giving him the dynamite after the Great War.

Damian hears a rumble, and as he turns, watches the truck belonging to the bankers round the corner, and as it pulls to a stop, Damian smirks. The bankers walk toward the house, one of them holding a clipboard and jotting notes. He looks at the match in his hand. He strikes it against the gasoline and stands. The gasoline doesn’t burn, it explodes. Within a few scant seconds, the road and grass are torn asunder. The windows shatter with the sound of a thunderclap, and the base of the house crumples like a tin can. The bankers are thrown back a good twenty feet. 

As he watches the house complete its destiny of a fiery end, he recalls something his mother had said before she caught tuberculosis. “If everyone fought fire with fire, then the whole world would go up in smoke.” He does not know where she had first heard it, but when his mother said that, she said it as if she was quoting someone. Damian doesn’t care. In his heart, all has been burned away but pure, smoldering ambition. His work is done here. How he will survive he doesn’t know, but he has had his revenge. 

Some time later, perhaps an hour, Damian hears something. Voices.

“Please, somebody!” The voice is muffled by something, and as he listens, he hears a commotion.

“Gimme da cash, lady!” The voice has come from a large man in a black overcoat. The man has a gun in his hand, and another in his back pocket. A thousand outcomes drift through Damian’s mind in the space of a second.

“No, please! I need this money to help pay off my house!” The women and gangster are down a small alley. The gangster has his back turned and is threatening the women. Damian strides quietly toward the two. The gangster’s gun is within reach. 

Damian breathes, shoots out his arm and grabs the gun. The gangster spins as Damian yanks, the women forgotten. Damian has the gun in his hands, and he finds that it is still full of bullets. He looks at the gangster pleasantly and proclaims, “If you pull the trigger, I will have enough time to do the same before I die, and we will both die.”
“Same goes for yous,” says the gangster gruffly.

“I am not afraid of death,” Damian says dangerously, “I will not hesitate to shoot you, so I suggest you hand over every bit of money in those pockets of yours.”

“I ain’t gonna do nothing’ of the sort, so scram!” The gangster yells, “No crazy person would actually pop one a’ those against me! Capone would have your head!”

“You are terribly naive,” Damian intones, and he shoots the gangster in the head. The larger man pulls the trigger as soon as he hears the bang, but Damian has already dove, the bullet missing him by a full foot.

“Th-Thank you,” The woman whimpers.

“No, thank you,” Damian declaims as he pockets the hundreds of dollars the gangster had been carrying. He watches the hope drain from her face and leaves her despondent in the alley as he exits with newfound purpose. 

Damian does not notice the leaves on the trees, or the wind, or the sun on the lake near him as he passes by. In his skill of seeing so far ahead, he is blind to all beauty. He cannot see what is, only what can be. Damian walks down to a cab. The driver of the cab is busy negotiating payment with a customer, so Damian simply gets in the car, and with a quick twist of the wire he keeps in his jacket, the car starts, and he leaves. 

The city around Damian grows smaller as he gains distance from it, until finally it is out of sight. Damian looks at the money, and then his hands. His hands are covered in dirt, and he grimaces in disgust. The sun sets gently on the horizon as his car moves off into the distance.

-Mason Smolen