His head hung over the balcony of the hotel, eyes peering over the side, staring at the body of a man....the man he threw over the guardrail. His costume was torn, his mask was nearly diminished, but at this point it didn't matter, he'd taken his vengeance, and the weight of it all simply lifted from his shoulders and his mind. He took these few moments, staring silently over the edge of the Balcony as the door to this room was being beaten on, screams for surrender being audible from the other side, these few fleeting moments of the remainder of his life as a free man, he used them to reflect to make peace with the past.
It was a dreary stormy night, the man had come home to see his house a wreck, the door kicked open, a fire raging in the living room, the sirens from approaching emergency response teams. Worst of all, however was the visage of his once happy family, and how he felt as held his wife and child as they breathed their last in his arms. He remembered feeling destroyed, as if what had happened to his family and home hadn't happened to them physically but instead had happened in his heart and burned itself to his memories. It was this night, this one night three years ago that lead up to his staring over the balcony at the corpse of a man that he killed.
His memories skipped ahead two months later, he'd fashioned a black costume procuring armor plating and weapons from an underworld scumbag, like the kind that tore his life from him. He'd gone through the trouble of forging a mask in the visible form of a psychotically grinning skull, and as his first exploit as this vigilante, he tracked down one of the perpetrators using every connection and skill he possessed and with the squeeze of a trigger, the slide of the loading mechanism, the pop of the hammer hitting the blasting cap, ended the man's life, as well as his two friends. Witnesses called him the Ghost, a name he felt fit as he himself felt as if he was only the ghost of what he used to be. Tabloids printed stories about the murders of the Ghost, even some of the big papers had his exploits on their front pages.
A year later, he'd hardened his skills, and was able to finger a second member of the posse he'd sought vengeance after, lured the bastard into a darkened room of their clubhouse, and savagely beat him to death with his own knuckle dusters, after putting a stop to the lives of three others who were there drinking with him. Three months had gone by and seven more had died by his hand. After two years since that night, he'd amassed a hefty body count.
He didn't care if people knew he existed, or if they knew what he'd done, he had unfinished business and he would finish it. Now as he stared over the balcony at the ringleader behind his family's deaths, he knew he'd finished the business he'd started three years before, a body count of nearly thirty, and more than that number in possible life sentences, or the possibility of being gunned down once S.W.A.T. had breached the door. Even with all of that laying on him, he felt calm, the first time since that night, that he'd felt peace, and as if Nature was confirming to him that things have come full circle, like that night, it had begun raining heavily, and after removing his half destroyed mask, throwing off the armored portions of his costume, and letting the torrent of droplets collide with his skin, the police finally kicked the door down.
He turned to face them, now unarmed, without armor, and without his mask, The Ghost that had been at the top of a few most wanted lists, was surrounded by men pointing pistols and rifles and shotguns at him, red dots shining all over his torso. All he could was smile and say, "It ended as it began...." The voice was cracked, and somewhat choked by tears that went unnoticed because of the rain that had doused his face. The Police stared at him confused, but he had three more words, "in the rain...." that he spoke to them before he threw himself off the same balcony he sent his nemesis over. The Ghost, or rather, Randall Hargrove, was now falling, falling thirty stories to hit the hard pavement of the pool area of a hotel that was now the final stage of his years long hunt for justice. He gave a soft chuckle as his body plummeted towards the earth, and spoke his final words, "See you soon, my wife, my son....see you soon....." right before his body hit the concrete, sickening thud and splattering noises coupled with the screams of witnesses, the last things he heard before he went to join his family, wherever they may be.
