I slumped against the brick wall behind me, staining the ground below with the beginnings of my end. My shadowy rival, on his knees and holding himself up with an ever more feeble pair of weary arms, fought the inevitable valiantly. Our weapons lay without masters in nondescript formation, haphazardly strewn along the floor of this claustrophobic alleyway like stray leaves in the late stages of fall. They would be all that was left to tell the story of our brief encounter. I found myself desperate for some consolation, some light to shine through the bleakness of such finality.

I spoke.

"Can I.. ask you something?" My voice wavered and my fading consciousness made it all feel like a dream. When my killer replied, his voice seemed as though it were an echo, growing ever more distant. "We're both dying, what could you possibly ask me?" He coughed up some blood and let his arms relax, allowing his body to slump to the pavement.

"When you were a kid.. did you believe in the goodness of man?"

A canyon of empty breaths and wheezing spread itself before me, allowing only a brief "yes" to escape its depths. I tried to picture a faceless boy in his youth, the idyllic innocence of infinite potential motivating his unguarded optimism. I recalled how wondrous the world seemed to me at that age. I pictured that boy in his place now, his guileless trust in good shattered by our brief and bloody scuffle. Tears overwhelmed me as my victim again broke the blood soaked silence. "When I was a kid.. I thought the world was perfect."

"Me too" I sobbed. My mortality was becoming more and more apparent. I thought about what I would miss. I thought about my son, who I hadn't seen in person for 6 years. I thought about calling him. I just wanted to tell him I loved him one more time, and that is what brought the sorrow home. The things left unsaid and undone are what really get you when you are staring at the end. The preciousness of each breath only matched by the terror of the coming silence and the helplessness of knowing there is no other path left. This is a short walk, this is a terminal crawl into nothingness. No one is there to hold your hand beyond the horizon.

My fleeting rival had removed his ski mask and was now lying on his back. His shaking hands, on the edge of lifelessness, held loosely upon his most grievous wound. They did nothing to slow the loss of blood, by now only serving as a fraying tether to lucidity in the surreal purgatory of fading consciousness. "I always wanted to be a painter."

"My son wanted to be a painter too. He thought the world was beautiful."

I looked at his face for the first time, and a shock brought me back to the present like being doused with a bucket of cold water. He looked familiar. I managed to push the sunglasses off my eyes to try and see more clearly.

"What is your name?" I asked without a chance to reflect.

Without answer, his body tensed briefly and then relaxed. His now lifeless head rolled to the side, and I swore I could see my boy laying there next to me. My boy who wanted to paint the beauty of the world as he saw it. Some beauty. I fought the fog of my failing vision, squinting to try and see for myself, to know for sure who I was looking at. There was no way, I thought. I grew aggravated by my inability to shake the blurriness from my eyes, my failure to discern fact from fiction.. But as my frustration grew, my body weakened. I could not fight any more. I reached for his hand and held it, both hoping it was him and praying it wasn't.