"Have you made up your mind?"

What the… Of course. It came back to me as my head left the stars and came down to earth with a crash. Mind you, I think I was still seeing a few stars. The man looming over me was all to familiar now. The sinister smile fit perfectly with his dark suit, pinstripe black tie, and immaculate shoes. He did had have weird socks though, never quite understood that. Always with the farm animals. I blinked and squinted as I looked at him. I told myself I was buying time, but I really did need those few seconds to recover.

“Of course,” I said. I cracked a confident smile which literally pained me. Those aches were freshly delivered. “I am all yours.”

The man’s smile widened. “Glad to hear that. A man such as yourself has to learn when he is beaten. After all, you are only doing what you can.”

Doing what I can. I knew it was a silly motto, but it wasn’t like I had planned it. I had muttered it years ago after bringing down a bad drug ring in my city. It was the only explanation I could think of in the moment.

I could feel the crustiness of weeks without a shower as I ran a weathered hand through my hair. He had me by the short and curly. A literal gun to the head of those who loved me and to random strangers alike throughout the city. An obvious, but effective strategy for a man trying to bring down the one honorable man between him and control. I’d read the comics, seen the movies and the t.v. shows. It looked like we both had. This was the moment the hero hands himself over to the confident villain. It was time for the self-sacrifice.

He had planned it well. Here I was, shaking myself awake in a public park, looking haggard and defeated, while he sat clean, handsome, and powerful. He knew he was being smarter than the straw man villains of fiction. His plan had been executed flawlessly and his face betrayed the confidence of a man sure of his own victory. He stood up and walked close to me.

“Kneel.” He commanded.

So cliché. The whole world knows the story of the hero’s journey. The man standing in front of me was playing to an audience. He knew that sometimes stories write reality because it is what people expect. Real power comes when you are able to destroy the hero’s journey. He would act free of the justice of a planned story. My death, which was sure to be gruesome, painful, and utterly disgusting, would shatter any hope the people had.

I put my weight down on a sore leg close enough that he could reach down and put his hand on my lowered head. “Please,” I urged, “You still have time to make this right.”

He sneered at my eager face. He looked away from me, completely secure in his role, at the camera trained on us.

Then I reached into his strange sock decorated with little ducklings, grabbed the knife I knew he always stashed there, rose, and slit his throat.

His body toppled to the ground, his eyes wide with surprise. I wiped the bloody knife on his suit. It had managed to become even darker with the addition of his crimson blood.

He had misjudged me. Reality is no fairy tale and I was no martyr. I had never done those deeds because I was a hero. My words had always been misinterpreted.

Doing what I can. Literally. I enjoyed the theatrics of it all, the glory, the beautiful woman who had pledged herself selflessly. I was never under any personal delusion. This had always been about me.

I knew that with the death of the man at my feet all those people in the city had also died. It looked my like hero façade was buggered. Time to take up a new act. I coldly looked around me. The world was my stage. People never could figure out why I chose to be called Shakespeare.