Gray Death

               The perfect crime. What is it? Is it a crime performed with impunity? Is it a crime without a victim? A crime without anyone to commit it? Most people think the perfect crime is the crime committed without getting caught. In this case it was not so simple.

            His name was Simon Glass. He was average. Not just average but absolutely unnoticeable. Nothing about the man stuck out in any way. Not his demeanor, not his dress, not his looks. Average height, average build. Gray hair and gray eyes. Simon Glass was a killer. A killer trained to perfection. Simon sat in his room, face expressionless. The phone rang, piercing the silence with its shrill demand for attention. After a ring Glass walked over to the phone, picked it up and answered. A deep voice said two words. A name. A target. Then a date and a time. The date was the same day. The time, two hours from when the phone rang. Glass put the phone down calmly, as if he had just been told a lunch order. He walked over to his closet and pulled out an average-looking suit. Gray, like Simon himself. He slipped a gray tie through the gray shirt he already wore. He slipped on his gray gloves. Not ordinary gloves, but ordinary looking gloves nonetheless. He slipped a red handkerchief into his jacket pocket. A bloodstain in his otherwise charcoal exterior.

            Simon Glass sat in a coffee shop, pretending to read the paper he had placed in front of him. His eyes darted back and forth across the street, focusing anywhere but on the newspaper. The exact change for the coffee already sat on the table in front of him; he was ready. The gray smoke from a cigarette billowed around him. Out of the corner of his peripheral vision, Glass saw his target. Another average looking man, but a man that stood out to Glass. A collared shirt, sleeves rolled up. Perfect. He set down his paper and put out his cigarette, releasing a momentary flash of orange ash just as the man passed and stood. He strode after the man, quickening his pace. Simon Glass placed his gloved hand on the man’s wrist for a mere second. The man spun around, confused. Glass, his face a perfect mask of confusion, blurted out an apologetic “I’m sorry. I thought you were someone else.” He then veered off in a different direction almost immediately. The average looking man in the gray suit was gone.

A block away, Simon’s target collapsed. He was dead before he hit the ground.

Back in his drab apartment, Glass took off his gloves with a delicacy that betrayed their simple exterior. Next came the coat and he set it on an armchair. Opening his closet door carefully, Simon hung up the gray jacket next to gray suit after gray suit. He set the gloves in a case next to a peculiar glass box. Inside were the most colorful things in the room. Frogs of such magnificent shades that they stuck out, to the point where they almost glowed.

That was the magic of Simon Glass. A single touch and he was gone. Gone like a wisp of smoke. Gone like a shadow in the dark. Gone.