places: first address

I’d been here before, on a delivery, but never left the car. I took only a handgun this time. I tucked it into my trench coat pocket. The place looked vacant but I didn’t take any chances. I parked on a side street and found my way to the back door. It was unlocked. I walked in with the gun pulled.

I went from room to room like the good old days. I was sure that I was walking through another vacant house and I was right. From bottom to top. I found nothing there. From room to room I saw nothing but roaches.  I went through the closets.  I went through the drawers.  It was a nasty empty place.

It was evident that someone had recently been living here. The house had been lived in, but clear that it hadn't been anyone's home.  It was a place where people had stayed.  I cataloged the house in my head. There was nothing hanging on the walls of family. Nothing in that house showed that a family lived here. The people who had been here were just passing through.

For some reason seeing this place made it okay for me to do what I had to do.  I was going to be invading houses...houses that are not homes. This address is vacant.  These houses that I will be visiting are only places infested with subversive vermin.

I can reconcile this.

It's time to play the exterminator.  There are no courtrooms on the battlefield.  It's time to kill the enemy.