Tears fell from the missionary, as his pockets were bared and the foibles of his sinning soul fell sticky to the rain-soaked red cobble. "Alive in God and with his passion!" he cried, "Alive in God and with his passion! With my hands I contrived to do fate's bidding!" And with that he was smote dead by the Roaming Ave, a job I'd envied since the first time I'd witnessed that sanctioned, rogue executioner wandering by the children's park in Cambridge.

Perhaps it is odd to wish to be a State's Executioner at such a callow age as seven, but I was, alas, an odd boy.

It is now a quarter-century later that I realize that the prohibition of the positions held by the wandering Executioners means nothing to me, and my true happiness -- now twenty and more years in denial -- lies on the other side of the courage to don a black mask and helf a sharpened dual-blade, then head out onto the streets as confidently as God's very bidding; a job application awaits my signature.

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