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drip onto the sidewalk. It was almost pretty. The rivulets racing down his face and clothes, dripping from his fingertips, looked like watercolors from one monochromatic palate. The blood never went away no matter how much it rained, no matter how many showers he took, no matter how hard he scrubbed. His own tears joined the cascade.
    Ghosts haunted his footsteps, seethed even in his own shadow. He had killed so many children now that it felt as if every inch of his skin was crawling with their vengeful spirits. Over and over he dragged his jagged nails over the surface of his skin trying to scrape their lifeless forms from his flesh, but they would not go away. They held tight to him, burrowing deeper than he could scratch. He could feel their spirits clinging tight to his own. At times, Jason could even feel their tiny spectral fingers tugging at him, deep within him, trying to pull him from his own flesh, trying to drag him off to their side of eternity.
    Each time a child passed him in the street, he wondered if they were real or one of them, one of the dead, one that he had murdered. Their wide innocent eyes bore deep into his, accusing, demanding, condemning until he turned away in shame. He heard their laughter in his dreams. Heard their screams and cries even when he was awake. He could hear them even then as he made his way through the rain-soaked streets. They had still not forgiven him… even after all this time.
    Jason thought that perhaps if they had graves. Maybe if he could have laid them to rest in hallowed ground they would give him peace. But that was impossible. Their bodies were long gone. What was left of their bodies after he was done with them had gone into an incinerator or landfill somewhere. He honestly didn’t know what happened to most of them. All he knew was that they were gone, unsalvageable.
    Sometimes the faces of the women, the mothers, were even worse than the kids. They had all been too young to know, some, too young to even scream. But the mothers had known. They had known what he was doing. They had come there looking for someone with his skills so he had performed for them. He had taken the life from them, sucked it from their wombs, and now they would never leave him in peace.
    The rain dripped from his nose just as a young boy stepped from the shadow of a nearby alleyway, pointed at him, then dissolved into the sewer fog. Jason wondered which child that one was. It could have been any of them. He’d never even gotten to see their faces.
    Jason turned the next corner and sat down in front of the abortion clinic he used to work at. He paused there a moment to collect himself. Rethinking his life as he unwrapped the package under his raincoat and stuck it behind the front door of the building. He had taken so many innocent lives at this place, halted their existence before they could even truly live, before they took their first breath. Atonement would not come easy. Perhaps, it would not come at all. Still, Jason knew he had to try.
    Jason scratched at himself again and almost cried out when his hand came away from his neck bloody. The blood of the children he had murdered. He wiped at the back of his neck again before he realized that he had scratched his neck raw. His own blood. Not theirs.
     The bomb had not been nearly as hard to make as he had thought. Gasoline, nitrogen-based fertilizer, laundry detergent, put it in a big jug and you’ve got something very similar to napalm. Perdition’s flame.
    For some, a religious epiphany is a great thing, a liberating thing, like being born again. For others, it is like dying, like being flayed and crucified but never knowing for sure if you will be resurrected, never knowing for sure if you deserve to be. Jason was not hoping for resurrection. All he was hoping for was absolution.
    “Dr. Lathum? Dr. Lathum, is that you?”
    Jason recognized the voice, Mary Thompson, the Physician’s Assistant he had hired his first day on the job. Her