The winter wind was unforgiven as it nipped at David's skin. Then again it was his decisions that led him to be standing in nothing but his breifs in the backyard just before dusk. However his focus was not on the gooseflesh rising on his skin, but the flames infront of him, his soiled clothes collected in a heap inside the man-made fire pit. If he focused hard enough he would swear the fumes reaked of burning flesh, abeilt he wasn't a credible source given how many white lines he'd indulged in this evening.

David learned from an early age that his reputation was profound. His parents had an upstanding part in their small-knit town. This made it easy for him to play the system. It was a mask he could fall back on when he found himself in trouble even as a school boy, a ruse he could use to place blame on others for even the smallest of wrong doings.

At the time he believed he was of no wrong, that he was merely protecting himself as well as evading his father's wrath. But David was no fool. He was self-aware enough to know the sin he committed tonight was unexcusable, that his God would not forgive him so easily for taking another's life.

But Richard deserved to die, that is what he had convinced himself. Richard stood in his way and needed to fall for it, so that David could have what was rightfully his. Surely his God could come to understand that, the lengths unto which David had to go to in order to preserve his friendship with Lyle.

David would wash his hands of his crime and pray to his God for understanding, yet not for forgiveness. David held no guilt, despite knowing he should. That it is only human to feel such useless regret. But his lack there of only made him believe that he may not be human at all, that God himself had played a hand in David's actions tonight; that he may as well be God if killing Richard was such an easy feat.

As David stared into the flames, content with himself and what he had accomplished, he wondered to himself why people attempted to wash the blood from their clothes when fire proved more efficient than bleach.