This is for Contests August Free Write 1, prompt #7 (Time Travel).

Nothing serious; thought I would have a bit of fun this time around.

--

I lined up my eye with the scope, blinking once before shifting and leaning forward. The target was just exiting the building, a small bounce in his step, like he knew something everybody else didn't.

I've got you beat there, I thought to myself, rolling my shoulders back and moving my finger off the trigger to the right, pumping it once, twice. Ghost-shooting. Pantomiming. Iterating through the motion. Getting ready. Not tense, just prepared. In several seconds, the man would stop to converse with someone walking towards him.

The man stopped.

Through my scope, I could make out the slight lift of the other man's eyebrows, the genuine and pleasant surprise. A coincidence, the meeting. Two acquaintances simply at the right place at the right time. A pleasant surprise indeed.

The first man's back was to me, but I knew what he looked like. I'd taken an opposite angle several times prior, almost a direct 180 from my current position in a church bell tower. My elbows dug into the ancient concrete, but I didn't put the gun down. Nor did I change positions. The men would part in five, four, three, two...

A second later, the first man clasped a hand on the second's shoulder, and they both gave half-nods before heading on their opposite ways.

There was a distinct possibility that the man was whistling. I'd once been close enough, disguised down on the street. Someone had been whistling, either the first man himself or one of the other civilians. Hard to tell, even at close range.

I liked to imagine him whistling. Made it more dramatic when the bullet went through his head and I was granted the distinct pleasure of imagining the whistling to stop.

There would be a clear window of opportunity, in just a-

The man started to cross the street. This was the only moment in the entire morning (or relative morning; not 12:00 AM to 12:00 PM but more conservatively 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM. I only count the hours in which his death can be observed by others, and not enough people are awake and on the streets between 12:00 AM and 8:00 AM) during which the man, given a three meter radius, was alone. There would be people on the first block, and there would be people on the second block, but for just a moment, the man would be the only one crossing between them.

I slipped my finger back on the trigger. I took a deep breath. Not for nerves; to steady my sight. It wouldn't be such a big deal if I missed; I could always go back and restart the day. But it was better to not miss.

I pulled the trigger.

It still amazed me, how traveling through time seemed to make the actual passing of time relatively meaningless, and yet - these first seconds of reaction, they passed so slowly, almost as if someone had paused the scene and were attempting to click forward frame by frame.

A small mist of pink around the man's head. Then he was horizontal instead of vertical. A small change, a linear change, but accompanied by the mist, a deadly change.

There were screams. One, then many. The crossing that had originally been empty was now filling up, even as others - smarter people, more cautious people - ducked inside doorways, waiting for a second shot.

But I didn't need one. The first sufficed quite nicely.

As the people on the street screamed and cried and panicked, I pulled the gun back inside the shelter of the bell tower, disassembling it into smaller pieces before slotting each of the pieces back into my bag, which was designed to blend into every other satchel or briefcase out there. An indistinct muddy brown color. Invisible on streets chock full of working men and women.

I slung the bag over my shoulder and proceeded down the steps to the church, nodding respectfully at the statue of the Virgin Mary before making the sign of the cross and exiting. Some days, I liked to go to the scene, to pretend to be a curious but uninformed onlooker. To stand by in the pretense of shock while someone removed his identification, reading the name aloud, looking up to scan the faces of the surrounding people, hoping for a flash of familiarity that never came.

Inevitably, the law enforcement would arrive, and whoever had taken charge - it really depended on the location of the shot; in my experience, it was often a brutish man towering just over six feet with a wild beard to match his shabby coat - would look over to them.

'Nobody's heard of this Adolf Hitler fellow.'

And they never will, thanks to me, I finished in my mind with a triumphant tilt to the lips. Given the fantastical ability of time travel, did I really have to spend my days killing Adolf Hitler over and over again?

Maybe not.

But I liked to make sure.