Juan Carlos Boyatorov watched from a chair outside his tent in the jungle. He watched the Muffin Man cook for a gang of killers and madmen who had slaughtered women and babies hours ago.

He’d never seen anyone so joyous in a moment, so happy with a necessity of life, so exuberant in creation.

Juan Carlos pondered this moment. He wondered why in all his years of dealing death to worthless men and the greatest leaders, he’d never seen anything like this. One lone man creating food and creating life, bringing hardened dead men to life, bringing them back to their past, reminding them of their lost hopes, reminding them of simple unadulterated beauty. He could see their remembered joy in their faces, that was his curse.

He could see the fracture in the Muffin Man’s soul, he knew it well because he saw it in himself.

In this man lay his redemption. In this man, frenzied with the impulse of life, he finally saw freedom.

A tear welled up from some long forgotten place. He had darkened every goodness, he had barred all the doors to heaven and to hell. Juan Carlos was the ultimate killer and now, for the first time in his life, he felt hope.

A silly longing, he told himself. A pathetic paean to a world that did not exist. And yet…Juan Carlos was suddenly…free. His mind soared.

He knew what he had to do. He saw the path in front of him. Juan Carlos Boyatorov would save the Muffin Man and the Muffin Man would save him by saving himself.

He had to call the Greek girl he still pined over. She’d move the world and right the wrongs. She wouldn’t know it but she would be the mother of an eon.