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Well past midnight, Emsley hunched over his piano, playing a piece from Beethoven’s early oeuvre. The apartment walls were thin, yet his fingers danced, carefree, across ivory.

He didn’t own a stereo or have access to a music streaming service. No, the only melodies Emsley ever listened to were the ones he performed himself.

Why waste time on garbage produced by other hacks? No musician on Earth was as gifted as him. No one alive, anyway.

 

His home was filled with instruments of various shapes and sizes. Emsley could dazzle with them all. He was a one-man orchestra. A maestro of unmatched genius.

“Mozart, you aren’t.”

Startled, Emsley struck his first wrong note in years.

Beside the Steinway stood a figure wearing a ski mask, utility belt, and black body armor.

 
Emsley, caught in Beethoven’s spell, hadn’t heard the window open.

“Know who I am?” asked the intruder.

 
Emsley nodded. “Figured you’d get here eventually.”

“Always find you monsters, no matter where you hide.”

The trespasser’s birth name:  a mystery. His crimefighting moniker, however, was Vigilant. And it was synonymous with savage street justice.

Lawbreakers laughed whenever they talked about running into police. Though, they whispered—and had nightmares—about Vigilant arriving at their doorsteps.

At the piano, Emsley’s hands quivered. Had Vigilant seen?

Supposedly, the man never killed his quarry. But he made damn sure perpetrators never committed crimes again.

“An interesting power you have,” Vigilant said. “Too bad you’ve chosen to abuse it.”

 
Lukas Emsley—a.k.a The Composer—was a supervillain on the rise. He had the ability to write and play original music that controlled listeners’ malleable minds. Occasionally, he hijacked local airwaves and caused a panic.

His latest tune, “Dark Daze,” had driven hundreds of citizens to suicide. Among the victims:  a school bus of screaming children.
Months ago, Emsley’s first deadly ditty had been composed for his next-door neighbors, after they complained about his moonlit sonatas.

He said, “At least those people died listening to something catchy,” and then began to play the song he’d written for the hero.

Before the sixth note, Vigilant slammed the piano’s fallboard shut, crushing Emsley’s fingers beneath wood. The Composer yowled. Vigilant steadily added pressure, breaking the musician’s bones.

With Emsley focused on his pain, Vigilant lifted the top of the piano. Using wire cutters, he removed a steely garrote.

The Composer blubbered on the floor. Vigilant twisted Emsley’s left arm and, with piano wire, severed a mangled hand.

A blowtorch cauterized the spurting stump. Emsley shrieked through it all.

He wasn’t quiet when he lost the right hand, either.

The Composer cursed Vigilant, who now crouched before him, holding a vial.

 
Inside, a pale creature wriggled.

“Dracunculus medinensis,” said Vigilant. “The Guinea worm. A nasty, little parasite.”

“God, no!”

 
Vigilant forced the critter into Emsley’s ear canal.

 
“Get it out, please!”

The worm slithered farther down the cavity.

Vigilant grinned. “Only music you’ll be hearing from now on is the sound of my friend feasting on your brain.”