A Sociopath ~ My Introduction

 Maternity leave is giving me loads of time to watch the tube and write ~ although, writing is a little more difficult with a newborn to take care of. 
Anyway, so there I am, watching this movie A Perfect Getaway yesterday.  I’ve already seen the end (completely by accident) so I knew who the killers were.  The cool thing about this is that I get to study the characters now.  I get to watch them with a more clinical eye.  The movie is alright, but I was IN LOVE with the sociopathic guy and his thought processes.  Once he was revealed, he has this monologue about how he sees the world, and even how he loves his girlfriend, and I’m like, WOW.  This guy is completely NUTS.  I LOVE HIM.
All of this gets me thinking about my first book, Two Shades of Evil.  It’s a ghost story, but I also have this bad guy (hence Two Shades or Two Types or one ghost, one human ~ both being completely evil.  You dig?) who is a complete sociopath.  I don’t do too much with him in the book other than have bodies turn up randomly, and then really bring him about in the end.  I LOVE this character, though.  If you’ve read my Blogfest of Death, then you got a taste of Michael.
Early this year, I entered Two Shades of Evil in the Maryland Writer’s Association Novel Contest.  The two reviews were awesome ~ more than I could have hoped for ~ but neither of them liked my Prologue.  So, I’ve been thinking of either removing it completely or doing another one.  I was leaning toward the removal because my first chapter really is a good place to start.
After the movie yesterday, the Prologue comes to me in movie mode and has to be written.  I did it in 3rd person, even though the entire book is in 1st, so I’m not sure if that’s weird or not?  (Opinions welcome!)  It’s just that it was the way it needed to be written.  You know what I’m talking about. . . .  So, I’m going to share this with you guys and would love to know your thoughts.  It’s roughly 1650 words long, so not too long.  Be my CP for the day, will ya??
Warning: Rough Draft ahead!  Also, some murder.  Tread carefully.

Michael took a long draw from his bottle of Bud Light. It was almost mindless the way he swallowed each slow gulp while simultaneously ignoring the childish banter between his two friends at the table. It was all insignificant in comparison to her.
Sydney.
He knew she’d show. She always did eventually.
From the corner of his eye, he caught the fact that his two friends, Mick and Daniel, had become very still. Turning with nonchalance, he raised a single eyebrow at them as they smirked in his direction.  “What?” he asked.
Mick and Daniel glanced at each other with identical sardonic expressions. Mick was the one who finally responded. “Your girlfriend is here,” he said, his tone full of that childishness that Michael had hated since his young days on the playground. Every time Mick used it, Michael wanted to slam his fist right through his face. “You gonna talk to her this time, or sit back and watch her like always?”
Michael held back his scowl. Instead, he turned back to watch Sydney lean in close to the bartender and smile at him. She was always so flirtatious; he wondered if she even knew the power she had over the men she spoke to. She could have any one of them. Yet she never did. Michael had watched very closely to make sure that she hadn’t.
“One day, when the time is right, I’ll talk to her,” Michael said. He’d said it mostly to himself, though, so he wasn’t surprised when Mick and Daniel had leaned in and asked him to repeat himself. He simply looked at them and said, “Tonight I’ll watch.”
Daniel pulled a five out of his wallet and slapped it down on the table in front of Mick who was only too pleased to accept it. Scowling at Michael, he said, “You cost me a lot of money, Mike.”
Ignoring him, his eyes searched for Sydney again. He found her at a table with her friends, sipping through the stir straw in her drink. Tonight the drink was clear. Vodka and Soda? Tonic? He could only guess. Each time she came out it seemed to be something different, as if she were going through her bartender drink book and choosing a different one each time.
The night went on and the club filled. It was getting harder to keep track of her in the throng of mindless idiots who came only to find somebody to screw. Everyone except her. She was content with having a few drinks and dancing. Mostly dancing, and strangely enough, she did that alone, unafraid of what people thought of her. Oh, she’d be approached by the mindless boys, but they would all fail in the end.
Sydney needed a man. A man who could see her for more than just a piece of ass, and Michael was just such a man. Only it wasn’t time yet. Not that he wasn’t ready for her; he knew everything he needed to know about her. The only question now was, was she ready for him?
Michael turned everything off around him as he watched her make her way to the dance floor. The thumping of the techno went silent along with the jarring sound of the voices around him.  None of this mattered when the reds, greens and blues of the overhead lights alternated off her tanned skin and long brown curls.  This was always his favorite part of the evening. He loved the way she could just close her eyes and move her body to the music, letting the lights paint her into an exotic creature of the night.
She was never necessarily dressed to be as sexy as she was, but with her figure, she didn’t need to be. Tonight for example, she was sexy in only a red tank top, jeans tucked into a pair of cowboy boots. Not many women could pull that off successfully in his opinion, but it suited her free personality.
“Just go, will ya?” Mick said from behind him. “I’m beginning to think you don’t have the balls.”
Michael turned. “The world waits on me, not the other way around, Mick-o.” There was an underlying threat in the hard way Michael pronounced the consonants in Mick’s name. “I’ll bring her to me when I’m ready.”
“Maybe you’re already too late,” Daniel said with a nod toward the dance floor.
The three of them watched a tall boy, clearly at the end of one of his surfing days, walk up behind Sydney who had yet to see him. Michael felt insulted for her. She was clearly out of this kid’s league. The least the kid could have done was wear something more appropriate for a night on the prowl – and prowling he was. It was disgusting. I mean, he was still wearing his swim trunks for Christ’s sake.
Michael, though angry at the complete stranger, wasn’t in the least bit worried. “She’ll turn him away,” he said as if he were the epitome of cool, calm and collected. “She always does.”
On cue, the floppy haired surfer kid had reached Sydney. The second he even opened his mouth, she held up both hands and shook her head. She was smiling up at him, but Michael knew she was only just trying to let him down easy.
What happened next, Michael had never seen before when the boys were denied access. The kid got angry. It happened quickly, surprising all who watched. Sydney’s beautiful round eye’s grew large in shock, a friend from her table dropped his beer bottle to the table and someone barely managed to keep it from tipping over as he ran to her aid.
Michael only sat and watched in utter silence. Not a single muscle twitched on his sharply sculpted face giving away his fury. He mustn’t give himself away – not yet. He knew that moron would be taken care of quickly. Her friend – Nate, he thought his name was – would see to that.
Just as the idiot surfer grabbed Sydney’s upper arm, she fisted her free hand and clipped his jaw just enough to sidetrack him when Nate went in with his own deft punch. That one had the kid on the ground, rolling away as he clasped his face. When he stood, he wobbled slightly on his feet but still attempted a swing at Nate. He missed, of course, and didn’t get another chance at him because the bouncers were lifting him from the dance floor.
“I’ll be back,” Michael said, standing. His eyes followed the bouncers as they took the struggling surfer through the double glass doors at the front of the club. He exited and walked by, hearing the bouncers warn the kid to think twice about returning to the establishment.
Ducking behind a dark corner on the side of the building, Michael waited until the kid was alone, mumbling angrily to himself as he turned away. “Psst.  You, kid, come here,” Michael said quietly.
The kid turned his light blue eyes toward Michael’s voice and squinted through the light. “Who? Me?”
“Yeah you.”
“What do you want?” the kid asked.
“I just want to talk to you,” Michael said, still hidden in the shadows of the building.
The kid pushed back his floppy blond hair, but it fell back toward his eyes. “About what?” he asked, taking a few steps in Michael’s direction.
“The girl inside . . . the one you just got thrown out for.”
He looked angry now. “That lesbian bitch?”
Michael glared at the kid from the shadows, but didn’t respond. Instead, he reached into his back pocket and removed what lie there. “Just come here,” he said finally.
After one look around, the kid finally made long strides toward Michael. “Look, if she’s a friend of yours or something, I’m sorry, but she . . .”
Michael grabbed a handful of the kids hair, pulling from root just above the forehead. He barely made a sound as Michael forced him face first into the concrete wall. When the kid fell to the ground, Michael saw that it wasn’t just his nose that he’d heard break. Several of the kid’s front teeth had broken off, too. The kid’s eyes had glassed over and were struggling to focus as Michael placed a firm palm over the kid’s bloody mouth.  The kid could barely breathe through his broken nose, he knew, but he didn’t care.
Narrowing his eyes at the kid, Michael said, “You made a lot of mistakes tonight. One being, and this is the biggest one of all, the lack of respect you showed her by just approaching her. How dare you. What makes you think you are even worthy of her?”
Finally focused, the kid mumbled something angrily into Michael’s hand, while fighting uselessly to remove it from his mouth.
Michael shook his head and sighed. “Don’t even bother trying to explain your actions. The fact that you even made such an attempt this evening is appalling to me.”
Michael could feel the press of hot air against the inside of his palm as the kid tried, once again, to speak. Despite the slippery surface of the kids’ skin, as it was completed coated in blood, Michael held firm.
“Mistakes like that can’t be handled so lightly,” Michael said. His voice was cool and even, hiding his anger perfectly. “You insulted the woman I love. You attempted to man handle her as if she were an animal. You called her a lesbian bitch? Seriously? It is all unforgiveable.”
The sound of the blade erupting from the handle, which had been hidden from the kids view until now, halted any further mumbled excuses he may have had. His eyes widened and glued themselves onto the shining blade that was now being twisted into different angles in front of him.
It happened quickly. One second the kid could see the switch blade, and then he couldn’t. What he did see was the soulless expression of the man who ran the blade over his throat from ear to ear. As he died, barely strong enough to struggle as the blood seeped from his wound, he watched the man, waiting for some sort of expression of guilt or anxiety. Hell, he’d even take pleasure. Something!
But in the end, there was nothing. Michael watched him die, cleaned his blade with the kids’ shirt, stood and walked away.

So that’s it!  I plan to make it a Prologue, rather than the first chapter, because it would have taken place a year or so earlier than when Chapter 1 begins.  I know there’s some debate on the use of a Prologue at all, but I think it works in this case?