New Yorkers get a bad rep as rude or unjustifiably intense. Most people don't realize that a city that dense works in a certain way, and if you don't take a moment to understand and learn that, you're getting in people's way and they'll simply adjust you so they can get on with their day. I fucking love New Yorkers, it's one of my favorite cities to visit.

He really was the best of us.

"Release me, human."

If he could hear me, he gave no indication. My anger was a slow, bubbling cauldron. I seethed while this seemingly weak human changed his shoes, a mundane act performed with implacable calm. He'd seemed the perfect target. A quiet, unassuming life, the kind of man who could be corrupted and carry out heinous acts of misery without detection. "I said release me!"

"Oh, I don't think I could do that. I know what you are, and what you want to do, and the longer I can hold you, the less of that there will be in the world."

I pushed at his will, which held me in place like stone. No human should have this strength. He sat at his table, opening a box full of colored wooden blocks. He arranged them in shapes for a while, listening to me rage and howl the litany of terrors I would visit upon him.

He was unmoved. He began building a structure with the blocks.

"I knew a little boy, who was five years old, and very very shy. He didn't know how to get started, to play with the children, or talk to other people. But he did learn how to build bridges, with blocks. All shapes and sizes of bridges. After a while, he pretended he could go over the bridge, and find someone to play with, and talk to." The human walked his fingers along the surface, mimicking a human's silly, precarious walk, no wings or tail to stabilize or balance them. "And playing about it helped him, it helped him think about it, and later, to do it. And little by little, as he played, and talked about it, he didn't feel quite so shy. I think about him a lot."

He reached into his pockets, and pulled out a handful of glass spheres. "I have something in my pocket I want you to see, too. Do you know what these are? They're called marbles. When I was a boy, I used to play marbles with other children. And I sometimes now think about people playing marbles."

Visions played out in his head, memories of children at play, a game of apparent finesse and occasional violence. I enjoyed the moments when one of these small frail humans in his memory threw their tiny arms in the air in defeat or frustration, at the realization of their inferiority. These moments stretched out interminably in his mind. I was helpless to do anything but watch, he held me so tightly.

"I wonder if I can make this marble go over this bridge." He made a few attempts, laughing to himself as it rolled off the sides, haphazardly. "Oh, I better feed the fish." He continued to pelt me with his memories and thoughts, seemingly without direction, just an idle wander through his psyche, thinking about.. marbles.

"How can you torture me, human?! What is.. this.." If he heard me, he showed nothing.

"Most marbles are made from glass. Old pieces of glass. Pieces people don't need anymore, recycled glass." And then I felt it. He plucked at my self, looking for my purpose. "Recycled means it's used, more than once. It's shoveled into a bucket, and weighed. The old glass goes into the oven, and the glass will melt, if the fire is hot enough."

Until now, I had been astonished that he could even hold me, never mind render me powerless and ineffective. For the first time ever, at the hands of a human, I felt fear. He began to apply a sort of pressure, it could be described as gentle and effortless if you were inclined to think in those terms, but I was not. It was also relentless, unstoppable, an unbreakable vise, terrifying.

"When it's all melted and soft, a machine takes the red hot glass, and rolls them around and around. Red, hot glass. It gets cooler and cooler, and as it does, it loses its red hot color, and those pieces of glass start looking like.. marbles."

He began to twist me and shape me while he talked about how marbles were made, not an ounce of effort visible as he moved about his simple home. No outward indication that within him he held a demon of the Eighth Horde, a master torturer capable of rendering exquisite pain upon human victims unlucky enough to cross its path.

"Some people even collect marbles."

Ice flowed through my being as he stole my hate for humans. I felt it, saw it ooze from my sense of self, my disdain for their innocence, their happiness, their freedoms, the joy they found in each other. He showed me the memories again, the children at play, the friendly competition, the marble trading and little victories, the lifelong friendships he still had, with those he'd beaten, who'd defeated him, in a simple children's game.

Forever passed before I shook myself free of the reverie I found myself in, sloughing away the foreign, unfamiliar feelings I was sensing.

The odious human sat down at his piano, and lifted the cover. He flexed his fingers a few times, and ran them across his cardigan to be sure they were dry. He slid them across the piano, waking it up with a gentle glissando. From somewhere within him, from some obscene wellspring of wholesome goodness, I felt the music bubble up, taking control of his hands and translating his joy into something his neighbors would undoubtedly hear.

And then he began to sing to me.

"What do you do, with the mad that you feel.."