This reminds me of that thing I posted in my bulletin a few days ago… “God is going to smite you… Now that he has his AK-47.” rofl.

The point where The Man is asked what he has to live for, under the seeming threat of death, reminds me a lot of both the Saw movies and Se7en. All three of these have the same motif of being threatening or executing punishment for a poorly-lived life, and (in Saw, at least) the possibility of redeeming one’s own wasted life.

I would make the end a little bit more obfuscated and instead of saying “The man had made him face his mortality, question his life, and then spared it even after he could not give a reason for it except that he did not want to die”, show how that happens – draw it out into a longer story, perhaps, or take off the end and add another story entirely, since the writing required to show this would prolly be pretty lengthy.

Overall a very good short story.