Renouveau: "They called him Le Corbeau. The Raven."
Jet black eyes stared into me. In one second I could hear all the lies I had spoken and see all the deceit and betrayal I'd done in my life, from stealing a cookie to literally stabbing my best friend in the back. Le Corbeau was made of everything vile in the word, thriving in what was considered repulsive. He was actual pure evil.
Hullo. Call me Jad, or Knight, whichever you perfer. I'm a writer by trade, as you can tell if you're here.
I'm not much into discussing much about myself, always found it odd, but my main interests are games and French s**t, namely the shows and games Wakfu and Dofus. Only mention this because you're likely to have French influence in your writing, or see screenshots from my games around the store.
Anyways, it's important to note that I live in Northwest Indiana, meaning I'm on Central Time with DST. I have school, homework, and somewhat of a social life, so my writing speed'll be affected by all that.
What this means for you: Hey, look. I'm paranoid of people stealing my s**t and putting their names on it. All this means is, give me credit and feel free to adapt my stories and poems. And no using this s**t for money making stuff without my permission, since that's what I'm trying to do here.
Well, I don't really care to set my own prices. I'd rather people come to me with offers, and then negotiate if need be, especially with how much of a b***h inflation is. That way everyone gets a fair deal. However, with writing I perfer per word payments, and lump sums for poetry.
I am interested in art, however, if you can do anthro. Gallery of the OC I need is here.
For a bribe slot, I'll take one of three things: A rather hefty lump sum or bonus onto the per word payment, an item from my wishlist, or art (Which will probably cover the base cost too, if it's good). Bribe slots are always open unless I'm completely buried under work.
The winds of change were again blowing, this time bringing a new song to my ears.
Poetry or Writing? Writing Length: However long, though it would be fabulous if it was wordy. First Price: 200k/1k words First Person/Third Person Whichever works~ Other details: (Character backgrounds and such)
Hmmmm, maybe you can mess around with these three as well as whoever else in the indestructible tab. Writer's freedom as always. Paragon, Asher and Eller.
Setting: It's a bit dystopian and cyberpunk.
Pictures I found:
naw man its all good go ahead and use it as an example
2.
Il Corvo di Verona
The winds of change were again blowing, this time bringing a new song to my ears.
Poetry or Writing? Writing. Length: Up to you! First Price: 200k gold per 1,000 words? (Or closest estimate, if it doesn't hit the 1k word mark.) First Person/Third Person Third-person, probably. Other details:This is Ayame. She's a psychic in the near, cyberpunk-esque future and she has even more text than Aleph, so once again, don't feel like you have to read all of the stuff below her profile just because it's there. Five vignettes, even just from her 'daily life,' would be great, as would a one-shot, depending on which you'd rather write; if you'd prefer to write a story, a la my previous orders, I'd be most interested in seeing what you could do with Plot Ideas 4 or 6! naw man its all good go ahead and use it as an example
People I'll owe s**t soon:
1.
2.
People who paid me an exorbitant amount of money or items and now I owe them s**t:
1.
Darkmgirl
None of it mattered anyways. I was a god.
Writing? Length: A short story First Price:- First Person/Third Person Thrid Other details: Captain Trinity was the daughter of the Vampire Zack, she was first mate to Edwards himself and sailed the sea's with him until he left to retire. She was brutal and mean, would do anything for her own pleasure. ( she had blond long hair and no boobs XD and likes men). But now she was stuck, a new ship, a new crew that was less then thrilled with having a female captain. Would she simply kill them all and start over ? Or maybe she could make use of these cowards and turn them into true sailors.
About her( age about 200 years) ( blonde curly long hair) ( seductive when she wants something, cruel when something doesn't interest her, will kill at the drop of a hat but is calm and intelligent) YO ***** DONT USE THIS AS AN EXAMPLE/naw man its all good go ahead and use it as an example
My friend hasnt done much with her oc so i figured this would be a good start XD please take it and run with it!
Well, to be honest, I can handle a wide variety of genres. Sci-fi, fantasy, noir, thriller, really most genres come somewhat easily. I do have my preferences of course, but generally you'd find yourself in luck.
I do poetry too! I'm a bit rusty at it, but I don't have any qualms with taking up a poetry commission. Just tell me what you want; haiku, a particular rhyming scheme, you name it.
Third person or first person doesn't matter much to me, but I have a preference and am more skilled with first person. Don't think much of it though, I have yet to even receive a first person order.
Don't:
Romance genres. It's nothing personal, but I'm seriously not good with it at as main focus. There can be romances going on, and lovey dovey stuff, but I just can't write it as a genre.
Anything in regards to Greek/Roman gods. I'm sorry but this is just a huge no-no for me for personal reasons.
Holy mother of God, don't make me do fanfic. It involves a ton of research into shows/manga I don't really care about and I end up hating the project before I start it, and that's a big issue for me and you. Sorry man.
Fill out this form, and I'll get to looking over it as soon as possible:
[align=center][size=18]None of it mattered anyways. I was a god.[/size]
[i]Poetry or Writing?[/i]
[i]Length:[/i]
[i]First Price:[/i]
[i]First Person/Third Person[/i]
[i]Other details: (Character backgrounds and such)[/i]
[i]YO ***** DONT USE THIS AS AN EXAMPLE/naw man its all good go ahead and use it as an example[/i][/align]
I handle writing on a set rotation, with occasional days off. Work on one story one day, another the next. If I only have one comission, I still rotate just taking a much needed day off. I send whatever I get done on your day to you via PM in a Google Doc, which is also where I'll put the final PDF.
You can bring up the PDF anytime from the example page if you allowed me to, or simply PM me asking for the link. Be warned that I may someday clean out my folder, and you should always keep a PDF on hand for yourself.
Otherwise, if you enjoy your product, give me a <3, or if you don't, let me know and I'll see what I can do to edit it to your liking. Remember: The money is always right.
Il Corvo di Verona: one of my first (and most frequent!) customers woo
Godsanity: one of my first customers and has ordered so much s**t and pays well jfc and holy s**t she bought an entire wishlist seriously the ******** is this girl she's amazing
Psycho Ice: Frequent buyer, and awesome characters to write for.
Just leaving some quick scrawlings that I come up with here, more for my own enjoyment than anything else.
I've always wondered what it's like to be famous. To see your name in marques, to hear people whisper about you when you walk by, and have the paparazzi constantly hounding you. I didn't dream about it, mind you. It was just a sense of curiosity, to wonder what it was like to live the high live. Everybody has those kinds of fascinations.
Infamy gives you a pretty good taste though. Your name is on everybody's lips. "Is that...no, it couldn't be...could it?" They'll say as you walk by. Your face is plastered all over the news and kept in every cop car there is, just like the wild west your wanted dead or alive. People are hunting you down, just as if you were some celebrity, the only difference being bullets as opposed to fans.
You start living your life, adjusting to it accordingly. You hide your face, try not to let people get a good look at you. Just like the stars, you do your best to blend in with crowds and not be seen. This time though, if someone recognizes you, they're more likely to call the cops with their phone than snap a quick photo so they could say they say you. Next thing you know, you're standing in the middle of a crowd holding a rifle and firing madly around at the police while people scream, soy latte spilt on the ground along with the blood.
Do I enjoy the infamy? ******** no. I hate being hated. It's terrifying that I've damned my own family to be hated by my own actions, and even then because people don't know what I'm doing. But somebody has to be the fall guy. There has to be someone willing to shoulder the hatred and limelight.
May as well be me.
Gunfire was blazing all around us, bullets tearing into the crates and splintering the wood. I would've laughed, should've laughed, at the fact that here I was again, hiding while clutching a needle. It'd been so goddamn long since I'd been in the same position, and for a few minutes I remembered what it was like to be a scared kid fearful for his life.
I looked over at Tamara, breathing heavily as I nodded. "I got a shot left, toss me a rifle." She fumbled a bit, throwing me her gun. I caught it with my free hand, the other taking the top off the needle. I looked a bit at it before shutting my eyes and plunging it into my neck, the needle finding my vein far too easily.
Right away I could feel the Ambrosia surge into my blood, the virus interacting with my heart, synapses, every part of me. Within a few seconds everything started to slow to a crawl, my body starting to warm and my mind feel more and more anxious.
But then it went wrong. I don't know what the hell happened, still don't. Something in me changed though, made that high unlike any other. When I stood up from the crates, watching bullets whip by me, my body began to tremble. I fell right back down crashing onto my hands and knees, eyes bulging and heart feeling like it was going to explode.
"Ken!" Tamara hollered, pausing in her firing to look at me. "Are you alright?"
"Get away," I called out. "Get away, get away, get away, get away, get away!" My hands clutched at my head as I felt like it was about to split open, until finally I let out a piercing howl throughout the warehouse. In a single instant I felt myself change, shapes, colors, sounds, smells, all of it becoming alien.
Skin turned to scales, fingers to claws, my eyes the only constant. I could see, hear, smell, feel, touch, taste, yeti t was all different. It was all alien yet the same, all new yet unnew. I was a crying baby, a newborn lost in the world, an old man seeking revenge, a pained war hero, a dead man walking, a champion, I was alive and I was dead, I was dead, dead, dead.
The bullets meant nothing, they couldn't pierce my scales, couldn't pierce me. I was unstoppable, a brick wall, a fierce force to be reckoned with. Did you hear about the end of the world? I laughed and laughed and laughed as I ran forwards, my claws sinking into all of their skin and piercing their armor. Skin tore apart like paper, blood covering my hands just like so many others before them and stained them just like so many others before them and corrupted them just like so many others before them and made me a hero and a madman and a dictator and a psychopath and a hero.
I flew into the goddamn air as if I were Zoe and without even wings of grace I swooped down and picked up the last man, tearing away his legs and crippling him just as Terry had been in retribution for the alcoholic man who had lost his family and his wife to a man who had proclaimed himself a god. A god? I was a god, a god among men and a man amongst gods. I could control myself, I could lose myself and unleash it upon people just as I was tearing this man limb for limb. I would be the person to change the world for the better and I would start by ripping apart this corpse and enjoying it and by this I would be able to make myself a better person because I would be alive and he would be dead, dead, dead.
Rip asunder, just like so many others. I could see them, the ghosts. They watched me and cheered me on as if I were in the coliseums of old. Did I do good? Yes you did do good, Ken. You did amazing. You did the best. Why thank you, Maria, I know I did. Yes James, I was the best wasn't I. Their blood? It's nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. No. Don't go. Don't leave me. I did good didn't I? I tore apart flesh and bone, sinew and blood. It was for you. I'm doing good right? I did it for you, not for the world not for Alondeur for you. You, you, you, you, you, you, you.
You, Maria.
I...I don't know how long I spent like that. It was only when I came to, all the way back in the village that I fully regained hold of myself. Maria was the first thing I saw, looking at me more than a little bit concerned.
"What the hell happened?" I asked, rubbing my head. I ached all over, and there was plenty of bandages from what looked like an emergency surgery.
"Jesus Christ, Ken. What the hell happened?" She asked. "One second you're fine, the next you'r leaping over boxes and tearing their own guns away to shoot them with. What happened to you?"
I looked into her eyes. I wanted to tell her the truth, explain to her just how much I'd lost control and how scared I was now. But Tamara didn't need to worry. She already had the entire world to fret over, she didn't need to have me on her mind as well.
"Sorry, I took a few risks. It's nothing, really. I got stupid and cocky." I looked away from her. "Really, I'm fine."
The stars overhead were something breath taking. I spun around a bit, looking over the tree tops and across the sky. Far away from any city, out in the country, thousands of their bright lights shone throughout the entire area. It wasn't my first seeing them of course, having been to the village before, but it was the first time I'd ever really truly looked at them. Truly took the time to observe them.
I sat back down after a long while, smiling quietly at the rock I was sitting on. And then, I felt a wet drop on my hand. Tamara looked over in concern. "Ken," she said quietly. "What's wrong?"
A sniffle came from me as I did my best to hold back the floodgates. "Tamara, this place is beautiful." I looked back up, a few teardrops coming to the ground as I did. "The stars, the forest, the river, the village, the people, all of it is just amazingly beautiful. I...I've never felt this way before Tamara."
There I was, a killer sobbing at the concept of beauty. I'd seen so much bloodshed, so much destruction, that the opposite of it just made me astounded. Tamara looked on at me, not sure if she should comfort me or not.
"Then, why are you crying?" She asked tenderly.
"Because we're going to ruin this," I whispered. "Everywhere we go, everywhere, destruction follows us. It's our nature, Tamara. Destruction is our job." I choked a bit, wiping my eyes. "I don't want to destroy this place, Tamara."
She finally reached a hand out to my shoulder. "Ken, we wo-"
I shoved it away, standing up. "Yes we will! Look at London, look at Chicago, for ******** sake look at Albertstown! We bombed them back to the stone age!"
Tamara pinched her eyes shut. "Ken, are you really going to start looking back on your choices now? After all these years? Yes, we had to nuke Albertstown but you know damn well why we did. Calm down."
"Calm down?" I got up to her, forcing her to look into my eyes. "I was the one who pressed the goddamn trigger, Tamara. Not you, not Leon himself, nobody but me." I sat back down, slumping. "I'm the one who destruction follows."
Tamara paused. She stayed standing up, her eyes stuck on me. I couldn't help but glance at her leg, shuddering as it reminded me of just another failure of mine, another mistake. Finally she spoke up. "Ken, you're right. Destruction does follow you, follows us. But," she paused, sitting next to me and wiping away a tear. "That's not a bad thing. We can use it to protect the village. Protect the people living in it. We can destroy whatever wants to destroy them."
I stared at the ground. It was soft, wet from rain from earlier. It'd been a particularly rainy summer, especially compared to the last one. "I don't want these people to die, Tamara."
"Then do your best to save them, Ken." She sighed a bit, wrapping an arm around me. It was a platonic gesture, one that she was doing to comfort me as if she were my big sister. "For all this talk of not being a hero, that you're the bad guy, you need to just shut up and be a hero for once."
I didn't say much, just kept my view transfixed on the grass. When you're thinking, contemplating, time begins to treat you however it wants. A few seconds you're staring at a blade of grass, the next you're in the middle of a dirt road leading back to a home you acquired illegally. Tamara was still standing with me, a comforting smile trying to lie to me and tell me it was alright. But, maybe, for once, she was right. I could be a small hero, at least one for the village. In between all the bloodshed, mayhem, and politics, it'd be a rather nice change of pace, I had to admit. Just protecting something worth protecting would be a rare luxury in the world.
"Tamara," I said to her. She raised an eyebrow, waiting for some smarmy comment. "You're right. Maybe we could fight for these people, at least to make up bringing destruction to them." My eyes had dried finally, and I was able to finally take a deep breath in again. My lungs filled with the fresh, country air, and I relaxed just a bit more. "It's the least we should do."
I looked up again, staring at the stars. They were the same ones I'd seen all my life, except for maybe a change of hemisphere and even then I'd seen these ones when I was a kid. But all the same, they'd changed themselves into something mystical. Something ethereal. To me they became the symbol of what I was fighting for now; not just to take down Alondeur, or end the Ambrosia threat, or even petty revenge. Now I was after an actually just cause, to protect people, even if it was my own fault.
I'd do what was right, for once.
"Where's the information, Hinto?" Red stared at me. There wasn't a frown, wasn't a sense of worry about her. She held all the cards in her hand and was simply waiting to see mine.
"Look, I did my best-"
"I asked you if you had the information, Hinto."
I sighed, pinching my eyes. The desert sun was almost unbearable. I wanted to get back to Vegas, relax in a cool hotel room. Just get anywhere away from the heat. "No, Red, I don't. I tried my be-"
"We made a deal Hinto," She said flatly. "You get us what we asked for from the ETF's servers, and in return, we gave you the location where they're holding your family. We're ready to uphold our end, yet you haven't done so with yours."
An ominous feeling began to fill the air with the dust. It wasn't good, didn't take a genius to see that. "Red, listen, I tried my best. I didn't expect The Spider to just be waiting for me. It was a goddamn sting operation!" I redirected my anger towards her, towards the I's. "Why the hell didn't you guys warn me? You have your eyes and ears everywhere!"
She shook her head. "Hinto, that wasn't our problem." Red glanced down at her watch, clicking her tongue. "Very well then." Without another word she left, heading back towards her still running chopper. Her svelte dress blew a bit in the wind, but refused to ruffle enough to cause any need to smooth it out. It was as if she had control of nature itself, something which I honestly had to consider.
"Mr. Hinto, we don't work with those who fail us and refuse to make amends." Her voice was on my radio now, patched through somehow.
"What the hell are you talking about?" My heart started to race a mile a minute as she sped away. I felt fight or flight kicking in, hand unconsciously reaching into my pocket for a shot of Ambrosia should the worst inevitably happen.
"Ken!" This time it was Lem's voice who spoke to me. "What the hell is going on?"
"Deal fell through, Lem!"
"Yeah, I can tell that! It looks like a bunch of missiles are headed towards you, right now! Ken, find a way out!"
I looked around wildly. All there was, was the flattened desert for miles on end. I began to feel just a bit panicked, just a little bit. "Lem! Do something!"
"The hell do you want me to do Ken? We're still en route and it's about three minutes until impact from the missiles. Just...do something!"
With the helpful tips from Lem, I decided I'd try his idea of doing something. My feet began to carry forward, hand throwing open the cap to the needle and shoving it into my arm as I ran along. The Ambrosia began to surge into me quickly, feeling like an adrenaline shot at first.
"Two minutes!" Lem's voice called out. It sounded slowed down a bit, just a bit. The world around me kept at the same pace though, my only goal on getting out. I had to live, had to fight, had to survive. I needed to carry on, keep myself going, be alive. I didn't want to live before but now I did. Now I wanted to fight, wanted to see, wanted to breathe, wanted to be everything.
"Ken! One minute! Find some cover for the love of God!" Already I could hear the screaming, screaming of both the rockets and of the dead who followed me. It was dramatic, overly poetic, stupid, but true. In my dreams they would haunt me along with the visage of The Voice of the Apocalypse whom I thought died so many years ago. Devil laughs, laughs at me for still seeing her but he doesn't know why she's here. He doesn't know.
"Ken!" Everything around me began to come up, ground tearing itself asunder. The world was hungry, starving for the one who had given it so much blood to drink. Like Shraker I had become the ferryman for the river Styx, carrying anyone who I deemed responsible for pain to the other side. It was just, not just, but none of it mattered. I was just as bad, as evil, as heroic. I was a terrorist, no matter how you looked at it I had killed children, infants, old men, old women, young men, young women, and some i never regretted.
Missile after missile landed around me, exploding in some of the brightest fires I could remember since the fireball set over Albertstown. So soon did one hit near me, body flying in the air as though for a single second I was dead and finally free, free of everything again at the final moment I didn't want to be free. Head cracked as I landed, eyes shutting quickly as I forgot where I was and what was happening because no longer was I awake.
I don't know how long I was out. Hours, probably. It was the cackle of the radio that finally got my attention, disjointed and scratchy. "H-nto. H-nto."
"Who," I looked over, seeing the devastation the firestorm had brought. The entire desert was scarred for miles, the I's attack leaving it's mark. "Who is it?" I asked weakly.
"Con-der this a warning." Red's voice seemed to say. "Don't be-ay us again."
The radio fell silent again, only to pipe back up, Lem again following Red's message like a puppy. "Ken! ETF! If you hear me, get out now!"
His words didn't matter much, poor kid. Already a helicopter was landing near me, bearing the mark of those sons of bitches. I couldn't put up a fight, I'd would have been a fool to try it. Shrapnel was covering me like I was a pine tree and I was still coming down from a high.
"Ken Hinto!" A voice boommed out. I weakly rose up my hands, signaling my surrender. Right away an entire squad of ETF members grabbed me, shoving me towards the chopper. Their leader looked at me with disgust and hatred in his eyes. "Under the authority of the ETF and under the SAVIOUR Act, you are being placed into ETF custody! Under the law of the SAVIOUR Act, you will have habeas corpus suspended amongst other removal of rights for the security of the State. Do you understand, scumbag?"
I glanced up at him, trying my best to act tough despite the circumstances. "Yeah, yeah, spare me the ******** talk."
A fist to my jaw was the response I got before they shut the side door. The last thing I heard before I found the butt of a rifle smacking into my head was my radio buzzing. "Don't fail this time, Hinto."
I had to admit, Red was a clever son of a b***h. Now I wouldn't have a choice but to get her information, as I sure as hell wasn't escaping ETF custody any other way.
Psychiatry was the last thing I had considered. Sitting on a couch while someone sat with one leg on their knee, notepad in hand ready to scribble down my innermost thoughts, something about it just never really clicked with me. I guess hails of gunfire really get you down on anything about modern medicine that isn't morphine or surgery.
"Ken, relax, I'm just here to talk with you." Dr. Murphy was smiling. Smiling. The woman just sat there every day of her life, listening to people who daily saw others be blown apart, half the time by them pressing the trigger. "You don't need to feel threatened."
I couldn't help but sigh. I was the one who had brought her on. Thought some psychiatric help would cut down on drug usage. I never thought I'd have to sit down as well though. "Look Murphy, it's nothing personal I'm just not exactly the open type."
"It's alright Ken. I understand. Still, you have to admit that it's best you just get as much as you can off your chest. What's good for the goose, right?"
She had a point. "Maybe, Doc. Maybe. It's just that I hardly know you, you know? I've talked with my friends before, and we've had lovely philosophical debates when we weren't being shot at, but I just met you."
Murphy took off her glasses and set aside the notepad. "Well, alright then. Fair's fair. Why don't I tell you how I got sucked up into LIGHT?"
That one took me as a surprise. I had just hired the doctor because she came recommended. I had no idea of her past. "Wait, you were in LIGHT?"
She nodded and took a glass of water from the end table near her. "For ten years of my life. Not by imprisonment, and not by brainwashing. By my own choice. I wanted to see what they were like. All of their reasons for joining up, all of their reasons for staying on."
That warranted more than a little bit of a horrified look from me. "We're some kind of experiment for you?"
She laughed a bit and took another drink of water. "Of course you are, Ken. But you act as if you didn't invite me into your own group. The fact is that if you're unhappy with this, say the word and I'll go home. But ask yourself: Does it really matter? I tell everybody the same thing before every session Ken; that I'm omitting names but still gathering research for a study. Besides, Stacy's filming people, interviewing them. I'm just writing information down." She cleared her throat a bit. "Now, are you ready to begin?"
I was speechless. Murphy just spilled some horrible truth, and yet I was hard pressed to find it horrible at all. The more I thought about it, the more I realized she was probably the smartest person there was. She didn't keep ties, didn't make friends; she was out on a simple research mission. Get in, get out. She probably had the best deal compared to most of our bum tickets.
"I guess. Where do we begin?"
"Let's start with something simple for this session, hmh? Tell me Ken: What was it like killing for the first time?"
I shut my eyes and took a deep breath. I could almost feel the cold come back, December biting all around. The walls of the storage unit, metal and freezing to the touch. The pipe in my hands. The addict in front of me. The blood. The vomit. The blackness from passing out.
"It was awful," I shuddered. "I didn't mean to kill them. I was in bad situation, you know? I needed to get out of the unit, drag Melissa's mother to the car and call the cops or something. But somehow I knew that the other man would kill me, strike me down in the second." I stopped for a second and turned on my side, facing away from Murphy. "I guess it was a preview of coming attractions. That feeling when you know it's kill or be killed. That you have to make a split second decision over whose life is worth more."
"And?" She asked. Her voice had the sound of scientific curiosity in it, regarding me as if I were a well growing tomato and she a botanist.
I turned back around, looking Murphy straight in the eyes. "For what may have been the last time I thought it for years, I realized I wanted to live. I wasn't ready to die. So, I took the pipe I'd found and raised it above my head. The man turned around, probably hearing me come up behind him. But then I brought the pipe down onto his head." I swallowed a bit as I demonstrated with hand motions. "I didn't notice it at first, but the pipe split his head open, and the concrete floor didn't help much. Blood covered the entire part he'd been hit with, and it only took me a few seconds to realize just what the hell had happened."
"Then what?"
"I threw up. It wasn't like I had the flu, and it wasn't even the sight of the man's corpse that brought it on. It was the fact I'd willingly taken a life, and that I was happy it wasn't mine. I just fell to my knees and started vomiting for god knows how long. Eventually I just passed out there, in that puddle of sick and blood. When I woke up later, it was the first time I realized what the stench of death is. Not decay, not rot, but just the human body rejecting itself."
Murphy arched a brow and smiled slightly. "How poetic."
I waved a hand dismissively. "It's weird. Killing gives you a different way of seeing things. You just get more and more introspective with each time, debating the morality of it. They alway say it gets easier, but, I guess maybe they just made peace with their inner demons and I didn't."
Murphy nodded and looked at her wrist. "Look at that. Time's up. Do me a favor, on your way out, send in Tamara?"
I didn't exactly feel better, spilling my guts out to this woman for only a nod. She hadn't given me any feedback on anything at all. "I thought you were supposed to, you know, help me put to rest some bad feelings or something?"
A click of the tongue was her first response. "Due time, Hinto. Perhaps next session?"
"Yeah. Next session."
I was soaked to the core. My shirt clung to me as though it were part of my skin, pants not too different. Though, how soaked I was didn’t bother me much. Catatonically, my gaze was locked and stuck on the cement covering the roof. Already the water was beginning to pool, tinges of read swirling in it.
“Was it worth it?” The voice of the person asking the question was that of the man holding a gun to my head. I didn’t need to look up to see his smirk, grinning like the goddamn Cheshire Cat.
I didn’t answer him. I was too far gone to realize on a more conscious level he was even speaking to me at the time. He did however get my attention, using the age old method of slamming his revolver against my head. My eyes went dark as I slammed down onto the ground, vision fading for a few seconds as a concussion probably set in. When I finally could see again, I was greeted with my fallen friend’s dead eyes staring at me. There wasn’t remorse or pity in them, just a dead stare.
“I asked you a question, Ken.” One of the b*****d’s hands grabbed me by my hair, forcing me to look up at him. His usual glasses were long gone, showing off his inhuman eyes. “Was all of this worth it?”
He turned my head around, this time forcing me to look across the vista and the city below. Smoke plumed into the air, the noise of gunfire coming from any direction at any given moment. Once in a rare while there’d be an explosion, someone probably setting off demolition charges to cut off their enemy.
“Smell it, Ken. The fire, the smoke. Your sense of smell is the strongest one when it comes to memory, so really take it all in.”
There wasn’t any need to be down there myself to know of the carnage going on. I’d seen it on my way up, hell I’d participated in it. Could sit and claim self defense all I wanted, try and argue the morality of it. But I was past that point. I’d spent a full year trying to lie to myself that all the killing was for a greater purpose. The truth was that I knew I was about to die. Why the hell would I care anymore?
“It’s such a shame though, this senseless violence. There’s no cause for it, none. If they were fighting in my glory though, it’d be so much more beautiful.” I could practically hear his eyes widen, body slackening a bit as he sighed rapturously. “Oh come now. Why so glum?”
My mouth felt dry. Did I vomit? It was hard to remember. “…It’s all over. Isn’t it?” My voice wasn’t despondent, just empty. Hollow.
A chuckle. “I’m afraid so, dear friend. You gave me a good fight though. That’s what matters in the end.”
“No. It doesn’t.”
He let me go at last. Leon gave a helpless shrug before casting his eyes upward, to the grey skies overhead. “What a waste. The heavens bestow upon you such a strikingly similar gift, and you squander it. You walk amongst mortals, encouraging them in their senseless plight.”
I did my best to shake my head. I may have given up, but I wasn’t about to let the son of a b***h feed his ego from it. “You’re a damned monster, not a god. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it ag-” My voice was cutoff as he once again pistol whipped me.
“And I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again, you insolent child. I’m superior to any mortal that’s walked this earth, and of a better breed than the only other like me.” His corrupted eyes looked down on me. I could sense the hatred, the friendship, and the insanity behind them. “But it matters little. Soon you’ll be a mere footnote in the scripture they’ll write.” He reaffirmed his aim, placing the barrel back to my forehead. “And I think it’s about time we finally gave them a satisfying conclusion to DARK’s chapter, hmh?”
By now I was at the edge of the roof. The second he pulled the trigger I’d probably fall back, onto the street below. I don’t know why I was thinking about that. I was thinking about a lot of things, though. The mistakes I’d made. The life I’d lived. The fact my own Judas was still standing by our friend’s corpse.
“Just tell me why,” I whispered. “Tell me why they joined you.”
“Ken, my dear boy,” Leon began with a bright smile. His teeth shone brightly even in the overcast, all of them aligned perfectly. “For the best reason of all. Survival.”
In the next moment, before I had a chance to even really think about what he said, the trigger was squeezed. A brief moment passed before the bullet struck, time seemingly coming to a crawl. The Grim Reaper must’ve been laughing at me, wanting me to soak it all in before I had a chance of final respite.
And the funny thing is, as trite as it is, it turns out what people say is true. In a flood all my memories began to flow back, all the way from the first snowy winter I got dragged into this, up to this very day. All I could was sit back, and watch the poor excuse of a documentary.
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