Ripping Out

Day turns to night and I perform the menial tasks with which were requested of me. I do them with little to no effort. I’ve stopped trying to understand what it is that I really am if not human in even the most basic sense. I accept it, in part, but there are still times that I wonder, ‘Who are you?’ …. ‘What are you and why are you inside me?’

….

Though my body works, my mind wanders elsewhere… to places far away and beyond my home or my chores. I know she was watching me; if I allow her to believe that I don’t notice her concern then there is still something left of my youth... Maybe, just maybe, her little boy still exists somewhere inside this body which is quickly becoming a man. If only for a little longer, I can pretend to be oblivious; I can keep telling myself that everything will be okay.

I am changing and I wish to God that I didn’t have to deal with it, but I can’t ignore it. No amount of praying or meditation will stave his advances upon my psyche. He, it is a part of me; it is a truth that I reluctantly acknowledge. Again, I say… I am changing; he tells me this is good. I have to change or I will die.

How it is that my life will cease to continue without him, I am still unsure of, but I don’t see why I shouldn’t believe him. After all, what choice do I have? In some morbid way, he is all I really have, a force that has never left my side. He is constant, a familiarity that I almost hate to part with.

‘You can’t pretend to be something you’re not. At this point, you have no choice. So, learn to fucking DEAL with it.’

“I don’t want you. I never wanted you.”

‘I AM YOUR SOUL, SHITHEAD! IF I HAD THE CHOICE TO LEAVE I WOULD HAVE DONE IT THE INSTANT YOUR MOTHER CRAPPED YOU OUT OF HER WOMB. BUT NO, GOD GAVE ME THE FINGER AND SAID THAT OUR LIVES WERE BOUND THAT DAY! WITHOUT YOU, I DIE…AND SO DO YOU WITHOUT ME. SO, UNLESS YOUR HAPPY ASS IS FEELING SUICIDAL, WHICH I DOUBT YOU HAVE THE BALLS TO EVEN GO THROUGH WITH, WE’RE STUCK.’

“…”

‘Besides, you’ve heard the shit head talk, Son whatshisname, mister hero with his giant energy ball of whatever the hell…IT FUCKING HURT! You know, in our ‘other’ life? You try being incinerated and tell me how you feel… and then to make it worse, I’m in this stupid place with this huge red mother fucker with horns telling me I’m being reincarnated into the body of some infant ningen!!! A FUCKING HUMAN!!! I’M LIKE, WHAT THE FUCK?!’

I decide that it’s better not to fuel the fire, though the rage has risen considerably higher. …Let him rant; he’ll feel better afterwards and then maybe I’ll have a moment of peace for once without his annoying voice disrupting my thoughts.

‘If I ever get the chance I will fucking break your stupid little--’

Something else has diverted my attention and I realize it’s the same thing that I sensed earlier. There is an ominous gloom that saturates the night sky within the array of stars above. It is almost as if life arose from out of nowhere, blinking into subsistence with the suddenness of a slap on the face.

People…things… beings possessing great strength… Not all are comparable to my sensei’s, maybe a few.... They are strange, save for one…

The ocean breeze, warm and salty sweet, disturbs the fettered shutters, making them tap against the side of the house.
…
…
Still, he is quiet…too quite, which isn’t good. He is less predictable when he is silent, scheming in a place within my mind where I never dare to tread. ‘that… it… they are… What are you doing? It hurts… shit, kind of like a brain freeze… Geez, WILL YOU GET THE HELL OUT OF MY HEAD!!!’

I imagine him stumbling down the stairs like a slinky, amusing to watch regardless of its lack of greater use.

‘Keep back. I’m not joking…’

There is an uneasy stillness… I’m almost begging to hear something, anything, even a snide retort like, ‘You know you love me, bitch’.
God, I sound insane… and he’d say, ‘You say insane like it’s a bad thing…’

‘LOOK at what you are DOING to me!!!’

…Each time becomes increasingly difficult to restrain. Why not relent? What harm could he do if I am here, disconnected, but still very much aware of my actions? Of course, that is my assumption and from what I’ve gathered, whenever I assume too much, it always leads to something bad. I have terrible judgment, a quality that I certainly didn’t get from my parents…

‘Bla bla, it’s all my fault, yadda yadda. What else is new? You blame anything you can’t explain on me.’

“That’s because half the time it’s true.”

‘….!!!!!’

One, out of all the others, for the merest second my eyes stare into the vast emptiness, focused on some invisible solid… I forget him and the flickering warmth of firelight from within my home. Out there are others like me, yet not. They’re different; they aren’t human…

There is recognition among many, one in particular that draws the darkness out of hiding… A shadow lurks out of the walls of my subconscious, possessing definably alien features. The solid mass takes color, an almost embarrassing shade of pink with bleeding red eyes; I feel myself shift, ever so slightly, the twitch of a muscle and an involuntary step forward that makes the ground tremor.

A god-like power pulses in time to my heart beat and I continue on, overcome with the need to expel it somehow. Ah yes, I curl my hands into fists, making the muscles of my biceps flex. All I need is a little push, just a little one… anything or anyone to provoke me…

The demon seethes, ‘The little bastard... I should have devoured him.’

‘Who?’ I blink in confusion, my legs moving me forward with greater intention.

‘him…’

I force myself to a halt, jolting from the effort of such a simple action as if I’d simply run myself into a wall.

‘Control.
Control is everything.
As long as you are in control…’
A tear finds its way down my face and I would not have noticed it if it hadn’t tickled my jaw line. I rub it away with the brush of a hand, weighted by a terrible sadness.

‘People have died, can’t you feel it?’ He sneers, prodding for a fight. ‘…or are you that ki blind?’

‘So many have suddenly gone… What happened?’ I ignore the invitation for a mental brawl, finding truth in what he has said. My sensory skills are not fully mastered and so my ability to feel much of anything from such an isolated area… it is nearly impo---

‘Impossible-schmossible! SHUT THE FUCK UP. Wasn’t it tard brain who told you that being mortal is what makes us capable of doing the impossible?’

“…”

‘You gonna play stupid and pretend you don’t remember or are you really THAT brain dead?’

‘…don’t you have something better to do than berate me all the time… I dunno, like, go and swim in shark infested water or something?’

‘mmm, Ubu sushi. I like. Can I watch?’

‘You think everything’s joke.’

‘Damn straight.’

I am compelled to go and find out what has occurred without me, drawn more by an instinctual curiosity than the chiding voice thundering in my skull. I take several hesitant steps, hearing the ocean waves crash over the rocks nearby. I must go, less of obligation and more of an interest in the unknown. Why stand back and wait for it all to come to me? I am more than ready to confront this new enemy if that is indeed what it is. The demon’s influence takes little precedence over the choices I’ve made… If I can’t be human then why not go where I have always felt that I belonged?

The monster speaks; he says he will make the fucker pay, though I know he hardly cares about the lives that were lost. He is thinking about the possibility of a fight, an all out war where the line between humanity and the supernatural begins to blur.
Less credibility…
More surety of self…
I know what I must do.
He knows what he was created to do.
We have come to an agreement at last and the fury is silent.

I launch myself skyward with little to no thought, freed by the boundaries of gravitational law and left out into the open reality. Human is but a word in a dictionary, stating that to be human you must have human form or attributes as opposed to those of animals or divine beings; "human beings"; "the human body"; "human kindness"; "human frailty"…

I am a being as most of the non-human-homo-sapiens I have encountered throughout my life… Being ‘human’ is a vague reference to what the Earth’s population use to be. Thousands of years ago, ‘human’ may have meant more; people didn’t know then that there was more outside the boundaries of our atmosphere, that there were worlds separate from this one, coexisting in the same infinte space.

Humans and non-humans have collaborated since then. So, to be humane is not to be simply human… My humanity is only skin deep. The rest is a part of that stranger that makes me so extraordinarily unique.

At this point, high above the ocean and higher still into the clouds, I am neither Ubu nor the creature Buu. I am only me, wise beyond my years... The thrill of the fight runs through my veins; it fills me with child-like excitement, an almost uncontainable desire for the unexpected.

Westward, to the larger mass of Japan, out and away from the segregated islands of my birth, I go without hesitation. I am ready. The demon is ready, pacing impatiently from side to side in anticipation. The fight, the glorified conflagration of energy and clash of flesh and bone; I heed your call. I am… we are… your humble servants.

----

The miles between me and the city melt away and the contemporary palace rises up from the horizon as if the pearly black sea had spat it out from beneath the white capped waves. Bright and perfect, the monoliths of glass and steel loom ominously out of the hazy eve.

I realize that I have never seen the city at night, not even when I had visited when I was 10, which was a little more than 4 years ago. That one moment was when my life changed forever; I met Goku sensei and he told me that I was very unique and that he wanted to train me to use my power to its fullest. A smile tugs at the corners of my lips and I am briefly lost in a dream that isn’t quite a dream; I was happy then and the monster didn’t yell quite so much.

The breeze, I notice, carries with it the familiar tinge of smoke, which I find very odd coming from such a modern civilization. At home we don’t have the convenience of electricity and natural gas power; fire is our only source of energy… well… I look at my hand; I have ki, so… I guess I’m sort of cheating, but still…

‘The smell of death…’

I freeze, almost sure that what I’d heard had been my imagination, a whispering taunt…

Those eyes, burning like coals, stare at me, telling me a story that I wish I never had to hear; I’ve listened to it a million times and I know that he enjoys how I squirm and twitch, sweat beading on my forehead. Oh yeah, he knows alright… I bite my lower lip.

‘You smell it, don’t you? Amid the dry scent of smoke, you can taste it in the air, rich and coppery, thick like the molasses on your mother’s pancakes, pooling….oozing over the grainy surface of the asphalt, sticky hot…’

I press my hands over my ears, straining not to listen. He enjoys this… He revels in it, the memory of his past……..our past. “How did you end up like this? How the FUCK did you ever manage to bypass hell where you REALLY belong?!”

‘BWAHAHHAHAHAHAAAAAAA!!!!’

His laughter grates on my nerves and I turn away from it, pushing him down as far and deep as possible. ‘Get away from me you fucker or I’ll give you something to really laugh at.’

The monster flares, returning to his place away from the darkness that I’ve attempted to conceal him with. He is what is he, he does what he does and he doesn’t want to be ignored any more than I do. It pisses him off. ‘I’m going to make sure you suffer you little shit. I’m just having a little fun and you’ve got to be such a hard ass. I’m just testing you, pushing your buttons!?’

‘Why?’

‘What the fuck do you mean WHY?’

“Holy shit…” I lower myself to the seaside board walk, a city of ruin stands before me. “What the hell is this?” Fuck him if he wants to watch, fuck him straight to hell. I’m tired of trying to suppress him. Let him do whatever he wants, I’m going to be the one making the decision every time. It’s my body and I’m not going to waste my time telling him to back off. What good does it do, especially now? What good? What… better… a response…?

I walk down a broken road, the putrid smoke rising up from the torrid remains of bodies strewn about. The street lights cast a ghostly orange hue over the gruesome scene, distorting the natural color of things. I take a deep breath, wrinkling my nose at the stench; I am reliving a nightmare, something that was understood and essentially the demon’s way of life. I didn’t know what he talked about till now, what it was he’d done and why he…

No. I don’t like it. I’m tired of hearing his crazy-talk about the joys of sin. I want to know and he WILL give me a direct answer. So help me God, if I have to hear another lie I’ll march myself to the nearest weapons store and blow my brains out. “Why?”

"Why, why?" A boot crunches the broken glass to my right. Buu looks down at me, his expression unreadable. “Why anything?” He carelessly toes the blackened arm of what looks to be a middle-aged woman. “Hn. It was my life. I just believed…”

'No. I don’t believe this. A hallucination, a… maybe I’m sniffing gas, that’s it… right? Carbon monoxide poisoning? Shit, I could die!'

“Pure and simple; I was made to do exactly what my…,” he hesitates. “My father, I suppose? He spoke and I did it. And no. Brat, I’m not real. This is your imagination come to life, I think, so stop panicking. You’re embarrassing me. Heh, delusions of the brain...” He smirks, wandering ahead of me several feet away. “You’re one fucked up kid. I guess that’s why I like you, strange as it is for me to say that...”

“Embarrassing?” I blink. ‘How…? How am I embarrassing you?!” I swallow dryly, and grimace at the taste of bile on my tongue. “You act like we’re being watched…”

“Ah!” He whirls around, arms held out with fingers splayed. “And WHAT an AUDIENCE!!”

“…….you…you’re crazy!!!” I get up, “YOU’RE FUCKING NUTS!!! THESE PEOPLE ARE DEAD!!!”

“True,” he side steps into a pool of blood then jumps as he does so, frowning. He gives his foot a shake of dismay. “Aw, damnit! I got some on my boot. I hate that.”

I think I’m going to throw up.

Buu continues to distance himself from me, seemingly oblivious to the chaos around us. If he notices, I can’t tell, but I’m sure he’s doing most of this to draw a response from me, which he is doing rather successfully. “You’re too compassionate, boy.”

“What would you know about compassion?” I ask, trembling from the sheer effort to restrain myself from strangling him and possibly harming myself in the process. “You claim that you don’t understand anything about humans… they are… insects, your playthings… But, you know what I think? When it comes right down to it; without people, you’re nothing. You have NO purpose.”

“Hn,” He tilts his head, listening. “I never said that I understood it completely. That doesn’t mean I haven’t learned anything. After all, I’ve been living inside you for 14 years, haven’t I?”

“You could’ve fooled me… heartless bastard. You deserve to burn in hell.”

In the time it takes to blink, 7 feet of pink monster is suddenly standing over me, his breath hot on my face, “Listen to me FUCKER!” He grabs me by my vest and gives me a shake. “SAY SHIT ABOUT HELL AGAIN AND I’LL RIP OUT YOUR FUCKING SPINE. THIS IS LIFE!!! I WAS CREATED TO KILL. DO YOU UNDERSTAND THE WORD KILL? SHIT LIKE THIS IS A FUCKING WALK IN THE PARK COMPARED TO WHAT I’VE SEEN. I HAVE THE ABILITY TO IGNORE IT, TO MERELY SHRUG MY SHOULDERS. DON’T START LECTURING ME ABOU--”
His lifts his penetrating gaze up and over my head, beyond me and to the distant horizon.

I wriggle in his vice-like grip, “Jesus, what the hell is your problem?! Let me GO!”

Calmly, he blinks once and leans close. “Do you know what that is? Can you sense it…? I know you do. You remember it just as well as I.”

“Wh..”

“SHUT UP!” he barks.

“!!”

“Do you? Does it make you burn? Haven’t you ever just…” He leans closer, his lips against my ear. “…wanted to give in? You’ve felt it…I know you want it… that erotic buzz you get when the flesh is rent and the blood hot on your chest.”

"What are you doing?! S…stop…" I grab his wrist, digging my fingers deep and attempting to pry myself loose. "I don’t want to hear this; you’re fucking crazy! Hell, I’M crazy! You’re just a ghost of my past, nothing more! I’m pretending that you’re real."

“It was real… Remember how he humiliated us? Remember what they did, all of them? You wanted to give… you wanted so much to just let go, tell them that you could win, that you weren’t weak. Tell me boy, what pisses you off more? Just a monster…. We’re a monster. We want revenge, right?”

Deep into the inky blacks of eyes I see my horrified expression reflected back at me. I try to look away, fearing what I will see inside myself, fearing that what I have strived to hide since childhood will at last break free. “I won’t…”

“Look here. I won’t hurt you… well, maybe a little.” With his free hand I feel the thick fingers curl into my hair, twisting my head and neck to an odd angle. “I can break it. I won’t lie. It hurts too and unlike me, in this pathetic body, you won’t be able to regenerate… Not like me, not like how we use to be. Remember? Yes… Remember what it was like and how good it felt to be free, FREE to do whatever we wanted… We could take anything then. No one judged us. They ran like sheep all in perfect little groups… One by one, just like fireworks, blood, bone, flesh… We silenced them, painted the streets red, lovely art. No one can say we weren’t creative…”

I close my eyes, but it does little in the way of protecting me from the snarl of his voice.

“MMmm and when the killing got boring… The things that could be made from them… You remember that most of all? Dark chocolate is our favorite, like mother’s cookies… warm and soft, fresh out of the oven.”

I’m not going to change my mind, I refuse to listen; he’s fucking disgusting. I want to filter out his words, prying at my mind, pressing in on my defenses to the inferno within, my life behind the walls. He pushes further, threatening to break the psychological mortar and stub out the fire. I don’t want him near me, but in many ways I can’t resist the temptation.

“You’ll be happy again soon. I promise,” he lies.

I just hang there, held fast by the neck, seeing through him to the part of me that screams inside. I don’t know what it says and I wish I didn’t care, but I’ve reached a point where if I don’t focus on something, I may lose myself forever.

“You can throw all the tricks at me you want,” I say bitterly, “I’m not gonna fall for it; we aren’t the same, no matter how much you try to convince me…”

Buu never loses his grin. “Oh, but you’re mistaken. I think you do want it… you want to play with me… Don’t you remember when you were little? We played all the time… I taught you all kinds of neat things when no one was looking. You and I are very much alike. In fact, we ARE the same.”

I spit in his face, “Bullshit.”

“You’re shaking, boy. Is this fear I smell?”

‘This consciousness, this thing in front of my eyes, what use is it? Whatever he is, whatever figment of my imagination, I want it dead. Hasn't living been brutal enough without him? What have I done to God to deserve this? Is there something he isn’t telling me? Is this really what was meant to happen, this load of shit standing before me, tempting me with promises of freedom? Should I take the path of blind refuge? Should I simply relent and see what it is that I’ve been missing?’

Death.
Death all around me.
Nothing good ever came from this event; I can sense it. Yes. He asks me if I knew someone once, if the shadowed phantom from my dreams ever had a face. Yes, that face and those of countless others; they are all looking down at me, trying to come to terms with my freakish gifts. I never believed, not even as a little kid, that I’d ever fit in.
‘Goku sensei, where are you? You were always there to save me. Why aren’t you here? What happened to you?’

“Think about it….”

I can feel it. The idea doesn’t frighten me and that’s why I am afraid.

“Afraid of yourself… Afraid… of US.”

Have I ever tried?

“Remember how angry you got when he insulted mom? You were ready to kill him. We were ready to show them all that they didn’t get away with saying things like that. NO ONE talks trash about us.”

Ring true… touch that source, greater than myself.

“I’m telling you to try. Open up and appreciate the beauty of this destiny we have made.”

‘…save me… Goku… SAVE ME!!!’

I see it, I hear it, and I reach out to touch it. I feel his chest; it belongs to the creation of one being’s darkest desires. The body of this beast, the pink demon, he is me and I can feel it, like staring into a mirror. I see my true form for the first time. The anger is gone.

A respite, the breaking of clouds to shed light down through the depths, down…down… I hold this state, breathing in and out. I am not angry. I am no longer ashamed. There is only a great need for something, a completion that only the demon can fulfill. I desire it.
The tragedy of my surroundings has ceased to affect me; I look away from it all and only to him.

I won’t live in fear anymore.
I have sought for a cure which I’ll never find when I knew all along that it stood in front of me, a marauding figure with a penchant for chaos. I have it now.

I can feel the energy in him; it burns bright like the sun, moving easily into myself. It doesn’t matter anymore… I’ll no longer doubt; I’ll simply be…

‘Fucking bastards…. They WILL pay…’

There are battles to be waged and wars to be won. I let him in, the deafening sound of glass shattering as the barricade is broken. My faith lays in no one… I no longer need to be held by the hand. I leave it. I leave it all behind. None of it matters any longer. What I know. What I have always known is… Me.

He grins.
I smile.

A shudder, the sensation of ice sliding down my back, stinging cold, to the seat of my pants; I grab him and I fall forward into the fire. He wants to kill. I want to kill, to crush the fucker and tear his flesh, slow and easy, watching muscles part and blood welling up, crimson black. I want to watch it turn dark in the sun, flaking away and bone, glistening white, turns yellow with age.

Everything that separated us, physical and biological, we are one, the calm of the eye before the storm. Cells and synapses, electrolytes and atoms; the mitochondrial essence of humanity is utterly destroyed. And then, it comes, a tsunami wave of vertigo. It makes me feel as if I am choking; I see everything and anything, all in fast forward, flashing before my eyes.

From the initial taste of his first kill to the searing whips of death-bringing energy, I see it, clear as day. People he saw, places destroyed, the tastes of demonic nirvana. The world lilted at his feet.

What place was it? He suddenly found himself at the head of a line and a beastly man looking down at him as if he were meat under glass. It was highly unsual for him to be on the other end of the perspective, the victim at last. He said nothing, listening in trepidation to the details of his situation and what would become of him now that he resided in the hereafter.

“New life,” The red man in the suit said. “Human.”

Those words struck Buu, lighting quick. He couldn't interject, resistance was futile; he swallowed his pride and reminded himself that hell was worse than where he was going, or so he thought.

I feel him writhe and I am born, his cries of rage were muted forever.

How loathsome, how utterfucking wasteful of a life, trapped in a living cell with unaccounted limitations. Perhaps the dance with the devil may have been better; he would have still been the great Buu, true to the core. But, someone else had determined the course of his life. He could think of a million things to do to the fool, twisted and disturbing varieties of torture that would make a grown man piss himself in fear. So help him, whoever it was, he’d pay in due time.

Buu is not one to forget a grudge.

I scream, feeling as if I’ve been doused in acid. My skin hurts, stretching tight and threatening to erode away, exposing the underlying tissue. Howling brokenly, I beat at the invisible flames and drop to my knees, clawing at myself in desperation.
Something… SOMETHING… GET THIS SHIT OFF OF ME!!! I twist onto my back, bowing my legs in an involuntary spasm, head thrust back and shoulders raised high against my neck.
IT BURNS.
The rage ascends.
IT FUCKING BURNS!!!!

I hug myself, and wail like a baby, begging God to end my suffering. Something rips, and I kick the ground and scarcely wonder why my limbs feels so useless, flopping like they’re shattered into a million tiny pieces. This hurts… hurts so much I want to bash my face into a mirror and hope that something will penetrate my skull and stab be in the brain.

Immobilized, I feel the joints in my knees stiffen before making a sickening crunch and the only sound I can make is a strangled grunt. My vocal cords have long since failed me. Though, I should be incapable of coherent thought, I remind myself that if I should live, I'll do everything humanly possible to keep anything like this from ever happening again.
It doesn’t stop. It only worsens.
Kill me please, drive a stake into my heart and end this insanity.

I itch… ants... ants… fucking ants everywhere…under me, all over me, in my mouth and in my hair and clothes. They’re there, their little feelers peeling away the nerves, chewing on my organs and spitting out sallow venom, filling me with their poison. I wrench and I cry, my sobs becoming louder as a bout sickness purges their wickedness from within; blood and brown chunks swirling in a steaming mass, I roll away from it and find no relief, only hollowed cold.

Everything hurts… HURTS LIKE A MOTHERFUCKER.
MAKE IT STOP!!!!
I lift my arm, it snaps and lengthens several inches; I shriek before stupidly trying the other and it too does the same. I barely see it through the blur of tears, muscles bulging, sinew popping. I continue screaming and wailing and the more I do it, the better I feel because then I can drown everything else out. I don’t have to feel the pain if I don’t want to. I don’t have to watch my body annihilate itself, swelling, twisting, and reshaping itself into something else…

Disconnected, the evil sees from the safety of his realm. Tawny skin, darkened by the sun begins to pale, winter white, bleeding cottony gray to rosy pink.

Barely cognizant, ignorant, and numb, the pieces are falling into place. My jaw feels funny and if I could, I’d see if it was actually still there… But, I’m still paralyzed, left vulnerable, laying in the middle of a street in a city that was once very beautiful. The words of delayed question are muttered as incoherent growls; I want to be a kid again, crying while being held in my mother’s arms.

‘Tell me I’m okay… Help me. HELP ME!!! THIS IS ALL HIS FAULT!’

My clothes, which comfortably fit before, lay in tatters, boot tips broken through by feet that have grown several sizes larger… My body is fighting itself, fighting to restrain the alien rising to the surface.
I squeeze my eyes shut, the stars no longer my comfort; I lay in the middle of a massacre, becoming the very thing that may make all of this seem like child’s play.

Yelling and screaming, the voice is me, I hear that it has changed as well...
Screaming… Screaming… the agony has yet to end… I shake and seize, clenching tight; I am helpless to the rage swallowing me whole, scorching hot.

A helpless sob, “F..Fucker… FUCKER!!!”

I am so beyond the real… so beyond the control…. I am uncontrollable… I am changed… I am nothing to be loved. I am nothing to be seen as worthy. I simply am….
Stop. Stop it. Stop. STOP THIS.

An animalistic cry slices the air and I can hardly believe it’s mine.
I feel the exquisite release of pain, now only a dull ache in my sides. Wonderingly, I run my fingers over my ribs and up over a powerful torso to strange broad shoulders, corded neck, and a face that I’d only seen as a vision until now.
I have become him.

A sound, a rumbling in his throat, the sadness and hurt is gone, replaced by something far more sinister… Yes, now is the time. The rose red irises of a killer glitter in the florescent street lamps; the beast rises to his full height, a daunting seven feet. This place is familiar territory. He remembers it just as well as he remembers the scent of his objective.

The monster steps into the light, turned orange by its glow. He doesn’t seem overly worried about his nudity or the fact that beside him lays the mangled body of a young woman, clutching her lifeless infant. Unblinkingly, he laughs, loud and clear. He thinks it’s funny, amused at the irony of it all. Ah, how good it felt to be back. What an unusual thing to be welcomed by such enthralling filth… But, he shouldn’t delay himself further; there will be time for frivolities later. For the time being, there are more important things to contend with.

"Revenge is sweet."

TBC...