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  Chapter 0: The countdown

  I did my tasks as usual, a few robberies. I go to the paramedic from the few coins I could effin find. I need to find money fast or I will die before this very day, I will smoke my last cigarette, I don't wanna die that way. But all I was told was to write my thoughts, so I did just that in my diary, but the doctor stated from the very beginning, down to the letters of the month and the year I am in now. Soo I write this like a letter to myself.

  It was a grueling evening. I’m 21, my parents are old and rugged, but I do my part in taking care of them. Smoking stings, but it gets worse when I am stressed, it helps ease my hunger at least, I don't need the food but all bones doesn't look attractive now does it. I feel like I need to find money fast, but fast money leads to issues. Rent payment LEADS TO ISSUES, and me grabbing my hair worsens my sanity. WHAT IS THIS, the vaccine. H HEEE HHEE he has it, the king has it but he can't let small people of his own nation get a taste. No noooo that same backwards thought got me into fast money I thought to myself. Then I slammed so hard I hurt myself. Then he starts spewing his lies I can't afford to look past, he keeps prancing a newer vaccine each day, I wouldn't be shocked if he used it on himself and just has the syringe filled with water. Why is it that I smell dead bodies, why is it that us of the slums have to fight back the hoard of zombies, of victims of the virus to unconcious for their own good. Everybody has the vaccine it feels like but US, every kid gets a chance to get a life, every damn orphanage, hes so damn selective no wonder people call him son of Lucifer. Sometimes I wish I was a damn one too, I CAN*T KEEP GOING ON LIKE THIS, then I see those rugged dirt bags I call my parents and I remember who I'm fighting for. That damn vaccine is what we ALL are working towards, but Malfonz never stated that as a prize of the hard work, only ever flaunting it like a damn carrot, (barf). People keep on dying on me, and it gets tiresome. My restless eyes. But so I had decided to do fast living, so that the payment can be earned. “One day I am about to die so why not die smoking a cigar”.

  I switched, I switched at the last second. Why, I don’t know. Something had to be done, this damn nations a hell hole and I need out, broken buildings, no food for the poverty, and a damn FUCK YOU TO MY MANAGER.

  Flame

  It was a grueling evening. My stomach was in ashes, my back felt the pain of a thousand boulders, but I'd rather feel death than this. I don't know if it was due to wanting to protect my family or myself from the world's issues that I kept walking, but doing my job was certainly done for my family's sake. Would I wanna die protecting or die the way I choose? But I would never commit to sin, death is sin. Instead if I die due to circumstances I would commit and be happy.

  My family is a poor one, we can only stand by so much in the day and earn so much. We can barely survive, but it got worse. We are no longer in freedom, we are trapped and more of us are dead than alive, WRITTING THIS DAMN LETTER actually makes me feel better, thanks doc.

  The doctor asked me "if you can describe your own fear, you can accept it and move onwards, sadness is not the end just the waiting game for something better".

  He was a guy with red hair and fancy attire, I remember his name starting with an M, he actually goes by a full name but I don't remember it. The last few years, a pandemic has occured, people get infected with a disease via radiowaves, and sometimes I wonder what if I die randomly will I ever know. It's a hallucinatory drug type of infection, live for a week. By day five I had heard that if the individual is not vaccinated beforehand they suffer hallucinatory aggression, and they attack people around them, til the last day when these people die out. All I see are bodies, I seen the real deal a few times myself such as the fighting aggression and sometimes the angry man takes a few lives way too early.

  Is it dumb, even after all this I still believe we all exist for a reason I still believe in god, I have faith in his order. But I'm scared too, too damn many times to count on my fingers. But what is the meaning of my life and living, am I simply just living. There's no joy, there is some but not much, my life feels e.. . Maybe my hole is filled, maybe my joy is my family, I do love them, but when you have “you always want to go for more”. I don't know. But this is me, if anything.

  "Do you feel sad now".

  No.

  "What do you love the most, the most random of things".

  I like listening to random sound coming from the creaks of flootboards to even the bell chimes of ... well bells.

  "Then why were you ever contemplating being happy, to be happy is fullfilling enough".

  Thanks doc.

  Day 2:

  Doctors words made me happy, I don't know why but knowing I can still live a happy life, maybe even happier than him gave me a drive, a sense of backwards hope. Hope is hope she'd say, I finally understood who I was fighting for and it was nothing. The bible said to greet your neighborm I did the same today to those kids I once hated. He showed up... that fucking man showed up when I was least expecting it.

  KNOCK KNOCK

  I was scared for my life, he was walking all showman like. But the more he acted like a theater nerd the less and less I was scared of him. My eyes half open and my face dangling down like a river, I did not get enough sleep due to my thoughts, but only for a split second, then I felt the fear that I was not able to explain away. Then after that second I had to stand straight and put my hands up, like a soldier would do.

  "I am the leader right here, so, I have a proposition. Pay me three asmereldas. Per month til the day you grow useless and wither. But for survival sake we can also be showmen. Each friday I will have a divine banquette dining, with only one asmereldas cost on my end. You can eat or fight for food to collect the most amount for your day to day leasure. But if any of you try swindling the asmerelda by giving me one less, your death will be at my leisure, I can survive without food, you cannot", he was looking down at me like damn pigs to the slaughter, smiling ear to ear.

  I mean money is like investment yeah, each coin is worth a damn lot, but the fresher it is the less it is worth, the highest cost money is old and withering ... a single bend and it snaps but its valued at 10 000% more than its fresher counterpart. The currency was designed with religion in mind not to make people hoard a lot and instead learn to give it away. For this money to wither it takes around 6 years of letting it ferment, and then looking at an asmerelda which is worth 10 X the value, man I'm screwed. That's the kind of money doctors make.

  FLame

  Robbery is what is needed, for I could never fork over enough for Malfonz. But my lust for a cigar stings, now even swinging a line towards me when I feel alone, when stress has no hold of me. It’s been a month since my last update, I was subjected to a red listing at an early age due to an early robbery, I needed the cash before and as my town got more and more withered worse debt collectors showed their ugly mug, until the worst one HIM. I ran in, scram yelled across the room and I was holding a gun filled with bullets. I did not shoot but I would have. My team worked, put my money on the table, I divided the money into 3’s, half for Malfonz, 1 percent for me and the other half for my family. When the smell of warm shirts I used to wear could be smelled, I felt blessed at home after a long day, I hugged and lost myself. Happiness, was a drug, but I do not know if it was good or not. My mothers discussion could ring through my ears, my fathers talk with me about how I earn my money yet nothing was brought to light via it. But cigars was always for when I was alone, for when, when my parents were not with me.

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  FLAme

  His red to black buttoned shirt was intimidating, and his speech was even more. But asmerelda was a thing only obtainable in the blackmarket for cheap. People usually don't give away such a high thing. Not cheap, but you might have to fork over asmerelda for assasination purposes because murder is seen as even higher of a sin. Should I assassinate? MMmm dude, my family need the food. But. what if I kill someone who I also hate, what's the point? I mean I would do sex work but that is given to the corporation and they divide the money into lesser chunks.

  My first kill still fills me with dread but I had to. It was a grown man, old, I didn’t hate em, he seemed nice by his appearance, but I lived by the sentence of bliss instead of knowledge. I hate to kill even to this very day but I had to. Slowly though, that had to be changed too, why... people started to die right beside me. Go insane, they were not they anymore, they would not feel like they anymore, and I did not love the fifth day. I started to hate five altogether. So many screams, so much blood, even if you stood inside hidden behind a door blockading yourself from them, the smell of metal made me puke it was such a nasty stench to this day. The king has the cure but he only gives it to the people of the richer class, slums like these get nothing, I dont even know why we are here but in the rich areas sleeping the side walks seems worse. It felt like that back in the day, nowadays I wonder if sleeping out back on the road was ever a hard choice compared to this life.

  It had been a year in passing, I kept paying my three asmereldas, I found a way. But it was lonelier, no more parents to look out for, and loneliness is a drug, it helps with insomnia when your suicidal but I lived on found peace in knowing the life I lived served some sort of purpose to someone, how I was loved, the nostalgia now kept me going. Because when I'm dead I know I'll miss this feeling of feeling the air touch my arm, I'll remember what I never did and how the grass was always greener on the other side, I'll miss me the most, when my time comes It'll be open arms but not right now it isn't my time.

  --

  My mother was 61. She loved animals, especially dogs. Her favorite food was rice. She was hardworking, but she was a log during sleep as well. She loved me, and took principle in her parents' teachings. She died sleeping.

  My father was also 61. He was lazy, and was the total opposite of my mother. He hated animals, loved us and that was it. He was an emotional package, he held emotions inside instead of out and about like my mother. Was found dead as well, I couldn't muster a tear the second time, I was numb to it, but reading what he wrote brought me closer to him after passing.

  The final snap was my brother though...

  MY BROTHER, DEAD not even 2 months old. So I begged Malfonz, can I have the vaccine, I do not want to end up dying in the hands of a virus like the family before me. He was unflinching, I felt like I was talking to a wall, whereas I was the pebble.

  FLAMe

  Do I really want these slums to give me the little they own, will killing them really benefit me. OOh oh no oh no, I can hear the footsteps.

  FLAME

  Whatever, the little you own can make you go far.

  FLAME

  What am I really doing? What's the point in all this, do I really plan on killing them. But days passed, my addiction was too much, I used up all the pay money, and now. My - my only way out was to run. But I was too late.

  I collected the amount my assassination gave me, but with time all I lost piled up. My family is gone, due to the virus. My want to survive was something I was looking for, the pain of a heart attack felt like something so excruciating, yet the fault was uncontrollable unless you had the vaccine. I begged, for my life's worth, in front of Malfonz. He did not agree to give me a chance at life. The houses were burning of ember, and the heat would give me a stroke.

  I understood something I never thought I did before, he sold it long before this charade...

  --

  "YOU haven't been paying rent huh". The door is kicked open with splinters flying and the door creaking. “HUUH”, Malfonz transforms into his lightning form and makes it so that two afterimages stay. One that captured the one who hasn’t been paying by the neck and the one of him standing near the door. He leans down, bends his knees and asks him for the last time why he hasn’t been paying up. A bloodlust could be felt and the air becoming denser. Malfonz’s eyes where black voids, with the shadows making it hard to see. “WHY HAVE YOU NOT BEEN PAYING ME”. “YOU WANT TO DIE OUT HERE”. He sobs, and his stench of drugs could be smelled. But Malfonz didn't care.

  I am not the same as them. So I lifted the neck up and squeezed, counting til the number 10 was the last ringing in these peasants minds and when that hit, every ounce of regret should have been felt, til the blood was spilled on my shirt. YOU ARE NOT THE SAME AS ME, SHOULD HAVE BEEN BORN A PIG, SO THAT ALL THAT YOU LOSE NOW WOULD GO TO SOMETHING, SHOULD HAVE RUN AWAY, PERISH, DIE. But with a single explosion my eyes were covered and my day went on like nothing. My black eyes once filled with bloodlust were turned off.

  I killed that man for nothing more than ending a ongoing project, I lost passion for.

  If I seem like I love myself, that is an illusion. Life owes me one. I did not deserve this love. I lost the meaning of life. Greed took that place for me, and yet I gained the love of children behind my back because they yet didn't know the man I willingly choose not to leave the side of, But did it justify killing people? Murder never souths me, but a life is just that life. Life leads to death and that is a free ocean to swim in, you are free to drown, I also am free to drown. My knees don't heal if stabbed, maybe they do heal, but a healing day for you is a week for me, my only proof that I am not a human is because I am both weaker and stronger than them.

  Maybe I hated him enough to kill em, to kill the drug user/(was not the reasoning.) I had no need for that, I am not in the ocean, I can drown but I am on a boat. Those days I was a bloodlusted creature, I killed if I wanted to. I was hungry that day, but that day or those days I did accept myself as something not human, above humanity or under it, I could not answer you, but with time the lust for blood covered me and I loved it. People who were deserving of it or not, I was not them. I was lightning as well as immortal as well as having the strength to be able to touch down and connect the corners of the earth if I so wished. This is why I WAS BORN, I AM NOT A SIMPLE HURRICANE, I.. AM.. THE EPITOME OF GREED FILLING THE POND OF WHICH WAS AN OCEAN. That day I was not just simply Malfonz, but a switch that could be turned on and off whom followed a sin.

  flame

  You DARE ASK OF ME FOR THE VACCINE I DO NOT OWE YOU. “Ow” the boy screamed. “The assassinations, the deaths occured due to the virus, WHO IS THAT VACCINE FOR, THE ONE WHO GIVES YOU THE WORLD”, said the boy. The atmosphere was bloody, red, and the smell of smoke made it hard to breath as well as see.

  The burning houses surround due to the anger of Malfonz, filling the air with empty space where houses once were, where death of suffocation was itching at the boy under the boot of Malfonz. Blue light from the sky was shining, I guess it was still day. And the smoke of cigars filled the air, like rotten cheese, but that was no cigar, that was the burning embers.

  WHO ARE YOU TO TELL ME ABOUT ME, as Malfonz proceeded to stomp his foot on the boy and with a vicious glance of joy. The screams haunted that town til this day, the spirit of Malfonz and the boy, the boy was a bloody pulp. Malfonz in a last “attempt” of reconciliation asked the boy, “WHAT ARE YOUR LAST WORDS?'' Before an answer could be given, the boy had stopped breathing, and it turns out Malfonz’s rage killed that boy that day.

  Stomped the head of the one begging to survive after he had lost his family to the virus, at the end of the day he was simply a coward with a power fantasy...

  FLLLLLAAAAMMEE, (the whispers of entities beyond the grave)

  YOU FILTHY MORTAL, THE LIVES YOU TOOK. THE PEOPLE AND THE FAMILIES KILLED DUE TO YOUR ACTIONS. TO FOLLOW NOTHING OTHER THAN A SIN YOU DO NOT NEED FOR SURVIVAL. ONE DAY YOU WILL PERISH, WILL SEE, WILL KILL YOURSELF BEFORE ANY FOUL MORTAL COULD REACH YOU. MALFONZ YOU ARE FILTHY, said the souls of the ones he killed in his life. Crossing every tunnel, the shift of the air, the shallow voice, it was not a singular voice but a collection of them suffering at the hands of a self made immortal who believed himself as above. But for now the bloody footsteps of Malfonz marked on the ground did not mark his death but instead the death of the ones he killed, this was not the end of his reign, but a landmark.

  –

  Chapter 1: One day doesn't change a cowardly man

  Because when he has power he is the same man that indangered the lives of his victims...

  But when a good man doesn't have power he still bares his life, but to protect the fallen not to fall from grace himself...

  A man who kills can only ever live in the shoes of another, not because he doesn't have his own but because to him the grass isn't only greener on the other side to him he doesn't even have grass on his own lawn and the day a man who is addicted ever turns to face himself that is when you can see ones true character shine. The man lived a happy life knowing he had spent it on something, created a satisfaction on his own lawn knowing it maybe as green as my neighbor. There is no equality but there always exists some sort of equivalent exchange.

  As a whole city blocks away from peoples view was burned down, as Malfonz was too focused on his own money, he made a grave change in seating. He sat where he never did before, the same day he meets Neova, the same story can never play out the same ever again. Fin.