I Am Shadows: pt8

The “empty lot” part

Who am I?

I ask again and again, but I can’t figure it out.

Sinner

I want my mom but she is gone. I want my dad but he offered me away. I miss my sister, Liz, but she…she’s…

Dead

I scream and put the gun to my head.

Click!

“Arrrgh!” I scream.

Click! Click! Click!

I throw the gun across the cluttered and abandoned lot I’m hiding in. I don’t want the comfort of walls. I don’t want human contact, but no matter what I do I can’t stop the memories, the dreams….

Or the training

I scream again. Maybe the police will come, they will arrest me and I’ll fight back. They can end it for me if I go for their guns.

My sister is pleading with me through the ether, begging me to stay by her, not to leave. Begging me to…help her…

What are you willing to do to be a fist of god?

I punch the wall and bloody my knuckle’s. I punch myself in the face and in the head as hard as I can. I try to break the liquor bottle I’ve been drinking from on my skull, to no avail. I can hear her screaming now it sounds so real.

But I hear other voices. They are hushing and stifling screams. Swearing and cursing at someone, two men slink into the lot; dragging a kicking body behind an abandoned van and out of my view. I can hear them laughing.

It’s dark

It’s cold

“You need to learn your lessons, whore!” One of them say. She’s pleading and begs. She sounds so much like my sister.

I reach for my bottle again, I need to finish it off, but I’m not holding my bottle, I’m holding a pipe.

My grip hurts on the cold steel.

She begs

They laugh

Streaks of black start outlining everything I look at, like a drawing overlapping the world. The buildings, the cars and the random garbage laying around, all outlined in graphite black. The colors start changing into hastily scribbled colored pencil. I look around still holding the pipe. I look at the building wall I’m standing next to and I see three posters. My posters. My heroes.

I prayed to my heroes every day.

Please save me

One is of Batman, the other is Punisher, and the last is of Snake Eyes from the G.I. Joes

Yo Joe!

The posters are old and folded many times, the corners are ripped and shredded, like from hundreds of thumb tacks and tape.

I look at Snake eyes as he moves out of his place in the poster and slides his sword across his neck. Punisher loads and cocks his gun and Batman pops his knuckles and points. I look where he points, the abandoned lot is gone. I’m inside a drawing of a room….

My room

…it’s poorly lit, minimal furniture, only a dirty mattress on the floor, but the door is cracked open. I can see the outline of light around the door, and I hear screaming and pleading.

And David’s voice.

            “You need to understand your place” he says softly.

            “Please no, please I’ll be good! I’ll be good!” Liz pleads

“It’s not me who demands it. If it was up to me I would let your behavior slide, but god expects more out of all of us.”

“Please…” she sobs

I sneak to my door and I peek out. I tiptoe down the hall, and find them in the living room. My sister is naked. David is taking his clothes off while also holding her down. She’s fighting, she sees me and cry’s out. “Help! Help! Help me please!”

David turns, I don’t move, I’m scared.

He looks at me and says “God demands obedience. Obedience is a sign of higher intelligence and spirit. Rebellion is lower intelligence and animalistic. In Africa there is a tribe of monkeys that use sex as a way to teach hierarchy.” He turns to my sister. “If you act like an animal you get treated like and animal, so that you know your place. If there was another way I would do it.” He looks at me with those intense eyes. “What do you think?”

It wasn’t a question, it was a test. It was always a test. I remember this test. I…

Failed

…passed.”

I walked away.

 I heard the whole thing…she fought…she…fought. He hit while he…taught hierarchy. She screamed, he hit, she fought, he taught. She…

Died.

…sealed her fate through rebellion. It wasn’t right away, but later from internal bleeding.

But this time was different. It was all in graphite and colored pencil. And I’m holding a pipe.

I’ve already walked back to my room, I look in and see my heroes

My saviors

I prayed to them many times asking for deliverance.

Snake eyes is running his blade across his neck, Punisher is loading and cocking another gun and Batman is punching his fist into his hand demanding I go back.

My sisters, painful lesson continues. I know she wasn’t the first to learn hierarchy. She was certainly not the last. Even I needed to learn my place once.

He didn’t want to, never wanted to, god made him do it.

I’m screaming now.

I run back with my pipe in hand and hit David with all my might. I hit him again and again. And with each new blow, the colors flash. With each new hit I rearrange his graphite lines. I beat him into a pile of squiggles that look like knotted string, while the color lines lays strewn everywhere. I look at my sister….she….

…Is not Liz?

The world is real again.

I’m standing over two men, beaten and broken, I’m panting, sweaty, bloody. I look at the girl again, a prostitute, She’s terrified.

I remember my training and act quickly. I riffle threw the men’s pockets; taking everything that is on them. They’re not dead, I slap them around so they look up to see that I have their I.D.s. I find rolls of money, drug money, and little bags of different things that will come in handy later. I pry open their eyes and throw dirt into them. Blinding them.

 I grab the girl roughly, making her scream. I slap her as noisily as I could and drag her down the street, pleading. Now they won’t implicate her.

When we are out of ear shot I give her the money, and tell her to get out of town or else. She is shaken and doesn’t quite understand. I don’t care I walk away as fast as I can, running when I was out of sight.

Tears are falling

Never crying

I find a fire escape ladder, and make my way to the top of a high building, and fall over onto the roof.

My training releases me. Tears fall, I can’t breathe. My bones ache.

What is happening to me?

I just killed…David? But he’s dead, everyone is dead. They all killed themselves in the rising.

Bags and bullets, poison and knives.

I survived

Sinner

David sealed my sister’s fate, murdered her and I did nothing

What would you do in the name of god?

“You can’t kill me” David says in the back of my mind “you can’t kill a god and my place as one is assured”

I can see him looking at me through those intensely scary eyes, pointing that meaty, flicking, finger in my face. “If you choose not to rise” my memories remind me “Then your soul is forfeit and your body will burn in the cleansing.”

I Am Forfeit



I Am Shadows pt9