Requiem's Prelude

The worlds of super 'heroes' and 'villains' has been saturated with cliches and tropes that those with abilities feel pressured to follow and adhere to. Not I. My powers were borne from one singular act of senseless and brutal violence. As I lay on the urine-flooded floor of my toilet cubical deathbed, blood pooling from my mouth and several other gaping wounds, mixing with the brown, green and yellow creating a Pollack-esque artwork beneath my broken body, I felt nothing and everything. All at once.

Pity? no. Hatred. Not for the loose-jawed yokels that dished out my final pasting. For the society of ignorance and pacifism, that favours turning a blind eye because facing up to problems and making the ugly decisions is too hard to bear. As life slowly petered out of me, I found myself wasting those final seconds of mortality, planning out my solution to society.

Then I blacked out.

Like all those times when our best ideas are born just as sleep captures us, I drifted away. I have no idea what happened next. Not really. The liminal black abyss seemed to last for both a nanosecond and several millennia. I am not even sure I survived. But, as I dropped the last, garrotted redneck piece of crap on the pile of flesh, bones and entrails that once resembled people, walked into the bar and sank a skinful of vodka, I felt a strange power coursing through me. Like my veins were on fire, my blood replaced by something more venomous and caustic. My body restless and inflamed, fighting this infection. I caught my reflection in a mirror. I didn’t look any different. But I was different. Something had awakened in me and a renewed sense of real justice and vengeance roared.