The Spirit of Vengeance

It has been twenty days since humanity ceased to exist. I expected equanimity but all I have in my heart is fear. I must keep moving. The fate of humanity was brutal but cannot be compared to that which I will experience if at any point I am found. Every second of every day, he draws closer. Often, I hear his cries; infantile screams impassioned with the greatest level of pain. The noise from this creature echoes the screams encompassing Earth on that good day in which the scourge was cleansed at my hand. That day, I felt nothing for those melting before my eyes. I knew it was a necessary sacrifice for the creation of a calmer existence. However, humanity was not the only curse afflicted on this reality. This I know now, and I wish I had known it earlier.

Miles away from the nearest derelict civilization, the smell of death still pierces my lungs. I felt murder would be cathartic, but instead it was nothing but a particularly gruesome chore. The forest feels haunted now; more so than when I’d frequented it previously. The brush of each branch felt like a grasp of my shoulder as I awaited the moment at which the owl king of vengeance would find me.

Opportunities to rest are as few as the food resources open to me. Berries are a dangerous vice; some burst with delicious flavour but some could be the end of me before I even had the opportunity to be found. Often in the past twenty days I had considered suicide, seeing it as an easy out. However, if I did end my life, I would never have the chance to enjoy the harvest of my efforts: a quiet world, undisturbed by the turmoil of humanity. My pock-marked hands clutch the knife I’d use against my oppressor when next we’d meet.

If humanity still existed, my very presence would instill terrible fear into whoever had the misfortune of finding me. In the past twenty days, I have had a handful of run-ins with my oppressor. He held me in a new reality of the hellscape inside my head, leading me to tear at any flesh including my own to purge him from my mind. In such defense, I had lost my left eye and a large chunk of my cheek. Infection is imminent, but I knew I would destroy my oppressor before the infection destroyed me.

Time is running out. I no longer run from him; I seek him out like a meal. His red eyes were a permanent fixture of my mindscape. The flapping of wings became an omen of hope, though seldom those wings belonged to him who I needed to find. During the day, I would rest, knowing he would be looking for me at night. I knew he was close. I could sense him. The screaming in my mind, flashbacks to the slaughter of humanity often tricked me into thinking he was close. Where at one point I feared him, his presence, imagined or otherwise became a drug to me. Adrenaline rushed through my veins, empowering me with every shriek, just as it had on the day of destruction I had manufactured twenty days ago. Dying slowly, I still feel better today than I did when the scourge still roamed the earth.

Birds tease me with their constant activity. I need him. I need to slaughter him to ensure my freedom in the world I have created. The hallucinations trick me into thinking I hear him close to me. I am always ready.

An all too familiar shriek has me turning eastward toward his presence. Finally. It is time to fight for my world. Red eyes glowing in my direction, drawing ever closer. This excitement I haven’t felt since I decimated the scourge. My blade aloft, I am ready for him. I cannot let him penetrate my mind. I slash at his wing as his beak strikes my shoulder. I can feel no pain- only excitement for the freedom and power I will soon possess at his passing. He strikes again, and my blade narrowly misses his furry breast. I note how he is attempting to close in on my head and I can’t let that happen again. He lands upon my shoulder and again, my blade misses him somehow. I growl in frustration, animalistic in my need to kill. His furry wings tease my ears and I begin to quake in fear, swatting him off rabidly with my blade and hand- though no attack seems to bear him any damage. I remember the spell I used to rid this Earth of the scourge. Could I use it now if I exchange some words?

He closes his wings further around my head. I must be quick now. Mori. Deditionem anima tua, noctua. mori. Anima tua opus est alibi. My breath hitches as I repeat the curse but all I feel is his presence penetrating my mind. My vision falters. All I see, hear, feel is his wings around me, his claws digging into my shoulders and- beeping. Voices of the scourge. It cannot be- I wiped them out. I freed this Earth of their disease. Mind games again; he is making me go insane.

The feeling of him around me is fading away as a light draws closer. I know what is happening as it has already happened before. He has filled my mind of nightmares of the scourge, but I know this isn’t real. It can’t be real.

The light grows ever more present until suddenly it is too bright and objects around me come into view. The shape of a man- one of the scourge- peers down at me. He seems afraid, and he should be. In the last nightmare, a member of the scourge supposed to be my ‘mother’ stood to the left of me. Sure enough, she was there again, but outside the barred doors this time. Her face is marred with the scars I inflicted upon her. I sense both hope and fear in her eyes.

“Can you hear me?” The doctor asks timidly. Of course I can hear him, though I wish I couldn’t. “How are you feeling? You’ve just undergone a frontal lobotomy. How do you feel?” He has me tied up- presumably for his own safety. I don’t blame him. I know to behave this time, however. I force a weak smile.

“I feel a lot better. Thank you, doctor.” Outside the door, the mother begins to cry through a smile. The doctor seems shocked.

I am still tied up for the next few days, spoon-fed by quivering nurses and aides who want nothing more than to be far, far away from me. I stay on my best behaviour. A few weeks in, I ask to speak with the doctor unbound; man to man. He fearfully agrees at the suggestion of my psychiatrist. The door to my little cell is locked, but I know doctor has the key. My plan is in action. It’s nothing personal; for the good of Earth, I must eradicate the scourge, one by one.

“This isn’t personal,” I tell him with a wry smile as I reach over the small table to grab his neck. A sharp jerk, a snap, and his eyes gloss over with the darkness of death, still watching me with a look of fearful questioning as if to ask, “Why me?” I feel nothing as I grab the key from the pocket of his white jacket. His name, Matthew Jones, is lovingly stitched onto the breast pocket. I note this mentally with a shrug before exiting my cell.

I am regarded with fear all around. In this reality, my magic is null- possibly due to medications they gave me while I was out. I must kill the guards and other people around me with my own cold hands- a chore. My ‘mother’ pleads to be saved, attempting to appeal to a soft side I no longer possess. “Your face is uneven,” I mutter to her, referring to her facial scarring, a result of my last stint in this reality when nobody had the good sense to tie me up. “I hate inequality.”

Her flesh comes away easily, as though it wanted to be freed from her aging features. She is still alive, though losing lots of blood. Her eyes plead with me with the same terrified, questioning look permanently frozen on the doctor’s face. However, her eyes carry more emotion as I let her bleed to death: almost apologetic and disappointed at once. Even a glimmer of care remains in her eyes, which sickens me. I turn away.

I see my exit; a ward door slightly agape. I would take a window if I had to. I step outside- suddenly, I hear the shot of a gun. Pain and darkness ensue as I lose consciousness. They took longer to get to me this time, I note with a smirk.

When I awake, I am in the forest again and my oppressor is nowhere to be seen. I am calm. Laid in grass, my hair is matted with blood and my lips are cracked. Time to resume the hunt.