The Night Where It Begins

An eye for an eye.

A heart for a heart.

Murder for murder.

It's all the same to me. Right, wrong, left, right.

it doesn't matter. In the end we are all rotten corpses.

We justify our actions using loose morals we grew up on. What our parents taught us. No one has a happy ending.

My knucks we’re bloody.

Hatred took over.

The punches got louder.

The screams got louder.

An evil grin came over my face. I looked into his eyes as his last breath came in.

You understand what fear is now?

What's wrong say something.

You can speak, right?

I see you gasping for air, your face covered in blood.

My family tried to pull me off of him. I yelled and said no. He deserved this for what he did to us. Why are you defending him?

"Michael, this is not justice, this is rage. You become a monster if you end his life right now. There is no coming back."

I looked back with a cold glare. I ended him with one last fatal blow to the head. A lifeless corpse. I got up from the creaky wood floor and looked at my family, hands covered in blood.

It needed to be done, I said coldly.

"No it didn't. You took justice into your own hands. 

You played God. 

Now you will pay the price when your time comes. Those who sin deserve a cold, brutal death."

Right… none of you are saints. No one in this family has morals.

Mother, you had an affair with your manager.

Father, you had a secret account siphoning money from your company.

Sister, I don't know what you carry. We barely talk. But I know it's something.

If I go to hell, so be it. Who even knows if hell is real.

Who knows if heaven is real.

No one knows where the good or the bad end up. That's just how life is.

One last look at their faces. I showed nothing. They showed everything.

Anger.

Frustration.

Tears.

Regret.

I looked at the corpse one last time and spat on it.

That is what you get for touching me as a kid. I hope you rot in hell. I hope you found your wife there. She knew what you did to me.

Silence filled the room like I had dropped a bomb. No one in my family knew. I kept it a secret because I was scared.

Those late night screams.

Late night panic attacks.

We're all gone.

This burden

no longer existed.

My family froze. 

Tears stopped. 

Just stillness. 

As if they never knew or what if they did? 

Doesn't matter.

 He is dead. Now 

I can move on.

Or so I thought.

I walked out of the house. No words were spoken.

The dark midnight sky was bright.

The warm breeze felt good.

The blood on my hands had started to dry.

I stopped and took one last look down my block.

Was this a chapter closing?

Would this follow me?

Did I truly escape it?

As I crossed the road a car came out of nowhere and hit me. It didn't stop.

Karma?

Planned?

Who knows.

Now I was the dead corpse. I felt my body stop moving. The warm breeze turned cold.

Blood came gushing from my head.

Eyes fading.

With everything I had left, I smiled. As if I accepted it.

"Welcome to the afterlife. Before we determine where you go, I will ask you a few questions. We will also revisit your past."

"Regardless of the outcome, you will be reincarnated into a parallel world much like the one you left. Politics, love, lust, consequence. All familiar."

"If you are accepted into Heaven you will be granted wealth, power, a strong body, and a loving family."

"If you are sent to Hell you will carry dark magic, a cursed form, little wealth, and no family at all."

"Question one, do you consider your actions justifiable?"

Yes. I carried this burden for a long time and was afraid to act on it until I did.

"Interesting."

"Question two, if there was another way, would you have handled this differently?"

No. The system is broken. Truth won't set you free and neither will lying. Innocent people get swallowed by a machine built for dealers and disputes. I know what I did and I would do it again.

"In reality the system is more of a drag than a corruption. Proven guilty is real  if it worked the way it should, things would be more fair. But it was also unfair of you to murder him in front of your family and then turn on them."

Are you being biased?

"No. Just stating facts. System or not you took a life. That may have been warranted. But there were other ways."

"Moving on."

"Question three, if you could see your family's reaction to your death and everything they witnessed, would you apologize for turning on them?"

No. I don't owe an explanation for that. 

Just like you never give a full honest answer 

only partial ones.

Who are you to act high and mighty? Deciding where I go. I am human. We all make mistakes. Is this just your way of exposing me?

"Let me stop you right there."

"You acted high and mighty. You beat a man to a corpse and spat on him. Yes?"

"Humans make mistakes. That is common. What matters is how you handle them and what you learn. If you don't learn, you go down a dark path that works against everything you believe in."

"And what happens next depends entirely on how your past choices weigh against you."

I couldn't speak. Like I had been exposed.

"I'll make this quick."

"God loves everyone and forgives everyone. But that doesn't justify the paths people choose. The only one who can truly forgive you is yourself."

Yeah, right. I snorted and looked into her gold eyes.

"Based on your answers and your resistance, I am classifying you as a fallen angel."

"Neither bad nor good. A neutral soul with a jaded mind."

"The path forward is yours to choose, Michael. But remember this."

"Every action has a consequence. It is how you handle it. How you move on defines what you become."