The Trial of The Lambs END

The glow of the Cybersphere had begun to settle. The dark red ball of energy had now started to turn into its daily blue glow, signifying the approach of the night. Evening has arrived along with the petrified face of the main man of the family.

“Looks like you had better days” I said to him in hopes of changing his mood, but it only worked in my head

He glanced at me for a moment and returned back to his previous state

“Tadano-san, are you okay?” I had to say his name a couple more times for him to snap out of his trance. He snapped back to reality and took a deep breath of relief.

“Sorry about that, it’s just….it was a rough day at work. A few of my co-workers died right in front of me…survivor’s guilt, you know the deal.” Kenma-san said that with a significant amount of weight in his words…can’t really blame him though

“You want to talk about it?” I asked

“Sort of…. Six of my friends were murdered by a bitch and a feral. Only I got away…It showed that you can never be prepared for what life throws at you. And just in a moment, you can lose everything you held dear by one who you expect it from the least” He said while taking a seat right next to me

I wanted to keep him talking just to get his mind off everything, but from his expression I knew that what had happened to him was haunting him.

“Tell me something, Akio-san. How did you do it? How did you move on from having your family murdered right in front of you?" He asked, slouched and looking down at the ripple forming on the small puddle between his feet hinting at rain.

“I thought I did….but I only realized recently, that it’s still a part of me. A part that refuses to let go without getting answers onto why it happened. After this, I am going to get my answers from him…..whether it kills me or not” I answered honestly

“You can move on when you have an answer. That makes a lot of sense” Kenma muttered, but I heard it clearly

“What’s that supposed to-” just moments before I inquired further, my time had run out.

“I guess just like moths to a flame, frauds also attract to each other I see” he said, standing at the entrance to the courtyards, in our line of sight

But just for my luck, both Aya-san and Yuri open the door and come outside to greet the traumatized Tadano-san. They both get to see Tsuneo standing on the opposite end and they stop before coming out into the open. I prioritized getting Tadano-san to the other two while Tsuneo was trying to get in my head.

“I warned you, Zero-san. You could’ve just walked away and let me have this. But that time has passed, to think you were this eager to die. I would be glad to take down the one who once gave me false hope” he said while walking inwards while I slowly walked Kenma-san towards his family.

I looked back at him “Tadano-san, I got this…you’ll be safe soon”. I make it towards the other two and hand the man to them. “Aya-san, take him and lock yourselves inside your room. If anyone but me tries to enter, you leave through the hidden exit and run. Do not look back, and do not come looking for me. I left a holo-note on the desk so you know what to do if that happens…Go”. But before I separate from them, my attention was grabbed one more time

“Nii-san….Don’t die on me...please?” Yuri said beside Aya-san. I give me an approving nod as a response and they all go inside.”

“To think they trust you that much. I used to be in the same boat you know” Tsuneo said

“You act like we’ve known each other while we never have” I said while following his every move

“True, but I did trust the Absolute Zero….CyberGrounds was a hot topic ever since it came out, but it was rather cruel that they never let people re-spec. People like me who only figured out that they couldn’t swap out their unusable weapon combos until the last moment, were left in the dust. We had no chance at having fun, nevermind competing….I even used to beg Arctus for them to let us re-spec but all they ever said was ‘no’. I gave up thinking it wasn’t the end of the world…besides, how big can a game get, right?” He said while pacing around

He stopped and stood still “ And it did. CyberGrounds’ success and worldwide appeal killed every existing esports scene, which made it so it was impossible to go one day without hearing about them. You have no idea how it feels to see everyone you know talk about a game so highly that I couldn’t even think of enjoying. And then you came along…..The laughing stock of the CG League turned underdog. One who was as disadvantaged as me, but still managed to thrive against the very best. You gave me hope, Zero-san…So much so that I gave it another shot, believing that I could thrive if I mastered my weapon. You made me like CG, and because of that, I felt like I wasn’t left out for once in my life…..but the day I learned that you had been using underhanded ways to have matches thrown your way, you broke my hope along with it. And here I was, thinking in this new CG, I could get a new start, only to run into you of all people.”

“You done?” I asked, and he got the hint that I didn’t take what he said seriously. “I know you are trying to get into my head. And I also know that even if I deny all the accusations, you won’t believe a single word of it. That’s why I’m not going to say it, I’m going to show it.” I said, unsheathing my blade and getting into stance.

“Quite a nice setup you had done here, lot of cover, possibly traps and escapes. You had prepared significantly for a gunfight. And that’s why we aren’t going to be using guns. We are going to take our time with you, slowly beat you to death to have you atone for your crimes”

“We?” I inquired, as I didn’t notice anyone except him so far. And from the roofs around dropped the three from before…Wait? Three?...but I still had to keep counting as now there were five of them excluding their leader. This is bad, I am effectively fighting a full team on my own, and I was not expecting a group this large to attack.

“I am guessing you want to know where the others came from. Well, after I found out who you were, it was easier than expected to find some help, especially when that someone has a bounty on his head. Last time, you had the advantage over us since you used your personal Gear, this time, we are going to level the playing field. We are not going to give you a quick death, so we came to an agreement that we won’t use guns” He started to pace away from his group “Now that I think about it…This is the new beginning I was looking for…to think I’ll be taking out two birds with one stone, and one of those birds being the reason I’m trapped in this hell in the first place”

All six men equipped their weapons, and not a single firearm was seen. Two with bats, a club, a staff, a nunchuck and the main man with a tonfa….they were not kidding about trying to beat me to death. After a brief staredown, they made the first move. Everyone was rushing at me and I only had a few seconds to react. I was overwhelmed with information, and I was on the verge of entering panic mode…..”Ok, calm down…you know what to do in a situation like this. Time to put it to practice in this new setting” I told myself in my head.

I closed my eyes and erased everything I knew about the situation right now. I first recalled the locations of the cover I had set up, and pictured how far each attacker was from me and between each other. I pictured a drop of water falling and pictured the ripple it formed once it landed onto a pool, and when that ripple reached the closest enemy, I began my strike.

I avoided panicking and got myself into the zone. I opened my eyes and rushed towards the closest enemy I pictured. He swung his club at me and I evaded it in the opposite direction and struck fast with my blade buried in his off-arm. I pulled my blade down through his arm and forced him to bend down and threw a hand of three kunai at one with the staff closing in on me. Him flinching from getting hit gave me a couple more seconds to finish off the club wielder and I elbowed the back of his neck, putting him in a daze. I didn’t have enough time left to engage another so I pulled out my blade and blocked one of the bat wielder’s strike, but the force of the strike knocked me off balance as my blade easily got over-powered by the much bigger Cyber-Gear. I went on the defensive and tossed an impact smoke on my feet. I didn’t have much time as they were prepared for that and my smoke cover faded as they threw out a smoke absorber, but the small window of time I had was enough for me to fall back to the side alleyway where I first caught Yuri hiding, it was a dead end but I had a surprise planned for whoever pushes me and I wanted to force them split up so I can take them each out one on one rather than one on six…Another life saving lesson that the world of professional play taught me.

“One flash, make it count” I muttered to myself, taking the only flashbang I had in my inventory. I primed it and threw it around the corner, knowing that I was getting rushed. The flash triggered, blinding the ones in the alley and I grabbed the one in front holding a bat and threw him at the electrified fence I had set up in the blindspot behind the dumpster in the alley. He started to scream and twitch and he rolled off the fallen fence, knocking him out cold. One down….Five more to go.

The others slowly recovered their vision but I still had a few seconds to get something done. The biggest threat for me right now was the nunchuck user. Considering the game give’s you natural affinity with you weapon of choice, even the most basic of nunchuck moves had proven difficult for me as it’s unpredictability prevents me from closing the distance. He was swinging his weapon wildly, still under the effects of the flashbang, so I closed the distance to try and disarm him. I evade his blind swing and find an opening. I try going for a takedown, but I get hit from my blind spot. I get hit in the back with a bat and in the front by a club. The bat strike sent me into a daze and took a small portion of my health bar along with it, but the club strike was significantly less damaging as the attack I did on the club wielder at the start has significantly weakened him. I dodge myself into the dead end of the back alley and climb the wall onto the roof, only to have Tsuneo waiting for me on the ledge

“Going somewhere?” he asked and he tried to strike me with his Tonfa. I let go of my grip of the wall and grabbed his weapon as it wasn’t bladed, and I hang from it using my whole weight to disarm him, using gravity to my advantage. He slammed his weapon arm hard on the roof he was standing on, and the weapon dematerialized in my hand and I used this moment he was wailing in pain to match his height advantage. But that is when they decided they had enough. A hail of bullets came flying my way, as one of them pulled out his machine pistol and started firing at me. From the fact he sprayed wildly, I assumed that he knew little to nothing about recoil control.

“You idiot, we agreed to not use guns” one of the goons said

“To hell with that, the deal was to have him dead. Doesn’t matter how I do it” the gun-wielding man said

But throw a bunch of rocks at a nest and at least one is likely to hit a bird, which I found out the hard way as a couple of bullets had connected and reopened the wound on my leg I cauterized earlier. The other hit me in the knee of the same leg, but it only left a bruise, rather than a bullet hole. Which meant the gun wasn’t personal Gear. The bruise wasn’t an issue, but my now bleeding calf was. I couldn’t rely on my speed anymore and I was in an equal bout on the roof against the wannabe assassin. While I couldn’t move as well, Tsuneo’s moves were predictable, he had the impulsiveness of a low-ranked player, which allowed me to side-step his attacks and counter him. The bout ended with him on the ground and me having the opening I needed for the killing blow, but I couldn’t go ahead with it. I pinned his hand against the roof with a kunai and assessed where the others could be. And that is when I heard the thumping of footsteps. The whole group was coming up the stairs to the roof with Tsuneo calling out my position through the pain he is under, and this presented me with a chance to take out a bunch of them. I took cover behind the doorway to the roof and handed an impact smoke from my inventory. I slapped the one in front with it, and it triggered in his face, and disoriented everyone on the stairs. I grabbed the one who got hit by his arm, dragged him onto the roof and tossed him off the roof. Luckily, the building is only two storeys high so it wasn’t enough to kill him…Just would break his legs or wherever he lands on.

The one in the back throws a smoke absorber and clears the stairs, but I use that small window to lunge at the closest enemy. He falls down the stairs with me in tow, and one punch to the temple on landing knocked him out cold. Three down, three more to go.

The staff user gets up and points the gun from earlier at me. But I had my blade in my hand.

His hand was shaking, as he would be seeing that I took out three of his friends. “Fuck…you” he said and he pulled the trigger. The bullet flies at me and I manage to block it with a quick blade slash, I only have to think about it, and it happens automatically…my blade gets in the path of the bullet and gets blocked. He kept firing bullet after bullet. He tries to fire bursts, but the recoil is too strong for him to get anything done, and it misses me by a mile. Each single shots he fired, I manage to block

“How are you-” he fires a few more shots and the clip runs out. I close the distance and turn the gun into two halves with one slice. This terrified him….so much so that he backed off and tried to pry a locked window open with his bare hands, went so far as to even punch the glass in hope it would break till his hand started to bleed, just to get away from me. I close the distance slowly to make sure he won’t be getting in my way, but he takes out his staff, ruptures the glass and jumps out of it. His landing was much safer than his friend’s as it was from the first floor, and he limped and ran for his life. It’s as if he had seen the grim reaper or something…. And here I thought I had a soft and fluffy image….or punchable based on how Jun used to portray it. Two were remaining and not learning from my previous mistakes, my moment I took to relax and reset was met by another one of them tackling me out of the same window.

I managed to land on my left shoulder, significantly lessening the impact and the fall damage I took. I tried to get back up but it was made near impossible from the dizziness from the impact, and my attempts to crawl forward was only met by my assailant digging his fingers into the puncture in my leg. I kicked him off me and got back on my feet first, and I was introduced to Tsuneo’s primary weapon. Right before I turned around a long thin object pierced my right shoulder blade. I turned around to see that Tsuneo shot me from above with a razor disk launcher. This time, it injured me severely, putting my health bar into the red zone. I can’t take any more risks or stay out in the open. I am out of smokes, and have a bad leg….while the disk launcher makes you have to reload every shot, I’ll have another disk sticking out of me if I don’t get out of his line of sight fast. I throw a kunai at the switch that would drop all the sawdust I had set up in the courtyard just in-case they bring guns to the fight. The throw had the disk cut deeper into my shoulder but I somehow held in my urge to scream in pain. But now since my planned dust-explosion threat was out of the equation, I use it as cover to limp myself towards the main building. The last remaining goon opted to check on his friend I threw off the roof earlier and Tsuneo was blindly firing disks into the sawdust in hopes of hitting me. And I drag my foot towards the building one step at a time, hoping that I won’t get hit by a razor disk. Because I take one more shot like that, my journey comes to an end. Tsuneo’s blind fire manages to come close but not close enough, and just by the skin of my teeth, I manage to make it to the door before the sawdust cleared.

I had a moment till the remaining two regrouped, so I limped myself up the stairs and hid at the end of them. Gritting through the agony, I somehow manage to pull out the disk in my back and fully potion up. My health bar wasn’t increasing fast enough but it stopped any slow bleeding that was losing me precious few points of health. I had no time to perform first aid as the final two entered the building, as I had left the door being wide open.

“I know you are here, Shinogami. I know you are hurt and tired, it won’t be long…you’ll get to see your family again very soon.” Tsuneo said from downstairs, barely putting his words together while struggling to catch his breath

He tried to stall me for as long as possible, but I heard one set of footsteps coming up the stairs, very likely following the trail of blood I had left behind. I had to make a stand here as if I back down any further, I’ll be leading them straight to the Tadanos.

“I clearly underestimated you. You might be a fraud, but you are persistent. But there is also one thing I did notice about you. None of the damage you took during our bout had been healed. That is what the Immortal Tyrant did to you, wasn’t it. He took away your ability to fast heal, even with potions. You can’t win….Even if you were legit, you are just a one fragile human.

I didn’t let his taunting get into my head. I took a deep breath and readied my next attack. Right as I expected, a nunchuck turned the corner to strike me, I dodged the strike and stuck his nunchuck to the wall by sticking a kunai through its chain and into the wall. His hesitation to let go of his weapon was his undoing, as I was able to follow up with an elbow to his stomach and a knee strike to send him tumbling down the stairs and out of commission. Just me and Tsuneo left. And now that I had thinned out the herd, it was only him and me left standing, and it came time to end this

“You know the difference between you and me, Tsuneo-san? Whenever you are challenged, you take the easy way out….My weapons are weak, the game is unplayable, it’s the developer’s fault. You make excuses to justify your shortcomings. Me? I embrace my weakness” I leaped at him from the top of the stairs and struck him with my blade, but he was able to block it with his tonfa. My landing put heavy strain on my injured leg, but I got back up on my feet, using my blade as a support.

“Let me let you in on another secret. Not only do I heal slower, but I also have no pain reduction. Meaning no matter whenever I get shot, bludgeoned or stabbed. I feel it as if it was real….sometimes it’s so bad that the pain lingers way after it’s inflicted. But eventhough I might be the most worthless player in this hellhole right now, I know I can do things that many can’t. You never tried to find your strengths…..you just wallowed in your weaknesses. And that’s why, you can never be better than me” I continued while constantly barraging him with blade strikes. And by the end, his tonfa broke leaving him wide open.

I switched my blade to my left hand, as gripping it this whole time had burned itself into my hand, but this managed to be a mistake. He jumped back and aimed his disk launcher at me, a variable that slipped my mind as I assumed I had the upper hand since I disarmed his melee weapon. “You can’t beat me, I REFUSE TO LOSE TO YOU!” he said and pulled the trigger. The disk came right at me and I managed to get into deflecting stance before it made contact, but unfortunately, it ended up shattering my blade and the disk cutting clean through the knuckles of my left hand. The gauntlet was cut clean through and I couldn’t reload even a single kunai to even use as a melee weapon. Tsuneo put away his launcher knowing he won’t get a chance to reload and managed to remove and equip a nearby pipe to defend himself. I had him on the ropes.

He rushed towards me in an act of desperation and I managed to grab the pipe with my right, eventhough I had my natural shielding, one hit would mean the end for me, as my health bar was flashing red and was almost invisible. But to put an end to this bout, I restrained him by twisting the pipe so he couldn’t let go, and finished him with a knockout punch with my gauntlet. This happened to be a mistake though as the exposed metal of the gauntlet managed to dig itself deep into my knuckles and most probably broke them. Tsuneo was out cold and I screamed in pain. The battle was over.

I couldn’t clench my left hand into a fist anymore, and I had no way of pulling out the metal from my hand. And by the end, I was battered and wounded. I still had the pipe in my left hand…my blade had shattered and it would take at least half a day for it to recover itself, so I had no way to support myself up the stairs without the pipe. I was hurt but I had no time to recover. I needed something to restrain the attackers until Yamori showed up. I was sure that Kenma-san and Aya-san would help me with that. On my way up, I checked how narrowly I had escaped with my life, and the answer was closer than I expected. I had nothing but a sliver of health left, and my stamina bar was barely even there. The third bar in between had revealed itself to show the letters “AWK”, but I wasn’t in the condition to figure it out now. I somehow dragged myself up to the family room and knocked on the door.

“Tadano-san, Aya-san….it’s over, you guys are safe now. I’m coming in” I said trying to open the door, but the lock wasn't budging as my fingerprints were being masked by my blood on my hands. I wiped my hand on the jacket, leaning on the wall and tried again and the door unlocked.

I threw my weak self towards the door, I closed the door behind me immediately and took a deep breath of relief, mostly because I went against a team alone and lived to tell the tale. But while I wish that I didn’t take the beating I got during that fight, I soon realized that the thing that I didn’t want to do the most, was turning around.

The moment I did, I was shocked to the point that I forgot all the crippling injuries I had. A pool of blood stained my shoe as it expanded from where Yuri’s body lay lifelessly on the ground. And for a moment, I refused to believe the reality of what was happening behind all that. Aya-san’s bloodcurdling choking gave way to a silence with every stab she received from the man she called her spouse.

“Tadano-san?” I said, while my tone emanated confusion

He stopped stabbing and looked back at me “Nakamura-san!....Right on time…. I’m guessing that Tsuneo-san won’t be a problem anymore.”

“Tadano-san? What have you done?” I wasn’t mad, but I was in a limbo between being petrified and in disbelief

“Easing the pain mostly…. I didn’t know what to do before this. But after a lot of consideration, I was sure this was the right thing to do. I want to get out of here, Nakamura-san, and no matter how hard I work, I never could save up enough Rels to compete…I worked so hard to make sure that Aya wouldn’t have to, but then I realized that I was blinded by my desire to make sure they survived, no matter what”.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing “ You killed your family….to save money?”

“I killed them because I had no choice. I swear it on my life that I wanted them to escape. Yuri convinced all of us to come here and I never held it against him. I wanted at least my kids to escape, so I did everything I could think of. I thought that clanning up would be the solution, and running into Tsuneo-san made me think it would be smooth sailing from there. But after he saw what I did to Hachimaru, he became another issue I had to deal with”.

What you did to-

“Wait” I took a moment to process what he said and it made more sense….the stab wound on his neck back at the cemetery, a razor disk couldn’t have done that… “ It wasn’t Tsuneo who killed your son”

He got up off of Aya-san’s body “I never said he did. The only thing I lied about was the fact that he was after all of us…He only wanted me. He can’t touch me when I am working but he could’ve very well used my family as leverage or worse yet, turn them against me. That’s where you came in” As he said that, I fell to my knees when I realized what he had done, and since I didn’t know any better.

“You used me!” I said, staring at the pooling blood soaking everything up to my knees.

“You were given a quest, and you did it better than I could’ve hoped for. As a matter of fact, it was partly thanks to you I was convinced to do this” He said turning around to face my direction

“Huh?” I looked up at him, riddled with sorrow and confusion

“Ever since I got to know you, you had been quite a riddle to me. The man who lost everything, wanted by everyone.” He closed the distance to me, dragging his right foot, until he was towering right in front of me. “ But you are still in your right mind. Able to laugh, able to take it easy, able to trust. Things I hadn’t been able to do before I met you ever since I found out this was a death trap.”

“You are insane” I said with my gaze fixed onto the pool of red slowly surrounding me

“Do you know why I killed my youngest child, Nakamura-san?.... It’s because I feared for what he was becoming '' He sat right next to me. “Few days ago, Hachi wanted to go out onto the field. Aya was unwilling, so I snuck out with him while she was tending to Yuri. I took him to a low risk zone, very weak enemies, world quests all cleared there so no interference from the Shepard Clans. It was all fun and games, killed some low rank mobs, that sort of thing. Until we were ambushed by a couple of player killers. I fought them off as much as I could, injured one of them out of action….and the other almost killed me…Hachi slit his throat and managed to brutalize the other eventhough he was begging for his life….he was laughing after that. What was more terrifying was it wasn’t because he enjoyed killing them….it was still a game to him”

He readjusted his stance as he was clearly in discomfort with his right leg “I brushed it off as a one time thing, but a day later, Yuri got something that he also wanted but didn’t get, and I caught him trying to stab him when he went to sleep. I was afraid for my family, Nakamura-san, and when I got that chance in that alley, I took it. It was unfortunate that Tsuneo walked in at that moment, but he was blinded by rage after that and never gave me even a second to explain myself. I couldn’t even tell it to Aya. How would she react if I said that I killed our child?...I guess sometimes, to tame the monster of your making, you have to become a monster yourself”

He got back up and limped back towards Aya-san’s body and he commented on that “Damn, never expected my own damn kid to stab me in the leg, whatever he thought he could accomplish”.

That caught my attention for a second, horrifying me even further

“And then my boss helped to see my loss in a different light. He said to think of it as a weight of my shoulder, a habit that I kicked, one that will save me a lot of resources. And that’s when I asked you about it, and when I realized your answer was the same as Isaac’s. I knew he had a point”

Isaac?

“Hold on, Isaac Taylor is your boss?” I asked him but he was caught up in his explanation to answer

He continued completely ignoring what I asked, and he raised his tone for a second “And after some of the toughest guys I know got murdered today by that whore and that lunatic she is carrying around, I knew that the chances of me escaping with Aya and Yuri were non-existent. We are still in the bronze layer, Nakamura-san. We still have six more layers to go. Who am I kidding, holding on to hope that they would get out of here? I would rather have them killed now so I can grieve and move on with my life”

“That’s why you can’t let go of your family’s death, Nakamura-san….Your friend killed your family, so you don’t have the answers….I do….I killed my family, and I know the answer. And that is they died now by hand, so they don’t have to die by someone else’s later. It’s the same as euthanization.”

He grabbed Aya-san by the leg and started dragging slowly “Your job here is done, I’ll let the Sheriff known you did good. I’ll stack the bodies with the ones outside, I’ll testify that they retaliated and killed Aya and Yuri, and I killed Tsuneo afterwards.

And my job was done, just like that. A prompt appeared in my view that confirmed it and transferred over my reward…..But was this worth two RP and 35 thousand Rels.

A part of me understood what he had gone through, but recollecting all he had done, my psyche was screaming nothing but the fact that he was nothing but insane. But is it really insanity? Or was it that he had been pushed to the edge so much, that he finally fell off of it. But through my confusion, I knew one thing. I was responsible for what happened here….if I stuck to my initial plan in keeping my distance with this group I knew nothing about, this wouldn’t have happened. Buried by the guilt, something in me snapped.

My emotions felt like they just shut down…I was unnaturally calm, and I was able to think clearly. The immense pain I felt earlier was nowhere now. And after a moment of calm analysis, I decided to act on a saying by a person I once considered a friend.

I got up slowly and calmly, and gripped him by the shoulder. The veins from his shoulder started to glow red and it continued up to his head.

“Nakamura-san, what are you-” he wasn’t able to finish his sentence as he met a pipe at high speed to his head

“It’s like you said Tadano-san. To tame a monster of your making….”

He got knocked away from the body and he recoiled backwards “That’s not gear, how are you breaking through my- “

“Shut up” I said calmly, and hit him again in the head with the pipe. This time, my strike knocks him onto the ground

“It hurts….Naka..mu..ra..san….stop” he started to drag out his words, caught in a daze by the pain and the pouring blood from his head…but it managed to be his final decipherable words.

“I said……Shut up” I said while I struck him again….calmly

For what happened after was a complete blur for me, and the moment I snapped back to my senses, I remembered what I walked into….Yuri with his face on the ground, looking like he was desperate to crawl away from what he feared, only to have a bullet lodged in the back of his head. Aya-san’s look of hopelessness, while she was riddled with stab after stab into her chest….But what I didn’t expect was for me to look down and see another body lying right in front of me. The head was smashed to the point it was unrecognizable but it's only when I tried to get closer to inspect it, I came to a conclusion I wasn’t ready to accept.

The pipe in my hand, bloodied and covered in bits of what looks like skin and brain, along with my hands covered almost fully in blood. I dropped the pipe in a state of panic and tried to wipe my hands off on myself, but the pain from the fracture of my left stopped me from doing so and the red of my right wasn’t going away.

“No….no, no, no, no, no this wasn’t me, this couldn’t be me” I said to myself, backing off step by step, but my injured leg overpowers me and drops me down and against the wall of the room.

“This isn’t real…I only thought of it….That wasn’t real…I didn’t kill him, I was just angry at him”

“This wasn’t me, this wasn’t me, this wasn’t me” I kept telling myself

I held my head in my shattered hands, trying to deny the obvious evidence in front of me. I was having a meltdown, in a constant and alternating state of fear and denial. But I glanced at what was right in front of me. Head-caved in on a carcass that is both disfigured and broken, remains of what only a savage beast could’ve left behind.

…….What have I done?