Ha//tred

As Brooklyn and I plummeted to the bottom of the blood-drenched harbor, I thought something to myself. Do I still hate it all? Is there finally someone I care about?

[ cut ]

Me and my sister were sitting in the back seats of an old minivan. My parents bought it when I was just an infant, so it was about 15 years old by now. It wasn’t super uncommon for my sister to be around home; her college was only a few hours away, so she would sometimes visit on the weekends and holidays. Now, however, was a special occasion, she had just graduated a week ago and was preparing to find an apartment to live in nearby, so our parents let her stay with us until then.

“So, Claire, how’s finding a job been?” My mother asked. She was the one driving at that point, my dad was in the passenger seat.

“I applied at a few game development companies, but I doubt any of them will hire me. I’ll probably get my first job at an online retailer or a software company,” Claire looked up from her cellphone. It looked like she was texting someone from her school. “I probably should’ve tried to get an internship while I was still in school but it’s a bit late now.”

Why does everyone have to worry so much about having a job or taking care of themselves? Why is the world we live in structured in a way that makes us care about the monotony of everyday life? We live, we work, we die; and if we stick our necks out, they cut off our heads. Who’s they? The world, the ones that look down from above. They laugh at us as we struggle through our pitiful lives, toiling for a small chance to see what’s at the top. This system needs to be torn down, completely destroyed. The people within it will scramble in fear, trying to preserve their lives, but they need to be destroyed as well. I hate this world and everything within it, I would give anything for the power to destroy.

“Hey Ashton” I heard a voice sitting next to me, my sister, “you wanna play something together?” Claire reached into her backpack and pulled out a familiar gaming device. She and I would play all sorts of videogames together whenever she visited, so I shouldn’t have been surprised she would have bought her own console while she was at college.

Was my family a part of the system? Was my sister? Of course they were. They didn’t understand me, they were only there for me out of societal obligation. Why did I care about them? Was that just what the system was telling me?

“No thanks,” I replied. Those words put a pit in my stomach for some reason, why?

“You sure?” Claire once again queried.

“Y- Yeah…”

The car kept moving, the world kept turning.

“That’s really not like you, Ashton, is something wrong?” Claire asked me.

“Yeah, something is wrong,” I answered, not really thinking.

“What is it then?”

“Mrs. Hailey is dead and everyone else at school is laughing about it. Sure, she isn’t a great teacher, or even a great person from what I know, it all disgusts me so much. I hate them for it, for making fun of someone like that,” I answered. The words were true, but it was only a small fraction of the truth.

“Your teacher dying is enough to get you this worked up? Most other kids probably wouldn’t think twice about it. Hell, I remember Mrs. Hailey, she was a total b*tch,” Claire was trying to act casual. She didn’t care.

“So what.”

“What do you mean ‘so what’? You’re gonna let some random woman’s death get the better of you like that?”

“So what if she’s a b*tch? Does that give the others the right to talk about her like that? You’re just like them, making fun of her. I know she deserves it, but is it really right anyways?”

“I don’t know, I never really thought about it,” Claire leaned up against the car’s window. “You’re a nice kid, don’t let that change.”

“I don’t want to be nice though! People don’t deserve that! I shouldn’t have to be nice to scum who disrespect the dead just because they don’t like them!”

“Are they being too mean or are you being too nice?” Claire asked.

“I DON’T CARE!”

The car was silent once again. Claire went back to staring out of the window. My parents were awfully silent, however, as though they couldn’t hear the conversation going on behind them whatsoever.

“Mom? Where are we going?” Claire asked. “Home is that way, why did we turn to go back onto the freeway?”

I looked into the rearview mirror and saw my mother’s cold, lifeless eyes. There was something wrong, she never looked like that. Claire jumped up to shake her awake, but she acted like a doll, staying completely still.

“MOM! Wake up! Do something! MOM!!!” Claire shouted. She unclicked Mom’s seatbelt and tried to get her to move, but her foot remained firmly planted on the gas pedal. “DAD!! DO SOMETHING!!!” Claire screamed, but Dad was a doll too, completely lifeless.

There was nothing either of us could do as the car careened into the mass of wrecked vehicles in front of us. I watched as the impact tore apart the front of the car and listened to the sounds of my parents’ bones cracking before my vision went black.

[ cut ]

I felt a hand reach out and grab me by the collar of my jacket. Brooklyn and I were being pulled to the surface. I looked up to see who our savior was, but the blood drained the color from my vision and painted it all a crimson red.

As we breached the surface, I could more clearly see my surroundings. Brooklyn and I lied face down on the dock and next to us sat Noe, the demon that saved us. Her hair, despite being drowned in blood, still shined with the gleaming brilliance I saw on the day we met. Her golden eyes locked with mine as I tried to sit upright, still weighed down by blood and seawater.

“You’ve seen better days, haven’t you?” Noe said, still looking down at me.

“You… How did you?”

“Scarlet understood how dangerous it would be to keep you separated from me when I explained the situation with your mark, so he brought me along to make sure Blaise didn’t try to kill you or something,” Noe explained. “We’ve still got more work to do though, there’s a demon here, a pretty big one too. If you want, you could even watch my back while I go in for the kill.”

“I- Okay, I can do that. I can do that for you, Noe.”

Noe stood up and faced the ocean. She held out her hand and summoned a pair of blades, intertwined. The blades merged to form a gigantic pair of scissors, gleaming with a brilliant light like nothing else in this world. She spun the blades on their hinge, allowing them to fly freely before grabbing both handles to join the blade once more. It was not a weapon of destruction, no one would be mistaken. It was an unearthly object, a blade with no weight, a tool for one purpose: to cut.

Noe swung the scissors as their blade extended to strike something offshore, underneath the water. From the impact point erupted a spray of water and a dark shadow, uprooted by the decisive strike. The shadow formed a figure above the surface, something unearthly and nearly indescribably. It had a whale’s head and a shark’s jaws. Its body was vaguely humanoid, if not for the tentacles to sprouted from its stomach and neck. Its entire exterior, much like the demons before, was wreathed in unpierceable shadow. The creature stood at the height of a skyscraper, something utterly massive.

“There you are!” Noe said, directed towards the demon. It threw a strike with one of its massive limbs, Noe nimbly dodged with unflinching precision and jumped up onto its arm.

As the creature retracted its arm, Noe ran up across it towards her opponent. With a jumping slash, Noe perfectly amputated the arm and landed on the creature’s shoulder before gazing into its red, unfathomable eyes. Her gaze was one of confidence and mockery, as if to beckon the demon’s next move.

As the eldritch being unleashed a torrent of tentacles towards Noe, she dodged each one, removing strikers from the creature’s arsenal with each successive strike. Noe ran across the demon’s back, slashing at its neck repeatedly, searching for the weak spot. Her search was met with no avail, beyond the creature’s shadowy hide was only more shadows within. Where was its core? Noe was only brought to the creature’s other shoulder and reunited with its gaze. Suddenly, she had an idea.

Noe went on the offensive, striking out at the creature’s tentacles. There was more than she could ever hope to destroy, but that wasn’t her plan. All she had to do was make it angry. Noe slashed and slashed, jumping around its neck to attack again and again at the most plentiful of the demon’s weapons.

Eventually, the creature had enough. It twisted its head around, 180 degrees, and struck at Noe with its jaws, fully engulfing her.

“Noe!” I shouted against my better judgment. She had a plan, right? There was no way she was stupid enough to just let it consume her. That wasn’t the Noe I knew.

Suddenly, a burst of slashes erupted from within the creature’s head and split it open a million different ways. Within, still hanging in the air, was Noe and the creature’s core, a shimmering mass of impossible shape. The core split on the lines where it was struck and exploded into multiple fragments that dissolved before they hit the ground. The creature’s shadowy carcass faded from existence as Noe fell down to the ocean below.

Before Noe could touch the water, however, she reached her leg down and stepped atop it. She then stood there elegantly, gazing off into the distance. The sun from above shined down upon her, the clouds parting to let the radiance witness Noe’s victory. I watched her as the wind caused her hair to dance against the now-blue sky, there was something so elegant about her that I couldn’t describe, something truly inhuman, almost disturbing.

[ cut ]

Within the dark, after my vision had faded, I heard something. There was a voice that called out to me, something that entered into my mind.

“Ashton, I know you wish to destroy. I know you wish to eliminate the system that confines you. We share a wish, we both hate that world that cast us out,” the voice was calm yet sinister, but it was so alluring.

“Who are you?”

“My name is [ I?Dl\t!xE ], you and I have a lot in common.”

“Why are you here?”

There was no response.

“Why are you telling me this? What can you do to help me? You’re just like all of the others, looking down on me from above. I hate you!” I said.

“But I do understand you, our goal is one and the same. I want to burn this world to the ground, to destroy those that I hate, that is, everything. These people, this world, I hate it all. I want to annihilate, just as you do.”

“You’re lying, it’s all just a trick! Nobody cares about me; nobody wants to help me. That’s all anyone ever does, they all lie.”

“What if I told you that a demon can’t lie?”

I looked towards the voice as I felt something grab my hand. I didn’t struggle, however. In the end, it didn’t matter. If someone else understands me, who cares who they are? If a demon can help me destroy this rotten world, then I suppose I’ll become like a demon.

“You made the right choice… Ash…”

[ cut ]