Makakaka

My nose won’t quit running. I keep tissues in there, but it never stops. The tissues irritate it so much that it bleeds, too. My nose is really big, so it can hold a lot of snot and twice as much blood. I don’t like my nose.

I wasn’t named or anything. We all look the same, so there’s nothing special about me there either. I’d like to think I’m a girl, but the grey flesh making up my body doesn’t resemble much of anything, so I guess even that’s just a pipe dream.

As a part of the 134th recycler generation, the youngest community on Earth, life is simple. Every year we work, donate gametes, raise the young the Service Agents make out of them, get sick, and die. The real people I know about, like the ones on the internet and in the giant buildings far outside my walled-in home, they’re all so much older than I’ll ever be that I couldn’t count to their age within my lifespan. We recyclers don’t live long, you see. 90 years at most. We were primarily engineered to perform cheap labor, but me? Well, I don’t really do anything at all. A few years back I made a secret home for myself in a hole I dug, and now nobody ever talks to me or makes me work. At night, I run up into people’s houses and steal bodies from their fireplaces. Bodies of dead relatives. Bodies of people they killed. I eat them. They do the same, when food supply’s dry. I’m just doing them a favor. Burning all those bodies to stay warm at night makes the recycler district smell like shit. So until they find me, I’ll just keep doing it.

I couldn’t tell you why I do it. It’s not to stay alive. I never cared about myself. I don’t know what this thing I’ve found myself in is- call it Earth, life, whatever- but I know I don’t like it. I could take it or leave it. I think I just enjoy pulling the wool over people’s eyes. It makes me smile whenever I hear them complain about their “dog” or “Service Agent” who eats their dead every night. Makes me laugh. Then they hear me. Then they call it a ghost, and I want to laugh even harder. But I never do. Because then they’d figure out it was just me, and I’d be executed, and everyone would have to look at me. They’d think, “Who’s that?” “Is that the neighbor I had six years back?” “Is that the kid who asked for my flakka in the seventh grade?” And so on. That would be so embarrassing. And then they’d have to see my ugly, ugly nose. I guess it’s a blessing that I’d die right after, but it still sounds close enough to hell to where I’d rather avoid it at any cost.

I’m sitting in my hole one day gnawing on the leftover finger of a grandparent when I hear something from above me. It’s a beeping noise, like a fire alarm or a metal detector. But it isn’t either of those things. I’ve heard this sound in a viral video before. This is a purifier bomb. Every half century or so the Service Agents are supposed to cut us some slack and tidy this place up via explosive spring cleaning involving some minor radiation. I always wondered if I’d see it in my lifetime, but I never expected it to come so early. At first, it’s a load off my shoulders- I’m not being found out or anything, and nobody’s even looking for me. The outside world is going okay as usual. But as soon as the purification bomb actually goes off, something very quickly goes very wrong.

There are bad things, all around me. It takes me a moment to realize what they are- that is, my face, my image- staring back at me from my entire field of view.

The once brown, maybe reddish dirt is now a reflective silver, its properties manipulated by the bomb. As my windup lamp illuminates the surrounding area, its appearance is cast back at me. A guilty monster twice as ugly as the most deformed animal. This isn’t me. This is something I have become. Something fate has forced onto me. But I touch it- my face- and sure enough, it is mine. I cannot believe that when I feel this dirty flesh, I sense my fingers touching my own skin. I manipulate and tear at it, but the illusion refuses to go away. This mask is mine, and it’s wrong. It’s wrong- so very, very wrong- but in time, the reflection does fade. Now, the dirt is completely see-through. Totally invisible for miles, like it wasn’t even there to begin with. It feels like I’m flying in midair. This is stage two of the cleaning process. At stage three, it will-

“HEY!” I hear above me. Looking up, the Service Agents shine their lights down from their Cleaningcrafts. I have no choice but to start digging down. Their bullets make an effort to reach me below the transparent dirt, but it is pointless. My now claw-like hands burrow far underneath the earth, until, after an all punt of time I cannot quantify, I reach something that has not been purified- the ceiling of a sewer tunnel.

With all my strength I eventually scratch through, falling face first into the fecal water. I see it there again. My face. It all feels pointless now. I am a dog, and those Service Agents should have put me down. It wouldn’t be any trouble for me, would it? I don’t like living, after all. It’s just a thing I do.

But in my despair, I feel something cold glaze my hand underneath the scum. Without hesitation, I grab the forgotten thing- only to find it is not waste, nor trash- but a machine. I hold the wet metal implement to my aching red eyes.

Makakaka.

This is the only word/words written on it. I have never held one, but I know it to be a “pistol” of some sort. The magazine juts out the bottom, stretching over two feet below the handle. The slide is large and bulky, expanding past my hand. The barrel is short, just past my trigger finger, and though the entire piece is worn- as I retrieve the magazine from it, I see that it is still fully loaded with expensive green uranium-coated shells.

Watery, quick-marching footsteps.

I reinsert the ammunition. They’ve come for me. Tracked me down through whatever methods they implanted in me from birth. I don’t know why I’m loading a gun. I really do wish I would die. I hate this world, and I hate this body. But something is telling me… at least once, I need to pull the trigger of this gun before I die… and it might as well be pointed at someone I don’t like.

I never liked anybody.

The Service Agent has no time to react. He gets half a syllable into shouting “FREEZE” when I stretch out my filthy arm and squeeze the machine’s thin silver button. It fires thrice, striking true each time- and as a bright multicolored flame exits the barrel, I hear its cry:

MAKAKAKA

I have never liked anything... until now.

I run down the tunnels, searching for more prey. I soon find them- a squad of four. It’ll take at least two bursts to hit all off them. But I don’t want to hold back. Their flashlights stand no chance against my honed vision. Just as they turn to see the ugly bastard staring down at them, the entire tunnel is soon engulfed in light. Whatever. If I can’t have a life, I guess I’ll just have to take all of yours.

MAKAKAKA

MAKAKAKA

MAKAKAKA

MAKAKAKA

MAKAKAKA

The continued fire makes their billowing blood more than visible in the rainbow blossom of irradiated kinetic discharge. The bullets piercing their armor was shocking enough- I didn’t expect the splintering bone fragments created from its shots to do the same. They’re left broken and covered in human glass. Nice. It isn’t long before I find more.

I don’t really have a reason to kill, I just like the sound.

MAKAKAKA

One pull, three shots.

MAKAKAKA

I don’t care if my nose is running anymore.

MAKAKAKA

I don’t care who I am, how I look, or if I matter.

MAKAKAKA

This… is fun as hell!