So this is how it ends.
Or how it ended, I guess, seeing as I'm not alive anymore.
Heh. That's a funny thought, isn't it? I'm dead. Makes sense karma would catch up to me though, especially in the matter it had. Stabbed to death slumped over a bar is what I deserve to a fuckin T.
Now that I think about it, how can I think? I'm dead, after all. Nothing else works, I can't feel, I can't smell, I can't taste, and I can't see, so how am I thinking? That doesn't make any sense.
Then again, my thoughts are clearer than they've been in decades, if not longer. I guess that's because I'm sober? But if that's the case, I should have a headache.
But I guess my head can't hurt if I don't have one, right? Maybe I'm just a soul, drifting through existence forever, if this can even be considered existing.
Then again, it's not like I did much existing when I was alive, either.
By the end there I was but a shell of a man, dying of a dozen different vices staking their claim on my desecrated husk. Kidneys killed from the liquor, Lungs burnt from too many cigarettes, skin torn from a brutal life poorly spent.
I wasn't always like that though. The first thirteen years were alright, at least. Loving family, nice house, a dog, the works.
Then it all went to shit.
You see, when I was thirteen, there was an accident. Tractor-trailer took a corner a little too tight and slammed into our minivan. There was only one survivor.
Sometimes I wished there hadn't been.
They said I was lucky, just about every single case worker, every foster home, they said that I was lucky to have survived.
It didn't feel like it.
A little over a year after the accident I was finally sent to a foster home that they deemed "stable enough". It was a nice enough place, I guess. The Grahams were good people, and they always had enough love in their heart for any kid the system foisted onto them.
They accepted every case, every kid with love and care. The most difficult kids, the broken. The twisted. The violent. Kids like me. There isn't any conceivable way that could go poorly, right?
Then came Ricky. An angel, his case worker called him. His parents tragically murdered in his home, right in front of him. Couldn't have happened to a nicer kid, they said.
We were the same age, so they paired us in the same room, a nice little setup in the basement, where we had some privacy. Thought we could be friends, I guess. Two kids, orphaned in horrible accidents, couldn't make a better match.
They were right, honestly. We got along like a house on fire. Wherever I was, Ricky came with. Wherever he went, I followed.
So when Ricky told me he had made friends with some older, cooler kids, I obviously demanded to come with him. We were a team, weren't we? His friends were my friends.
God, I wish I hadn't.
They were older and cooler, that was true at least. Covered in tattoos, with sweet cars and nice clothes. Ricky fit right in with them, laughing along with their every joke, singing along with their songs, as if he was right where he belonged.
I certainly didn't belong there, a weird, awkward nerdy kid too traumatized by my past to get a straight sentence out. But lord did I want to. I wanted what they had. I craved their popularity, their experiences, their fun.
Their attention.
So I did everything I could to fit in. I got a new haircut, started listening to the same music as them, started laughing at their jokes, I did whatever they told me to to fit in. If they wanted it, I did it.
So when they said they needed someone to 'move some product', I volunteered.
It was a mistake, though. The way Ricky looked at me changed, like I was moving in on his turf. Like I was now a competitor and no longer a friend.
He became colder after that, but I couldn't bring myself to care, because I was now their golden boy. They'd give me 'product' and I'd move it for them. Every time I came back with the cash they treated me like a hero. I became addicted, not to the drugs, but the attention.
Unfortunately, I wasn't the only one addicted.
You see, I had taken Ricky's spot as their pusher. I had no idea, of course, but apparently I got the job done better than him, so he fell to the wayside. The closer I got, the further he fell.
Honestly, at that point, even if I knew I wouldn't have bothered. They treated me like family. Like a brother. We were thick as thieves.
Heh.
Apparently, they were gang affiliated. It made sense, in hindsight. Where they got the money, the drugs, the guns, the alcohol, even if they weren't much older than us.
They spoke of a better life on the other side. That being 'one of them' would make my wildest dreams come true. So of course, when they asked if I wanted to join up for real, my answer was an enthusiastic yes.
Ricky did not receive the same offer.
He was irate, of course. After all, I had wormed my way into his life and stolen his opportunity, like the snake I was. He said that I was just supposed to be an accessory, a bonus on his rise to power, and that I should have stayed in my lane.
We got into a fight that night, a bad one. We both came out of it covered in bruises and blood, the broken skin of my knuckles still sticking to the wet mass of his broken nose.
Lord, was the walk home awkward after that.
We didn't talk on the way back. Not a word.
He walked a step behind me the whole time.
I didn't look back.
I should have looked back.
Alas, I just crawled in through our bedroom window and dropped myself into bed, not even looking at his side of the room.
I should have gone to the hospital, or stayed awake that night, or even just slept in a different room, but I was a stupid kid who thought a single fight would solve all of our problems. That we would go back to brothers when we woke up. We'd forget everything.
It wasn't until I woke up with his pillow over my face that I realized how wrong I was.
The following fight was a blur, the still slick blood from our earlier fight coating the bed dressing as we wrestled, fists flying, names being shouted at each other. But then I shoved him too hard.
He stumbled back, head colliding with the dresser in a sickening crack.
And just like that, the noise was gone. No more curses. No more fists. Just silence, heavy and suffocating.
I waited for him to move. To groan. To get back up.
He didn't.
So I ran. I climbed out of the little window over our dresser and fled all the way down the street, leaving the dead body of my best friend lying cold on our bedroom floor.
I drifted for a few years after that, always looking over my shoulder, half-expecting Ricky to come stumbling after me with blood still on his shirt. I lit my first cigarette a week later, choking on the smoke but pretending I liked it because the burn kept me from thinking. By the end of the month I was drinking too, chasing every memory down with a bottle until they blurred enough to sleep.
To make money I started selling drugs out of the back of an old coup I bought off some kind hearted old man who wanted to help a down on his luck teen. Luckily my 'old friends' were more than willing to supply me with the illicit goods I'd grown so dependent on, both to make money and maintain my own sanity.
It was after a year on the run I'd been offered my first commission. A simple gig really, someone wanted to hand me a couple hundred to break into someone's house and leave a present on their kitchen table. Easy job. Two weeks of hustling earned in an hour and a half.
Soon more and more people were coming to me for odd jobs. Originally easy stuff, you know? Breaking and entering, vandalism, theft. Nothing too hard, nothing too bad.
But slowly but surely, they got worse. A mugging for a grand. Beat some guy up for two. Break a leg for five.
I was living the good life. Sure, I didn't have any friends or anyone I could rely on, but I had money. I had booze. I had drugs. I even had a laptop where I could watch any of the anime and movies I used to love. I didn't need anything else. I was living the best life a seventeen year old delinquent could hope for.
So when someone came to me to kill someone, I took the job. I mean, who would turn down twenty thousand dollars? I'm not insane. I'd done it before, I could do it again.
It was easy, too. The gun was in his mailbox like the client promised; the front door was unlocked. I went in, pulled the trigger, and left like any other delivery.
The client invited me out to a bar to celebrate my first hit. How he knew it was my first kill I had no idea, but he was paying for the drinks, so I followed him to a run down little bar called the Dead End.
I don't remember the rest of the night, and I suspect that's intentional on my end.
After all, who would want to remember the monster they'd turned into?
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I've been drifting in this endless abyss for weeks. Or years. Or eons. I really have no way of knowing, given that I can't actually feel anything. Just alone with my thoughts for all of eternity.
Honestly, it's the punishment I deserve for everything I've done. Inigo was right, I don't remember every life I've destroyed searching for hedonistic pleasures.
Luckily, I have a pretty good recollection of my memories while in this state. I guess that's a benefit of not having a brain, every one of your experiences can be relieved without human imperfection.
With nothing better to do, I relived watching season one of Naruto: Shippuden for the second time.
I'd gone through just about my entire library of anime and movies for the sixth time when it hit me.
For the first time in eternity, something new.
A sound cut through the void. A voice, maybe, though calling it a voice felt wrong. It rasped like gravel ground between teeth, a jagged, discordant melody, as if a thousand demons were laughing in my skull all at once.
"Well well well. What is it we have here?" The voice crooned, the sound a painful mix of comforting and deeply disturbing.
"A soul, is it? Drifting in the Veil between Nothing and Nowhere..." The words slid over my skin, pressing and prodding in a disgustingly familiar manner. "How did you even get here, little fly?"
"Ah, right. You can't respond. Just a soul. Sorry lad, it's been a while since I've had company."
Then the voice giggled, a deeply disturbing sound that vibrated my entire soul.
"Well, no sense letting you fade out here. Let me just give you a little push-" and as the entity decreed, I felt myself go flying, soaring through the vast Aether.
Without warning I felt my soul slam into something hard, rattling my entire being. The pain was immense, like a baseball slamming off a bat in the World Series, being dumped into a pit of molten tar and then being drowned in an iceberg. A thousand different tortures flashed through my being until it suddenly stopped, leaving me back in that lifeless, non-feeling soul form I'd grown oh so used to.
And then, a vision. The first in forever.
An orange-on-black screen covering my entire vision, or what passes for it in my current state.
[ Host Found ]
[ Adjust Parameters... ]
[ Finding Form... ]
[ Calibrating... ]
[ Complete. ]
[ The Chaos Gacha is online. ]
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So… Some pretty heavy shit, huh.
Percival is a piece of shit, but we kinda see how he got here, right? You know the saying, If you push a snowball down a hill and there's no one around to stop it, does it ever stop growing?
I think that's how it goes, isn't it?
Whatever.
Anyways, Next chapter we're introduced to the Gacha. We're almost in Marvel. I promise.
(P.S. I would very much like some feedback on this chapter so I can improve my writing in the future ofc.)