Humans are no different than monsters.
No, they're far worse.
Good and Evil, Light and Dark, Hero and Villain.
All of these concepts have existed for eons, but what is the truth behind these?
I've always wondered that, more often than not, the righteous ones are actually the perpetrators of the most atrocious of things.
The whole system is corrupted, but who cares? I'm just a fifteen-year-old boy. What could I possibly do?
I look outside my classroom window, and the sun is at its peak. People walking on the side, some are in suits, some in uniforms, and some in casual clothes.
Their clothes may be different, but one thing was certain. All of them had accepted their boring, mundane, and monotonous lives.
I, too, had accepted it for years, but the situation flipped, and my perspective of things changed.
This world is too cruel. Some might call me a madman for saying something like this. But it is what it is, and it is the truth.
My teacher doesn't care if I look outside the window for the whole lecture; she's probably given up on me…just like many others.
Though that doesn't bother me.
Despite that I'm top of the class, I can't understand this. I don't particularly like studying, but even so, the results astonish me.
Oh yeah, when I said I don't like studying, it's the same for other things as well. Nothing interests me anymore except one thing.
That one thing is reading webnovels. Stories are better than this cruel reality; they make me forget the pain from the several wounds on my body.
Cuts, scratches, bruises, and buckle marks are present on my body as though someone beat me up in the name of art.
Anyways, back to the people I was looking at. Among the herd of sheep, there were two in particular who stood out.
A woman in her early twenties and a man in his late twenties, probably. It looked like they argued about something, and then, in public, the man slapped the woman.
Her knees buckled and hit the stone pavement, and blood seeped out of them as her tears dropped as well.
I wondered why he hit her. Did she cheat on him? Or did she commit fraud with him? I would never know, as in a bit, they both would leave.Or so I had thought.
…
…
…
It was around 4pm when I walked out of the school gate. The woman I saw earlier was still there; she hugged her knees and sobbed endlessly.
Break up? Perhaps. Who knows.
Even though she was a complete stranger, I still went near her and crouched down.
"Miss, the pavement is cold." My voice came out rather cold and distant, but enough for the woman to look up at me.
She had dark brown hair, cut short and tied back in a messy bun. Her eyes were silver-grey, and tears dropped down from them.
From the classroom window, she didn't seem much, but this close, I could see she was nothing short of a beauty.
After all, I'm still a boy; subtle infatuation never really subsides. I took out my phone and called an Uber. The least I could do was send her home.
"Miss, an Uber will come and take you home. Go home and clean the scratches on your knees." I said and got up.
But rather than standing straight, my vision tilted as the left side of my face met the pavement, and a sharp pain shot up in my leg.
Blood pooled beneath my face, and some got into my eye, which made it hard for me to see. Tears welled up and flowed; I had done my best not let a single tear drop from my eyes for some time.But this was too much for my body, which was used to rather normal physical abuse. Then again, pain shot in my other leg as well. My attacker had kicked both of my legs hard.
Maybe both were broken, after all, I was on the weaker side of things, and if my guess is right….it's the man who slapped the woman earlier.
"You whore, so you've been cheating on me with this bastard." He said out loud as he grabbed the back of my shirt and threw me back on the ground on my back.
My back met the pavement much harder than my face, but the damage was worse on my face. I felt the vision in my left eye falter; the jaw on that side was probably fractured if not broken already.
His fist came crashing down towards my face; it felt as though I'd die if it hit me. My left arm moved on its own and took the blow instead.
I couldn't cry anymore; the pain had exceeded my limit. Emotions that I thought I had let go of came back.
I wanted to scream out, beg for him to stop, but my throat was dry, and no words came out. My already broken mind broke further.
The bone broke, and more pain spread through my body. My mind throbbed; I couldn't keep up with the beatdown, but the last thing I saw was him punching my ribs hard, fracturing a few as I lost consciousness.
***
"Evil is whatever distracts." – Franz Kafka
The calamity that left me in my current state probably thought of himself as the hero, and me as the villain. That would only justify why he beat me senseless.
Well, here I am, hooked to a few different machines, my body wrapped in several bandages. I'm Julian Hale, if I didn't already say that.
Crippled from both legs, fractured ribs, punctured lung, fractured jaw, and left eye out of order. I went from a simple testing canvas for my parents to a full fledged piece of art…or rather broken art.
It's been a week since then, and I've thought of the incident daily. What if I had done something different? Would I have ended up here? Or would I have gone back to the toxic hell hole?
Who knows.
Despite my current situation, the hospital is much better than my house. My mother and father did not once come to check up on me, even my older brother didn't come.
Well, if they've given up on me. Then guess what, I too give up. I can't even wipe away my tears, like hell I would cry because of those unimportant bastards.
Tears stream down my face as I let out the burden on my heart in the empty room where the only sounds were the beep of a machine and my quiet sobs.
I opened my mouth, my lips quivering as I gulped hard.
"What a cruel world," I muttered amidst the tears as my eyes looked at the plain white ceiling of the room.