Prologue: Circle of Guns
As children, we were told fairytales as bedtime stories by our parents while they sat on the side of our bed as they tried to get us to fall asleep. Little girls grew up with the idea of a prince charming that would come rescue them from whatever particular hell they found themselves in. Little boys grew up with the idea that they had to go looking for the princess that needed rescuing from the hell that they lived in. Prince charming came to rescue the princess, and they lived happily ever after together. Standing here now in this alleyway of the crumbling ruins of the prequake era surrounded by all these people, many of whom I knew, I wonder why others could so easily believe in such lies as they were spoon-fed down their throats as children.
This world that we live in is Hell, and I’ve had to learn the hard way that there is no one that is coming to rescue me from it. For me there is no prince charming, and I’m no princess either. I’ve learned to survive in this world. I clawed my way up to the top. I did things no normal person should ever have to even consider doing in order to survive here. I’ve killed people. I’ve killed so many that my hands are stained a permanent red. To me it didn’t matter if the people I killed were men, women or children. All that mattered was keeping up appearances. I had to be the loyal obedient dog up to the very end when I tore off the hand that fed me.
Happily ever after, maybe I could have had the chance to experience it once, but that was a long time ago. If the prequake era had continued, I know I would have lived a peaceful life that wasn’t filled with violence, blood, or even the guilt for it all. As I look up to the sky now, I know I will never have the chance at a happily ever after. I will not have a chance at anything else ever again. This is my fate, and I’m perfectly ok with accepting the end that awaits me here in this alleyway.
How, how did I end up in this situation? How and when did I stop striving for some fairytale life like the one in the stories that my mother used to tell me? I guess it started when I was a child, maybe it was after the prequake era ended, or it could have been when I was training, but I cannot say for sure. There is only one thing that I am absolutely certain of at this point.
“There is no fucking happily ever after in this damn world!” The people that had encircled me all had guns pointed at me, and they all pulled the trigger at the same time. Never again will I look up to the sky and imagine it was once again that crystal clear blue like the days of my childhood. Never again will I remember the fairytales that my mother used to tell me as she sat on the side of my bed at night either. Never again will I pull the trigger to end another life of another man, woman, or child. Never again will I throw another folder onto the pile that sits in my house. For all of those that I have killed, I wonder if I will go to this place that all the old decrepit ones call hell, or have I been living in it all this time. If there even is a place called hell, I never could imagine it to be worse than this place that I lived in. Silence fell upon the alleyway. I fell to my knees and slumped over to the ground.
Everything was set into motion on that day. That day became to be known later as the birth of the era of monsters. They did not call it that until much later when the monsters came out of hiding to tear apart what was left of the once vast human population. They say one monster put all the others to shame, and it is said that monster was me. How I became that monster started on that day. On that day multiple large earthquakes happened all at once to tear the earth apart.
Back before the earth ripped itself apart, known as the prequake ear, I was normal. I went to school, and I had friends that I had known for a long time. However, all of that would disappear in the blink of an eye, and just like that part of me that had disappeared all those years ago, so would I, the monster, disappear in this alleyway of the crumbling ruins of the prequake era. Here is where this monster would die, but the real story is how I became a monster in the first place and why they believed they had to put an end to me.
