A man stood before me. He was tall, with shiny, sleek, bck hair that was stamped to his scalp. His eyes were fierce and filled with hatred, his pupils contracted, and his irises abze. His fingers were chapped and crusted with blood, and his knees were weak; they were shaking.

  He smiled, a smile so joyful it almost broke my heart.

  “You tracked me here all the way from your ravaged home. It’s burnt embers now, isn’t it? Are you gd you managed to succeed in your revenge? Do you feel happy? Is your purpose complete? You fucking fool! Every goddamn day of your life since you were twelve you’ve searched for me. Look at you now! You’re nothing! You’re a body without a soul, a man without a purpose! You’ve done it! You’ve killed me, but you’ve also killed yourself!”

  I clenched my fists so hard I felt my nails pierce my skin and my hands begin to bleed. My head quivered as a torrent of rage began to flow throughout my brain.

  “You fucking monster! How dare you mock me with that disgusting mouth of yours! You fucking freak!”

  I grabbed his skull and squeezed it as hard as I could between my dirty fingers. I wanted it to pop, to explode!

  “Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha, you fucking moron! You fucking fool! You stupid little idiot! You’re a child, a child, you haven’t seen the world, you haven’t seen your own life! Yet you’ve seen your parent’s death! That’s all you’ll ever see! That’s all you see! And you want to kill me?! You can’t kill me! I will live forever! I will never die, I am a God!”

  I squeezed harder, harder!

  “Shut up you monster! My parents are dead because of you! I saw you, you fucking ate them! You ripped out their hearts and ate them whole! You’re a fucking animal!”

  His eyes rolled in their sockets, like little balls of marble, they twisted and turned and spun all around.

  “I’m no animal! I’m a god! I live forever! My soul is pure, my life is good! You’re the animal here, you’re the fever! You’re the cancerous cell that consumes and grows and eats a man whole! I’m pure, I’m free!”

  “You’re not free, you're dead! Dead, dead, dead!”

  “Aaargh!”

  I squeezed harder and harder until his teeth shattered and his eyes bled.

  But I wanted them to bleed more, I wanted them to explode!

  “Ah! You fucking moron, stop it! Stop ruining my head, my precious, holy head!”

  “SHUT UP!” I screamed in his face, “JUST FUCKING DIE ALREADY!”

  “Aah!” He moaned, and scratched at my arm, trying to loosen my hold, without success.

  “You fucking fool, you goddamn idiot! Stop it, stop it! You’re hurting me, you’re hurting me!”

  I screamed and squeezed harder. My fingers were lead, his head was steel, and my bones were pstic.

  “JUST FUCKING DIE!”

  His head popped, like a balloon, and blood and brain matter flushed out of his ears, nose, and eyes.

  I fell to my knees, the monster’s head still clenched within my hand.

  “You’re dead now, Vexis. Your brain is pulped, you look like a fucking popped tomato.”

  I chuckled, and lowered my head into the dirt.

  It felt nice, the dirt. It was cool, and smelled like life. I buried my head further into it.

  How truly wonderful would it be, living your life in the dirt? No worries, no qualms, just dirt.

  I threw Vexis’s head to the side. I was done, I was finished. Vexis was dead, my parents were avenged.

  It felt meaningless, now that I finished it. There was nothing more to do.

  I licked the soil, and tasted iron. Blood. It was everywhere. On my hands, in my hair, even in the dirt.

  Even the dirt was not free of the taste of blood.

  I felt hot tears stream down my face. They stung, they hurt, they mixed with my sweat and blood and stained the dirt with pain.

  The dirt was not free, and neither was I.

  I chuckled slightly, feeling my face twitch from the pain of the action.

  Even though Vexis was wrong about being a god, one thing he said was true. I killed him, along with myself.

  I was dead, yet my parents' faces could never smile in my vision, their hands could never hold.

  My father, my mother, they gave me everything. My life, my love, my very soul. And yet they were not spared from the horrors of reality. They were eaten, consumed for nutrients. They were turned into food.

  I was food too. I was food to the devils, as they ughed and ughed at my foolishness and greed.

  What man in their right mind would chase after their parent’s murderer for seven years?

  A foolish man, a man who knew that they would either fail and die, or succeed and die too.

  And now I was dead.

  Yet so was Vexis.

  I smiled. That felt right, that felt good. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

  I felt the dirt beneath my skin. It was so warm, so clean and new, yet full of blood.

  I tried to think of one thing about Vexis that I would remember and never forget. Something I would keep hidden in the back of my skull for a hundred years, a memory of his sickness that would stay forever etched within my broken soul.

  A crazy, deranged, unhinged and insane man like Vexis liked to use his mouth. He liked to speak. Yet every word he uttered oozed with ughter and hate for life. He was like a soulless robot, an entity of pure instincts and hunger. An animal.

  Yes, that’s what he was, an animal. And that’s what I would remember him as, for the rest of my life. A horrid, wretched, monstrous animal, that fed on the blood of the living and the pain of the dead.

  I closed my eyes and felt my brain drift and fall and float through endless white.

  And through the white, I saw two faces smiling at me. Mother and father. I reached out to touch them-

  And the world turned bck.