Before I even start the story, I shall make you, my reader, a promise.
This story will have a happy ending.
There, I made it. You’ll need to hang on to that promise, because there’s a lot of bad stuff in the beginning, and even more in the middle, and the area around the end is worst of all. But it will all work out, I promise. Remember I promised.
Are you ready?
Picture it now, red velvet theatre curtains, spotlights just in the middle. Then the curtains are pulled apart and a scene is revealed.
And we are watching a kid get beat up.
What?
Oh, yes. You read right.
The bigger kids surround the shrimp of a boy, teasing him, jabbing with boots and fists and words.
Get over yourself, Miss Malane.
Miss Malane wants to run home to her mommy!
Don’t be such a girl, Malane.
Mac Malane, the little kid, is close to tears. This is the first time this has happened to him, but he knows it won’t be the last. They found out how sensitive he is, his artistic streak, his soft side, and it’s like blood in the water and sharks.
Boys are supposed to be tough.
He hates it. He hates his soft side. He hates the taste of the tears rolling down his cheeks, he hates the blood running down his forehead. He hates being helpless.
But sometimes to be soft you must be strong.
So he just puts his head down and rolls with the punches.
And that’s what he does all year. And the year after that. And the one after that, and after that, and after that.
Until that day.
The day he snapped.
Nobody talks about that day now. It is lost to the progression of time, killed by the refusing voices, kept alive only in the minds of those who were there.
Mac still doesn’t know how it happened. He was there and he was taking the punches and then he was on top of the other kid and punching. Punching repeatedly, mechanically, until some teacher dragged him off. The other kid could’ve died, they had said, if it weren’t for the timely intervention of the teacher.
Nothing was ever the same after that.
Whatever snapped inside of Mac stayed broken. He was no longer sensitive and artistic and kind. Mac Malane became a name to be feared instead of taunted, and he walked the halls with the predatory grace of a shark.
“It’s like his heart is black,” his parents used to sigh, “like a permanent stain killed all the light inside.”
He hated when they said that. He hated them. He, in fact, hated everyone. Everything. Anything to do with what he was before. Anything that made him think of how helpless and weak he used to be. The first few years were rough on him, rough on everyone. Then he managed to control the anger and the hatred and cooled it into something else.
Something worse.
Even in the emotional state he was at the time, his first kill was the hardest.
But isn’t it always?
He hated his parents. He hated them, even after he cooled down. They kept trying to fix him, as if there was something wrong. They kept trying to help him even when he told them he didn’t need help. They were an obstacle and they needed to be removed.
They never deserved it. They were good people. They did their best. Went to church. Brought up a kid and tried to save him when he went down. Did all they could for their family.
But now they’re dead.
He was nineteen when he did it. He killed them and then ran, left the country, laid low in England for a year or so. Then he returned and got caught.
He spent time in jail, but thanks to bad politics and revolts and rebellion over jail time and faulty records, he was out within the year.
He knew he needed an alias. No more Mac Malane, he needed something new. Different. Better.
It’s like his heart is completely black now. Like a permanent stain killed all the light inside.
BlackHeart seemed fitting.
It wasn’t long before word got around in the underground. One thing led to another, and before he knew it, the man known as BlackHeart had over fifty confirmed kills and assassinations and was, once again, someone to be feared.
Was there ever guilt? Regret? Fear?
Of course.
One day he looked in the mirror and all he could see was the blood on his hands.
One day he woke up screaming with the voices of the dead in his head.
One day he made a wish that he’d never snapped that day.
And one day he stopped regretting. He knew it meant he was weak. He knew weakness would no longer be tolerated, not any weakness from him.
So he just stopped.
He would look back, occasionally, and pinpoint the places where things kept going wrong. But he forced himself to view those times as necessary, things that only made him stronger in the long run, things that helped him by harming him.
And one day he looked in the mirror and saw a villain. A strong, powerful villain. Someone to be feared. Someone who was not weak, sensitive, soft.
Someone who he never wanted to be.
And here our story ends.
You see, I lied. And there’s something to be learned from this story, too.
Sometimes people break their promises. Sometimes you just can’t trust anybody, no matter how good their lies sound.
Sometimes people do bad things. Sometimes people don’t get redeemed after they do bad things. And sometimes when people do bad things, they just can’t stop doing bad things and they have to keep going.
And sometimes?
Stories don’t all have happy endings.
-BlackHeart
No comments:
Post a Comment