Have you ever wondered what there was to life?

I did—a lot of times.

You are born into this little blue dot of ours. Maybe lucky enough to be received in between warm arms, perhaps not. If that were the case, that could fuel you enough to move forward in the miserable existence of being a human child. Maybe not...

I wouldn't know anyway.

So then, you are an irrational, dependent, human maggot. And your purpose is none other than to... survive. Lucky if you do.

Then months go by. If you have been fed correctly you will eventually evolve… Slowly but surely, ahhhh, there you go... You get your first real quest, your task is simple:

"Learn how to wobble through the floor in a semi-rhythmic manner,"

first like another ordinary bug,

then like a slightly more sophisticated bipedal bug.

Through encouraging smiles and laughs alike, you'll probably manage to pass that phase quite smoothly... Unless something bigger happens to squash you in the process, that is.

Have you done with that? Great.

Next. Learn to communicate. Use your tongue, move your lips, vocalize. Learn to express yourself, your opinions, ideas, and complaints.

Do it fast, or else you will be a failure.

But not too fast either, or else the ones who root for you will equally bring you down.

Done? Good. Don't let anyone fool you, words are your most powerful tool.

So use that tool to make friends later on, learn, and bond. Then maybe ditch them if you do not like them, doesn't matter. Just be competent enough to wield connections with other humans if necessary. It's all that matters.

Then comes... Ahh yes.

Right. The flower of youth.

Be a freshman, study, fail, study some more, then fail some more. It'll take about a decade for the human maggot to get to this point, and If you are not utterly incompetent and your overseers are not useless, you might even make it.

As I understand things to be: Become the best you can be at anything, sports, business, academics, communication, it doesn't really matter. Just grow a spine. 

Then hopefully, someday, it'll strike you.

You'll fall in love.

Some spring day, the butterflies will arrive, a burning hope will fill your heart, and love will bloom within the midst of late puberty… perhaps.

Then everything will become colorful once again.

Grief, disgust, hate, fear, and love, you will feel them just like everyone else. Then, maybe... Just maybe. Everything you did up to this point will have been worth it. The suffering, the repetition, the pain, the grayness, the numbness of every miserable second you lived to get here.

...

"It's your last chance."

The warmness of my thoughts vanished in the freezing, eerie night breeze. My voice shook the pillars of alloy under my feet as I lighted yet another cigar. The wind blowing in my direction made it particularly bothersome to have a smoke.

"If it really can happen, let that so-called love spread and take over your mind like an irrational fever and go back home."

I said, as loud as I could... Yet, nothing.

Despite my words, the man in question did not budge. His eyes remained focused on the abyss below our feet. His eyes shone with longing.

I frowned my throat turned as cold as I could muster.

"Emilio. Dead don't have a choice. You have... So fix it, do it before it's too late. "

But nothing... In his eyes, the world was still grey. His body playfully leaned back and forth at the edge of the bridge. As if the man in question had already accepted his death at the hands of the abyss. 

Emilio treated death as yet another objective to cross off a long list of mortal chores.

"Tskk- Nothing..."

I shouted, for the first time desperation filtering through my tone.

I spat out my cigar as I walked away from him, the grip around the gun I was holding trembling as I spat my lungs out in sheer frustration.

"Absolutely nothing changes, not even in the face of your very own demise."

I tossed the gun to the ground, making the bridge tremble beneath our feet.

"SHIT."

...

"Is this what treason feels like? I wonder."

Treason to a plan, an idea, a concept of life I followed for the sake of pleasing other people. People I didn't give two shits about.

Let the compelling checklist that meant a well-lived life for the world be your lord and savior.

Embody the average of the average.

Go to college.

Buy things you don't want.

Earn credits you don't need.

Marry someone you don't care about, procreate so you can continue this circle of madness.

Then die.

In that exact success of events, be normal.

Merge with the rest.

Pledge allegiance to the accurate prediction of your days.

"Predictable..."

Giving that adjective to such a desperately boring, meaningless life could only be described as utterly repulsive. Physically repulsive.

The type of disgust that would urge you to vomit right down that bridge, to drown inside a puddle of muck and let it dry with you...

"You know, it's necessary."

The bastard finally spoke. I couldn't stand him, I averted my gaze.

...

"So that's it."

I said as the ashes fell off my cigar down onto the void, then a few seconds of silence. It felt as if the man in question was looking into my eyes. Except he couldn't.

"You know this cursed slice of us must die... There is no other way."

...

I'd like to retort, but we both knew he was right. We knew there was no other way to kill the curse but let it do its job, we had already talked this through.

...

A long sigh escaped my lips.

"Well then. Let's quietly remember your life, so I may end it."

I paused again, trying in vain to stretch those last few seconds we would ever spend together.

"Your name is Emilio, just Emilio. You are exactly eighteen years old, you live in a modest house in the suburbs of... somewhere you do not even remember anymore."

A clear image of our home surfaced in my mind. 

"You are the son of a broken family. Burnt, rather, just like many others. Scorched by the fires of the illness that corrupts the world... Several years ago, a product of that rotting evil had been the one to take your father's life.. Scorched alive before your very eyes, by a crazed, broken-loose pyromaniac."

...

'It still lingers.'

I paused, as the disgusting smell of the man's burnt flesh traveled back through time.

Cinders sheathe your mind like a thick rubber carpet.

"Then you awakened your curse of choice."

My teeth gritted together to the point of breaking. I did not know know if we were normal to begin with or not. Perhaps we were just born defective… Whatever the may have been, ever since we could remember everything always felt void, numb. Gray.

"Monotone to the point of nuisance."

...

I got a little worked up there... I exhaled and inhaled the freezing winter air once again, warm smoke poured out of my dry mouth. I made sure to keep my eyes closed and continued remembering. Remembering to forever forget... The irony.

"After that incident, her, your mother. became heavily addicted to enhanced synthetic opioids and other borderline-crippling drugs... Father's early demise transformed her into something gruesome and unrecognizable.

It was like taking care of a chimp, she would run rampant like a tornado at times willing to hurt and break anything, then falling to her knees, crying and hurting like a lonely child."

The image of that sorry thing we called mom still lingered. 

"Poor thing."

I let out a heavy breath as we both began to approach the abyss in a relaxed pace.

"Even to this same day, your relationship could be best described as strangers living in the same home. You didn't know each other, probably never did, definitely never would."

What else was there to you?

I wondered for a few seconds.

"There was no one else out there... Made no friends during high school. Met nobody that would remember you nor did you bother to remember anyone."

I grabbed onto a steel beam right at the edge of certain death with one hand, the other still holding onto my cigar.

"I mean, sure you did talk with some people sometimes, but they were all just two-dimensional relationships. They would fall apart like wet paper the moment one of us stopped benefiting beyond a sensible threshold."

We were instruments to each other, not that it bothered any of us… it was convenient.

"And lastly... Ahh, yes, almost forgot."

The reason you... Emilio was about to jump off this bridge.

"You bear the water curse... You are supposed to be dead anyway. "

A chill ran down my spine. The bridge was quiet, no one had followed us here, but... it always felt as if they were observing.

"Now that they've found Emilio, even if you were capable of fighting the curse for a couple more years. You would be murdered either way."

...

For once, an unrestrained, mad smile formed on Emilio's lips.

"So this is our checkmate."

I too couldn't help but grin one last time.

"Now, this will hurt."

There was nothing left to be said. The introductions were finally over, it was time for Emilio to tragically drown.

| Thud |

I let go off the burden. As planned, both of our feet slid from the edge of the bridge. The sensation of falling, sharp winds brushing against my skin as we fell towards the freezing, turbulent death that lay below.

Time seemed to flow particularly slowly as my body descended.

I heard of something like that happening to people when they were on the verge of certain death… Was I feeling fear? Remorse? I wonder what Emilio was feeling...

Who am I kidding?

He felt nothing.

Even in the last moments, Emilio could have saved himself from that deathly fall.

But chose not to. Even in those very last moments, the young, cursed man wanted nothing but to die. And so he did.

| Bang |

There was no redemption, no witnesses, no survival chances, no proof, and nothing more than the constant, monotonous emptiness there had always been.

Just another suicide, another dead man cursed with the devious water mark.

...

It was cold outside.

| Breaking News!! Another body has been found on the shores of the river's #19th port. The autopsy and early analysis show evidence of advanced decomposition, and the profile of the corpse matches that of the missing 18-year-old…|

The TV cut abruptly as the fat man casually decided to turn it off. His face was grim, dark, and eerly inexpressive as his hands nimbly washed a cheap bottle of whisky.

"Old man."

The double-chinned, bald man's eyes lazily hovered over me. Struggling to locate the source of the voice... As if I wasn't the only client within the whole local.

"Why did you turn it off, couldn't you see I was interested?"

I asked, my index finger pointing toward the nearby TV device.

One second.

Two seconds.

Three seconds.

Completely ignoring the question, his eyes hovered around the local a couple more times. Fully coming to terms with the aberrant fact.

Indeed, both of them found themselves alone…

His heartbeat staggered, I felt it.

"Old man, I asked a question."

He didn't bother to answer. The man's skin glistened with newborn sweat and his gaze fled away as if somehow attempting to hide his thoughts.

"Tssk- Another bottle."

I protested. Which seemed to somehow calm him down.

Turning around awkwardly, the fat, beardless geezer turned around in search of another glass of cold-served tonic. Which was a surprise, since this was the first time he had fully lifted his attention off the hoodied figure standing on the counter. 

Or so that would appear to be.

For a millisecond fattie's eyes shrunk arrogantly, a hint of excitement and madness hidden behind that veil of normalcy.

The thick tattoos covering his left arm glittered with cold, black, lusterless radiance, ready to burn blood…

All before he had to desist.

'The last boy was a few weeks ago, if I fuck up the charges could turn problematic. Next, be.'

He simply scoffed. His eyes hovered back over to the desk, he turned around, placing the bottle of old tonic back into a cabinet.

Then, something was uttered under his breath…

"I have been nice for a while already brat… Drink your glass and get the fuck out. I'm closing for the night."

The frustration hidden behind his roasted voice surfaced for a few seconds, and then the echoes died down.

An eerie silence.

…

"I see."

The young man answered. For the first time, his pale black eyes were visible through his pitch-black hood, his hand mercifully playing with his still-full glass of water.

"I have a question first, though."

Question. A single question.

That was enough to freeze the mass of meat-turned-bartender for a second.

Maybe his senses did notice something off...

Tick.

Tack.

Tick.

"You see I am not good at making these guesses. Not at all... But, I was wondering… are you, perhaps? Evil?"

…

His hands, which had been rhythmically glassware up until that very second came to an abrupt halt.

Even though I could not see them, his chubby eyes opened substantially behind the counter, and his breathing stopped. As expected, his acting was quite brute.

"What are you rambling about, are you on LSD?"

The tone of his voice did not change, but that subtlety he wore as a costume was a red flag in itself.

Some half-brained, undercover criminals would have already made a move by now. But the meatball was completely different.

He wasn't scared.

Nor threatened.

Nor fearful.

Instead, he was excited, mad as pangs of desire reignited bellow his layers of fat.

A Fire Mark Wielder.

A nasty one at that.

Without intending to draw any warning, the glass he was calmly holding at hand fell like an ominous thunderstrike in the emptiness of the tavern.

Red-hot shards of Cristal ricocheted off the floor.

Echoes of shattered glass shook the old wooden floors

If only I had not vanished, my skull would have been split into halves.

'Tssk.'

I almost chuckled.

Despite the man's aberrant volume and bothersomely gruesome body, how he turned around resulted in being eerly nimble. 

"He i- gone!"

After a brief pig sound effect, the man's burning eyes staggered. 

Seeing the hooded piece of shit missing from the spot it'd just been a couple of seconds ago, meant his checkmate assault had failed.

It also meant his enemy was not to be taken lightly.

'Shit. Fuck. I pressed the button... Tony told me not to but this is... He and his men should be here in a couple of minutes. I'll kill the brat before then.'

Without a second of delay, his thick, greasy hand barged against the bar top as his eyes blurred. The door was clear and locked, there were no movements, no sounds either.

Still, his pupils ran from corner to corner, trying to discern where the little punk had dis-

"Your name… Gerth Davis."

My unmistakably plain, monotone voice hovered around the man's ears. Yet instead of any relief, the pig gasped in further horror.

The voice came from all directions.

Including behind him...

'Fuck, the brat had to be a marksman!!'

He cursed in his mind, fighting to maintain the few roots that still bound him to the cold logic of a fucking murderer.

The man bolted back, his murky paws rapidly opening a nearby compartment hidden inside the old wooden cabinet.

No doubt he was picking up his weapon.

'Shall I pick mine too, then?'

Once more my ghastly, echoing voice invaded the empty room like a tide.

"So drug dealer… Worked in illegal opioids and drugs trade across the national border for over one decade…"

Unemotional.

This time, the thin, inherently prey-like underline of a tone that characterized my voice was surprisingly no more. Instead, it sounded empty.

Like that of a complete stranger, that of… something that was not a kid.

"Tssk."

Greased by the liquid flowing through his hands, the man fitted in between his fingers a gleaming pair of silver brass knuckles.

His hands closed and opened repeatedly, warming up for the upcoming danger.

"Faced several charges for human trafficking, but somehow escaped unscathed… How curious."

The moment I noticed, his face… He had lost it.

The man's complexion had burned off to become that of an entirely different character.

Burning mad, fired up in all the wrong ways. If one were not to know who the individual truly was, they would best guess he was just an extremely talented actor.

However, he was not. 

He was a bad guy. 

"Ohh, yeah. Plus your little brother is quite a bigshot, pig."

That was information protected by Tony and the uppermen... He could count in his hand the number of people who were allowed to know.

'You'll pay for that little fuck head.'

The man's expression couldn't simply contort any further yet just mentioning his brother was enough to deepen his wrinkles visibly.

Desire ran rampart inside him already, the curse was doing its job, breaking the dichotomy between Gerth's gruesome exterior and his half-backed cover personality.

"I would rethink my moves, kid."

He said. His tone playful as if this was just some kind of game for him.

A highly anticipated game of hide and seek, one with dire physical consequences…

A foolish attitude fit for a fool. I guess.

| Clacp Clapck |

He jolted back, sensing a sound around the corner of his eye, just behind one of the bothersomely opaque tables at the back of the room.

'The brat has thrown something lure me. But from whe…'

By the time he realized it, it was late.

Eerly and without a sound, rising from behind the counter a nimb, young, cloaked figure rapidly moved past the top bar.

His body tense, clamoring him to catch a breath. Now wasn't the time though.

For a moment they both exchanged gazes, each trying to break the other's will apart in vain.

In the end, all Gerth managed to see was a pair of calm, relaxed, blue eyes.

"Wu- water Marktj-!!!"

One palm pressed against the wooden desk, another, wielding my deadly weapon of choice.

| Crasjh!!! |

The glass of water wielded by the youth broke and shattered against the man's nose, ruthlessly crushing it inwards and delivering myriads of tiny cuts across his face.

That did buy in a few seconds.

"Asphyxia."

| Snap |

With a snap of fingers, the harmless droplets of tonic fluid revolted in the air.

Like a slithering snake, the suspended particles caused by the crashing glass defied gravity.

In a fraction of a second, one by one, they fixated around the man's skin, merging together, and marching towards his nostrils. Utterly blocking his trachea.

"Fwujkr!!!"

The man attempted shouting, uselessly wasting his precious breath on stupid nonsense.

His big, thick hand arrived blind and late to strike me since I had long leaped back away from his reach.

"Needless size makes you weak…"

I said, half seriously, now communicating directly through my voice.

Tick.

Tack.

Tick.

'Now, let's see what you do, Gerthy.'

Knowing he didn't have much time left to get rid of the blockage in his air conducts, the man busted in rapid movement and followed after the kid's voice, his bloody eyes fixated on his prey.

Retreating was imperative but the tavern was small, I knew that.

Letting my guard down here would be a bothersome mistake. 

Seconds were enough for a fire mark to burn me to cinders.

'I miscalculated his lung capacity…'

A foolish, crazed smile surfaced as the madman caught up to me. Without a single flickering of muscle on my face, I leaned on the filthy wooden wall of the tavern.

'Not that it should matter.'

The bulk of mass crooked his neck to the side.

His lips opened. His throat remained cloaked, but he could still ignite.

And so he did.

"Boil."

As expected.

In an instant, the tattoos decorating his left arm ignited in fierce incandescence, flowing in unison as a pale orange glow. Flowing like living steam of deadly, scorching might, his skin burned as thick clouds of vapor emanated from his pores.

His dark irises turned fiery red

as his maddening grin widened.

"Dumbass…"

…

The last thing he did, was crack his fingers. His brownish, flamed eyes died down in a matter of seconds. His limp body fell to the floor, sending a quake along the empty local.

Nothing moved for a few seconds.

The grin on the man's face remained frozen.

"Though that color does suit you…"

His skin rapidly turned pink, then purple.

Gerth was dead.

A thick volume of light tonic liquid filled with his mucus escaped the cadaver's throat, spreading through the floor and soaking the wooden floor.

"Light a flame, and it will devour your breath, fire mark."

I said as I stood up, throwing my hood to the floor, and dressing back in my suit.

I grabbed a cigarette from my pocket, and lit it with one of his incandescent brass knuckles.

"Do remember in the afterlife."