Dystopia

The Roads a Monster Must walk... Ch. 4

After weeks of searching the Honor Guard found Malice; he sat outside of a bar in the Clinton Heights Ghetto in his own filth. His once beautiful black hair was dirty and mangled and his body thin as if he was on the brink of death. One of the men reached out to grab his book of the floor, Malice lashed out with a shriek and slit the man's throat, and he began cursing and screaming "Do you know what you've done?! You've destroyed the future! It's gone now all gone!" He fell to his knees crying. Uriel stepped out of a black van that came with the soldiers; he scoffed at Malice and called him weak and untrue to the cause. He scolded him for giving up and told him that Michael was weak and deserved his fate, a fate that Malice would meet, should he keep up this foolishness up. Malice made his way to his feet and laughed dusting himself off he looked at Uriel and told him that when Ira was alive, he told him a parable "It's not about who stands up first but who's the last man standing." Uriel, puzzled, asked what does that mean. Malice revealed a jacket packed with C4 and smiled and threw his book at Uriel who was being pushed into a SUV. The explosion destroyed most of the ghetto and killed all the guards present; the hospital workers told Uriel that he was lucky to be alive. He just sat there as if still stunned by the death of another of his comrades; he turned and notices the book on the table beside the bed. He picked it up...

"THE FUTURE OF MANKIND"

BY SUOMYNONA NWONKNU"

He cracked it open and began laughing uncontrollably; all the pages were blank except one that had a picture of a young Malice in the hospital with writing on the page "the day my world went dark." Uriel laughed for an hour straight; the thought that for over thirty years Malice was blind and he never knew. But as he calmed down he saw on the inside of the front cover there was a note, meant for Malice of course: "Do not despair the future is not gone, it is simply waiting to be written" – Ira. For the next few weeks those words echoed through his mind. Malice's suicide wasn't meant to kill him but to open his eyes.

He returned to the Seven House where he and Gabrielle had lived. Gabrielle greeted him with a party where she invited all of the Sevens' comrades to which Uriel was most upset. He lashed out saying now is not the time to be celebrating; Malice is dead, we lost an entire town and the Sevens are being officially disbanded in three weeks. He screamed at Gabrielle trying to figure out what was there to be happy about? He stormed off into his room. Later that night Gabrielle came into his room with what was left of the 'Welcome Back' cake in a plate. She tried to explain to him that it was a good thing that the Sevens were being disbanded this way they could settle down, start a family live like normal people, she even mentioned that she would one day like to visit France back on the ground. Uriel went into a rage he began smash things and screaming that this was the problem, he rambled on about how they weren't normal people. He said that he longed for the heat of battle once more. To live on the razor's edge again. He exclaimed that that was his happy place; where blood splashed across his face and his wounds ached. Where the right to live was decided by how much you could take. Where the weak fell prey to the strong. He pleaded with her to understand that they weren't meant to grow old on some farm in the sky, they were meant to die on the battlefield covered in the blood of their enemies and that that was the only way he could ever die happy. He said that when he thought of Michael's execution or Malice's suicide he felt no sorrow but anger, anger that men he once called comrades threw their lives away. She looked at and scolded him for being unrealistic. Told him that they were humans first and warriors second. She grabbed him by the collar and said "I wish you were half the human Michael was!" Uriel was shocked and slapped her across the face saying that he was ten times the warrior than Michael could ever hope to be and she would be wise to remember that. The next day one of the butlers woke him to show him the horrid truth. Gabrielle had drowned herself in the pool. Uriel screamed and fell to his knees crying.