-Suzanne Collins

━━━━━━━━┓ ✠ ┏━━━━━━━━

That night, with a deity as a legitimate witness, I killed my brother...along with certain emotions. Emotions that are of integrity on a mere human. Emotions that I don"t want to be a.s.sociated with...anymore.

If the decision itself was made to make me seem less like human, then so be it, as I could not care for more but to erase the feeling of emptiness and to free myself from the mercies and incarcerations from the reminiscence of the image... of my dead family.

"What are we to do now? Your fate awaits." The G.o.ddess asked wearing a face as if she already knew what"s coming next.

"Hmm. In her omnipotence, this deity can be quite a pain." I thought...

"I heard that you know, and for additional information, I am no omnipotent ent.i.ty." the G.o.ddess frivolously replied to my thoughts extrapolating the fact that she"s not as powerful as I think she is.

For the last, I took some time to glimpse at the cold corpses of my mother, my father, and my sister. They were such honorable personas, worthy of commendation from others as they were kind, and that, they showed goodness without partiality to people in need despite being aristocrats, who are as of that time, a family, that can control governments and systems at will.

My family owned several businesses and large-scale corporations, yet that did not become a reason for our family to lose contact with the less fortunate. Yet now? They became nothing but corpses at the state of rigor mortis. Is this what they get back, for the good that they had done?

And then, there is this foolish man, freshly pierced of bullets and dismembered, who destroyed everything on an instant... that demon. The next heir who was once a man of great stature. He was an academic prodigy with athletic reflexes. I aspired to be like him, but now, I probably realized that it was the stupidest decision in my life to try to compete with this man, as he is without a doubt, at the top of the food chain when it comes to insanity and drunkenness to the insatiable hunger for more worldly power. This man, today is nothing to me, but a pile of rotten flesh better set aside for the street dogs to consume.

After being drowned by my self-dialogue, I shifted my gaze back to the G.o.ddess and said, "Lacrimosa, could we burn this house down? That would be my last request for this night."

"If that"s what you want, then let it be done. But it goes without saying that I will do the incineration. Figured, it"s also a time for a little warm-up." The G.o.ddess answered.

She then snapped her fingers and then, at the next blink of an eye, we were outside, in a vast garden that my mom engineered, facing the gargantuan mansion. I looked around, only to behold the same diabolical scenery, the same callous pavilion. I saw nothing more but corpses of whom, by the help of the beaming moonlight, I quickly recognized as our henchmen and servants who we considered as friends and an integral part of the Cendrillon family. It was, by the forensic term, a ma.s.s ma.s.sacre, not a three- men murder, with my brother as the unequivocal perpetrator.

I don"t know why, but I could not care less. My intent from that point was to entirely obliterate our household"s palace, the mansion where dreams were born and were despicably destroyed in a split second without warnings.

Memories then came flashing again back into me, but this time it was our household, as a whole. There were these memories flashing before me as if it"s in vintage film, making me feel like having a giant boulder laid upon my back, in stacking order. Yet, I know, that dwelling in the past is not a very authentic choice judging by my situation. I must move on, towards an obsolete future that my brother made opaque and unclear...

To my surprise, my eyes suddenly became watery and it became heavy. What I felt next were tiny droplets of tears flowing through my cheeks. I- I cried. At that moment, my heartfelt so much lacuna, a hole that is by far, the most disparaging to behold, knowing that I will never see my family talk in front of me again or inspire me the same way as they did before.

In a world which I knew nothing about, surrounded by corpses of my loved ones, feeling empty inside.

"I"

"am"

"Alone"

So I thought, and yet, a gracious tap in my back, which appeared to be from a G.o.ddess awoke me from my melancholic trance. The tap was so warm that it erased the part of me that thought that I am all alone, abandoned and despicable.

"Hmm, you like to be intrusive," I said, in a slightly harsh tone and yet deep inside I was ...a little grateful.

"You are not alone Jaiden. As long as you are under a pledge with me, you never are." She said while looking at me on the eye that expressed great compa.s.sion.

"That sadness you are feeling. Taste it to your heart"s content as it would be your last to feel of it, just like the last savor of anger prior," she added, while slowly turning her attention towards the mansion which I requested for her to burn without a trace, along with the happy moments and memories, that I encountered on that place. A place, which was a symbol of wealth coalesced with undaunted kindness and picturesque visage and is now a ma.s.sive tombstone of the people whom I treasured.

I then noticed that the tears eventually stopped flowing... or maybe it"s just that, I again lost my ability to feel the emotion... tagged as sadness. And yes, it turned out that my hunch was spot on. The clock-like symbol of my contract with Lacrimosa again took a turn, this time towards the third threshold.

"Congratulations on obliterating sadness. That leaves you nine emotions to go before your wish upon this G.o.ddess is completely fulfilled. Now that"s what you could call progress"

"Hmmm, how do you want me to react to being congratulated, in this state? I am not trying to be manipulative to a more supreme being here, but could you please burn this place now?" I replied as if I just heard the most sardonic drivel ever.

"My, my! You sure you are not?... Just jesting. Yes, yes right away." the G.o.ddess responded.

Having said that, Lacrimosa then faced the mansion and pointed her gaze directly towards it and chanted some balderdash that she alone could completely comprehend. I then braced myself as I knew that I was about to witness something that exceeds the ordinary. Yet again.