Prologue:
If You're Looking for a Hero, You've Got the Wrong Guy

My name is Danny Jones and I have always been a man of an unorthodox nature. Mile stones, momentous occasions, life-changing experiences – the lot, have never really gone according to plan for me. Something in the blueprint of fated sequences seems to have a fault, thus causing the whole event to fall apart and I'm left to wonder where my life went wrong. The same goes for today and right now: visiting the deceased. Sordid moment in most lives, I know, but for me it's almost a turning point, a re-evaluation of all I own and what it means to me. I'm brought with the immeasurable weight of wonder when standing aside fresh earth, gazing down into the damp soils beneath which someone I know, perhaps love(d), is laying motionless, cold and dead. Very much so dead. For on this day in which I choose to babble on to someone who can't hear me, won't hear me and I doubt would actually give a rat's ass what I have to say, the sun is shining. The sun, that damned ball of flaming inferno in the sky, is being all glittery today, making the grass shine in its dewy submerse, make the birds tweet with happiness because their feathers won't get wet and ruffled, making idiotic joggers wear even tighter Lycra and shorter shorts because it's half a degree warmer outside. When you visit the cemetery it's supposed to be pissing down with rain so badly that you can barely see through your windshield enough to even realise your wipers move about half the speed you bought them to do. The sky is supposed to be clogged thick with ominous dark clouds that look like they might shoot a lightning bolt at you if you look at them in any way they don't like. Visiting a cemetery is supposed to be one of the most depressing moments you can force yourself to endure and so the weather is generally supposed to follow in accordance with said under-the-weather, s'cuse the pun, emotions. I can't say it didn't surprise me when I flung open those black and white striped curtains mother bought me ten years previous to find even the sunflowers looking pleased with themselves. Good weather on a depressed day is unorthodox. My life is unorthodox, as I've said. But I've gotten used to it with time – when you've been ironically run over by an ambulance you hit some sort of epiphany in your life, turn over a new leaf you didn't actually know had fallen from the tree. I was a nice person before this, now look at me: bitter and spiteful, uncaring and sarcastic. And I'm having such a good day.

"You'd better keep your promise."

I'd rewind and tell you what happened, what brought me here and why I'm so adamant that this zombified corpse should keep its promise but on account of three reasons, I cannot allow this. One, the memory is bitter and painful and travels illegally into a locked chamber in my conscious which is pretty dusty and has been left untouched since the incident because I don't feel content enough to dig up old feelings. Two, said dusty chamber is just that: dusty and scratchy; I hardly remember anything about the entire ordeal. Thirdly and most importantly, I can't be arsed. I'm bitter, remember. I'm just as bitter as the memory I harbour from that, dare I use it, fateful night. I'm just as bitter as the emotions I felt and, somewhere deep inside, still feel.

"I just wish you hadn't left me with so little to work with."

I'll tell you so much as underneath me, placid and stony, rotting away like a good ol' carcass, is my late mate, Dougie. I was being modest when I said "mate". He was my best mate, better than any other friend or foe, family member or lover. If I was of the homosexual nature, I so would have. That's disrespectful, I know, but Dougie was like my platonic soul mate. He was alike me in every way possible and he knew me inside out, better than I knew myself and then some. He knew me so well he'd known I was going to fuck up on the night without having to so much as guess. He knew I would miss something, I'd forget something or I'd just naturally fail and be caught and for this he put his life on the line. A life now abruptly ended due to my idiocy and no, I do not wear Lycra, or short shorts for that matter. I should feel guilty. I should feel like I've cost the world a substantial sum for being inadvertently the cause of death of this sparky kiddo. I don't. I feel nothing. I will also tell you I'm bent on vengeance. Dougie wouldn't want me to feel guilty, nor would he want me to single-handedly hunt down the culprit but I'm past being respectful and I'm past following Dougie's orders. All my life I did as Dougie… not so much commanded, but advised. I lived by Dougie's advice and tips; those got me through life. For once and for all, I don't have to take this from him. I appreciated it at the time, though often feeling a little boxed in by what he recommended but now it means nothing to me. Dougie means everything and his death must be justified. I will take another man's life to square out this incomparable loss if needs be. For once, I'm able to think for myself and act on my instincts and beliefs. My name is Danny Jones, I feel nothing, and I believe you will just love me.