Mercy
A TWD One-Shot
That pitiful creature. I couldn't look at it, at its vile and contorted face. Those mangled limbs. Those blood-drenched hands. The dead, hungry eyes.
It was disgusting. Hideous. Revolting. Everything wrong with the world, in a nutshell.
And though I shunned it, I could hear its weak voice crying out for me. A faint shuffle of clothing as it tried vainly to move. It wanted me. It wanted to rip into my flesh. But it couldn't. Oh, that loathsome creature could scarcely move, let alone pose a threat to me.
A part of me chimed with malevolent laughter. How rich was it that the predator was nothing short of prey now, reduced to such a miserable state? Very. My laugh almost bubbled out, but I refused to let it; the noise might alert others, others that were less vulnerable.
Another part, though, went out to this thing before me. Wretched and wrong as it was, it still held true that once upon a time the thing was like me. Alive, healthy, surviving. And to think that someday I too might end up a defenseless, despondent, doleful existing thing...
My heart lurched at the thought.
Perhaps, just maybe, surviving as I had done changed me. When had I become someone who could laugh at another's suffering, even if that someone was closer to a something?
Slowly, gradually, with reluctance I met those lifeless eyes. They were bloodshot, their color indistinguishable. The facial features nearly gone thanks to the hunks of flesh devoured by others. What was it once? A woman? A man?
I sighed and softly spoke to it.
"You sad, sad thing. I guess you caught me on a good day... I'm prepared to end your misery."
A groan-like noise emitted from it.
"You want me to, don't you? Deep down, somewhere inside of you, you want to die for real?"
The hand desperately pawed the air, groping for my flesh. In my left hand, I grasped a baseball bat tightly enough to drain my skin of color. Still, it reached for me.
"Don't hold this against me, alright? I'm sparing you any more pain. I know, maybe, that's hard to understand... But it's for best."
I raised the bat.
"I hope you can rest peacefully now."
I brought the metal weapon down. Hard. The hunger faded from the eyes, leaving only the deadness behind. I sighed again, staring at the grotesque liquid seeping beneath the corpse. Guilt wrapped around me. Not for extinguishing the "life" of the thing, but for having ever laughed at it.
Sometimes I found myself frightened by how inhuman I had become. The numb way I could kill things like that one. The relief when one was vulnerable to not be a threat.
Surely it was best that I killed that thing. Certainly I was right to not let it suffer anymore. The act was merciful, like putting a dog to sleep. Far more merciful than just watching it suffer and laughing about it.
It was merciful, that act of violence. Merciful.
A/N: I do not own TWD.