Rise and shine. Live or die.

It is perhaps the simplicity of the message what incrusts it in my mind every single morning, like shrappel piercing through my flesh or cold water running down my face. Yet I cannot be but grateful for it as I lay down at night in some dark basement, while I curl into a ball to console myself or hope to retain some heat. While I press my eyes shut through the night hoping to silence the horrors that lurk in the darkness, while I pray to a deaf God to take me far away from this never-ending nightmare, or even when I try not to break in tears and weep like a little boy and bring shame to my pride.

Pride... is that still a thing? No... Pride is something we no longer possess, much like our own cities. But it's a necessary evil, something we must sacrifice in order to stay alive, in order for our hearts to keep pumping the poison that is our blood. You see it every day on the streets, between the bushes or through the thick glass of a bottle. Those battered eyes that seem to be looking at me like a mirror, as if watching their own sickening reflection.

Fools. Blind and useless cattle, too afraid to take control of the only thing they have left. Still caught in the webs of the past, still hanging to hope and happiness- Only they'll never archieve anything but dissapointment. And I will be merciful enough to give it to them.

It's funny, really. Spend a lifetime building an image of what a man is, of what a man is capable to do, of what a man should do... and destroy it. You can't break a man the way you break a dog or a horse. The harder you beat a man, the taller he stands. To break a man's will, to break his spirit, you have to break his mind. Men have this idea that we can fight with dignity, that there's a proper way to kill someone. Show them what a messy, terrible thing it is to kill a man, and then show them that you relish in it. Shoot to wound, then execute the wounded. Burn them. When they fear you, you become stronger. You become better. But let's never forget: it's a display, it's a posture, like a lion's roar or a gorilla thumping at its chest. If you lose yourself in the display, if you succumb to the horror, then you become the monster. You become reduced; not more than a man, but less—and it can be fatal.

What difference does it make? Who knew that a bullet could not only make holes, but help me plug the one that has been torn inside me?

But now I know better, and they do too. I feel their eyes in my back, I hear their fingers graze upon the triggers and their hushed whispers as I pass along, but deep inside they are afraid. Afraid of changing, afraid of leaving behind what they were. Sometimes I feel like stripping naked before them, to prove that I am not a mutant, nor a man. I want to yell to the skies that I am a monster, that they should run away or gun me down like a dog.

But that would be crazy, wouldn't it? Because if I die... who is going to teach them? Who is going to guide them in the right way? Who is bold enough to point his finger towards himself?

I may not be proud of what I have become, but don't think for a moment that I am ashamed. I have no name, I have no home... but I have a knife and bullets. And so far they have proven to be the best example possible. Break their legs, slice their necks and dip your face in their blood before looking at the lone survivor. Look at their terror, hear their writhes and smell their urine as they drag themselves like the rats we all are. Sometimes I ask myself.. Did he understand? Does he know the message? Will he spread it like the spores spread through the air? Is it somehow better to kill a man with a bullet than to chop them up? Would killing a man save a hundred, or a thousand? Would killing another man mean he gets to live?

But I cannot sit and wait for the sprouts, and I must keep spreading the seeds. Because the sooner their realize the truth of our existence, the sooner we can become men again. The sooner they stop turning their backs to themselves, and hold hands like brothers...

The sooner we can stop this hell from swallowing our future.