Kentucky, Central United States, May 3, 2012
"Why do it?"
They ask, "You know that you are evil, you know that your actions are evil, so why persist?"
They never stop. "Why do you continue to rend families apart, to destroy lives, to murder?"
Ever. "What do you get out of it? Does this make you feel any less small and worthless?"
Always muttering in the back of my head, always judging and commenting. "Do you feel like a big man now, with the blood of hundreds on your hands?"
How I'd love to end them. "How many must die before you feel better about yourself?"
All of them. "What will make you stop hurting?"
Unfortunately, even I cannot kill voices that nobody else hears, that speak to me in the night.
"Why did you kill us? Arkady, Arkasha, why did you kill me?"
Southeastern Arizona, United States, November 11, 2009
Another day past, another day gone. Finally.
It'd been a long day, another day pissed down the drain. High school continued as expected, with the weak hindering the strong, and the teachers overworked and uncaring. I sat in the back of my classes, dressed in greys and blacks, and doodled in my notebooks while fools toiled away. In fact, the only interesting thing that had happened was a fight breaking out during one of the passing periods, between two of the wannabe Blood gang members who seemed to infest our school's outermost hallways. Watching the two fools beat each other bloody was amusing, if ultimately pointless. Both were hauled off to meet their righteous punishment, and I returned to my boredom. During lunch, one of the thugs came over to my usual corner table and disturbed my solitary lunch. After spending five minutes attempting to provoke me, he gave up. As he walked away, I followed him with my eyes, and watched as he returned to his table, with his thuggish friends. All of them deserved to die.
As I stood up and left the cafeteria, I felt as if I was consumed by apathy. I was a Christian, and thus told by my God to help and defend the weak, and to spread peace, but I didn't want to spread peace. My instincts, the imp that crouched on my shoulder and poured poison in my ear, commanded that I hurt, that I maim, that I kill. That didn't interest me either. My hormones, pumping through my 15 year old body, commanded me to breed, and, while that did interest me, any sexual impulse drowned in the sea of apathy that filled my head and heart. However, there was one bright spot, one beacon of bright, white, light that shone in the grey void: My shrine and devotionals at home.
About four years ago, my family lived in Japan, on the US Army base of Camp Zama, near Tokyo. We were evacuated when, during the autumn of 2005, a large detachment of FBI agents sent to Japan were all murdered by someone, or something, known as "Kira".
A year after that, in San Antonio, Texas, I had watched the commandant of Brooke Army Medical Centre drop dead of a heart attack at a speech given after his Court Martial found him "not guilty" of embezzlement of funds meant for reconstructive surgeries of veterans. Before he died, he publically announced that he was guilty, before revealing the hiding places of the embezzled funds. He also announced that these revelations and that his fast-approaching death were due to the efforts of "Lord Kira".
Needless to say, I became fascinated with Kira. I had never seen death before, nor had anyone close to me had died, save for elderly relatives. To see a healthy, robust, middle-aged man snuffed out from existence was an important event for my formative years. While my parents, when asked, agreed that Kira was a criminal, and a murderer, I devoted my precious internet time at school to finding any scrap of information about Kira that I could. I watched the tapes released by the Second Kira, I watched the news reports on the attempted arrest, and death of, the so-called Third Kira, Kyosuke Higuchi. I read the press statements released by the great detective "L", and I followed the rise of the Cult of Kira during the last half of 2006, and the first part of 2007. Most importantly, I saw and read about how the leaders and princes of the world kowtowed to that same Cult and its mysterious godhead, and noted when the statements of the American government became identical to the ideology of the Cult.
I remember when, in 2008, Kira seemed to disappear: No more criminals, celebrities, or politicians died, the Cult of Kira stopped issuing press statements, and the world seemed to hold its breath, as if waiting for an inevitable punishment. That scouring of the newly emboldened criminals never occurred, and the crime rate skyrocketed. The state and federal police, having grown lax in their duties due to Kira's frequent interventions, were taken unprepared. The National Guard and detachments of active-duty soldiers were sent to reestablish order in major cities all over the nation, and in Canada and Mexico. Soldiers were hastily recalled from all over the world, brought home to garrison and secure the homeland, as well as the newly established protectorates of Canada and Mexico. While the United States clamped down on North America, Japan, Great Britain, Australia, and most of Europe were able to restore order after a few tense and occasionally bloody months during the latter half of 2008.
The real fallout from Kira's sudden absence was felt in Africa, where none of the old grievances had ever been forgotten, much less forgiven, in South America, where the starving poor fought the their governments, and criminal cartels undermined both sides, and in Asia. With the exceptions of Asiatic Russia, Japan, and parts of China and India, Asia descended into chaos. Governments rose and fell almost by the week, and each day brought news of new atrocities. In Indonesia, hard-line Muslims seized power, and began the ethnic cleansing of the Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Indo minorities, as well as the destruction of the Indonesian Christians. In India, a country always teetering on the brink of mass-famine and provincialism, a 28-sided civil war broke out between a wide variety of former states, ethnic groups, geographical regions, ex-Governmental forces, and a variety of Hindu, Muslim, and Buddhist groups. This civil war was snuffed out, not by foreign or internal intervention, but by a famine horrible even by modern standards. After the death of 45% of the former population of India in a period of a year and a half, from the middle of 2008 to present day November, 2009, the civil war degenerated into less of a war, more of a struggle for survival. China underwent a similar situation, further exacerbated by attempts by the People's Liberation Army to subdue cities by "Any means found appropriate for the situation." After the remainder of the Chinese government used nuclear warheads to obliterate the primary foci of resistance in Shanghai and Hong Kong, the remainder of China was brought back under the control of the Central Government, which had headquartered itself out of the northeastern region of China. Restoration of government superiority, however, did nothing to stop the widespread famine that devastated both the coastal regions, and China's impoverished interior.
While China and India collapsed, North Korea bunkered down, and defied the world. This would have passed unnoticed and uncared for by the world in general, until the collapse of South Korea's government, brought about by the sudden withdrawal of all foreign support, and food and raw material shipments. During this time of weakness, the North Korean generals took the initiative to finally reunite Korea, and crossed the Demilitarized Zone in force. Seoul was ground to dust between the artillery of the NKPLA, and the desperate urban warfare waged by Seoul's residents and surviving garrison against the onslaught. The resurgent United States, in a move to underline its continuing authority and power in the Pacific, responded to the North Korean actions with a massive and immediate deployment of troops to the Korean Peninsula in January of 2009. Beginning with a relentless campaign of offshore shelling, carpet bombing of the entire Korean Peninsula, and continuing with the "liberation" of Korea, the Second Korean War easily surpassed the brutality of the First Korean War. Waging a scorched earth campaign designed to utterly obliterate North Korea as a state, the US troops first landed in the far northern part of North Korea, and began a long march through enemy territory, leaving not a single standing building, intact road, unscorched and salted field, or any Korean of possible threat alive. Learning the truth of the saying that "the People are the sea in which the guerilla swims" from the previous wars in the Middle East, the proposed and executed plan boiled down to removing the sea entirely. The plan worked, and the campaign was successful, both as a military maneuver, and as a propaganda tool. After marching through the entirety of the former North Korea, and shelling the remainder of the country into a Verdunesque state, the US forces withdrew entirely back to bases in Japan and North America, leaving an utterly destroyed land and people in its wake. All of this was done within five months.
Pakistan destabilized in a manner similar to India, only with a nuclear exponent. The entirety of Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Kashmir, Tajikistan, and southern Iran were left uninhabitable, as well as significant portions of western India.
The Middle East imitated Africa, as all old feuds suddenly and bloodily reactivated. Israel and her allies fought against the remainder of the Middle East, while Sunni fought Shi'a, Christians fought Muslims, and the rapidly starving populations fought for necessities everywhere.
Africa rode a wave of ethic cleansings, genocides, wars, ambushes, massacres, retributions, and mass starvation and disease to beat out Asia for sheer anarchy. To this day, the cycle continues, picking up greater and greater momentum as it goes.
I share this brief explanation of current world events, not to bore you, but to explain my longing for the days of Kira, and the incredible adoration I had for the entity that could bind humanity, and whose mere absence could cause the profoundly world-shaking events of 2008 and 2009. I was not interested in the justice of Kira's cause, but the power, the influence, and the sway he still held over humanity. Even in the darkest months of the last year and a half, the Cult of Kira retained high membership, and considerable influence over culture in both the Eastern and Western worlds.
I wanted that power. I was, and still am, unattractive, with a "disturbing" and "creepy" personality. All throughout my schooling I was taunted for my foreign name, for being the son of immigrants, for being strange, and for knowing and doing things that none of my peers could possibly understand. I craved understanding and connection, but was rejected at every turn. I had no friends, no allies, no followers, save for my family, Lord on high bless them.
I learned that, no matter how hard you tried, without power, you were nothing. I saw those far less than I, who had no rich parents or Adonis like body, gain and lose friends and companions as if they meant nothing, were nothing. I saw good, caring people crushed into the dirt for the sake of common cruelty. I saw those who did nothing hurt float to the top, like feces in floodwater. I hated those who were what I could not be. I hated those who mocked me, taunted me, called me "Comrade" and insulted my parents. I hated them, envied them, and began to grow into myself.
You can understand, I am sure, why, when the opportunity was offered, I accepted without a single qualm.
Returning to my long day, with its eagerly awaited reward of an hour's worth of peace at my shrine, I left the school about half an hour after the release bell rang, not wanting to go out into the biting wind that swept across the high mountain plain any sooner than was necessary. Sadly, my time to linger was past, as my after-school shift began in twenty minutes.
Leaving school, I walked past a long-deserted lot, where the decaying ruins of an old Cult seminary sat. As I walked past the remnants of the high-water mark of Cultic influence, I noticed a small speck of black on the sidewalk up ahead. I wondered what it was, and if it might be worth anything at the local pawn shop. A few weeks back, I'd found someone's college textbook on the crosstown bus, which had netted me fifteen dollars, the equivalent of thee hours of my wages.
When I reached the spot where I'd seen the black object, I found a small notebook, about two thirds the size of a standard spiral notebook. Reaching down, I picked up the notebook. The cover under my hand felt like leather, smooth and supple. I turned the notebook over in my hand, to look at the front cover, to see if there was a name or anything. On the front, written in white lettering that contrasted the ebony cover, was "DEATH NOTE".