Sixteen Years Ago…
I was running myself through cobblestone streets of Kings Row. The town was alive and joyous as it bestowed many citizens strolling about. The girls chased each others in a game of tag, the boys were talking mischievously about the teenaged girls who were dressing slightly undressed and trying to appease the teenaged boys. The men were smiling as they flounced about in glory with their women in hand with merriness in every note of the songs of Christmas.
It was December 20th and Ana was giving me a small adrenaline rush. I've been running for twenty minutes at full speed with weary lungs and labored breath. I bounded through crowds with my gun strapped to my leg. A revolver with armor piercing rounds. I pushed through everyone as I tried to keep Ana in sight. She finally spun into an alleyway and I managed to get a cold breath from the heated intensity.
I bended over as Ana pointed down the trashed, dank, and humid alley. A plastic bag floated on slush puddle and a few mice darted back and forth between the dripping crevices and their watery foundations. A blue drip here and a dark stream there. In the night, the lantern lights were the only light my eyes could wear.
Ana was heaving as she pulled her rifle from under her cloak. I could see the man running through the alley as Ana took the shot. His leg popped and blood sprayed along the wall. He fell down and hit the stones in agony. A pool of blood formed around him as the hole was about six inches in circumference. Ana ran up to him and I followed with exhaustion in my burning jelly legs.
"Who the fuck are you guys?" He had a red pained face.
"We want information now," Ana said pressing her finger into the wound's hole.
"Alright, alright!" He squeaked. "What do you want to know? Just let me go goddammit!" I hit him in the nose. He grabbed it as Ana made a violent jerk up with her finger. "Argh!" The man screamed. "What was that for?" He looked at me.
"Don't take God's Name in vain," I gave in a slightly sarcastic optimistic way. The man's cap fell off and revealed his scruffy red hair. His green eyes were wild. His beard was dirty and had dried spit in it. This guy was clearly a poorer individual than the average slut down by the pub.
"Tell us where the case is," Ana growled.
"It's by the pub. I swear. There's a bloody wanker behind the counter and he'd give you the fucking case."
"Thank you," Ana said standing up The man was howling in pain until Ana ended up shooting him with a tranquilizer. "You get there and cover bases. I'll get him patched up."
I nodded and caught my breath. I turned and looked at the lit street out of the alley. So many sounds going on at once, not a single baby made a cry over the thud produced by Ana's rifle.
She bandaged his leg and called him in while I began to head off to the pub. When I reached my destination, I saw that the pub was mostly empty. I rubbed my temples. The British dialect had me thinking wrong. I'm a contract killer straight out of Boston. These fuckers had me thinking wrong.
The bar was empty and full of nothing but bottles and stacked chairs. I saw a young woman sweeping and a man cleaning shot glasses. He looked up at me. The woman looked at me at the door with my arrival being a disturbance.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I must've forgotten to put up a sign to announce closing. We're closed for the day."
"Good," I turned and locked the door. I turned around. Walking forward, I heard the floorboards creak beneath my weight. I looked at the woman who had a pale face as I pulled a chair down and sat in it.
"Let's make something very clear. I am a stranger to you and with my confidence striding in abroad, I must he someone of high importance. Not of governmental, but rather of a shady underworld. So, you see this?" I pulled out my revolver. "This can change this entire conversation. It's tone. It's words. It's survivors. Where's the case?"
"What case?" The bartender asked.
"Don't bullshit me. My friend just shot your buddy in the alleyway." I checked the chamber to show off I could afford the time to check my weapon.
"I assure you, there is no case. Lolita, come here and go out through the back door."
"Interesting name," I smirked as I slapped the chamber in. "Stay where you are Lolita. Do you know who Lolita is?" I stepped up from my chair. I drew closer and pressed my weapon to her jaw and traced it with the gun's barrel. The bartender was tense and delicate with his fingertips on the counter. Slightly leaning forward thinking he could lunge fifteen feet to me and stop my interrogations.
"No," Lolita lowered her eyes. She was nervous. Her hands were slightly fidgety.
"Lolita is a classic book," I smiled trying to ease her up. "It's about pedophilia in a certain light, but if you really look at it, it's about a young girl preying on a man who wants something and exploiting it to her own devices. So, are you in this together or are you just a witness I might have to silence," I hissed like a snake.
Lolita turned her head and met eyes with the man. She whispered her apologies and pointed to the counter. I smiled and pistol whipped her. I walked to the counter leaving the girl hurt on the ground. She knew better than to cry out. I came eye to eye with a angry bartender.
"The easy way or the hard way," I said. "I prefer hard, but you can deny me the pleasure."
The bartender put his hand below the counter. I realized my mistake too late. I was overzealous. He brought his hand up and then swung it at me. A liquid went into my eyes, but it was multicoloured. A rainbow of colours. He grinned as my vision became twisted and disoriented.
I stumbled back and tripped over something. I looked around dizzy on the floor and saw my tripper was Lolita, but her face was off. I could see every muscle twitching. Her bloody pink face was turning into a dark haze with no eyes with black blood coming from her sockets. Her tongue was on the floor and yet she was standing up. Her hair was on fire and her teeth were overgrown to be a blinding white. Such hideousness with such light made me as terrified as I was confused.
I looked over at the bartender and his eyes were dark grey. His face had a beard of snakes and the hair of cobwebs. His rotting skin was a moldy brown with black cream oozing from his cuts all over his flesh.
No. Monsters don't exist. There had to be something in those liquids. It didn't matter. The bartender had the case in his hand. He crouched next to me. He laid the case down and popped it open.
He brought out a needle before holding me down by the shoulder with one hand. I felt immense pressure on me. He began to inject it in my arm. I felt a small prick as I wrenched my head over to see the plunger be pushed down.
My pale arm became snow white and grew even more painfully white as the whiteness began to spread up my body. It covered my hand and began to engulf my shoulder. I began to see the world more sensitively. Wherever the white touched, I felt only pain.
Then I could tell what was happening in my body. The effects began to wear off. I could see through the liquid he'd thrown in my eyes. My eyes turned red as I slammed my fist into the bartender's throat. Lolita tried to scramble away, but I caught her by her hair and dragged her to the floor before choking her out.
I stumbled up and grabbed the gasping bartender. I pulled him along to the counter and slammed his head into the edge. He had to be dazed. I cracked his forehead over the edge again. A cut appeared on his forehead. So I slammed him in the sharp ledge of the counter again. And again. And again.
There was no fire, but rather a sickening set of cracks coming from the young bones soon to wither away and float across a pond of it's own marrow and blood. I slammed him harder with each time his forehead connected to the metal. I felt my emotions out of control.
"Nyght!" I heard a woman scream. "Stop!"
I released the man and turned around. It was Ana. As we met eyes, she dropped her rifle and covered her mouth.
"What happened to you?" She whispered.
She followed my eyes as I looked at the case. She saw the syringe was laying on the floor empty. She approached me slowly and touched my shoulder gently as if she was afraid to touch a tiger in it's den.
"It's still me," I said. "I'm just of a different appearance."
"Nyght, don't tell me-"
"He injected it in me. It's okay. I feel strong."
"That'll kill you," she whispered.
"It's okay," I whispered as my eyes became droopy and my knees began to wobble. Ana has a slightly strained face. My head was beginning to spin and I realized she was supporting me.
"Won't you just… hold me until I go?" I asked.
"Nyght, we'll get you help."
"I'll still be right here."
"I'm with you," she said in a cracked voice. "Jack, Reyes!" She yelled into the radio on her shoulder. "Get me emergency evacuation. Nyght is about to die and I have two minutes before he starts to go."
"We're on our way," a man said. I couldn't even tell who was who anymore. I laid my head in Ana's lap and my eyes began to settle on the ceiling fan spinning. Around and around and around.
I faded out of consciousness.
Present…
"What happened?" Angela asked.
"I died," I responded lightly. "I actually died."
"No way."
"Yes way," I kissed Angela's nose. My eyes were still pink. "Ana told me I did and Reyes said he had brought some weird medical supply that was only experimental. He injected it into me and I was breathing a few hours later."
"How come I haven't seen it here?" Angela raised an eyebrow.
"I don't know," I furrowed my brows. "I never paid much mind to it."
"I'll ask him about it later," she brushed her thumb under my eyes. "It seems more haunting that you lost control."
"That was before I met Genji," I replied. "He taught me about meditation. You may not believe me as we have seen that as Genji had parted ways with us once before to meet up with Zenyatta to come to terms with his own… unfortunate disfigurement. There was a time when you first joined and I was not always around. I was constantly in discord as only six months prior to your joining, I was heavily inflicted by some emotional baggage with drug cartel skin operation."
"That sound like a story."
"Maybe for another time," I pushed myself up. I realized I had bandages over my entire upper body. I had thought it was just a white shirt, but I was know surprised at how messed up that explosion must've had me. I looked up and saw Angela giving a small bite to her lower lip. She seemed to still be worried about me.
"So… you were a contract killer?"
"There are things I'm not proud of," I said with white eyes. I remembered this one time a young thirteen year old girl begged for her life.
"Please," the girl had tears running down her eyes. Perhaps it was actually raindrops and she was actually in pain. Or maybe tue moonlight played it's tricks on my eyes as the sun would not. The light made her white sick skin look like a ghost. The ghastly sight made me throb in the heart as she was pleading. My beating heart was so loud as I was about to shoot a girl behind a elementary school in Colorado Springs. Hitmen can't be picky about where the target is; they just have to negotiate a good price. Mine was sixty grand.
Death would be a mercy and I realized that by killing her would kill six. Her family who was in need of her money. It's not my business she started to selling drugs on the wrong street. It was business I got my paycheck. My business that I have to eat. My business to do what is right.
"Please," the girl cried. I could save her. "Please."
Alas, money is money and bullets are bullets and there are times when sinners have not found God. Sometimes, I pretend she was begging to be put out of her misery. But I know the truth. No matter how hard I shut my eyes. There will never go a week when I don't close my eyes and repent for what I've done.
"Maybe, you. can help me recuperate sometime later on. There some things I'd rather discuss with you in a much more appropriate setting."
"This isn't an appropriate setting?"
"Well, uh, not really."
"Tell me how?"
"I had pink eyes."
"Nonsense. You're healthy as ever." Angela still wasn't picking up on context clues and rubbing her chin.
"I had pink irises."
"You have white eyes right now."
"I'd prefer not to talk about my mistakes about killing innocent people while trying to romance you after having an erection," I cut to the chase. Even I cringed at that.
"Oh," she let her eyes once again drop to my private areas. "Right. Um, uh, well-"
"When do I get to leave this bed?" I asked creating a diversion.
"Oh, three days of rest and two of physical therapy. I'll have one more for physical evaluation and the last for a night on a blanket by the Swiss Alps."
"Hike much?"
"Physical recreation is by far one of my favorite activities around. I'd suggest it to you, but, well, looking at what peers you have, I imagine you find it quite a challenge to find anything not requiring physical action."
"If you plan on staying with me, I think I'll find it a challenge not relaxing."
"Hey, quick question." Angela said suddenly with a change of calm to a intriguing tone."
"Ask as your heart so ever desires."
"Why are you so relaxed around me?"
My eyes turned to a shade of yellow. My mind weaved through the many reasons. For one, she was kind. She was nonviolent. She, ironically, acted like a guardian angel who would not let a weapon be drawn in her sight of there was a patient in her sight. But most of all, why was I relaxed. These reasons all culminated into one answer really: I loved her. But why? What was the number one reason I was attracted to her?
Yes, she was a reminiscent of Zøe, but the main reason? Well, yes. I do know the number one reason and no, it wasn't because she was a Swiss woman. It was because she was so pure. She refused to give into any evils that hurt the well being of humanity. In fact, it wasn't just because of my own personal hatred for Ana's ruling of my false guilt with the hands on Zøe death, but it was because she tricked Angela into creating her signature sniper rifle that I know disregarded her as a personal threat. I would snuff her out like I did to Velva if given the chance.
"Because I love you," I said at last. "You are my world right now."
"What of that world came crashing down?"
"I'd stay with it and rebuild it piece by piece."
"What if you couldn't rebuild the permanently destroyed pieces?"
There was a silence as my eyes began to flash different colours. My mind began to just imagine it. Holding hands with her on a red and green blanket on a warm day in a grassy field of green under a tree at the base of the Swiss Alps. Then a bullet slicing through her throat and her eyes lighting up with surprise as her lips have begun to drop from their beautiful smile. Her eye lids fell as her body hurtled down to the ground.
But I caught her. Her blonde hair flowed through my fingers as her body was lifeless, but not in a poetic way. Not a relaxed body that was limp as if she was sleeping. No, no, no. A paler skin with a stiffness to her. As if her beauty was drained out as her body was musty and rotting. Her skin became a grey and then a crusty dust. She began to blow away with a breeze.
I grasped for it as it escaped me, but as I looked up, I saw flames everywhere. I saw a lean figure in yellow with a gas mask on. The grass produced tongues of flames up from the ground. The mountains was covered in hot lava and smoke boiled into the fiery black and maroon skies.
The figure approached me and as it got closer, I could see one more more gruffer figure trailing it. With face paint and grey camouflage US militant attire, it Jack Morrison. Ready for black optics. I looked down and saw my knives. Broken. Shattered like glass on the ground without any glow. I felt red hot chains across my chest, thighs, and forearms. I was latched onto the ground. Looking up onto a killer of my lover aided by Jack.
The figure crouched by me. It put it's hand up to it's mask and pulled it off. I saw my own reflection in the black glass eyes of the mask. My face was bloody and the grey scar was bigger and redder and my eyes were dark red and black. Cuts embodied me as if they were cultic tattoos.
Under the mask was just who I suspected. The killer who abused every privilege she got out of my lover. The one who always sided with Jack. She was just too unreliable as I could not get a gauge of any of her motivations.
Ana.
"Nyght," Angela shook me. I let my imagination fade away and I saw the love of my life alive and well. She had a worried look in her eye. "Nyght. Nyght, I was just speaking hypothetically. Please don't be mad."
"What do you mean-" then it clicked why she looked so afraid. My eyes. They were pure black with a shade of red for the iris. I quickly forced them to turn to pink just to turn down her fear. "Sorry, I said. I just got a little carried away."
"I should be the one apologising. I shouldn't have said that. I should've realised that that would set you off."
"It's okay," I used my index finger as a hook to stroke her cheek. "As long as I'm with you, there's nothing in the world that can comfort me more. I love you."
"I love you too," she had slight tears in her eyes. She was truly saddened by my sudden set off. "I just feel so bad."
"It's okay."
"It's not okay!"
I hugged her close. I began to rock her as my eyes began to morph into a honey hue of yellow. I had a slight smother on her as she began to cry it out. Sometimes, just sometimes, the toughest moments need just the right amount of time for a slight heal. To let her know that everyone needs to ask for mercy.
And I was going to give her it with my forgiveness. It was my fault anyway. I shouldn't have done such a thing. Sometimes, it's the thoughts of the mind that are the most dangerous.
After six days of working with Angela through physical work and resting with lovely talk, we were heading out to the Swiss Alps. Blanket: check. Picnic basket: check. Swiss chocolates: check, but Angela didn't know. A typical American 50's fantasy. But, there was one thing the Americans never got right. Well, a couple of things actually. But one important thing they managed fuck up on a picnic:
Proposing where the girl loved to be.
I had given some gold to Torbjorn with some valuables that only he really wanted in order to make a wreathe. A golden wreathe resting in the basket atop of the foods and waters. We managed to reach the foot of the mountain before setting up the blanket. We began to just talk to each other. Making jokes and talking about our loves and hates.
I was looking around still having memories of the vivid imagination. The only thing that calmed me was that there was no tree and Angela had done her hair in a French roll instead of her typical hairstyle.
"If you could change one thing about the world," Angles stretched her arms to the blue sky. "What would you change?"
"I would change you."
"What? Is there something wrong with me?" Angela asked confused.
"Yeah. You're not married."
"So?" She sounded slightly defensive.
"And it bothers me how you're not wearing what I brought you."
"What did you bring me to wear?" Angela propped herself up on her elbow. Now she was intrigued. She was anticipating and waiting for a sleek surprise.
"It's in the basket."
Angela opened the basket and she was silent. My eyes were still on the sky. I felt a quick intake of air. I brought my knees up to make my legs an arch. Then I saw Angela put her hands on my shoulders and twist her way on my hips. She had the golden wreathe on her hair and a smile on her face. Her eyes shined it's radiance of Liebe.
"You are a lovely piece of art," I whispered.
"And you may paint me."
"Du bist Braut," I smiled in German.
"Und ich bin dein Geliebter," she smiled back.
United, she leaned down and kissed me. I held her arm and rubbed her limb. I caressed up to her shoulder and held it. I drew her back from touching my upper lip with her lower.
"Is it a yes?"
"Ja," she said.
"Unto death."
"Until death."
"Is this the honeymoon?"
"Oh, we'll find a way to accommodate this. So… do you want to explore more of my body?"
I smiled. Married and now freed from my vows of sex before marriage as I was now in one flesh with my wife, I began to unbutton her shirt with black eyes with the biggest, brightest pink irises. Love is love and hate is hate. Light is light and dark is dark. They cannot coexist. In the moment of bliss, I showed my love as I bounded myself with my lover.
But when the Lord returns, there will be two in one bed and one will be taken up while the other left behind. Two in the mill, but one taken up and the other left behind. The light can overtake the darkness and the darkness the light in the sight of Man. I must confess one thing for sure without any questionable doubt:
My story is far from over.