Cleansing the World Through the Light of Darkness

A story about two boys who try to destroy all evil in the world

Cleansing the World Through the Light of Darkness

 

     I have often heard people say there is a fine line between good and evil, between right and wrong. But if that is true, what is that line? How do you know when you have crossed that line? And what should happen to the people that cross this line that no one can seem to find? These questions have been on my mind for many years now, and I have finally found the answers. There is no line between good and evil, because nobody has taken it upon themselves to draw the line. No one has drawn this line, because those who draw that line have to decide the fate of the fools who cross it.

I hate this world; I hate this world and all the evil in it. This world, it thrives on the enjoyment of peoples suffering, it thrives on hate.  I want to eliminate that hate; I want to cleanse the world. But how does one go about doing this task? How does one go about twisting the lives of people who have crossed the non-existent line? The answer is simple; it’s just that no one wants to admit the truth

 

When I was born, my mother died in labor. My father raised me until I was 10. It was at that time that I saw an event that would tragically scar me for life. I was 10 on that fateful night, the night I saw my father murdered.

It was late and I couldn’t sleep, I stumbled out of my room to go get a glass of water. When I peered down the stairs I heard a couple people rustling around. I thought it was Dad and one of his friends, but for some reason I was too afraid to go look. I went to my Dad’s bedroom and saw that he was still sleeping there. Running over to him quickly I woke him up telling him that there were people downstairs. He quickly jumped out of bed and grabbed a pistol that he kept loaded in the gun cabinet. He told me to stay upstairs as he crept down. I heard a shot and flinched. I heard a scream; he must have hit one of the other guys. But then I heard a scarier sound, a continuous barrage of shots. When it stopped I peered around the corner of the stairs and saw a bloody mass, and next to it was my father’s pistol.

Tears streaked down my face as I ran over and grabbed the gun. I pointed the gun towards the man, closed my eyes, and began pulling the trigger continuously. I buried bullet after bullet into the man’s back. I ran out of bullets but kept pulling the trigger aiming at the bloody man in black.

It was then that the police stormed in, my friend’s older brother had just joined them a few days ago. He fell to his knees at the scene; it must have reminded him when his parents were killed. One of the officers grabbed the gun from my hands and held me close while I cried.

They took me down to the station where I was questioned. I may have been 10, but I wasn’t an idiot. They were trying to see if I was going to be put on trial. I eventually was, but not for murder. I don’t really know what it was for, they just asked me some random questions like “How do you feel?” and “Have you been having any weird dreams lately?”

     Eventually I was placed in foster care, thankfully my friend’s older brother pulled some strings and I was able to stay with them. I attended the same school, had the same friends, lived on the same street, and saw the same house every day. Everything was almost exactly the same, almost. Even though life was close to being the exact same as it was before the incident, everything was different. And my hatred grew with ever different day.

     It must have been nearly fifteen years since that incident. I tried going to college, but that sense of conforming to society was not for me. I soon became a sensei at a local dojo �"did I mention that I have a black belt in several forms of martial arts?�" and lead a seemingly peaceful life.

     My childhood friend, Marcus, was a recent college graduate with a masters in computer programming. He was a child prodigy on the computer. He entered the local university when we were about 15 and quickly rose to the top of his class. Together we were brains and brawn, the “dynamic duo of devastation and destruction” I would call us. Our goal was simple, our plan was complicated. We were to wipe out all forms of evil on this planet.

     You may judge me for stating what is evil and what is not evil. You probably think that I am evil, don’t you? You probably are even asking yourself, “What is evil exactly?” The answer is as plain as day. Evil is “the willingness and conscious effort to do something that one knows is wrong, and the willingness to do it again with or without proper cause.” Both Marcus and I were going to accomplish this goal, with my strength and his technology, we could do it.

 

     My Katana was dripping with blood, I spoke through a small radio that was hidden under my black mask, “The 25 prisoners that were scheduled to be executed next week have been taken care of. Should I move on to the next level?”

     “No,” Marcus’ voice echoed over the earpiece, “You have used enough of your power, if you overexert yourself you will pass out and be killed.”

     “Roger,” I responded, “Though I wish you would stop calling it ‘my power’ it's as much yours as it is mine. If you hadn’t built this super suit nothing would have become possible.”

     He laughed, “It was nothing. All I had to do was hack the governments military computers, steal the schematics, and totally erase all traces of the blueprints and my involvement while carefully blaming one of the new employees who just happened to be the only person working”

     I walked out the door, “As expected of our expert hacker.”

     As I turned to walk down the street I was stopped by the sound of sirens and gunshots. I mentally activated the powers of the super suit.

     The super suit was unable to be completed by the US government but by some miraculous means Marcus was able to complete it. I contemplated how awesome the suit was as I ran and dodged the bullets at near supersonic speed. The suit was originally designed for assassins, can’t catch what you can’t see, right? It caused turning a part of my brain into a computer to use it, but in the end the state of my brain or body wouldn’t matter. The suit itself basically stimulated all the nerves in my body increasing their output dramatically, I could see every single bullet slowly move through the air and have enough time to dodge them at that. But dodging a barrage of bullets can be a lot of work, so I usually prefer to cut them with my katana.

     I danced around the slow motion barrage with great ease, making quick work of each gun with a carefully aimed slice of a sword. Police officers were not on my list, they may do evil deeds, but they do so with proper cause. Needless to say they are the lesser of the evils, or they are in most cases anyway.

     Slashing the tires to their cars I ran away quickly evading every flying piece of lead. After I finally outran them I collapsed to the ground, the suit had a tremendous strain on my body. I could barely move, but I somehow managed to prop myself up against the brick wall of a nearby building.

     Marcus’ critical voice began to echo in my ear, “I told you not to overdo it, now you have to pay the price.”

     “Well it's not my damn fault the police got there faster than you calculated.” I panted.

     “Nor is it my fault that you took your sweet time getting in and out of that prison!”

     I clutched my sore arm, swinging a sword at high speed sure put a strain on a person; “Well it doesn’t really matter anymore now, does it? Mission accomplished with minor injuries, let’s call it a success. Now just point me in the direction of the nearest entrance to headquarters.”

     He sighed, “The entrance was 10 kilometers south of the prison, and you headed 15 kilometers north. That means you are 25 kilometers north of the closest entrance.  You won’t be able to make it there in your state so you should just sleep in the alley and pray the police don’t find you.”

     “Pray?” I scoffed, “I don’t know how you can keep your faith in this world? I don’t know how you can keep it in a time like this?”

     “And I don’t know how you can live on without it.” Marcus snapped, “Without my faith I wouldn’t have had the ambition to even get out of my bed every morning. Not after what has happened to our families.”

     “Well,” I sighed, “I never said I was living now, did I? Yes I am alive, yes I do breathe, but do I live? What does it mean to live anyway? I must tell you this, walking down the path of darkness, diving straight into the deepest pits of death and despair, killing without hesitation. None of these things can or should be considered as living. Not even the wittiest rhetoric can poke a hole in that theory now, can it?”

     “I am sure you could think of one,” Marcus sighed, “Well anyway, I will be there to pick you up shortly.”

     “You’re gonna actually leave the safety of the computer?”

     “I'm in this mess about as deep as you are. And as far as the government is concerned I am in even deeper trouble than you, stealing national secrets and all. If they catch you, it won’t be long before they trace your trail of black blood back to me.”

     “Touché,” I chuckled laying down in the alleyway, “just be quick about it.”

     Little did I know that that would be the last time I heard Marcus’ voice.

     I awoke when I heard a loud shot. When I looked over, I saw the bloodied corpse of my friend, and looking up, I saw the newest chief of police, Marcus’ older brother.

     “Look what you made me do!” He hissed pointing his gun at me, “You made me kill my brother! The only family I have left!”

     I stood up; the super suit was the only thing allowing me to move normally, it was my only hope at survival. But then again, now what did I have to survive for? “I didn’t make you do anything,” I hissed, “Did I make you pull that trigger? Did I make you point that gun? Did I take your arm, and force you to aim that gun at your brother and pulled the string that caused your boney finger of death to tighten on that cold metal contraption? No I don’t think I did!”

     “Shut up!” He smacked me across the face with the barrel of his gun, “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. If it wasn’t for you dragging him into this mess, this would’ve never happened to begin with!”

     “Do you think I made him do this? Do you seriously live in such a delusional world that you think that I made him do this?”

     “What were you trying to accomplish?”

     I chuckled, “Abrupt change of conversation, huh? Well I guess I do owe you at least a reason for what we were trying to do. We were trying to change the world, eliminate the evil, and restore the truth of this world! But you, you had to stop us! Didn’t you?”

     He shoved me against the brick wall and pinned me there with his gun to my throat, “Do you seriously think you have the right to judge what is good and evil? How can you even draw that line without even batting an eyelash?”

     I felt the slightest twinge of an evil sneer peek through the corner of my mouth, was the evil really starting to consume me already? I hoped not, “Because only those who walk on the path of evil really know what it is. We were thrown onto that side, you were too. But you climbed your way out of there, but you never even looked back to see if we were following you. You assumed that we would always take your side, but you were too ignorant to even sense the tension between you and your own family. While you walked away from the darkness we sunk deeper in. You were all we had and you abandoned us! You left us to wallow in a pit of despair, not knowing what was up, what was down, what was good, and what was wrong! We had to write our own definitions, and then we had to form the world to fit them.”

     “So what did you ‘define’ as evil then? Tell me!”

     “A person who consciously does an evil deed with proper knowledge of the character of his deed and is willing to do so again.”

     He looked intently in my eyes, I could see his fear. Was I really becoming the exact monstrosity that I had sought to destroy? Was I really being consumed by my actions that there was no more hope for redemption?

     He pushed me harder into the wall, “if you had to kill like this again, would you?”

     I felt the evil frustration pent up within me release itself into the air around us. You couldn’t see it, hear it, smell it, or even touch it. But you sure as hell could feel it, “Yes,” I sneered, “I would do it a thousand times over.”

     He smacked me across the face with his pistol, “You hypocritical b*****d! Do you realize that you are evil by your own definition?”

     “Yes,” I smiled, “and in the end we were determined to wipe all evil from this world, even if it meant wiping ourselves from existence.”

     “Why?” I could see the tears in his eyes, “Why would my brother follow you in your path of self-destruction”

     I looked at the dead corpse lying on the sidewalk, “I don’t know, but now we never will. And do you know why?”

     He looked away and shut his eyes tightly, “Because you dragged him into this mess!”

     “No you fool!” I snapped, “It's because you �"not me, but you�"pointed your gun at him, and killed him. You killed him. You ended his life. You destroyed him and everything he had in his future.”

     “He had no future!” He pulled the gun away from my throat and let me go, sobbing, “He threw his future away in order to save you. I knew he was worried about you, and I guess he thought that maybe the grace of God could save you.”

     I laughed, “He should have known that no ‘divine grace’ could save me. Especially a grace from a God that obviously doesn't...”

     He held the gun straight at my face, “If you finish that sentence, I will kill you. Do not mock my brother, who threw everything away from you, by insulting the one thing that mattered most in his life. Do not mock his faith, for that is the evilest of all evils in this world. Even if I wasn’t chief of police, trying to hunt the killer you have become down, I would kill you for such mockery.”

     “I am no killer,” I hissed, “I am a savior of the world!”

     He pulled the trigger, the bullet buried itself in my face and the whole world drifted black. But I swear that I heard him say one last thing, “You are no savior. You are nothing but a murderous fool like the b*****d that killed your father.”

#

     I looked at my younger brother lying on the pavement, “You can get up now.”

     He stood up and wiped the ketchup off his shirt, “I can’t believe you were right. The devil got him bro.”

     I placed my gun back in its holster, “the devil has his fingers on us all, and once we stop believing we have lost the battle, but we have yet to lose the war. But only when we fall to the devil and walk away from God is the war lost.” I wiped the tears from my eyes, “Marcus, let’s go home.”

     He looked at the corpse of his dead friend and sighed, “Yes, let us go home for the ones who can no longer.”

     I smiled and placed my hand on his shoulder, “You did the right thing Marcus, you tried to save him. That is all any of us could have done. His death is on my hands and is my sin to carry.”

     He nodded, “but I have dipped my hand in the blood of his sins. And I do not know if I shall ever be forgiven.”

     I held my brother closer, “I do not know brother, but I do know that I forgive you. And for now I hope that is all that you need.”

     “Yes,” he smiled hugging me, “it is.”

    

    

Author's Note

Well...be brutal, but support what you say with reasons and/or examples please. And also if you can think of a better Genre for this to fit in I would appreciate it if you could tell me that too.