Topic: Origins

Nebulus

Date: 2012-06-02 03:10 EST
Sometimes we have to step outside the box to get things done. Sometimes all the rules and red tape just get in the way. Democracy presents itself as the ideal system of government and in some ways it is but more often than not it stresses too much the moral justification of laws rather than the simple matter of equality. At least, it does in some countries. But this isn't about democracy. This isn't about a government. It's about the flawed justice system we see in every country on every world. How do these scum manage to walk away unscathed" Kingpins of crime and masked murderers walking free because of "circumstantial" evidence" Well, I for one could never stand it.

So one day I decided I wouldn't watch the news anymore. I just couldn't. Every time I turned on the television it was a series of murders, trials, convictions appeals and eventually every low life piece of sh*t with a half-wit lawyer was able to walk free. I thought if I didn't watch it, it wouldn't piss me off as much. But somehow I still learned about it. Through the grapevine, at the water cooler in the office, wherever I went their names were thrown up on the walls and tossed into conversations. I was sick of it.

So one day I decided that I didn't want to hear about it anymore.

The next day I went down to the courthouse downtown with a gun hidden in my coat. How I managed to sneak it past security was beyond me, but let's face it. At this point they were just letting convicts walk out the door so it's not like they cared anymore. There was a hearing about a man named Alexei Belikov. He was the son of some big shot with the Russian mob and his foot was practically out the door by the time I arrived. I walked down the aisle with my hands in my pockets and my finger on the trigger finger and I walked up to his lawyer and pistol whipped him in the back of the head and then I pulled out the little six shooter I'd bought and I put three rounds into Alexei's head. I'd never fired a gun before and the shot was startling, deafening. What was worse was the blood and brain matter that flew through the air and the limp way his body seemed to collapse after it had been thrown from the seat from the blast. I'm still not sure how I made it that far; guards had been hurrying after me the whole way.

Before I knew it I was under arrest and being dragged back down the aisle. Men and women were screaming and some old woman was sobbing over Alexei's dead body. His mother. Sorry, ma"am. Your son was a piece of sh*t and deserved a lot worse. A cop shoved me into the back of a squad car and was driving me away from the courthouse. I figured I was about to go to jail and I didn't give a rat's ass. I would probably be dead in a day or two one way or the other. That's how these mobs work. F*ck with them and they'll f*ck with you right back.

Man, I had no idea just how right I was.

I didn't think about it at the time but the drive was taking a helluva lot longer than it should have. I mean, we were just around the corner from the station but we'd already been on the road for thirty minutes before I started to get suspicious. I opened my mouth to speak and that's when it hit me. Well, us. See, these cops were trying to get me far from the city as fast as possible. They knew the Russians wouldn't take long to come after me and apparently they were faster than the poor police had hoped. It was some big ass truck, a black monstrosity of metal and gasoline that rammed into the passenger side of the squad car and sent it toppling over. I was screaming and getting thrown around the backseat. We landed in a ditch off the side of the road, upside down beneath a pile of broken glass and crushed metal. I could taste that coppery flavor of blood and the driver was obviously dead. No human neck could bend that way.

The other cop was trying to crawl out of the wreckage already, tough son of a bitch. I tried to say something but all I could do was groan and even that wasn't loud enough to hear over the bang of a gunshot. I saw some polished leather shoes outside the window nearest to me and saw a fresh hole in the back of the cop's head where he'd been shot. Some big ass strong man ripped the door open and reached down to grab me by my arm, which I then realized with blinding pain was broken, and threw me out on the dirt at the feet of an older man in a white suit. His face was beet red and he was cursing at me in what I could only assume was Russian. I never could wrap my head around languages.

They tugged me up to my knees so I could look him in the eye as he shouted, spittle flying every which way while he waved a gun around in the air. I knew what was about to come.

"S"the matter, Chekov?" I asked.

I'm pretty sure he shot me in the face then.

Nebulus

Date: 2012-06-02 13:51 EST
So you might be wondering how I'm able to write all of this if I'd been shot in the face and left for dead. Well, the answer is a little complicated so you'll have to bear with me. Death wasn't exactly the welcoming embrace I thought it would be. No, it was a lot of blood and a lot of pain. I saw fire everywhere and was sure that I was going to burn in hell for my sins, murder being the chief among them. But as my resolved steeled and I resigned myself to my fate something cold washed over me and the fire was swept away. After that it was all an infinite, inky black dotted with tiny specks of silver light. It reminded me of the sky on those nights I would travel out to the country to visit my grandparents as a kid. There was some blinding flash after that and my eyes felt as if they were on fire. They burned. I burned. Everything was white-hot, searing pain and then I was falling. I could see the world rushing up to meet me. Not the ground. The actual f*cking planet Earth. I was in space. Let me tell you, breaking atmosphere without a giant monster of a spaceship around you is really an unpleasant sensation.

I fell and I fell. Through clouds, past flying planes and birds and zoomed through the air. I was pretty sure I would be landing in the Pacific but missed it by several miles and landed face-first in a ditch. My eyes were closed when I hit the ground but after a few minutes of wondering if I was dead or not I decided to open them and take a look for myself.

There he was, Ivan Belikov, the old man I'd jokingly referred to as Chekov. He was staring at me with wide rheumy eyes and had a smoking barrel pointed at my face. I'd just been shot but apparently I wasn't too big on dying that day. He shot again and the blast echoed so loud the ground shook. Not the gunshot, that didn't do anything. The blast was?well, at the time I wasn't sure what it was. I just know that fire was involved and that when he tried to shoot me it exploded outward. I saw it sear his skin, melting it from his bones until even those were black as coal and cracked from the extreme heat. I heard his men dying around him and felt the explosion of the overturned squad car behind me, but no pain.

I'm still not sure how it happened.

Some things just can't be explained.