Kill The Monster, Chapter 1

EPILOGUE

He was hurting inside. He suspected he had done himself a good deal of damage. It could only be downhill from here on. Soon they would be here, and he would probably be punished. He was surprised they weren't here already. Surprised they hadn't been here to stop him being bad to begin with.

The sun beat down on him like a blacksmith's hammer; the stone he lay on was anvil-hot. Blood lay all around him, smeared across the marble in carnadine trajectories. His own blood.

He was almost certain he was dead. The time of his death had been made harshly clear. He would also have to continue to live in slavery for what little life remained to him. He couldn't decide whether he'd welcome losing all reason before the end. The idea of losing his mind was terrifying; but the thought of being conscious of what was going on around him, what he was making happen around him, was monstrous.

Soon he would remember nothing, at least.

The bullet wound still hurt in his back, even through so much self-inflicted anaesthesia. He was seeing things. A bird with teeth, hen's teeth, had alighted on a pillar nearby and was regarding him with a single beady eye. He wondered whether it was contemplating eating him. It would like as not poison itself if it did.

He wished the time to come, however pitifully short it might be, might pass magically, so he'd no longer have to live with the knowledge of how badly he'd failed in the task the world had given him.

Still, at the very least, he'd killed the monster.