The Blood Birth

She had been okay. Just last night, she looked me in the eyes, laughed, and smiled that angry smile. She'd said I love you, brother, and for some stupid fucking reason, I'd thought that everything was okay. Because she wasn't supposed to be part of this. I stared at the lock of blonde hair on the floor, the blood - so much blood - and it was as if my heart was being sawed out by a rusty dagger and squeezed clean.

Give it back, I pleaded with the ghost behind my eyes, a prayer to whatever was listening. Give back the people, give back the life, give back the hope and the light and the love and maybe I won't have so many ghosts to entertain. 

So when the sun split open the sky and parched the earth of my tears, I laughed. I laughed because I was a brittle man who had just lost everything, a man who had just bowed down and been stepped all over until it was too late to hope. Instead, I festered with bitterness until there was a shield of impenetrable hatred in the ragged hole where my heart used to be. He had taken everything I ever had, everything my people ever had, and he was going to pay for it. His gaudy crown and his grinning armies had preyed on the scrap of human left in me, and now I will bring hell to this earth.

I emerged, a monster with a dangerous prey.