Don’t fear the liar, take his words as lies, and you’ll have half of the truth. Honest, on the other hand, is terrifying.

-

Nini, my little sister, is dead. I found her body in her room, and her head in the kitchen, put there as if to provoke.

Trails of blood around the room suggests a single message. She died before morning, and after night. In sunrise.

Her arms slashed off, her head slashed off, her legs slashed off—not cleanly, but with a disturbingly chopped off way, as if through explosion. All I can say is that she must’ve died quick, but painfully. She musn’t even have registered the shock.

The shock…

What a precise words.

It’s all there is to tell.

An electric shock, in a disturbing volume.

An electric shock in a catastrophic level.

An electrick shock done to torment rather than kill.

Torture, for not her, but me.

As if a declaration of war, as if a declaration of lies. As if—

A war has begun. As if someone wants to wake me up, make me move, spur me on. Asking for fight, asking for war. Needless to say, vicious, monstrous, inhumane, radical—and most of all, vacant. Empty in all regards. No heart or a need of one. Someone—who’s a monster, an animal, and nothing else.

So.

I’ll show them.

I’ll show them.

I will—

“You are here, aren’t you?”

“Uh, found me? I didn’t expect that.”

Lightning—no, electrical surge—from cables and devices collects at a single point and forms a human shape. That shape cools down to become someone.

“Solved the mystery yet?”

“I know everything.”

“Being that cocky won’t help you,” he says. His smile, sneer doesn’t waver. It doesn’t go away. He is telling the truth, he is telling a lie. A two faced, two facated person. Orange flaming hair, blue eyes and a blue coat.

“Why her?” I ask again.

Why her?

What wrong did she do?

She wasn’t someone with superpowers like me—she wasn’t blemishes, sinful.

Why her? Why her? Why her? Why her? Why? Her? Why her why her? There is no reason. There cannot be any reason to justify it, there never could be one to utter. Because, she is just herself.

“Oh, it was just a precaution,” he says, with no care. “Since you do have the powers, there is a minimal possibility she has too.”

Monster.

Monster.

Monster.

Lower than animals.

Lower than objects.

Lower than ideas.

“It’s already convoluted as it is, why don’t we get into the details already?” he asks. “It’s the reveal part isn’t it?”

“…”

“Now, let’s start from the end. How did I kill her?”

I don’t answer—I’ll never answer.

But I know the answer, what he exerted on her, the cruelty he induced. I know all that.

He electrocuted her body to the point of making her explode from several parts. A painful, torturous, but quick death.

“How could that even be though? I don’t have powers without storm, right?”

Of course, that was also a lie. He did have powers. The story he told, the lies he told, don’t reflect this.

I remember the contradiction.

I can tell his lie now.

Yesterday, Leon explained to me that he couldn’t attack me the day before because clouds hadn’t been crowded enough, and that he was now merely waiting for me, so he could land lightnings. But the sky he pointed to was bright and clear as day. Both contradict each other—there was no way for him to attack me, if clouds were a problem for him. Smiling the whole time, acknowledging how painfully idiotic I was. How easily I swallowed that up, he said all those.

That means two things, Leon could’ve attacked me anytime he wanted, in any sort of way. Without the need of clouds or lightning strikes. By through his own strength.

He doesn’t bend elements, he manifests them.

“What’s next?” he asks, smiling still.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Yes. What’s next indeed.

The day before, I found his corpse. That corpse was dead, but Leon himself was alive. He left his body behind and took the form of pure energy. He wasn’t lying when he said that was the reason.

For what reason?

To be with me—of course. To enter my house, to follow me through my life. Every step, every moment, scene after scene.

He must’ve entered a device, my cell phone most likely, the moment I found him as a corpse. That’s why he was able to appear right there at the street when I went there to investigate. He was always with me, after all. Always present, always near, a breath away.

“I didn’t act fast. Instead, I searched into your life, divulged your secrets. I know you already hate me, so I will tell the pure, unvarnished truth from now on. No more lies. My first plan was to attack your parents first, but they never came. Sooner or later it became apparent—no, I found it out—that you both are orphans. Your parents rarely, if ever, comes home. But you are indeed genetical siblings—that limited to list quite a lot for me. From an entire line of family, to two siblings. From a massacre, to a mere double murder.”

He entered my house, he looked into every cranny of my life, intent at killing me as he promised. But where to begin—was a choice to be made. Where is the root of their powers? Where did it all come from?

“Why?” I ask. It’s a simple question, and full of meaning. It’s all I want to ask, all I want to know, before I kill him.

“It’s nothing personal,” he says.

But that is clearly wrong.

If so—why was her head on the kitchen table to begin with?

“Lie.”

“No. It’s the truth. I urged you on to attack me, so you wouldn’t try to escape. That’s all really. I only want to kill you both for bigger reasons. For the whole world if you will.”

“The whole World?”

World. Surface of which made up of water for the most part. Spins around sun. Is, but, just one planet in the Solar System. The only inhabitable one, the only one with breathable air and sprout of organisms.

“The world I mean isn’t the planet earth. You could say it’s the ideas, constructions, scientific causations, that makes up the universe. Casuality.”

Casuality. Having reasons to be.

Being preceeded.

The cheapest destiny.

“I know you won’t understand. But I’m doing it for the good. And eventually, like you guys, I will be eliminated.”

“Who will do that?” I ask.

“People I work for.”

“Too bad. I’m not planning to leave the fun part to them.”

He smiles. As always, a smile.

The monster, the animal before me—inexhaustible smile on his face, out of not desire to destroy, desire to annhiliate, desire for vicious taste of murder, but altruist, know-it-all, big thinking. Saving people from a “potential” threat by killing people as a real one instead. The way of a monster.

“Hey hey hey, don’t look at me like that. I’m not the one at fault here. I’m doing it for everyone, remember? But, well, I can’t make you not hate me anymore, can I? Sorry. This reveal and all, I lied plenty, and hurt you plenty. There is nothing that can be done to reverse any of this. I hope you’ll have a good time sleep.”

And with that, his hand rises, it rises, electricity filled on the brim, light flashing and stretching around like arms of an octopus. The eyes filled with nothing but indifference, casually, to make casualty, for casuality.

What is the reason, I wonder. I don’t understand their words, their understanding, whoever they are. I don’t understand their reasoning, their meaning. I can only sense danger for my life, and loss of my sister.

I will kill.

The electric sparkle shoots like a dart towards me, and of course, it’s extremely hard to dodge an electric current from touching your body. One cannot fall, go down, right, left, jump—none would work. Dodging is out of option because it’s extremely fast, faster than bullets ever could be. And in this speed, putting up resistance like that is impossible. Then what can I do? Before this, my body endured a strike from his fairly well, with hardly a scratch. And all that he influenced regenerated in short time.

But I can’t accept an attack, with that mindset—there is no telling how it could affect me. How it could hurt. There is no way to gauge.

That’s why I do something much simpler, something pre-planned, with my phone right before me. With a premonition I’ve placed the phone right where it should be—the electric current strikes it, and gets absorbed into it, before exploding with huge puffs. My phone is turned to smitherens in a milisecond.

“That’s not what I expected,” he says, simply. “But that doesn’t change much. There is no way you can escape. And this time, I won’t let you live through it. That was simply a lightning which I sent you that night—this time, it will be the real deal.”

He is just there, enjoying it all. A monster, a brutal beast, a liar. I don’t know how he is feeling, but I feel like he’s just enjoying it. Now, what can I do to avoid the next attack? He’s right now talking to himself, it’s an opportunity. I can escape through the window, but that doesn’t guarantee success. Actually, it can even be called running into the beast’s throat. I have no way of succeeding by escaping like that. His attacks will eventually hit, and I will eventually be down. There is no other outcome to it.

And well, I can’t fly at this time of the day.

So what can I do?

I quickly take out a metal pole from the closet, which we use to hang clothes on.

“What will you do with that?” he asks, normally. Of course I can’t answer, nor do I have many ideas myself. I jump out of the window with it and strike comes instantly. An electrical surge rushes through the window which I had left just now. Leon looks up from the window, to see me flying. But I’m right beneath. I stick the pole right under his throat and it lodges in like a spear and goes through the other side. Idiot isn’t aware that I can’t fly in mornings, I guess. Or he just made a miscalculation.

But despite the attack, he just looks down at me. And speaks.

“Man, this isn’t even a real body,” he says, turning into neon. The pole I burrowed into his throat is suddenly charged with his energy and it strikes me hard, makes an explosion, and sends me down on the ground.

I forgot my attacks could do nothing to him in this form.

He dislodges the bat from his body, approaching step by step. Probably about to kill me with that weapon of all.

“You did well,” he says. “But this is the end.”

I don’t know what Leon expected but the moment he aimed the weapon at me, I evaded it very easily.

“Shoot, I forgot my speed in reality. But I think, I can manage.”

Once again he strikes and I fall on my ass.

He raises the pole again. This time intent on killing, charges it with energy, and I see his body fully dissolve this time into electricity, which enters the metal. The thing rises from the ground, like rocket, it unleashes itself onto me. That’s when I press the sprinkler with all I have. Water rains down as the thing is about to launch to me, and the rain affects everything.

The electricity concentrated in the pole starts to waver. It starts to connect with the water, enter into it, start to lose form. I can’t hear him in this form but I think Leon’s body is being torn apart. Slowly, the electrified water begins to hurt me from the sitting position, but not hugely. Pole falls down to the ground. The reason it doesn’t hurt much, is because it’s being sucked into the ground, where all its force is nullified. In other words, Leon isn’t only turning into particles, he’s also completely being destroyed. All the energy that makes him—absorbed and zeroed.

Soon, there is only feeble attempts to stay, and after few minutes, nothing at all. I close the sprinkler. I return home, opening the door, entering in, stepping to the kitchen to get a plastic glove. With that I return to the garden and hold the metal thing, it’s not hot at all.

With the help of a shovel, I bury it as far as I can. Thinking about what he did, thinking about what he induced. I bury him deeper and deeper, until it’s too hard even for my enhanced body. Pour some water onto it and bury it anew. This time, even if he succeeded in preserving some parts in the metal thing, his body will never get outside thanks to the earth barrier. I’ll make sure it’s never wet enough here to for him to collect his parts, though I doubt any remains.

Forever and ever, dead.

Just as he should be.

That’s when I drop onto my ass, ready to cry. But no tears appear, as always. So I scream. Because I can’t cry? Or because I feel hurt? I can’t tell. All feelings are mixed up, all world is turned upside down. Nothing makes sense. And the only person I could open up to in this world, that idiot girl, is dead.

Revenge doesn’t soothe.