His hands shook. Hesitant, but they reached to grab the gun holding it tight.

He struggled to take his eyes off it. A voice telling him to put it down, but the echoing sense of anger and pain rang through him. He clenched it in his hands and pulled himself into a stand. He didn’t want to kneel or crawl any longer, now dragging his bruised and beaten body against the wall. Dragging himself all the way toward the living room.

His arms felt heavier with the gun in his hands. In the attempt to aim it at his father he couldn’t stop his hands from continuing to shake as the man sat there. It was just seconds, but time stalled for him as he contemplated; was it fine to pull the trigger? Should he try to pull the trigger?

The end of three years of abuse and torment could’ve been over with just a simple pull.

Yet, no rationalization could bring him to do it. He had been pulling a gun on a man who wasn’t looking. He was afraid of a man that wasn’t directing any animosity towards him. No matter if his body was ready to pull on the trigger, he couldn’t bring himself to.

The sound of the front door unlocking immediately snapped both his gaze and the sights of the revolver down the hallway at his mother as she walked in, holding a bag of groceries along with the crumbled drawing of Jack in her hands.

“I brought some dinner. I’ll be leaving again–”

She paused, now noticing the revolver pointing right at her. She spilled a box of frozen bean casserole, denting the box against the ground, staring at her son with frozen terror. Alerting the father as his mother pressed her body up against the wall.

“Huh?” The father questioned, before turning back.

His eyes met Richard’s, letting out a groan as the background static from the TV continued blaring on. Another bother.

He raised his hands to the air, surrendering himself as he looked to his son. Despite his mother’s blatant fear, his father just looked annoyed. Not at a loss of words or shocked, instead, just uninterested. Even when his son held a gun to him, he looked down the barrel with a groan.

“I never taught you how to use that thing. Your soft uncle hasn’t either.” Was all his father had bothered to say, as he approached his son, slowly but steadily. Richard kept aim on his father all the way through, but his fingers had never regained a grip over the trigger. His father had been right. He never learned how to use a gun nor did Jack ever want him to learn.

“You’re supposed to pull back the safety.” It was Jack’s fault.

Richard’s father smacked the gun out of his son’s shaking hands, hearing it clatter against the floor made the boy's heart sink. He gripped his son’s collar, before plunging his fist into the boy’s chest. He then curled his fingers into his knuckle once more, slugging the boy against the cheek.

Spit mixed with blood flew from the boy’s mouth, knocking a tooth from his mouth and dropping him to the floor. It was here he realized… his father had never actually hit him.

He may have been struck, or beaten; but this time was different, warm-ups.

“He never taught you how to punch or take one.” He berated, now smacking his son with the back of his palm, hitting him so hard that the flesh on his cheek throbbed.

“You use grown-up toys, you’ll get treated like a grown-up. This is a grown-up fight. So learn.” He raged, kicking the boy so hard in the chest that he found himself half-rolling and scrambling to recover. This was a beating.

There was a reason why Richard’s father was allowed so much leeway for his actions.

People didn’t care about the happenings of their neighbors in the community. If it wasn’t murder or trespassing, no one would care. Second, Richard’s father was a man who knew how to punch. A boxer who hadn’t stepped into the ring in over a decade. Someone who was willing to air his anger.

Third, it was just too simple for anyone to care about.

Richard laid there as his mother watched him get beat, just as the neighbors did, with a look of disappointment and then dejection as she picked up her groceries to go towards the kitchen to prepare dinner before she’d head off for the night shift. Richard had just come to a conclusion. Today would be the same as the rest, just another—more extreme—set of bruises.

It had made Richard feel more aware, as the foot dug into his chest, he had looked up at his mother as everything seemed to only revolve around pain. She was lifting the crumbled up portrait that Richard had drawn of his uncle. High enough for his father and Richard by proxy could see it.

“I found this in the driveway, I didn’t know what to do with it so I cleaned up the glass. Should I–?” She asked.

“Throw it away.” He scoffed, before shaking his head. “No, give it to me.” He demanded, and there was little if any attempt to fight it. She handed off the crumbled drawing, to which his father had stared at it for a couple of seconds. There was a look of disgust, contemplation, and disapproval in his eyes. Then, the man followed up by crumbling it into a ball and picking Richard up by his shoulder to gag the boy with it.

“That uncle of yours lied to you. Memories die the moment you don’t remember ‘em or when you kick the bucket. The sooner you forget him and stop being a rebellious teenager, you will be more of a help to this family and know your damned place. He didn’t even take the bastard down, he just blew himself up until another bunch a’ freaks came in.” He scolded, staring down at his son as he choked on the paper. Something seemed to snap in the boy, or so he wanted to think. He had sat there and taken beatings, berating, and consistently heard them badmouth his uncle. He always had rationality in the back of his head, making sure he’d refrain from doing anything destructive or downright near-suicidal. That wasn’t a factor now.

He lunged himself at his father once his back was turned, trying to grab at his throat and choke him. His father’s hand was around his throat in seconds. His skull hit against the ground so hard that everything had begun to ring and the world around became a spiral. He had tried to keep a grip on his father’s throat, but was outmatched. The stress of having to fight the urge to live as his father’s meaty fingers stopped his breathing. The old man tried to speak to him, but in Richard’s state of mind, he couldn’t hear what he had been trying to say. As tears had concentrated at the edges of the boy’s eyes, he turned to his mother with an arm outstretched.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

She had just stood there, a mix of distraught apathy plaguing her face as she looked at the boy who was her son being strangled by the man who was supposedly her husband and his father. She blinked with bags under her eyes, letting out another tired yawn. Despite it all, the ringing, his delusional state, and the tightening of his breath. He could tell what she mumbled under her breath.

“Hank, stop, it isn’t worth it.” She murmured, before turning her head away from the two. Richard had found himself just lying on the floor. Hands still at his father’s throat but without the energy, just doing it to do it.

What would his uncle have done? He would’ve died.

Richard didn’t want to die. He wanted to live for his uncle’s memory.

But… memories… memories don’t live forever.

If memories didn’t live forever. What was the answer?

The world seemed to come to a crawl, as flashes upon flashes of memory. A pitiful recollection of his life.

He could remember his father screaming at him when he was young. He could remember his mother smiling when she came home to pick the boy up into her arms, the first time she read him a story to sleep, the first time his mother didn’t smile. He could remember the times his uncle picked him up to go to the park, the times his uncle grilled with him, the times his uncle took him to school, the times his uncle cared for him, the time his uncle took him in. He remembered the time they went to the grocery store, the time he met the homeless man… the death of his uncle. His uncle’s last words to him. No, no, there was something else.

That man had kept mumbling something. He laid there as his father pulled his hands away while he watched the memory of his uncle’s death on repeat in his mind. Each time was more and more less painful to endure, just another memory.

It clicked.

A feeling akin to euphoria had rushed through his body like a surge of electricity. “Nothing.” A look of confusion lingered for a moment as Richard’s father heard his son. Richard himself had just been smiling. “Nothing lives forever.” He uttered, right as the final flash of his uncle’s explosive death had vanished from his mind.

That was it.

The final burst of euphoria had sent itself through the boy’s body, accumulating in the arm he had been using to try choking his father and erupted into his throat. It blew apart chunks of the man’s upper torso from his head to below his shoulders in a display of violent gore. He watched as it circled the spot where he once stood, like an orbit of flesh. A look of shock lingered on his face as he reached a hand out, trying to understand it, but deep down he knew what it had been.

He snapped back into thought, having heard his mother screaming at such a volume that had brought him back, only for him to guide his hand toward her and the shrapnel would follow. Silencing her.

He stood to his feet as his mother dropped to the floor. He wanted to leave, so he walked to the door and did so.

Now outside, the flashes of the day had come to him once more. His mother and father were dead, but they were still there. Faces. Faces of people that knew him. Faces of people that knew his family. Faces of people who didn’t care about him. Faces of witnesses. Faces of people who could tell.

Both him and his mind in tandem guided himself forward, limping with purpose.

∎∎∎

Richter had been sitting in a white room white lights constantly shining on him from all sides of his cell. His hands had been bound by cuffs connected to two separate chains, one coming down from the roof and the other from the floor. It bond him, preventing him from sitting or touching anything even if he tried. The only time he could sit was when a chair would ascend from one of the tiles, keeping his hands in the same position but giving him momentarily reprieve. It had all been made worse by the feeling of a broken wrist. His vest and any other upper clothing had been taken from him, making sure that the key symbol was on full-display.

He had been staring at the wall for about four hours after coming to. He hadn’t been allowed to sit roughly an hour afterwards, just standing there to wait. The sound of the mechanical whirring of the chair tile ascending had given him reprieve, giving him the chance to rest for just a second before the wall he had been staring at had gone transparent. A pair of distorted faces, both wearing the uniform of the Supernatural Defense Agency. Navy blue laboratory-esque clothing with a red-x at the right breast on their chest. Just like their faces, none of their figures were notably distinguishable. It wasn’t that they were “basic” or had a figure that would fit all, it was instead impossible to place anything that differentiated them from what one someone would commonly think of when they were asked to describe “a person.” It was uncanny.

“Richter, you’re being detained for suspected murder, property damage, unlawful usage of your Key, failing to register your abilities, engaging in unlawful crimes associated with gang violence–” they kept listing. The voice was still so hard to pin-point. At one point he could’ve sworn it was masculine, then feminine, then it began to become too hard to even discern the difference between those two. At one point, there was even the lightest tint of an echo the more he focused on dissecting it.

“Richard.” With just a single word, Richter’s attention was back on them and his blood had gone cold. “Richard Krueger, that is your name, correct? It looks like that at least got a notable reaction from you.” The investigator confirmed, writing something down onto a clipboard.

“The ability your Key manifested seemingly matches many of our reports, one which is hypothesized to explode its victims or objects, with inconsistent fragmentation. Using that as a reference, we managed to tie back your believed path of destruction to a few murders consistent with your ability in Bellrige Bay–then further back towards Bellwood, and then to the start in which becomes the origin… mass homicide of an entire neighborhood street in Alexander City, Alabama. In total, that’d amount to about fifty-four murders by rough estimate.”

The investigator spoke while continuing to write away. “That’s enough for an immediate termination or worse. Even if you were normal there'd be no saving you.” They commented, the tiniest bit of discernible condensation in their voice.

“I know my rights.” Richter snarled.

“You forfeit your rights when you used your Key to murder humans.” They responded.

“The No-Righteous Man Act, I give up a Key and y’all are more lenient for what to do with me! I know two, no, maybe three. Three times the leniency.” Richter shouted, looking at the glass.

“Then speak up, tell us about them.” The investigator asked, preparing their pen and paper.

“Nah, fuck you guys. I know what you’re about. I want to speak with the Black Ring Organization. Then you’ll get me to talk about all the shit I know, and it’s a lot.” Richter demanded.

◉◉◉

Creak.

From the darkness a figure would slip out the closet, each footstep they had taken was small and inaudible. One with the quiet night. It flew into the bedroom, carried by the shadows to the sound of light snoring.

It stood there, hovering above the bandaged body of the brown haired and freckled Noah. A hand had manifested from the cloak of black, taking a picture of Noah’s exposed chest with the flash of a camera.

Noah’s body had nearly thrown itself up in a frenzy in response, looking around to see nothing in the darkness.

“I’m going crazzzy…. ahhh.” Noah murmured sleepily. Dropping back to his bed, just waiting to fall back to sleep as his adrenaline slowly climbed back down and the darkness crept back into itself.