“You do know murder is against the law, right?” The solemn voice that leaked out of the suited man echoed through the dark warehouse. His words made the rows of gangsters scrunch their brows and grip their wooden sticks and iron rods a notch tighter.

“Does it look like we care about the law?” The gangster with greying hair snapped back as he took a step ahead. “Don’t speak like you are a law-abiding citizen, bastard.”

The suited man sighed. His dark pupils, like those of a soulless character straight out of a Tim Burton film, swept over the gangsters.

‘This… seems like the end of the line.’

“Sure,” the suited man said. His tongue was his weapon and how could he go down without swinging it at least once? “I may not have been the best lawyer, but what exactly have I done to deserve this? Why must you kill me? All my crimes have been small, harmless ones performed to deliver justice!”

“Harmless?!”

The gangsters around screamed back. Agitated answers shot out like arrows.

“You bribed the judge and sent me to jail—over a damned cookie! I didn't know it was yours, ok!?”

“You blackmailed Machio's family into lying in court!”

“You framed our biggest benefactor, Mark Enterprises!”

Each of the words that came back stabbed straight into his chest. If wounding someone with the truth was an Olympic sport, then the gangsters here would be an all-star team.

'Machio's family... right, good times. Not my best work, but hey, a win's a win.'

“I understand your point,” the suited man, the lawyer, waved his hands and addressed the crowd. “I may have made some mistakes and may have been selfish, but that doesn’t mean you should kill me over this.”

”Elphis…” The man with greying hair took a step ahead. “Do you remember my divorce case? You filed a false domestic abuse and adultery case on me… even though you were the one having an affair with my wife.”

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Elphis, the young lawyer, pursed his lips at that.

“You know what, fair game.”

There was no way for Elphis to argue with that. A sigh left the young lawyer as he reflected on his actions.

With one hand, he reached into the pockets of his coat and pulled out a box of cigarettes—stuffed inside was a joint that Elphis had rolled the night before. With a flick of his lighter, the joint sparked to life, smoke curling lazily in the air as he took a long drag.

‘So this is the final stand…’ Elphis thought. He knew this would come. He had also prepared some contingency plans for it, but since he was in this position, they had failed.

The final stand.

A full stop to his story.

He knew it would come. Someday, somewhere, somehow.

Today. Here. In this way.

He was going to die.

Elphis took a long drag off the joint, a very long one, and waited.

The gangsters around him screamed and charged while the man with greying hair pulled out a pistol. The ground rumbled, his death coming closer as his vision blurred from the THC.

Elphis exhaled.

—BANG BANG!

And closed his eyes.

.

.

.

“Hey, wake up, you lazy rat.”

Kicks landed on Elphis’ body, hammering. The pain from the bullets, the relay of the sticks and the rods, all the pain he expected 'on' his body was replaced by a sting within his body.

‘Am I alive?’

It was strange… he could think.

Slowly, Elphis opened his eyes. The blur in his vision remained, but he was sure it wasn’t from the THC. Large steel chains were bound to his hands and feet while his body was entirely skinny, enough to make bones stick out in his frame.

“Damn it, get up I said! And get to work!”

He turned again. An unfamiliar person towered over him, holding a whip with lightning crackling around it. Elphis’ gaze wandered around.

Thunk thunk went the dozens, no, the hundreds of hammers chipping away the turquoise stones of the cave.

“What the… fuck?”

All the people—bony, skinny, people—were connected to him with the iron chains as they hammered the stones studded along the cave walls.

Elphis looked in his own hands, holding a hammer.

This…

“A slave this lazy is just useless. If you collapse again, I am getting you killed!”

He blinked, the chains clinking heavily as he lifted his hands. They didn’t feel like his hands. Too bony. Too weak. Slowly, it all came together—the chains, the whip, the hundreds of hammering bodies.

He knew what this was.

Elphis… had woken up in another world as a slave.

“Fucking human rights…”