Chapter 2: Alphonse - Injustice

I didn’t really know what happened the next few days. I woke up and saw myself on the floor of our home. It didn’t use to look this way. The curtains shrouded the light from entering. The pungent smell of dishes and trashes that were not cleaned and thrown up since the day she was gone filled the air. Our lovely home has lost its splendor. The colorful picture of the family now looked black and quite like a proof of bereavement. Instead of that warm feeling, it was now covered in a dark mourning mood. Actually, it wasn’t the house itself that caused that. It was me. All the emptiness I felt was leaking out, sucking all the happy memories we shared in this place.

I lost my will to live. I didn’t care for anything else. My mind has shut itself from the world, leaving everything else to its vessel to do whatever instinct told it to do. And who could have guessed what it would do next? The same thing it has always done for the last twenty years. It didn’t take long before the mind became restless and curious of what its body was doing. So it decided to take a little peek and once again, I was myself, standing inside an elevator, wearing a suit with my usual briefcase. So, I went to work again. Just like that, I moved on? The human mind had a funny way to deal with its suffering.

“Just do what you have always been doing and forget everything else!”

“Good morning, Camille!” I said to the secretary as I passed by her desk. Instead of replying to me, she just looked awkwardly at me with a shocking expression. I soon realized that she was not the only one in the room to be surprised by my presence. All of my colleagues, those who worked under me and my bosses, they were all shocked with me being here. From the whispering crowd, a fat man with a familiar face approached me. I knew him. He was my branch director, one rank above me in the company.

“Alphonse, why are you here?” asked my boss.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“What? I thought Camille sent you an email about it.”

“What email? … I haven’t been paying attention to the emails. I apologize.” It was true. I never checked my mails once ever since the accident. Maybe there was a meeting somewhere else I was supposed to be?

“Come in my office! We will talk there.”

The fat man led me to his glass walled office and poured a glass of wine for me but not for himself. It was weird because our company forbid employees to consume any alcoholic substance during working time. I had a bad feeling about it but couldn’t quite make out what it was. I decided to drink the glass of wine anyway.

"My apologies, Alphonse. I should have taken care of this more subtly. Anyway, it is good that you are here. I actually prefer to do this face to face rather than by email. It is the least we could do for someone who has contributed so much for our company."

It didn’t take long for me to learn the news. Simply put, I was fired. I didn’t come to work for a whole week and they needed someone else to take care of the deal with their partner company. Yet, the person in charge was me so certain actions required to be done. And the easiest would be to let me go.

“Again, my condolences for your losses! Despite how things turn out, we are grateful for your contribution to our company after all these years. I put a good word for you to the higher ups so you will be well compensated. In case you need any recommendation to another company, I can do that too. Maybe we can discuss in...another occasion.” The fat man said as he opened the door of his office, waiting. What a move to ask someone to leave!

I didn’t even need to take my stuff away. They have already taken everything and sent them all to my home. Passing by my old desk, I saw another youngster in his early thirties or something, cheerfully discussing with those I once called friends. I was shocked. I didn’t expect for them to just forget about me this quickly. I did remember seeing a few faces at the funeral but none of them were people I was close with. So they all ditched me for this new guy. All these years, apparently, I was the only one who thought them as friends. Unable to watch the scene anymore, I rushed out of the office, leaving everything behind, my job, my reputation.

For the first time in years, I felt so lost. Before, everything I did, it was for my family. Now, what was the goal of my existence anymore? For what reasons should I keep this miserable life of mine? We humans were not so complicated as we made it appear so. In fact, everything could be quite simple if one looked at their own actions and the impact of their circumstances on them. At that time, I was desperate, in search for a new goal, the purpose to justify my existence to the world so that I could continue to live, my raison d'être.

People tended to overestimate themselves, thinking us humans as a superior race far beyond the animals living around us. But in reality, the beasts and us were not so different from each other, if not worse for us. Facing any imminent threat, it was within our basic primal instinct to try fighting back and survive, not so different from a cornered animal. But what if the threat was ourselves? What if the mind could not find any reason for it to continue on living? How would it react then? Some brave spirits managed to move on and found a new reason to live. In some cases, it usually ended up with them taking their own lives. Others became insane, unable to cope with reality. But there was another category that was a mixture of the ones mentioned. It was actually very simple if you thought about it. Because there was no reason to live, our brain decided to make one for ourselves so we could cling onto it. And amongst the many possible ropes, one stood out as the strongest drive to survive: hatred.

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This was where things started to become a little hectic. In my mind, I started to shift the blame onto that reckless driver that caused the accident. To me, it was simple logic. Have he not caused it, my family would still be alive today. I would still have my job and my status. If anyone was to be blamed in this story, it was him. And oh boy, how it was so easy to shift the blame onto someone else. Things that were not there began to link to each other in my mind. Somehow, they all made sense to me. But I was not one of those unruly bastards who thought themselves as above the law. Our society had rules and the hammer of justice would fall onto those who wronged the innocent. I must retain my sanity. I must remain myself. That was what I told myself.

Thinking about it, why was that I have not heard anything from the police? From their tone, they seemed to have caught the driver immediately at the scene. Shouldn’t there be a prosecutor or some sort of trial to judge him? Shouldn’t they invite me to the hearing? Back then I was naïve. I didn’t know that there was a lot of things that I didn’t know about. I didn’t claim to be all knowing of course. I was just a simply salaryman. But I have always prided myself in knowing a few other things than the common people. Either they were from books or on the net, I was always the curious type to research things I was not aware of but may prove to be beneficial to myself. Yet, knowing it and experiencing it yourself were not the same. Sometimes, I wished I knew that before learning it through the hard way.

As the elevator went down to the ground floor, my head began to hurt. Was I thinking too much? Or could it be the wine from earlier? Nah, impossible. It was just one glass of red wine. I could have tolerated ten times that amount. Still, my vision started to become blurry. Things became hazy afterwards. I didn't remember much what happened exactly or how I ended up lying on my bed that night. It was weird because I went out in the morning and the next thing I knew, the sun has already long set down. Did I pass out? Then how did I end up home? Maybe it was just my instinct kicking in and my body remembered the way home. After all, it has always walked the same route every day for the last decade. Anyway, I was tired so I decided to go back to sleep, ignoring what transpired.

The next day, I went to the police station and met with the detective in charge of the case. What I learnt however shocked me. There was never any case in the first place. The driver, who apparently was just a youngster, was bailed out through some shady connections and the case was scratched off the records before it even reached the prosecutor’s office. The only thing that showed the records was just a car accident with the car having some faulty wires and that the driver drove recklessly, which was absurd. I put a complaint immediately but was met with little resistance from the detective. The guy too shared the same opinion about the case. However, the problem was that the culprit of this case was the son of some big shot. Using their influence, his crime was wiped out as if it never existed. He didn’t even show up in the records of the accident, like he was never there in the first place. What a bull of crap!

I have always thought those rich bastards were the corrupted ones of our society. However, the story on the news, to me, was just like any other story. Supposedly, it would never happen to me. I have always assumed so, until now. How funny it was for the same thing to come back and bite me for it! I have always taken for granted what I had, taking a bystander’s position and doing nothing. Was it my curse? Was it because of it that I was being punished?

I was frustrated at my own powerlessness. I wanted to scream in the middle of the streets, cursing those who have wronged me. Yet, here I was, unable to do anything. There was an invisible me that stopped me from doing so. No, nothing could possibly stop me from shouting right here. I could do whatever the hell I wanted. But the consequences of my actions, that was what I was afraid of. That was the chains that halted me from my freedom. The bonds I shared with other people. The affections I held. The family I loved so much and had responsibilities to. The job I must retain. The laws I must respect. Those were the chains I was bound to. But guess what, most of them were already gone. The one thing remaining was the law. I wanted to break free. Yet, I didn’t. What would happen to me if it was gone? Would I still be myself anymore? The answer to that frightened me.

But so did the burning desire of hatred inside me. I could not forgive the bastard that killed my family. Not only was he not dead, he now was walking free without being afraid of the consequences of his actions? To hell with that! I refused to let things end this way. That fucker had to pay for what he did. That, I swore.

“AAAA!” a female scream echoed from the street, waking me up from my thoughts. Curious of what happened, I decided to go and see. A woman was injured from a motorcycle while crossing the street. The light was clearly red for the driver and yet the guy insisted on going. Luckily for the woman, she was only lightly bruised with a few scratches here and there. But what shocked was not the degree of the incident but the attitude of that biker who looked like a gang member with his spikes on his leather clothes and skull faces imprinted on his jacket.

“Hey, what the hell are you doing?” a bystander helped the woman gathering the stuff she dropped. However, he was met with a punch to the face by another biker. Shit, there were actually two other menacing looking gangsters bike right behind the fucker.

“Fucker, get lost!” the biker spoke out angrily. He was more concerned about his stupid bike on whether if it was scratched or not. “You are lucky, bitch. My bike is still fine. If not, who knows what will happen to you…” The biker glared at the woman who quickly lowered her head to avoid his stare. “Lucky for you, I am in a hurry. Watch where you are going next time, you stupid bitch!” And he drove away, leaving only the awful smoke from his bike behind.

Did this kind of thing happen often? Surprisingly, yes. Did the police do anything to help with the problems? It depended on whether or not the bastard in question was related to any big shot. A situation like mine where the powerful could do whatever they wanted without any consequence was not uncommon. There was no need to search faraway. Right within my company, the situation was practically the same. But I have never paid attention to these sorts of things. From the office to the daily streets I walked by, nothing has changed. It was not that I was ignorant about it. Only because my mind chose to ignore them. Why worry about other people’s problems while you already had much on your plate? I was never a victim myself, always succumb to pressure from the higher ups the instant they asked so I managed to avoid the unnecessary attention. But now that I was a victim, my vision began to change.

These kinds of injustice, they were everywhere, literally. They took place anytime, anyplace. I remembered from the movies I watched with my daughter about a black cape superhero who punished the criminals, yet never resorted to murder. In a way, he stayed true to himself by refusing to lower himself to them. That kind of hero was the person our society needed right now, but not the person we deserved. The mass spent their time in blessed ignorance, just like I did. As long as it didn’t concern them, they would not lift a finger to help a stranger. I knew that feeling well. Unfortunately, we didn’t have those superheroes in real life to punish the evildoers. Even if there was, I doubted they would be so saintly to not simply kill the criminals themselves. Heck, even our police was so incompetent, unable to do anything even though they knew who the culprit was.

I clenched my teeth as I thought about how those fuckers could just do whatever the fuck they wanted. But wait, this was the same thing I have done in my entire life. Sure, demonstrating my anger was a small step up from a cold bystander but aside from that, nothing has changed. That was it if I stayed idle like I have always done. At the time, my unstable mind was whispering something to me. It was so small like the breezy wind that flew through the night. But it did say something, something only I could hear. A calling it was, my calling.

I gave off a creepy smile to myself in the middle of the street, scaring out the onlookers. That was it. Why did I not think of it sooner? Was I really that blind this whole time? I meant, the solution was so simple.

“If justice cannot deliver itself, then let someone be the holder of the hammer of justice and strike them down!”

The question was who could bear this responsibility. I didn’t take long to figure it out. Such a person would need not to be afraid of losing anything. Someone brave or someone who has already lost everything, like myself. I held my face tightly from the illumination I received as I smiled maniacally. I cared not for the laws of our society. They were disappointing and useless anyway. They let me down when I needed them, despite me having followed them all these years. I shall become the wielder of that hammer and the deliverer of justice. I shall become the judge and the executioner. And for the celebration of my rebirth, I chose that biker as the first sacrifice. So began my story!