I woke up a short while later, staring up at the seats of the taxi, feeling blood and meat run down my face. I looked to the driver side and saw Jimmy hanging unnaturally from his seatbelt, his arm dangling down to the opposite door of where he was sitting. I looked towards the back of the taxi and saw Sergei, at the end of the car, lying flat on his face, not moving. I assumed he was sleeping.

I sat up, shaking my head, trying to clear away the getting punched in the face during a car accident feeling. I could feel a hole in my lip, but surprisingly, all I tasted was metal. I smelled something sharp, clean. I didn’t know what that was, but decided that sitting here wasn’t gonna do me any good. That was when I looked down and saw the hole in my thigh.

For some reason, the blood coming out of it was only a trickle. I turned my leg over and saw that the bullet had gone straight through, a hole near the bottom of my ass cheek, just below where my underpants ended. And lying right next to me was the fake wad of bills I’d thrown at Jimmy’s feet earlier. I took this as a sign from God and put it back into my shirt pocket.

I heard Sergei stir behind me, fidgeting and groggily trying to sit up. I stood up in response, feeling shaky, but when I put weight on my leg, I felt no pain. Chalking it up to getting my face punched in, I decided that it was a good thing for now. The leg wouldn’t take my weight, the bastard, so I sort of limped toward him. If only the kids could see me now, they'd probably howl with laughter. Well, as long as they didn’t see the blood. Or what I had to do next.

Sergei was trying to get onto his hands and knees but kept falling back onto his face. I jumped on his back, put my hands on the back of his head, and started smashing it against the floor, over and over, until blood started pooling under it. I grunted with the effort, gritting my teeth, spit dripping onto his back. But I didn’t stop. Just kept pounding, until I felt his skull crack beneath my hands.

I sat back, spitting blood and saliva that had been forming in my mouth. I felt my stomach churn as I saw one of my teeth come with it, but tried to hold back the rising bile in my throat. I stood back up, going toward the door that was above me now, and saw it was already open. Fuck. I looked around and realized Jack was nowhere to be seen.

I thought about it, like I'd thought about it on the drive here. Vincent had no way of knowing about the girls, since everyone that did know is in this taxi. Was in this taxi. If I killed them and threw their bodies into paradise, no one would know.

Unfortunately, I somehow managed to throw myself in, practically skipping the formalities and jumping straight to the punishment Vincent was going to put me through anyway, but hey, who said I wasn't an overachiever?

I needed to kill Jack. If he got out and told someone, they would be in danger. Sure, I would probably die within the week. But then, so might he. And that was too long. He needed to die within the hour, before anyone else could find out.

Should’ve taken my own advice and killed him earlier. But I was going to fix that mistake very soon. It was like I said. Not while I was breathing.

I fetched a piece of broken glass that was a bit longer than my hand. I grabbed it and walked back to Sergei, rolling him over onto his side before driving the piece of glass straight into his throat, feeling blood gush out and drip from my fingers.

I stabbed him a few more times, making sure he was dead. After making sure he was gone, I started going after Jack, since Jimmy looked dead enough to me. I limped back to the door and climbed out. Just as I finished hauling myself out of the door, I stood up on the side of the taxi and fell down onto the street. I sat up and looked into paradise. All I saw was a world of ash.

I looked back toward the gate we’d crashed through. Luckily, we must have gone about a kilometer in, so I believe I was quite deep into Paradise City at this point. Where I looked, there were hints of old buildings, completely destroyed by that big bomb. But all I saw was ash, everywhere. It was inescapable, like even the air had decided to burn. I thought it was the most beautiful sight, since I could see Jack’s footprints, wandering off into the distance, away from the gate. He must have hit his head pretty hard to be going that way. Lucky me.

As I stood up to limp after the footprints, the pain shot through me. My lip was on fire from the hole in it, my face felt like a mess of aches, and my one eye was closing up. But my leg felt like it was trying everything it could to make sure that it was the center of attention. It felt hot, like all the meat in it was burning me, trying to make my life miserable. I'm not ashamed to say I whimpered, almost falling down again.

But then I thought of little Yelena, looking at her new toy, and Maria in my arms, and lied to myself that it wasn't actually so bad. I whimpered some more as I stood up, but gritted my teeth, bringing the bloody piece of glass up to my face so I could look at it as I walked. I gripped it until it felt like it was searing through my fingers, my blood mixing with Sergei's and falling to the floor. I was dead anyway; what's one more scratch for the collection?

I limped forward as fast as possible after the footprints. I decided that screaming would probably make him know where I was, so I just cried quietly as I raced after the man who had ruined Yelena's birthday.

As I ran, the metallic taste grew stronger, like I had bitten off a piece of the taxi and carried it with me. I looked around at the empty remnants of what used to be streets. Passing the ruined swing sets, I swear I heard children's laughter. Most of the time though, all I heard was screaming. I chalked it up to my brain feeling mushed and hurried a little faster, feeling like there were a lot of people all around me in this abandoned city.

Finally, in the distance, I saw a figure, walking slowly toward the other side of the wall that keeps people out of paradise. Funny, I never thought I'd see this side of it. A large building loomed right behind it. It looked sort of familiar, but I couldn't quite place it. He seemed eager to go there, and I was eager to have a chat with him, so guess I was going there too.

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I felt the pain leave me when I saw him, so I limped toward him as fast as I could. I must have been a block away when he turned around like he'd heard something and saw me. His eyes went wide, looking like he'd seen a ghost, and he started running away, a little faster than me. At that moment, I remembered the gun and decided I should have brought it with me.

But I kept chasing him, screaming, “You sold me out for two sandwiches! Now you're gonna fucking die for them!”

He didn't reply; he just kept running toward the wall. I was out of breath, hurting, feeling the blood running down my leg and the air wrapping around me, trying to keep me in this unholy place, but I didn't stop, and I didn't slow down.

Finally, he reached the wall and started panting. He looked back and saw me hobbling toward him menacingly. He groaned, but then he started to climb the wall, using garbage people must have thrown into paradise to build a small ramp. He got onto the top of it, before seemingly falling onto the other side.

Luckily, he had left the garbage there in his haste, so I started using it too. Unfortunately, as I stepped up with my bad leg, I lost balance and fell into the wall, using my forearm to block the fall. I scrambled back up as quickly as I could and felt my arm flare up with a renewed sense of purpose—pain. I looked down at it, and it didn't seem to be broken, even though it was screaming at me with everything it had that it was.

I climbed back up. Finally, the garbage held, and I was able to gracefully fall over the wall to the other side, landing on my back. I gasped, feeling the wind rush out of me, so I laid there for a moment. It was a lucky thing I did because I saw Jack scrambling up the fire escape in front of me.

I sat up, the fire that had made me run across paradise standing me up on a torn-up leg once more, and I climbed up after him. I was too tired to shout, to scream, or do anything but pant. But I climbed, because he needed to die.

Finally, I reached the top, and I started climbing the ladder to the roof. My forearm roared at me, yelling its excuses about being broken and in pain. I just gritted my teeth, ignoring its pleas, and kept going. As I pulled myself over the edge of the roof, all of a sudden, Jack was looking down at me, punching me in the face. I fell backward, down the ladder I had just climbed to get up there, down back onto the fire escape walkway. I gasped, feeling every ache and pain I'd just gotten tearing through me with a renewed sense of vigor.

“Fuck off, Boris! Please! I'm sorry! I owed Vincent, okay? I have to take care of Jill! Please, just let me go!” He yelled down at me, crying his final plea.

“I’m gonna fucking kill you,” I wheezed, feeling very threatening in the moment. But I still had that piece of glass in my good hand, and that was enough of a promise to get him to run away, his footsteps echoing off the quiet roof. All of a sudden, I heard a different voice, and that was more than enough motivation for me to get up there as quickly as possible.

I hauled myself over the edge of the roof once again, seeing a bunch of things I had no idea how to describe, besides being circular and white, dotting alongside the left part of the roof. Dotted around were what I could only describe as roof windows, glass sticking up like the forts I'd built with the kids.

But I saw Jack, hands raised, talking to someone hiding behind the circular thing I mentioned earlier. I hobbled toward him as fast as I could.

He spotted me out of the corner of his eye when I was ten steps away. He screamed, jumping backward, “He’s here! Look! He’s here to kill me! Please help me!”

Then a fucking fink, dressed in white with a piece of metal running down his right-sleeved arm, stepped out and aimed his gun at me.

His eyes went as wide as Jack’s when he saw me, like he’d seen a ghost. Sure, I was a man with no pants, covered in blood from head to toe, clutching a piece of glass with a look on my face that screamed I was there to kill someone—but it couldn’t have been that bad.

I just stared at them, getting another few steps in before he snapped out of his shock, shouting, “Freeze! Don’t move, civvie! What the fuck are you doing running through Paradise? Do you even know where you are?”

It must’ve been the shard of glass I was holding that finally snapped him out of it because he stopped asking questions and started screaming, “Drop the knife! I’ll shoot if I have to! Please, drop the knife!”

He begged, like he was the one with the gun pointed at him, standing between me and Jack with a roof window right behind him.

I was eight steps away. Eight steps from making sure my kids would be ok. I was so close. I closed my eyes, whispering my final prayer, “God, I commit this sin knowing it will damn me to hell. Give me the strength to do it. Give me the strength to make sure my kids are safe.”

I opened my eyes, preparing to rush straight through the gunfire. That’s when a miracle happened. A noise came from something on the fink’s hip just as I started running toward him, and he jerked his head toward it, as though it might bite him. Jack’s eyes widened in slow motion as he stepped backward, his foot landing on the roof window. I saw the fink’s face go pale as he turned back to me and pulled the trigger.

I watched the bullet tear through my stomach, felt the meat explode out of me as I took the hit, but it didn’t matter. I kept running, and screaming, slamming my broken forearm into the fink’s face, and drove the jagged glass shard toward Jack’s neck.

The momentum carried us both over the edge, crashing through the roof window. Jack fell first, his feet stumbling onto the fragile glass. It cracked and shattered beneath him. I followed closely behind, the blood-soaked shard still tight in my hand. I drove it into his neck as we fell.

His eyes went wide, staring at me like I was the devil himself. His hands clawed at the glass protruding from his throat, but no scream escaped, only a gurgling, whimpering sound. Even as we fell, he was begging, trying to escape the punishment he deserved.

I glanced up and saw the fink falling with us, screaming as he flailed his arms, reaching for the gun that had slipped from his hands. It was useless.

Shards of glass rained around us, reflecting light into my eyes as the world spun into chaos. The wind roared in my ears, and I felt the weightlessness of the fall. I looked down at the ground, where thousands of eyes stared up at me. Their collective gaze burned through my soul. It had to be God’s judgment—thousands of eyes watching every second of my life as I fell, a baptism in shattered glass and blood, welcoming me into hell.

Jack spasmed, and I let go of the shard, letting my hand fall slowly to my side. I kept thinking, Thank you. Thank you for helping me get the bastard.

Then there was a bright light, and then… nothing.