Bright sun.
Heat.
Greenery.
A small, cozy town in Amazonia - a country in the north of South America along the Amazon River.
A girl in a summer dress, wide-brimmed hat, and sunglasses stands in the center of a little riverside town, holding a coin in her hands. Before her is a small fountain with a statue of a young woman in a yukata, pouring water from a pitcher.
The girl stands for about half a minute with her eyes closed, her palms together, clutching a coin between them and bowing her head, then throws it into the water and watches as it sinks to the bottom of the fountain. There's a soft smile on her lips, the smile of someone who has left all her troubles behind and can breathe easily. She radiates lightness and tranquility.
"Mom, are we leaving soon?" a little girl in a sundress with an equally large hat with broad brim stands next to her, impatiently waiting for them to move on.
"Wait, you restless one," the girl quietly replies, looking at the fountain.
"What are you doing?"
"Making a wish."
"And what is it? A lot of money?"
"No, silly. I wish for... everything to be good for one person," she sighed.
"Who?" asked the straightforward child, her eyes wide.
"Just a person..."
Reminiscing sadly about those who were now a part of her past, the girl returned to the bygone days to pay a final tribute to the one who had let her go peacefully and given her the chance to start anew. She cast a parting glance at the fountain where she had made her wish, then took the kid's hand and left the square with her.
This was not their final stop, and both were still in for a little adventure in a foreign country. But neither of them was afraid. After that gray city, the world was bursting with bright colors, which literally propelled them toward life, promising that everything would be fine. At one of the stops, they boarded an intercity bus, which took them through the Amazon forests, further and further away from their past.
***
The cold air penetrated my lungs. That was the first thing I felt when I woke up. The cold, prickling air. It literally burned my nose, making me want to breathe through my mouth just to avoid inhaling it through my nose one more time.
I slowly opened my eyes, regaining consciousness as if from a deep sleep. My head was hurting incredibly, but my face hurt even more. It was practically burning, as if someone had pressed a hot poker to it, leaving a terrible scorch.
I forced myself to sit up and look around.
What did I feel when I realized I was still alive?
Nothing. I felt absolutely nothing. It was such a strange feeling, as if I was empty inside and not knowing how to react to it. It felt like... I didn't care. Perhaps it was the aftermath of the crash I must have gotten into when I drove the car off the road and down the cliff.
Or maybe it was also the fact that I didn't really care whether I was dead or alive after what had happened. Because the only thought that was spinning in my head was - betrayal. I was betrayed and discarded... I was simply alone...
Logically, I understood that now was not the time for such thoughts, and if I was alive, then I had to keep living, but my heart was literally devastated. I wanted to choke on the spot until I became a cold corpse. No goals, no desires, nothing... I just wanted to lie back on the ground and sleep in this beautiful fresh forest under the open sky, never to wake up. Perhaps that would have saved me from the feelings tearing everything up inside me, giving me no peace.
Even though I didn't want to live now, a human is too stubborn a creature to just die. I struggled to push away the intrusive thoughts and force myself to get up, even though I felt only emptiness and pain inside.
Very slowly, I got to my feet and found that my body was basically fine. Neither my arms nor legs hurt; breathing was more or less easy, and I seemed to move normally. This didn't cheer me up. I cared so little that, even if I had found my own severed arm, I wouldn't have batted an eye. Only my face burned incredibly. When I touched it, I found that one side of it felt more like mince than skin. My whole palm was smeared with blood after the touch. And my right arm was very badly scraped. But I felt nothing about it.
It was getting light, which meant it was about eight in the morning. Around me was a leafless forest. The dense bald forest of the Sikhote-Alin Mountains. Judging by the incline of the ground, I was still on its tree-covered slopes.
About five meters from me, there was a clear streak of plowed earth, on which pieces of shattered glass, paint, broken plastic, and other parts of the car that had flown away were scattered. Apparently, when the car crashed, I was thrown out of it straight through the windshield, and a carpet of leaves and branches saved me. And also the fact that I'm very fat. However, judging by the torn clothes and wounds on my arms and face, I was badly dragged along the ground.
They say miracles happen, but for some reason, I wasn't happy about this miracle. I wasn't happy at all, as if I was sentenced to life instead of the usual salvific death penalty. A persistent little voice in my head kept whispering that it would be better if I died here rather than continue living like this.
And yet... there was unfinished business that had to be completed before I could take my own life or wait for natural death. Those bastards who decided they could control other people's lives and get away with it. Thinking they're not only masters of their own lives but of others, too. I had to make sure none of them got away. Since they decided they could behave as if everyone owed them by default, let them face reality.
It doesn't matter who you are - anyone can be taken down if there's a will.
And it was my hatred for them that really fueled my desire to live a little longer. I had to finish off everyone who was left in the car.
So, picking up a rather hefty stone from the ground, I started descending, following the "trail" left by the vehicle. I found it about twenty meters from where I was thrown out myself. From what I could see, the car had rolled sideways down the slope and stopped wheels up, having crushed into a large, sturdy spruce trunk. If it weren't for the tree, it would have kept rolling down the slope until it reached the bottom of the ravine.
But I wasn't the only survivor.
Leaning on the car and doubled over as if in extreme pain, there stood a man in a dirty, torn business suit, apparently having crawled out of the cabin. He was breathing heavily, as if after a run, and glancing around...
Just then, his gaze met mine. And then he saw the stone in my hand.
The survivor correctly understood my intentions.
But he was a few seconds too late.
The moment he raised his hand, clearly intending to use his impulse, I had already thrown the stone, which was on its way to him. I knew I wouldn't have time to get down to him, and this throw was my only chance. My survival depended on it, but I didn't feel even a drop of nervousness.
The man didn't have time to do anything - having received the stone directly to the side, he groaned and fell to his knees. He raised his hand in a new attempt to do something and...
I crashed into him at full speed. We were both pinned to the car, which creaked pitifully from the impact, and the man sank to the ground.
I had no intention of stopping; I needed to maintain the initiative, which was now the deciding factor in this fight. I picked up the stone from the ground, and when the man turned his face to me, I hit him in the head with all my might.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
The first time, I only managed to make him sway, but after the second blow, blood spurted from his head. After the third hit, he fell to the ground while I dropped the stone and picked up a larger boulder that the car had dug out. I lifted it above my head, and then with a swing, I dropped it on the scumbag's skull. He feebly tried to raise his hands as if wanting to catch it, but...
A squelching crunch, like someone had hit a watermelon and split it open. The man's body twitched a few times as if dancing to music while strange sounds like wheezing came from under the stone.
But I paid no attention to that.
Because the moment I dealt with him, I noticed a girl was already halfway out of the car window. The very one that was driving me on my final journey, but passed her own as well. Though she was clearly out of it at that moment, she didn't even pay attention to me when she was crawling out. She stared blankly into the distance, moving her hands and digging her fingers into the frozen ground, trying to get out like a zombie.
But she never got out of the car. With a swing, I dropped a rock straight on the back of her head. There was a clear crunch, and she fell limply to the ground.
After that, I searched the first man's body and found what I was looking for. Two pistols. The funny thing is, one of them was my Glock, which they had confiscated at the hospital. And without any remorse, I used it, firing a bullet into the heads of the two remaining men who were still in the car - unconscious or perhaps dead. Then, I put a shot in the girl's head to be sure.
I think if it hadn't been for this crash, I would hardly have been able to do anything to them. But after such a spin in the car, it was unsurprising that they were in such a state. Maybe they got even more than me because, unlike me, they were flying around the car for a while before they hit a tree.
They wanted to bury me in a shallow grave but found their own death.
Funny...
Yet, I didn't feel any satisfaction from what I had done. I didn't feel any joy of victory or happiness that I had survived. It was as if I had lost the goal for which I needed to live.
What had I been living for before?
For my family?
But now I don't have one. I have nothing.
What was the point of my existence now? To live? To strive for something? I had no family, no friends, nothing left. I had either killed or left everyone behind.
Even going home was now out of the question. As soon as the house finds out that I survived, they will send hitmen who will cut my head off. And if before I could have gotten away with a bullet, after killing their people, they might well saw off my head, slowly and torturously.
Nataliel was right: I really ended up alone. Without any life, without a soul, empty like a soda bottle. Completely alone, lost, and abandoned, even by myself. And the more I felt it, the more the sense of life's meaninglessness washed over me.
I think I even started to understand what hell is. It's not an abstract concept, not a fictional world where sinners burn in lava or a cauldron. It's not a world or a planet.
Hell is a state of the soul.
As I stood and pondered what to do next, my gaze fell on a side mirror that had been ripped off the car and now lay on the ground. Without any afterthought, I picked it up to look at my wounds and saw my own reflection.
"Ha... he... he-he-he... he-he-he-he..."
Hysterical laughter started to shake me. What I saw in the mirror now barely resembled my face.
"He-he-he-he-he-he..."
The right side was literally torn to shreds. All oozing with blood, like some red jelly, it covered the right side of my face like a mask. I could even see patches of skin that had stuck back to the face due to the blood. It was as if my skin had been cut into strips.
"Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!"
I laughed like a mental patient, looking at myself in the mirror. The whole right side of my face was nearly mush. The entire left side was simply slashed with deep scratches and didn't look much better. As if someone had deliberately scarred it.
"HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A!! A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A!!"
My laughter turned into a scream. A monstrous scream of a man who's about to plunge into the abyss of madness. I looked at my own face and screamed like a sick man who saw a ghost in the mirror. With such a face, not just others but I had a hard time recognizing myself. But I wasn't screaming because of my face. I screamed because I realized that I had managed to hit rock bottom with all its implications. Because understanding this hurt me so much that I couldn't bear it anymore. I lost it not because I was broken. I simply stopped seeing the point in living this life any further. I wasn't even myself anymore. One could say that Nurdauleth Lapier crashed dead along with the others on the forgotten and abandoned roads of Sikhote-Alin.
I gave up everything for my family, but in return, I received nothing but pure hell.
Scream as loud as you can. Now you are alone in this world... No one will hear you anymore...
The caressing and ghostly voices of my sisters echoed in my head.
And I screamed...
***
The snow started to fall. For the first time all winter, it snowed. Large flakes unexpectedly came from above, covering everything.
I watched it, watched how it hid the traces of what had happened, how it covered the events that unfolded here... how long ago? I don't know. And I don't care, to be honest.
I sat on an overturned car and smoked, just as Malu once taught me. I smoked because it calmed me down a bit; it helped me come to my senses. Apparently, it was a conditioned reflex from when I first tried it and distracted myself from the nervousness before the first big job. Well, I don't mind...
I smoked one cigarette after another, staring into the void with an absolutely empty gaze. I found a whole pack on one of the house's people and now silently watched as the snow covered the ground with a white blanket, filling my body with new and new doses of nicotine. This made my head spin a little, but it was even nice. Anything is better than the torment inside your chest that makes you literally scream in pain. Cigarettes, even if not entirely, muffled this, helping to restore my sanity. Now, I felt just sad and miserable. And also, my hoarse throat ached - I had strained it so much that I couldn't even utter a word.
I tried to reassure myself that my sister was now safe and everything would definitely be fine with the family, but it didn't help much. So, I just pushed all these pointless thoughts aside. That was now in the past. The past that could never be brought back.
All I was left with was to either accept my fate and die here or move on. And while the emotional pain insisted on the former, my consciousness confidently voted for the latter. After all, I hadn't gone through so much just to die in some shitty forest next to a wrecked car, discarded like some rag, after managing to outlive even my captors.
Deep down, I really felt that I had nothing to live for. I simply saw no point, and the desire to survive was more of a natural instinct... But it was there. Like the only person in a huge, empty gymnasium. Instinct wouldn't let me accept my death so easily, forcing me to keep moving, even though I didn't give a damn.
Or maybe it was my stubbornness, which never allowed me to give in. Maybe that's why I fought for my sister's life by all available means - I didn't wait for a miracle or her death; I just did everything I could.
And now, even if I die, wouldn't it be better to do it on the road rather than sitting by the car and indulging in self-pity? Pain is pain, betrayal is betrayal, but all of this will pass sooner or later, while death will be final. And even though the feeling that had settled in my soul kept gnawing at me, to simply accept death was...
I'll still have time to do that.
It was a mediocre motivator, but better than nothing at all. I didn't want to live, but I was aware that this was wrong. I had to act, to suppress this feeling with activity before it completely got out of control. Because only the material reality always matters. In this case - my life. Everything else is just background noise.
I gathered everything I could find in the car and from my captors, including their winter coats, which would come in handy for my journey. I still had to make my way out of these mountains, and even though I had a paved road to aid me, the snow showed no signs of letting up. I took everything valuable that could be sold or exchanged, including rings, watches, and even earrings. I also took the weapons, as they could be useful in the future.
After that, I washed off the blood with snow, trying to clean myself up a bit.
The right side of my face was simply torn to shreds. I had to make an effort to somewhat restore the remaining scraps of skin back in place, hissing in pain, douse everything with hydrogen peroxide from the first aid kit to stop the bleeding, and then fix everything with a bandage and adhesive plaster. The left side of the face was in a better condition, just slashed as if with a knife, but no more.
It could be said I was ready to move on. Or rather, not move on, but start my new path, a life from a clean, albeit torn, sheet.
It hurt, hurt deeply because of what had happened. But after smoking and shouting, I felt significantly better. I felt that I had regained partial control over myself and could think clearly again.
Having climbed the steep slope to the road, I looked around. An absolutely deserted, forgotten-by-everyone road in the depths of the mountains and hills. The crash site wasn't visible from here, even if you looked down. It's unlikely anyone will find them. Cars like these usually have trackers, but the noble houses disable them, so the government doesn't know what they're up to and where they're taking the bodies of their enemies. It was probably disabled here, too. As for the phones, they were all turned off, as they should be in such cases, but just in case, I smashed them all for good measure.
No one will know what happened and where we disappeared. Perhaps they'll assume we're dead. The noble house might look for us, but I doubt they'll find the car. And they definitely won't announce that some kid managed to off four of their people - their reputation would hardly rise from such news.
As for me, I decided to start by heading to Silverside - a city where you can hide and get lost even with a face like mine. Malu had told me a lot about this place, and most of it wasn't good, but one thing I understood perfectly - if you needed to hide, it would be a great place where no one would give a damn about you.
I looked around again, enjoying the landscape slowly but surely getting buried in snow. It was like a balm for my shattered and cracked psyche. Not a single person around, only me and the wild nature. The forest hills and a long-awaited snow that covered the whole world from dirt, wrapping the earth in a white shroud.
Before moving on, I pulled out the photographs I had taken from home. Five people were looking at me, smiling, oblivious to what would ensue. Despite the betrayal and everything that happened, I could call them all my friends. Screw everything else - to them, looking at this photograph, I felt just that.
With a sigh of sorrow, I hid the photos back in my pocket and started on the road toward the mountains. I had a very long journey ahead to my new life.