FACELESS

Prologue: The Flames of His Wrath

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When all one has seen, heard of, and

experienced is violence, pain, and hatred-

the idea of peace exists only in the realm

of one's dreams.

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Flames danced through the wooden hut, their hypnotic, fiery hips sashaying with ease through the small one room home. Unlike a pathological criminal, they crackled with life, announcing their presence to the three occupants huddled beneath a few blankets upon the center of the room. Two of the bodies were not moving; their limbs lay askew in weird angles and a crimson color stained the coarse material of the parts of the blanket that lay above their chests, their legs, their arms. The third body could barely be distinguished between a living and dead being. The chest was heaving only gently to indicate breathing. The fire licked a circle of heat around them. It had already devoured one corpse that had been lying on the outskirts of the room and like a tigress awaiting its next kill, it tantalizingly moved forward, readying to devour its next victim.

Haroon had been dreaming, enraptured by the fantasies conjured by his own mind at night when he first heard the door creak open, releasing him almost instantly from the realms of his deep slumber. His eyes flew open and he immediately became alert as the blood roared within him and his heart beat quickened, pumping erratically.

His heart pounded, thud, thud. He squinted in the dark and froze as his eyes connected with a pair of blue iridescent pupils, dilated with a madness and rage which he was unable to comprehend.

Thud, thud. Thud, thud continued the beat of his heart. He had never felt so alive.

Haroon reached his hand out blindly in the darkness instinctively searching for his mother's arm. He got ready to open his mouth to scream, but he was far too slow, far too late. The gunshot boomed like thunder. It only took half a breath for it to hit it's target. It only took two cries of pain, two screams of anguish- perhaps a sound in the wind, a jest played by nature? It only took six bullets. It only took one man to end the lives of everyone he cared about.

There was so much blood, it splattered all over the blankets, his face, arms, and even hair were all covered by sticky red liquid; his mother and sister's life source. His eyes met the white man's again, and held as he refrained from even moving a centimeter, paralyzed by fear. The feel of the wet hot liquid made him want to convulse but he was too scared to move a muscle while being scrutinized by those ever watching, unblinking eyes.

Thud, thud. Thud, thud.

He heard the trigger pull with a clink. He wanted to open his mouth to scream, but his voice was clogged inside of him.

Thud, thud, thud, thud.

He squeezed his eyes shut, but a stream of tears escaped and coursed down the contours of his cheeks. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die. Allah, please, I'm scared. So scared.

He waited for the shot to come, for the pain to start, but it never came. He opened his eyes slowly, hesitantly and was met once more with the mad glint in the other pair of eyes.

“Live, boy,” growled the man in a low snarl, “Live in regret and pain. I spare you not out of mercy, but because the life you have been left with will be more of a hell than death.”

He stared wide eyed and scared, not understanding the language being spoken, not understanding the pain, grief, and demented madness filling the grown man's eyes.

“You can't understand it now,” he said hoarsely, “but one day, very soon, you will experience the same pain your damned lot have left me with. And if you so wish to kill me, to seek revenge like all the rest of your savage kind always manage to extract, know that I do not care, for my life is worth nothing to me anymore.”

And as Haroon watched on with horror and dread, the man lifted the barrel of the vile, evil machinery, placed it against the temple of his head, and pulled it once, ending his own life and adding it to the slowly growing pile of bodies compiled in his home.

He was all alone.....with no way of escape from this horribly real nightmare. He looked around him in mute horror and it was then that he realized he was, in fact, not the only living occupant left in his house. There was a small line of fire which was cackling with glee as it slowly moved from its perch near the door and began to sashay inside the room. His eyes darted quickly towards the lifeless ones of the soldier, wanted to scream at him, to ask him why he had done this. He may have spared Haroon's life, but if he didn't stop the fire in time, it would disintegrate the bodies of his mother and sister, erase all traces of what happened- take the blame off the man and whatever unit he belonged to.

He couldn't allow that to happen, but he didn't know what else to do. The water was outside in the well, but the flames blocked the only exit and entrance. Haroon shuddered violently, suddenly immensely conscious of the smell of smoke clogging his throat, of the blood matting his hair against his scalp, of the heat coming closer and closer towards him.

It wasn't until his eyes landed on the dead corpses of his family that the full horror of his situation finally sunk in to him and dry sobs began to escape his parched lips. Thud thud thud thud thud thud. He stared at his trembling bloody fingers and felt bile rise from his stomach and fill his throat. His stomach heaved and he threw up a vile, yellow liquid.

Upon his knees and feeling utterly spent, it was then that he gave up on the urge to live. He no longer cared about his life for it meant nothing to him, and how could it, when all the substantial, tangible things that composed it had been destroyed for him? A strangled, helpless, wounded animal cry escaped his burning throat, the last sound that escaped his lips before he closed his eyes and threw his body upon the blankets, choosing to die with his family, since every other road was closed to him for good.