Integrity Of Violence

Chapter 11 - Hunter

Hunter

"I wonder why we are hunting you when you are the hunter, huh?"

The pen was held in between my hands which held my fingers. They were about to get crushed as the pressure intensified. Tears ran down my face. I wanted to scream but the sound was getting muffled as my mouth was shut by their socks.

They thought my screams were annoying. My classmates had every right to bully me. I was poor, abandoned, and now at an orphanage studying at a school where ruining lives was a sport. I was the best target.

I had been bullied since elementary school in ways that I would not even be able to imagine but I had learned to suck it up. I was born for it, as they said.

"Who named you?" The boy raised my head gripping my hair. I hissed. He was still breaking my fingers. My whole body was shaking.

I could not answer. He punched me. Though I was used to getting my face smashed by various objects, this felt a bit too much. He was wearing spike rings. "Gosh, I am sorry. I didn't realize I stuffed that." He laughed and took the socks out of my mouth.

"Now, answer my question." He sat on a chair.

"I don't know," I whispered with the little energy left in me.

They all laughed. "Makes total sense."

"Oh right," A girl chipped from behind him with the other girls as her blonde hair bobbled. "Hunter, can you do me a favor and check my boyfriend's dumble weight?" She pouted.

I closed my eyes. Their doings were predicted at this point. One of them threw a 30 kg dumble on my leg. My scream sounded in the backyard of the school. I grunted and fell back. I definitely heard my bone crack.

Curling irons, steel chairs, sharp pen tips, knives, baseball bats, basketballs, thick books, and spiky iron rods were what the students brought to school. Books were brought during the exam period and then drained in the gutter. All they cared about was who won a fight or who gave up on life.

Every day of the school continued like this. Nobody cared about pain. The school was all about survival. When I was on the verge of giving up on life, on top of the school roof, my foster father took me down violently.

I fell on the roof and for the first time at school someone else other than my bullies beat me until I was unconscious. He said that if I died, he would have to face a lawsuit by the orphanage for not taking care of me. I wish I had told him that the orphanage could not care less about me.

He told me to be a man and endure it all. So I did. One of the cops at the society caught the kids who were beating me at a dark alley and he ended up going to juvenile. He was the son of a politician so my foster father was screwed by him.

The Juvenile and the court had dropped the case after being fed with dollar bills and that's when I knew that the law was weighed by the one on whomever it will be imposed on and the power they held. Justice was stomped by money.

When the case was settled, he decided to use me as a toy whenever he felt stressed. I was twelve and I had been beaten - according to them - not enough. But I felt like my soul was bruised when his wife started touching me.

She threatened to kill me and held a knife to my throat as she did whatever she wanted with my body. I could not take it anymore.

But then, when my foster father was cheating on his wife, I did not intend to come inside his bedroom. Right in front of me, in his night robe, he killed one of his housemaids brutally with a knife and made me hold the knife.

The police came in the middle of the night and the orphanage refused to acknowledge me as I might taint their reputation so after so much, I was left with nothing and without anyone. I was abandoned as always.

I was standing on top of a bridge and no one cared about it. Because nobody saw my scars. I looked up at the sky. And then down to the ground. The world - then and there - opened my eyes. Why should I die? I might have been let loose but I will not lose to evil.

My mind change was nothing surprising although I was surprised that I could think properly after all that. When I had been left at an orphanage, it was not my choice but then when I headed towards another orphanage was mine.

It was a new place where they had taken me in without hearing my story. They gave me food and did not verbally abuse me. I was thrilled. It felt like heaven. My scars were vanishing as new ones did not appear.

Then the manager of that place told me that a big business tycoon in Japan along with his wife had decided to adopt me. When I first met them there, with all my experience, I could tell what they had for me and I was ready for it all.

I was ready for the world after being fed. I had knives on my nerves so I knew who I was. Hunter Barren, the son of Ben Barren who had been the first person to ever see me smile.

I was no killer. I am a reviver of justice. I am justice. I am an executioner, the only impartial human being. I surveyed the jungle from my stage, a sense of grim satisfaction flickering in my veins. Below, Takashi and his gang stumbled into the elaborate trap, caught by the very design I had crafted.

The air thickened with tension as the torment unfolded. They tried their very best to approach us on the perch but their area was limited as one by one, they were snatched by my design. One of them got caught in the rat trap, which was indeed a rat trap, just slightly bigger.

The other thumped and fell inside the cave underground as blades pierced his body. The once-confident tormentors now found themselves at the mercy of a vengeance they couldn't comprehend.

I looked at Maya. Though I had thought that I had less morals than her, good lord, she was enjoying every bit of the show. I smiled at her. We both thrived at the justice we imposed. This was the violence that the world needed quite desperately.

"Do you feel like the lamb you were?" I softened my voice when I spoke to her.

She looked at me. The look on her face almost made me believe that she was cold-blooded. "I feel power."

"That's my girl," I smiled.

The jungle echoed with the desperate cries of those who were once fond of the misery of others. I looked at the sky. I balanced the scale of justice.