Decode [s.m]

prologue.

prologue.

Growing up, I believed in all kinds of monsters. I believed that they lived in closets, under beds, and in the shadows. But I didn't know that they walked in daylight or looked like ordinary people. I didn't know that they would walk amongst us like nothing, almost invisible as they blended in with the everyday boring commute. They weren't dressed up as their usual selves, but dressed casually, and on special occasions or events, they dressed up like every other normal being.

But they weren't really normal, and neither was I.

Behind closed doors they lived their lives and practiced their magic as their powers grew and grew. They all lived together from what I was told by my father, who trained me for my profession when I was 13. He took me into the mountains where some of the lone wolves lived in hiding from civilian. I must admit, I felt wrong because he was taking me up to their homes to draw them out of hiding and kill them.

"Won't they hear the gun shot?" I asked my dad as we walked the hike.

"It's hunting season." He merely told me. "No one will think twice of it."

Still, it felt morally wrong to do such a thing. I mean, even if they were witches, it was wrong to go to their home and shoot them. What 13 year old could handle becoming a murderer?

"No, it's not murder." He told me when I asked him. "It's heroism."

"Heroism?" I asked him.

"You kill the bad before they have a chance to hurt us. We're the heroes, Shawn."

Hero.

Still, it didn't feel right.

Even when I saw the witch begging for her life to be spared, it didn't feel right. Not even so when I pulled the trigger and the silver bullet went straight through her neck and she fell back to the ground. I closed my eyes as my father pointed his gun at her head and I heard the gunshot.

"You can open your eyes now, Shawn." He said to me. I kept them closed still. "It's all right. We got the bad out."

That was nearly seven years ago.

But the bad never really left, you see.

Instead, it just transported to me.

I became the bad.

- loosely based off ASH: Coven ; title based off Decode by Paramore -