The Phoenix Hunt

Chapter I: Monster

"With only three days until the anniversary of the catastrophic Hydra Hunt, we come to you with reports that local police in Italy have tracked and captured the Hydra that has been terrorising the streets of Rome for several months. The Hydra has been tranquillised and taken into custody alongside several accomplices," The voice registers, high-pitched and nasal, and I groan in protest. I peel one eye open and glance at the television, watching the newscaster shuffle the papers in agitation on her desk as she talks. Her eyes lift and she stares into the camera. They're alight, flames of burning hatred in her eyes ready to spit fire. I sit up, my head groggy and a vague sense of nausea plaguing my body from excessive alcohol consumption the night before.

"We remind anyone who intentionally helps or conceals a Hydra that you will be considered an accessory after the fact, an offence punishable by death in most regions," Her tone remains calm, but I can hear the underlying thread of anger that pierces through the façade of professionalism.

Really though, who can blame her? Hydras are the monsters your parents warned you about when they told you not to talk to strangers and to never leave your friends on their own. The monsters that forced you to keep your hands on the steering wheel when you're pulled over, or to ask for Angela in a bar. They're the monsters you see every day, walking their dog or driving to work, but when they get home the evil that lies beneath the surface is unleashed on their loved ones, or an animal, or a child. They're the epitome of evil that you see every day even when you don't know it. Except Hydra's are worse, because they're every type of evil I've just mentioned with no way to catch them or control them. Or, more importantly, kill them.

You see, about 18 months ago, I died. Like, really died. I felt the bullet pierce my skull, my brain tissue split and escape from the crevice in the back of my head, splattering over the freshly painted white walls of the hotel. Five seconds later, the man who killed me turned the gun on himself. And sixty seconds later, the whole world as you know it changed forever. In sixty seconds, 207 people died across the world, men, women and children lost to their loved ones forever. Or so they thought.

Of the 207 that died, 89 woke up. Yes, you heard me correctly. They woke up. Unfortunately, the 89 that woke up were not the ones you want to return from the dead. They were the worst of the worst, the souls with no shred of good left to beat back the evil that grew within. And every single one woke up with startling green eyes, and the strength and speed to take down a small army. 89 people came back from the dead and not one of them deserved to. A serial killer on death row who'd slaughtered seventeen women in cold blood; an abusive wife who'd left her husband physically and emotionally destroyed; a police officer with a track record for shooting unarmed black men; a serial rapist who'd evaded imprisonment eight times and a suicide bomber that detonated his bomb outside of a school in Yemen. That's who came back. Not the victims of the serial killer, or the unarmed black man that was shot on his drive to work, or the twenty-one children blown up outside of their school. They all died, and in a cruel twist of fate, or destiny, or whatever you call it, we survived. Yes, we. I woke up too. We didn't deserve to. Now, the immortality that came with it? Maybe we deserve that. Maybe we deserve to be tortured, experimented on, in hiding, or on the run. A constant battle to evade imprisonment without the sweet escape of death.

The newscaster's nasally voice cuts through my thoughts, grating against my throbbing head and forcing a slug of last night's tequila to claw back up my throat. Ladies and Gentlemen, I'm Cherry Blake and this has been the morning news on Channel 9. Thanks for watching, see you next time. The obnoxiously loud theme tune that follows startles me into scrambling across my single bed and muting the television.

I sit up, glancing around my apartment. It's a shoe-box really, an old, filthy shoe-box that's too small for one person. But, it's cheap and it's a month-to-month lease, no strings attached. It's most redeeming feature, however, is the large window in the sitting area that, come dawn, floods the apartment with light. In the darkest hours of the night, when my fear wont be tamed and my haunted dreams wake me short of breath and sweaty, I turn on every lamp I have, filling the apartment with synthetic light. However, my solace truly arrives with the warm light spilling through my window at sunrise; when I know that he can no longer lurk in the cover of darkness.