Good Evil and I

Where do I begin?

Blood was trickling down the right side of my face and from my nose. There were several cuts throughout my body, both shallow and deep. My white shirt was now a horrid pinkish-red hue. My left foot ankle seemed dislocated, I was unable to put any weight on it. I was on my four, knees scraped, bleeding out from the cuts, unsure if any of my major veins or arteries were cut out. I tried to lift myself onto my right leg, using a nearby electric pole for support.

As I achieved temporary balance on the pole, I started to hop on the better leg to keep moving. I didn't understand why he left me alive. He was obviously more powerful and more dominant in the fight. I don't think I can call it a fight, a fight is were both the parties get to deal in blows. In my case, it was just a one-sided beating to the death.

I knew my opponent was a skilled knife wielder and perhaps one of the world's best hand-to-hand combat specialist, not only did he learn his skills to perfection but he was so perceptive and agile that he mastered those skills within a few months of training and practice. But how do I know this? Because that's how long it took me to learn those skills. And he is faster than me in everything.

As I hobbled to the nearby trash can, I made my self steady at the trash can and tore my shirt open. There were small nicks all over my chest and stomach but nothing severe over there, my left shoulder seemed to have a deep cut and the right arm had a few serious looking cuts. I tried to prevent the bleeding by tying them up for now but I'd soon need some proper medical help. Sure my regenerative healing ability should help too but it wasn't miraculous, I could heal faster than a regular human, much faster, but it takes a lot of my own energy which I didn't have at all.

The streets were empty, quite deserted somehow. In a country so heavily populated, it was a very rare occurrence. Indians were always on the move, someone or the other poking their pointy noses into anything and everything that happened around. Especially the Hyderabadi people, generally good folk but they genetically must have this extreme build of curiosity because they just can't avoid anything loud or extravagant.

Yet, today no one was here, no one was staring out of their homes or just sipping tea and eyeing at me like an alien or some foreign object, there wasn't any chatter, any whispering or gasping from any elderly women or no quizzical looks from the street folk. There weren't even children who would be playing outside at this hour. The eerie silence of what should have been a normal buzzing life of an Indian neighborhood was getting increasingly confusing.

I could hear distant noises of life, dogs barking, vehicles moving around, some child crying and the normal voice of the streets but they were from a distance, neither did they sound immediate nor did they come from nearby. There was a small two-storied building a few away from the new electric pole that I had now stopped at. I was getting desperate for help as my sight was starting to fade and my body was getting dehydrated.

I decided to walk inside. Clenching at the rusting gate covered with torn patches of black paint, I slowly start to pull the gate open and walk into the first door I see. As I go into knock, I notice that the lock was blown out and I was free to go in. Puzzled and confused, I just stood still for a moment to reconfirm what my brain was analyzing. The door's lock busted out and I could see pieces of it laying around broken.

I hopped in on my good foot, careful to avoid the pieces laying around. The house was intact but  deserted. Or so it seemed. I hopped my way to a room which I thought was the bedroom. As I opened the door,  I shut the door again immediately. My heart beat just sped up to double its rate as a chill ran down my spine. My eyes were widened in horror, my palms sweating and my physical numbed by the shock.

Four dead bodies. There were four dead bodies, their heads all smashed to pulp as their brains poured out along with their blood painting the floor red. I hadn't noticed earlier but there was red even on this side of the floor, the blood must have poured out. I slowly built the courage to walk in again and slowly walked myself in, using the walls around for support. There were two adults, a male and a female, perhaps the mother and father, the father's body was on the bed and the mother's body was by the dresser in front of the mirror; she must have been applying makeup. There was a body of a boy I guess, maybe of an age of 3 whose hand was in his mother's hand, his body on the same cold floor. The worst of all was the body that was in the crib, a baby. My eyes were starting to slightly tear out, maybe out of anger, fear, disgust, sadness, I wasn't sure. There was a photo, by the dresser in an intricate photo frame, a photo of an ordinary family, alive. And the baby was crying in the photo, the mother trying to console the baby. The boy was playing around his father's legs and his father was trying to control the kid. And the photo was now covered in red.