They Called Me FIVE

LANCE

Finally Lista showed his true self. I don't know if this is possible. He transformed. He shed his own skin like snakes wriggle out of theirs. New flesh green musk rippled in his arms. He pulled out his face, revealing a skully green skinned man with a shock hollow cheeks and teeth twice the size of dentures. 

He outgrew his human size. He became taller – seven, maybe eight feet tall – his muscles tripled its size. Large pulsing veins transverse on his ripped bare chest. A man, the same build as the new him stands by his side. 

I resisted the urge to run on that spot. I kept my feet planted on the ground. The shadows detecting my fear. They swirled around me. Not exactly comforting but it gives me an edge to stay focused. To never lose track of my goal.

What did I came here for? To kill them.

What did they put me through? They murdered me again and again, feeling pleasure from the sight of Beasts tore my limbs apart. Scratch my guts inside out. They put their tongue on my blood, licking the pain and savoring the screams I let out. 

No mercy. They treated me like my undead warriors. Even though I still have a heart that beats and emotions that got scarred. Now, its their turn to know how that feels like.

Dad and Lista has the same bald head, no human skin retaining on their frame. Dad came on to me, his hand holding a gleaming silver sword to long for the normal ones we used to spar before. His face is wearing a nasty grin of self assurance, of victory.

I searched in the ground for weapons. Except for the unused rifles, nothing. That couldn't be good. I scowled. Rifles aren't good for close combats. Enemies with eye blinding speed could slice your neck even before you took a shot.

Rifles aren't a match for Dad. Not in the monstrous form he has now. I began to circle in my strides. The shadows backing me up in my hands. Blazing like fire, its too dangerous to use this against Dad. 

I have never beaten him when he's in human form before. He might cut off my arms before I could lash out my wave. My fingers quivered. A signal its in its limit of death waves. 

First I snuff out lives, it doubles my strength, then I go past its 100 percent capacity to raised the dead. Now I'm left with a slight ringing in my ears and eyes buzzing and attempting to tilt the world in slow motion ferris wheel.

I clench both my fist. Dad is causally swinging his new gleaming sword. I check it out. There's a golden line tracing its edge. Like a molten thin lava traveling through small crevice. I recognize the pattern.

I recognize the aura it bears. Suddenly I looked through the grain of mist and screams and out of this world gigantic branches to search for Seven. That sword has the same aura as her blooming rose.

The dream I had of her came back to my mind. Efta… I'm more convinced that wasn't her. Seven in real life is too hard to discern. Too hard to figure out what she's thinking. I pushed back the possibility that Seven works with my Dad and Lista.

Because its completely absurd. 

They must have done something for Dad's sword to retain some of her powers.  Experiments? Blessing absorption tools? Alpha Beast? There's a lot of ways to accomplish it. Dad stepped closer to my circle.

In my eyes, he's no longer the kind and brilliant man he once was. This is the monster who lived under the pretense of being my father. This is the product of my foolishness, my misgivings, I trust too much. Because I have no one to turn other than him.

His words became my world. His warnings became my rules. 

We sized each other up. Just like what we always do before we spar in our morning trainings. Without warning, he ran past the circle I built with my shadow and slice it in half. I'm momentarily stupefied.

No one had done it before. It's impossible for my shadows to burn out like fire because – 

My thoughts are preoccupied. I didn't notice Dad has already sprang himself inches away from me. His hand find its way in my throat. He lifts me up, one handed, I'm staring eye to eye to a monster who didn't hesitate to swing his sword in the air and cut my neck from my body.

It was strange. It wasn't painful. It was flawless. 

I didn't cry. I didn't scream. My cowardice sprangs into my eyes, welling it with overflowing tears. Years I spent with him flush out. Memories playing back. The road trips, the morning, lunch and dinner pizzas. The peaceful old days spent lazing in the couch. 

The day when he trembled in my arms. Looking vulnerable as ever. Confessing to me what happened to Mom, who he really was. 

I'm still a soft hearted coward huh.

After all the things they've done to me I still searched for traces of emotions he showed me for all those years. Dad the paranoid alien talker. The only person who tuck my blanket at night, kiss my forehead goodnight, tell me stories about unworldly fairytales I've never heard or seen in children's books.

He knows every detail about me. I know every detail about him. But maybe not everything. My heart, which probably stop beating at my dead body on the ground, still longs for those days. 

One last time….

If he shows any sign of the him I knew…

If his eyes crinkled, scowled, and wells up with the same emotion he used to gave me when I'm growing up… I'll forgive him. I'll forget everything. I'll revert back to the stubborn me. 

I'll convince Magnus to take him with us…Find a way to revert back the soul he lost…. Just once…

I'll give him one last chance…

Please don't waste it Dad.

Don't give me another reason to let this hatred burn more fire within me. 

Even after all you've done I still love you. I became who I am…thanks to you, so please.

"Dad?" I croaked. I'm amazed to find my voice even if I lost my throat.

"Dad, will you come with me? Let's stop this and – "

He didn't let me finish talking. He took up his sword and swing it vertically in the air. Slicing my head he held in his hand in half. Eyes devoid of emotions. Heart empty of sensations. 

I want to put a lid…of the jar of overflowing tears in my heart. 

That was his chance. I offered him an opportunity to start over. Below my red rimmed tears, blood pooling on the ground, Dad crushed my other half of the head with his feet. Planting his sword on the other half. It went through my skull, to my brain…everything in me is a tattered mess.

This is what I get for trying to reach out the past where everything was still okay. 

"I have no son." He said in a voice I always hear in our morning trainings, in our bedtime story tellings. 

"Seems like I became too immersed in my 'acting as father' to you, lowly scum. You waste your blessing to be a pile of blistered mess in my feet. Just for what?" He crushed my other half of head. 

I watch my brains spilled out like a pig's brain spilled after it's butchered. My eye ball rolled closer to the other half he slashed with sword with.

At the farther left, I heard Lista crack a cruel nasty laugh.

"Man, what a performance. You sure you're really a Chosen One? Why are you so weak?" Lista mused. He copied Dad's movements. He placed his foot on my headless body. Stomping my chest with his black boots. 

"Do you know what's that sword your Dad held? You recognize what's in it?" 

I can't speak. My tongue is cut in half, my mouth, my teeth. Plus the gleaming sword sticking out like flagpole. My left eye tear up, because of blood, its hard to tell the two apart. 

Yeah, I'm crying like a fool. I'm sad like a reckless idiot as I was. Because I'm naïve. Because I let you both do this to me. You came into my life, lending me a hand to stand up. I have no one, I only have you both.

The short days I spent with you, I didn't want to admit it, became one of my drive, my reason to survive. Despite all that you've done I still held this tiny glimmer of hope you'll come into your senses. 

That I was both the son you raised. That I was the meek boy you wake up each morning and ate together with in breakfast table. 

Believe it or not, I still dream about it each day I spent in the cell you threw me in. I'm really a fool aren't I? I knew this will happen. Once a Faery slave, will always a faery slave. That statement is the same with, 'Once a betrayer will always be a betrayer.'

Nothing in my efforts to make you come back to my side can change that. And that is everything.