Blood Under the Bridge



"It is impossible to suffer without making someone pay for it; every complaint already contains revenge."

~Friedrich Nietzsche



"God! Damn it, dude!" I screamed at my brother, "shut the hell up!"

He had been bothering me and running his mouth about me and what I do for weeks now, and I was getting tired of it. Every day of every year I can remember he has always had some reason to run his mouth and make me angry. It's no secret around my house that I have a certian... Blood lust.... When I'm angry.

"Why don't you make me?" he'd constantly say, every time I was about to explode, " what're you going to do, anyways?"

"Look," I said with the last string of patience about to fray, "you'll get what you deserve, one day. I just hope it won't be me who shows you."

"What do I deserve? Why don't you show me?"

As he said that, I snapped and lost it. I walked to the kitchen and behind me I could hear in his sarcastic tone, "oh nooo! He's getting a knife."

And that was it, I walked back into the living room and loomed over him, my teeth grinding, my hand clinched, and a 10-inch carving knife held tightly in my hand. I lunged for him, blade swinging, and landed the knife in his neck. I could feel the warm, sticky blood squirting everywhere and I could feel him struggle on the receiving end of the incision. Believe it or not, I almost regretted doing that. Almost.

It's been ten years now, and I was moved to a maximum security prison as soon as I was convicted. My case was pretty well set, having murdered that son-of-a-bitch. I guess that saying is true, sociopaths have no conscience, no little voice in the back of their head, their voice of reason. I was diagnosed as bi-polar/ sociopathic when I was a mere teenager, believe it or not. I liked putting people in danger to see what they would do, or if they had any survival initiative. My fondest memories of my morbid actions was in the Marines. As a child, it was my dream to serve my country, but then I let it get out of hand. My squad was led on a mission to catch and keep any enemy counter soldiers. We head out and all of a sudden a cold chill ran down my spine and I grinned wide and walked as quietly as possible. Upon finding a soldier who decided to take a little nap, I stabbed him in the throat. Oh, how much I loved that gurgling sound of him choking on his own blood. As he stopped struggling in attempts to pass out from blood loss, I cut his ears off, then chipped his nose, and sliced his lip and shoved it in the hole in his throat. By the time I was done, he had died, and I headed back to camp to wash up.

I cleaned off in a river and damped my clothes to wash them. I wasn't usually paranoid, but I swore I had heard something, something.... Human almost. It sounded like a crushed tree limb, but I ignored it. When I finished washing my uniform, I was rushed by another one of them, but this one was ready to attack. Swinging a knife, he was aiming for my head, or my neck, whatever. I acted as quickly as I could, but still got stabbed in the process. I ripped the knife out of my arm and continued after him, gaining quickly. As soon as I had him to the ground, I went to work. I pushed his eyes into the sockets and eventually pulled them out with my fingers, the screaming was like nothing I had ever heard before, and it made me so.... Ecstatic. I threw his eyeballs away and picked up a rock and bashed his skull in. Soon, brain matter was all over the grass and dirt. I got up, and proceeded back to camp.

No one really knows much about me, how I think, or my morbid obsession. But, many people still think I sold my self to Satan, being as I should've been killed too many times to keep count.

Working in infantry, we were beat five of their men to our every one man. I was over powered along with some others of our squad and was blind folded. From there on, I don't really know what happened. I didn't know what was happening until the fold was removed, and I lean against a wall, chained by the wrists. My legs were tied tightly with barbed wire that was already cutting deep in my flesh. My mouth was sewn shut, one of the other two men besides me had his eyes sewn shut, and the last one appeared to have his hearing lost. His eyes wandered all around the room, and when he tried to speak, it sounded like his mouth was full of something. I tried to take my focus off of the pain in my face and legs and attempted to wiggle my way free. The worst part, the thing I didn't notice until I really looked around, was that we weren't the first group to have been taken in this room, seeing as there were all types of medieval-like torture machines and discolouring on the walls, a syrupy red looking substance. The man with his eyes shut eventually went ballistic and tried to yank his arms out of the chains, which he only succeeded in ripping his arms off and bleeding to death. Seeing this, the deaf man ran his head back and forth into the wall, eventually cracking his skull and leaking blood.

I was soon to die of something, I could feel it. But in a daze, I heard absolute chaos and the ground beneath me shake. All I could think was, "Thank you traceable communication devices."

I was rescued just in time, sent home under honourable discharge, and lived on. Just a few months later would bring us back to the point that I started off telling this story.

I awake every morning in fear. Fear that my brother will come back and get his revenge... Every day seems like the last for me. I have nightmares of burning for the rest of eternity, never getting used to the pain or dying. I fear I could very well have myself literally skinned alive...

The next morning, things seemed different. I had just waken up from a dream about my own funeral and lie in my beak, breathing heavily, As my vision adjusts to the darkness, I see a silhouette outside my cell, assuming it's just a guard, I resume pretending to sleep, closing my eyes. I had that nagging feeling I was still being watched and it annoyed me.

"Piss off," I said to the guard, "I'm trying to get some sleep here."

I eventually stopped feeling like I was being watched as I heard feet shuffle and their echo fade. The next morning I woke with excruciating pain running through my body. As I opened my eyes, I saw one of those terrible set-up things. You know, that shit that has a whole bunch of steps and the actions caused by the previous one eventually causes one big action? I saw two lit candles burning ropes tied around my limbs and a barb wire running through my body.

I'll be honest, I cried a little when I realised what was going to happen. The ropes suspended me to keep me alive, and when they burnt and untensed, my body would be split in two. I saw a silhouette watching... It looked familiar, but it's been so long, I don't even remember where its face was from... The last thing I saw was my dead brother sticking his disgusting, decaying fingers in my eye sockets.