He lay in the blood and filth, a discarded, broken thing.
For a minute, maybe ten, the world was nothing but a red, roaring ocean of pain. He couldn't breathe. His lungs were on fire, gurgling. The air was too thin. The cold was a heavy blanket, pushing him down, promising to end the agony.
'Just let go.'
The thought was a whisper, a sweet, seductive promise.
'It's over. You can't win. They were right. You're nothing. Just die. It will stop hurting.'
He almost did. He let his breath shallow out, let the darkness at the edge of his vision creep in. It was warm. It was peaceful.
Then, a face flashed in the blackness.
The lanky teen's, smiling, spittle flying from his lips as he yelled, "Fucking vermin!"
And another face.
The merchant's, his expression twisting into a sneer of pure disgust before he turned his back on a man being beaten to death.
And another.
The woman's, her eyes wide with false pity as she hurried past, pretending not to hear the crack of his bones.
'They are all... fine.'
'They are home. They are warm. They are probably right now laughing, drinking ale, telling a story about the "curse" they'd seen, the "pest" that had been "handled." They will sleep in their beds tonight. They will wake up and go to their jobs, their families.'
'And I will be a frozen, half-eaten corpse in an alley!'
'They won.'
A new feeling, hotter than his fever, sharper than his broken bones, cut through the peaceful, dying haze.
It was rage.
It wasn't a spark. It was a chemical fire. A deep, black, subterranean hatred that was so pure it felt like a physical substance, filling his lungs and choking out the desire to die.
"No..."
The word was a wet, bloody gurgle in his throat. It hurt. Everything hurt.
"You... bastards... all of you..."
He wasn't crying from sadness. He was crying from pain and rage. Hot, agonizing tears of pure, undiluted fury streamed from his swollen eyes, carving clean paths through the grime and blood on his face.
He wanted to kill them. Not just the boys. He wanted to find that merchant. He wanted to drag him from his stall, to beat his face against the cobblestones, to ask him how "bad luck" felt when it was breaking his ribs one by one. He wanted to find that woman, to light her cart on fire, to make her watch as everything she had was turned to ash, and then turn his back on her as she screamed.
He wanted to find the guard who kicked him, the priest who called him "refuse," the king who exiled him. He wanted to stand on the palace walls, and he wanted to burn the entire fucking city to the ground.
But the rage he felt for them was matched only by the suffocating, crushing hatred he felt for himself.
"Idiot," he sobbed, the sound a horrific, wet cough that sent fire through his chest. "You... fucking... idiot!"
He had done this.
He had wished for this.
He had stood in that park, a safe, warm, boring park on Earth, and he had begged the universe to throw him away. He'd been so obsessed with his pathetic, porn-addled fantasies of "milfs" and "domination" that he'd thrown away a paradise.
His cubicle. His shitty, beige cubicle with the buzzing light and the mosquito-whine monitor. He would kill to be back in that cubicle. He would happily rot behind that desk for a hundred years. He'd had a bed. He'd had a microwave. He'd had food that he'd bought with money he'd earned. He had been safe.
"I... I want to go home..." he whimpered, the admission torn from him. "Please... I'll be good... I'll never complain... just... let me go home..."
But he couldn't. He was here. He had traded his life for a gutter, and the universe had been all too happy to make the exchange.
His hatred twisted again, aiming up.
He looked at the two moons, cold and silent in the sky, and he hated them.
He hated the "Suns" the people prayed to. He hated the "gods" who had "cursed" him. He hated whatever cosmic, indifferent thing had heard his stupid, horny, pathetic wish and decided it would be funny to grant it in the cruelest way possible.
"You did this!" he screamed in his mind, his body too broken to make a sound. "You listened! You heard me, and you did this! For what?! A joke?! To watch a bug suffer?! FUCK YOU! FUCK ALL OF YOU!"
He was done with gods. Done with kings. Done with people.
They had all had their chance. They had all, every single one, failed.
They had looked at a man suffering, and they had either joined in, or turned their backs.
Fine.
He wasn't a man anymore. They had been right all along. He was a curse. He was a blight. He was vermin.
And vermin didn't ask for pity.
Vermin survived. Vermin multiplied. Vermin devoured.
He wasn't going to live. He was going to endure. He was going to spite them. He would refuse to give them the satisfaction of his death.
He had to move. He couldn't die in the open.
He looked at the end of the alley. Just a few feet away was a larger pile of refuse—rotting straw, discarded barrels, a mountain of stinking, rain-soaked trash. It was a den. A rat's nest.
It was cover.
"Move," he commanded himself, his voice a bloody whisper.
He planted his one good hand, the one that wasn't a broken mess, into the grime. He shoved.
The world vanished in a supernova of pain as his broken ribs ground against each other. He screamed, a high-pitched, gurgling sound that was barely human. His mangled hand was useless, a lump of broken meat.
He collapsed back onto the cobblestones, sobbing and shaking.
"I can't... I can't..."
The merchant's sneer.
He shoved again.
He used his heels to dig in and dragged his shattered body across the stone. It was a pathetic, agonizing crawl. A slug's pace. He was a broken animal, leaving a trail of blood and filth behind him.
With every movement, he sobbed. He cursed.
"Fuck... you..."
"Fucking... kill you..."
"Fucking... idiot... Arthur..."
It took him what felt like an eternity. By the time he reached the trash heap, he was barely conscious. He burrowed into the rotting straw, the stench of mold and waste filling his shattered nose. It was disgusting.
It was the safest he had felt in weeks.
He collapsed into the filth, hidden from the world, a creature of the gutter. He was alive. Barely.
The pain was his world, but the hate was his air. It was the only thing keeping him breathing. He lay there, shivering, bleeding, and broken, and for the first time since he'd arrived, he had a purpose.
It wasn't to be a hero.
It wasn't to find a milf.
It wasn't even to go home.
It was to live, just to spite the world that wanted him dead.
And if he lived, he would find a way to make them pay. He would burn this world to the ground and laugh as it all turned to ash.
*****
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