Cycle: 3000. Time: 06:00
"Alright, Mercenaries of The Messengers! Roll-Call for the day!" A muscular, grizzled captain yelled atop the chrome-silver perimeters on a large naval ship.
Gray hairs on his well-groomed beard shines in the light from the skies.
Wrinkles and crow's feet form on his face as he takes a glance at each crew member.
A loose gold nametag etched on his gray uniform with black outlining. His eyes azure, bluer than the bright skies.
It read: Captain Cyrus.
Standing at the bow's edge of the warship of many memories, leaning on the shining silver rails, stomping his thick boots as if to make sure the ship maintains stability in the treacherous waters.
Clearing his old, dry throat, found a lump in it, "Ahem. Darius," he called.
"Here." Darius bobbed his head in boredom with sharp brown eyes.
"Amir."
"Also here," Amir said as he adjusted his thick-framed glasses and short dark hair.
"Karam," the old man muttered.
"Alive." He snickered, with flowing long curly hair in the wind.
The old man stared at him for a second in disappointment.
"Ismail?"
"Still breathing." Ismail smiled with dimples and gave a fist bump to Karam.
Exhaling, "Lee."
"Always." He said as he read a digital-style comic book that has audio-dialogue playing with each speech bubble, and his brown ponytail stayed still.
"Nora."
"Yup." She shrugged, as her full lips puffed.
"Roshan."
"Present!" She cheered pretentiously with gleaming blue eyes.
"Layla."
"Here." She said monotone, with braids hanging from long black hair.
"Dragan?" the old man said in a grand tone.
He looked around.
"Not here," Cyrus remarked.
Then a quick pause.
"Malik, son."
Son.
Both tended not to speak of it much, so it seemed like a rumor to the other crew at times. Sitting down with long dark-brown hair nearly covering his face. Innocently, the boy, no more than seven years old, raised his hand and didn't say a singular word.
Strikingly, the sea splashed a wave grand as the clouds above. Roaring a meticulous crescendo as it rocked the ship from under, the boy kept his arm raised as not a drop of water landed on him.
Seagulls flew by like torpedoes, flying fish jumped sky-high out of the sea like rockets, and barnacles clamped onto the ship with ferocity as the sapphire sea commenced its outcry.
He put it down, twirling his enchanting lengthy hair with a grin of malice as he looked downward.
Cyrus scratched his beard like something felt off, but he chose not to interfere. Moved on, head counting like he always does in the mornings.
"That boy's like a short blade," Cyrus had once said. "Might cut you if you don't know how to hold it."
. . .
This ship was too loud. However, the young, small boy still slouched on the rails, listening to each passing wave.
Laughter echoed, whirring, soldering tools were used on certain broken-off parts of the railing to stabilize it. Boots scraped the metal floor, squeaking stenciled in Malik's mind. But it felt far away, muffled, almost grainy to his eardrums.
Suddenly, he jumped up without warning, his hair bounced upward as it lay back obediently on his shoulders. He wandered the corridors like a ghost. Not quite invisible, just that nobody ever asked where he was going.
Passing Cyrus's office, the milk-white bathrooms with tiles, and leaning on the wall, as he takes out a sheet of paper and a marker. Drawing no less than the adeptness of an amateur, he giggles naturally as he scribbles on the page that he pressed against the wall, now in complete focus.
Looking down, he noticed something he never knew.
A jagged bayonet. Old. Oxidized from a lack of properly rinsing. It contrasts with the clean metal sleekness of the ship's floor. An oblong hole through the knife leaving only edges as it spikes with ridges that can dig into flesh.
It had most likely fallen out of a weapons box that Cyrus carries to a storage room down the stairwell to the hall which holds everybody's room. Nobody saw the boy. Even if they did, they wouldn't bat an eye—he was just a child, after all.
Slipped from Pandora's box, a rusty reminder of war to the poor kid.
He folded his drawing, put his marker and folded paper in his pocket, as he knelt down to pick up the harbinger of bloodshed. Malik gripped it like a forbidden secret. A totem. A key into a realm he had yet to seek.
Something that made sense of a world that didn't. He wasn't sure why he took it. His intuition felt that he needed it. A thought murmured throughout his skull, then a voice.
"Stealing is okay. If nobody gives you anything, then take everything."
. . .
Standing tall next to Malik, towering him by at a meter and a half.
His low haircut grazed the ceiling of the corridor, as his face carved in cruel lines of voices like broken ashes of rock scattered across magma on dull skin.
Its name was Dragan, a brute of Kharzan. An outlier amongst the rest, except Malik, of course. He didn't pick on Malik like others would by teasing, joking, or naming. It was purely pressing on sight, when nobody was around on watch.
"Someday, not today, not tomorrow, but someday. I will end you. Little shit. Think you're hot stuff, huh? Nobody here likes you, and you make it so easy to be targeted!"
The beast had a lot of disorders evident with a mere glance.
Pressing a large ashy hand with the roughness of wood, slamming the helpless boy to the sleek metal wall that smelled of modern cleaning detergent. Dragan cackled as he moved Malik's hair out of his face, "You sure ya ain't a girl? You're awfully petite too . . ."
With eyes closed, layered with eyelashes thicker and darker than a shadow, he opens them, staring directly into the soul of an insecure specimen.
"What the hell's with those eyes, freak?" Dragan said in a disgusted tone as his lumpy, rough-skinned complexion bounced as he stepped back.
Gray storms swirled with a black hole in the eye of the hurricane, with sharp, siren-like eyes of cruelty.
Sadness? Loneliness? Hatred? No emotion was discernible. As if he had given up with a glower whilst piercing him ruthlessly in his vision of silver cyclones. With a look of mixed signals, the boy's eyelids drooped.
"You falling asleep, dumbass?" Dragan watched the strange boy like he was a lab rat.
Dragan noticed the slip of paper in his pocket; he quickly snatched it before Malik could react. "What's this? Aww . . . is that you and your daddy? He ain't your dad, kid." The behemoth insulted him as he crumpled the paper and threw it wide, into the ocean.
The wind allowed the paper to enter the ocean . . . there was no resistance, only acceptance. Malik never screamed. Never told Cyrus. Or Darius. Or Roshan, Layla, or anybody for that matter.
He only kept thought of it.
In a low whisper the boy spoke: "I'll remember that. For that, I accept you." The boy marched away with strength for a kid of his stature, covering his eyes as if they blind those who stare into it.
Dragan frowned, "It wasn't fun this time." He scratched his faint eyebrows as his skin creased with every fold of movement as his fingers glided across. Then, he walked away, slowly.
Malik turned the corridor, and found Darius working with welding tools to enhance the ship's railing.
He wears a clear mask with buttons and fans on the interior. Cyan glows from it to flash whatever he focuses on to precision.
"What's up, buddy? You need something?" he asked softly.
"No . . . I just wanted to watch." Malik said coldly, looking down.
"Ok, well this stuff's dangerous, so step back a bit." He grinned tightly.
Past Darius, Roshan and Layla walk near them to initiate conversation.
The cheerful Roshan asks, "So, what'cha guys doin'?"
Darius flips his mask open, "Nothing much, just fixing up the rails. You girls shouldn't be so close here."
"Oh please." Roshan giggled.
Layla smirked, "Hey Malik."
The sickly pale boy looked at the woman, "Yes?" he said in a forced-deep voice.
She laughed, "Ya' know, I can help you out with your hair. You want me to?"
"I-I didn't know what to do with it, sure I'd like that." Malik could only ponder.
Nobody wanted to do something so nice to me before.
"I could help layer it!" Roshan added gleefully.
She ran into the hallway, immediately came back with a pink-violet pouch with all sorts of hair products and accessories.
"What's all that weird stuff?" the boy asked faintly.
The women giggled and didn't answer, as they began to trim it.
Malik didn't mind. He stared for what felt like hours at each drifting azure wave, but it didn't bore him.
Time passed quick, "Done!" Roshan said gleefully.
Layla peered at Malik having a staring contest with the ocean.
She asked him what he was doing.
He only muttered, "Listening."
"To what?" she added.
"The ship, the ocean, the waves, all of it."
Layla didn't understand, but she still sat beside him, adjusting his newly formed luscious fur of a mystical oakwood forest come to fruition.
Roshan had to go, and so did Darius. They waved goodbye, but the pale boy and the mercenary woman remained.
Like watercolor paintings, a violet and orange mixture filled the sky, shading the clouds with their ethereal, elegant lights.
"Purple sky . . ." he whispered.
"Yes, Malik, purple sky . . . so, do you like it?" She pulled out a mirror from the pouch that Roshan left, and gave it to him.
Malik smiled with a mask, "I like it," behind it, he didn't hate it, but his appearance.
I have the look of a weirdo he said . . . my eyes they— I don't even know anymore.
Was the beast right again?
Layla stares at the sickly pale boy.
Malik never spoke of his 'thoughts'. He said to Darius that he "believed in broken things."
He's unfinished. Not broken.
From his many minds, anger thrives, wrath, an urge to pierce through walls.
Layla got up and helped Malik to his room.
. . .
Malik lay in his empty corridor that only consists of one thing: a white mattress.
I'm alone. What do I want to believe?
No. Nothing's real. It's just my stupid head.
Dragan's hand hurts. I felt my heart squishing with every push. That's real.
Malik scrunched his head as he lay in drowning emptiness.
Hate is real.
. . .
Nighttime.
Malik had taken a nap. Yet awoke. A black sky filled with blinking lights that Malik was told to never speak of. It fills his room with faint white moonlight and dust as the sea rocks his bed like a crib.
He looked like a child to them.
But really, was he?
Deep down, he wanted more. And he would do anything for more.
An avarice, such greed unquenched.
He wanted to be seen. Felt. Feared. A thirst for such despair in others' eyes. Did he want that? Maybe he did, if it meant becoming a beast like another. But a worse one.
Bummer. I know they're real, but not to them.
Slowly, he gets up like a mummy from a tomb. Smiling, cynical. He felt real.
"I am real," he whispers as he pulled something from his pocket.
. . .
Meanwhile, Dragan snores in his crimson blanket, a blanket too large for the bed that it droops onto the floor.
Suddenly—Dragan instantly heard a sound. He quickly leaned up, examining his room.
Nothing.
The black bed frame absorbed all light, making it near impossible to properly see. But something glinted.
What in Zaleth's name?
A rusty bayonet glistened above him, quickly—vanished. Dragan rushed out of bed with paws up. An attack?
No . . . an ending . . .
A quick flash of shadow then—
It weaved, locking its left arm on Dragan's thick, scarred neck. The Bayonet had outmaneuvered the beast. The giant felt the tip of a ridged blade grazing his neck.
All of a sudden, the Bayonet spoke in its glide, like a message from demise.
"Your hate is real . . ."
"W-what?" Dragan gasped.
"But you're not . . ."
Dragan struggled, but the Bayonet had locked itself onto him. The giant attempted to shake him off, but the blade persisted. Its rustiness glided in its full glory.
Slowly—
"GAHHHH!" howled the brute.
Drips of blood leak off the small gash, millimeters near his artery. An inch away from reality.
"Shh . . . it's not as real as I am," muttered the oxidized javelin-blade.
A spotlight of moon shined through the barred windows rocking in the sea, muffling the screams. The light shone on the wielder of the Bayonet.
"M-Malik?" he whimpered.
"No . . . the Bayonet only hisses in thirst of the ablution from your bursting arteries of Kharzan. I am the stage, and the harbinger of my inundation . . . is the performer."
The Bayonet is no longer a boy. The boy was pulverized already. This is all that remains.
"P-please, Malik I'll—"
"Hush, child." The Bayonet pierced, vocally.
Kneeling, the giant closed his dust-filled eyelids.
"You told the boy we will end. I apologize . . . but not in this lifetime." His words stabbed through the eardrums of any who listen.
"I wanted respect. You failed. You will end." It said.
The Bayonet unrestricted the large child, "I let you go, yet you're too scared." He smiles as he locks eyes with the man-child bowing before him.
"Swing. End me. Stick to your word." It insisted.
Trembling, the giant couldn't speak, more blood still leaking droplets onto the metallic floorboards.
"Get your revenge. Just do it." He shook in reverence.
"What am I venging? I'm only satiating. A hunger that feeds. A hunger that needs." The Bayonet cackled, with layered brown wooly hair on his scalp reflecting in the gray moonlight.
"Look into the eyes of the Bayonet. The same eyes you judged. What do you think?"
"T-They're nice," muttered the giant.
"Liar. You used to be real. Not anymore . . . This is for you, as you don't suffice for me. A crimson-wrapped gift from what was found below my feet." He held the blood-coated, rusty knife—pressing softly on Dragan's rough neck.
The Bayonet laughed uncontrollably as the giant couldn't move a muscle in shock.
Dancing, the blade danced on his throat like a ballerina, swaying its movement, with just teasing force—enough to not cut, but leave a mark.
Opening his eyes, the giant smiled.
He's gonna let me live?—
No.
The Bayonet speared through his throat. His head lay back with pulling loose flesh, sprinkling blood as he embraced it.
"I'm sorry . . . my only real comrade. I have given you a performance of ages. Tell me, are you willing to watch until the curtains close?" he murmured.
He kneeled down, took the stiletto, and—
Cleanly sliced off his hand.
"This was the hand you crushed my heart with. You killed the boy. Now, he in tranquil with you, for he accepts you gracefully." The spewing bloody body toppled over as he spoke.
Normally, a Kharzan native shouldn't be so fragile, yet he let it happen. For this wasn't an assassination. It was a send-off of venerability. Malik carefully placed the hand on the half-headless corpse, on the chest where he placed his hand on the boy.
He closed his eyes anew. Gray no longer, for they shield behind fields of crimson red.
Suddenly—
A huge figure entered . . .
"Father?" Malik whispered weakly.
A scene beyond comprehension.
Cyrus stared in dismay. No, dismay would be an understatement. He saw every memory of when he saw Malik as a child, and flashes to every small experience, until now.
A blue-white birthday cake with seven candles not even months go. It filled Cyrus's heart to see the ear-to-ear grin on the innocent boy's face. The smeared cake on his lips with blue and colorless frosting.
"He's still ma' boy." Repeated the old captain. "He's still ma' boy . . ."
He is no longer boy.
"I-I . . . I want ma' boy back." Cyrus began to whimper.
He shakily came closer to Malik.
"What did you do?" he worried, with a weak voice.
"He touched me, Father. I was defending myself." Cyrus hugged him tightly. The captain didn't want to let the Bayonet go. He gripped it firmly until he bled, but would never let go until he would bled out every drop.
"Please, son. D-don't do this . . . forget this. I know you're still a boy in there. You would never do such a thing. Please . . . oh Zaleth, please . . ."
Malik gave a psychotic smirk, "I'll be more careful, Father. But I had no choice. It was me or him."
Cyrus cried for the first time in decades. His tears traced every wrinkle that formed from distress.
"Don't cry, Father. We can fix this. I'm still a boy, right?" Malik handed a faint, deranged grin.
"Y-yes . . . I won't tell anybody of this. Just please, don't do this. My heart is old, weak, I can't handle a cut this deep."
Cyrus immediately stood up. A frown traced, imprinted on his face. "Come on, son. This can be fixed."
"Yes, Father." The Bayonet hid a maniacal laugh under a veil of guilt.
The moonlight shined brighter—it applauded.
. . . .
Cycle: 3010 Time: 06:01
Ten cycles pass like a flowing river.
There stands the Bayonet, pondering, pure, cleansed.