Commitment - Predatory Ethics: Book II by Athanasios Page B

entrails!”
    He felt his pulse start to race as he thought of those idiots out on the street being massacred like the fools around him.
    All in the name of the Redeemer.
    Oh and the Dark Master’s reward of His loyal servant. Guy had been dreaming of the reward for most of his adult life. Bathing in the blood of seventy-two virgins and being given immortality to serve the Dread One, the Great Leviathan.
    Unconsciously, he stroked himself and bit his lip so hard blood began to trickle down the side of his mouth. He had worked himself to a frenzy and took several deep breaths to calm down.
    Guy prayed to all below that the Master, the Prince, would not punish him for losing control, and despaired again at the terror of the Prince’s punishment. Standing still, his face was ashen and frozen at the possibility of Lucifer’s correction.
    A bellow of outrage brought him back to the present and after getting his emotions in reign, he stooped down to pick up a drenched, ceremonial knife and continued to the center stage.
    “Please let me go! I won’t tell anyone, just please let me live!” the bound, spread eagled man pleaded.
    “Scream as loud as you like. No one will hear you.”
    Guy had soundproofed the Puritan. He inherited it years ago and had built most of the devices around the stage himself. The ornate stone altar that held his latest object of attention had taken him a month to meticulously construct from plans in condemned, obscene books he collected in his travels. He had arrived in his life’s work after many years of searching for a direction to his seething and all-consuming hatred of everyone else.
    Nobody could explain it. His twin had turned out splendidly and was even running the family business. Their older brother had become an engineer yet everyone had shaken their head at Guy’s plight, his loathing. He laid his own path long before his brothers’ successes and counted the family’s disappointment with his life as further reason for his universal hatred.
    The shackled man was helpless on Guy’s altar and almost mad with terror from the previous sacrifices he witnessed. He was the last. Everyone who had come to see the independent production of Jesus Christ Superstar with him was dead.
    Thirty-five.
    Nine women.
    Eight men, and oh God.
    Nine little boys.
    And nine little girls.
    He knew how many because he could not look away. Keeping count was a ridiculous triviality to center on, but he couldn’t stop himself or the maniac with the wickedly curved knife. He saw each of them beg and cry for their life under its slashes and cuts. Some of the adults, and most of the children, soiled themselves with fright and as their bodies gave up their ghost. Some shouted and others prayed, but nobody tried to fight or run. They all stayed like lambs at slaughter. When he was led to the altar and civilly asked to disrobe and lie down he complied, all the while his mind screamed to run.
    Run.
    Run.
    Run.
    He just lay back and unbelievably let himself be shackled the same way he had seen the thirty-five others.
    “Don’t kill me please!” The tears began and led to sobs when he could not believe he would die like the thirty-five others. He couldn’t believe his last moments would be like this. He always prided himself that he would go out fighting, but it was turning out much different than he ever intended. In a desperate act of defiance, an attempt to be true to his shattered hopes he spat at Guy, full in the face.
    This stopped him in his tracks.
    Guy raised a hand, touched the spittle, and brought his hand forward to look at it. Seeing it stun his tormentor, the man felt a fleeting exultation. He had this trivial blow to placate his pride before he died. So he gobbed up another and hit his tormentor on the forehead. The nearness of death must’ve given the tortured accuracy Guy thought, and sighed, reaching for someone’s fallen kerchief. He wiped off the spit and some of the blood off his