PROLOUGE:

THE DARKNESS :

So many people had differing concepts of death and life. Sometimes a few of them could scratch the bare surface of what those words meant. Its been a dilemma for thousands years if not the very beginning of life itself.

Everyone and everything were chained to a mundane existence by their own mortality, their own view of life and what it represented. I know I have tried………and I have failed.

My life used to be the most important thing I had, I cherished it and was determined to live it to the fullest. That is until my life became more than just my own. Until I had to share its importance with the woman I came to love, and the daughter who gave meaning to my life.

Such things were lost to me in mere moments. Flickering wisps of time, as fate happily screwed me over. And in this darkness, I had been cursed to relive that moment over and over again.

I had no concept of time where I was, but I was sure I had been there for years. My mind could not wander neither could my body move. I was stuck watching fire burn, stuck watching fire grow, trapped watching fire eat and take everything that I lived for. It was ironic, I lost everything because of how much I loved life. Now I wish I was never born.

Before all this, before the darkness, before the silence I used to be somebody. My name was……my name was. Well I don’t remember my name, but I was wealthy. I was a gamer, a professional and an enigma. Back where i was from, the best at what I did came from big countries like America, Japan or China. It was quite surprising that a no name street kid from Nigeria west Africa would be able to stand at the pinnacle of the gaming entertainment circle. While my country was not as developed as the rest of the world. A lot of us had little access granted to us to experience the world in all its splendor.

I was one of the lucky few, and with it came love for the virtual world. Whether it was in front of a screen with controllers in my hands or VR helmet with a haptic suit on me. I loved it, and I excelled. I loved it so much, it became my only source of living. I loved the idea of being someone else, of being a hero a fighter who could do things that reality wont allow. And from it I became rich, I found love. And from it everything I ever owned was lost to me.

Gaming became a mainstream source of entertainment somewhere around the middle and quarter end of the twenty first century. I don’t remember when I was born but I know it was around the middle of both time periods. It was so mainstream it had its own world cup and Olympics. There was veritable amount of investors in the industry so money was not a problem, it flowed in endless waves as many aspirants set out to be on top of this business.

I conquered this world, but to do so I had to step on a few toes. Because gaming changed. It was no longer about how much skill you had anymore. It was about character, personality and charisma. Not many people could properly hold and wow the crowd so the bar was high and the competition was tough.

You took what you could get. And if the opportunity arose, you stole opportunities from someone else. I crushed dreams in my journey to the top, I was so afraid of failure I gave up everything that made me who I am. Of course I changed. Being a father can do that. But it was to late.

The enemies I made over the years, people whose dreams I destroyed, whose lives I made desperate banded together to teach me a lesson. At most they were either going to beat me within an inch of my life, or send me here….to death. But things went out of control when one of those men decided it would be a fun idea for them to rape my wife right in front of me and my daughter. To let us live with the shame, trauma and stigma such an act would cause.

My wife shoved a fountain pen straight through the eyes of one of her would be assailants. But not before the man shot her in the head in shock and pain. He used a shot gun, and there was hardly any piece of her head left when it was over. It was the single most horrifying moment of my life. Not even my time living on the streets of Abuja could compare to pain my heart felt at that moment.

At that time all I could hear were my daughter’s screams and the pain of a dying man with a pen in his skull. They took their eyes off me for a moment. Big mistake. I activated a system lock down of our house trapping everyone in it. But I was able to get my daughter out. With everything she would need to survive in this world, her world now. My little girl had no idea that her father had no plans of coming back out.

I ran back into the house, blinded by grief and rage. I was not going to let my wife die alone, I was going to make sure each and everyone of those men went down with me. With the house on lock down no body could get out. And then I set everything on fire, took my wife to the bedroom that had been our home for the whole of our married life. I lay her almost headless corpse on the bed, and I laid there right beside her, with her body in my arms as flames and men raged and screamed in a fiery blaze of destruction and lost dreams. First the pain and the burning was all I could think about. And then everything went black, before I knew it I was here.

But all of this did not matter to me anymore. Well it did, but no matter how much I tried to hold on to it, I could feel it slipping away. Like I was being scrubbed and washed of everything that made me who I am or was. And on it went, until there was nothing left but a name. Cassie, I don’t know who she was, in fact what was a Cassie. I wonder if it was something I could eat. But I drifted and then I woke up again, this time to more fire.