He couldn't see or hear a thing and the noxious smell of oil fumes and singed curtains and trapped smoke and guilt and dead dreams washed over him and set his nose on fire, terrorized his brain, trapped him in the corner of the shattered home, trampled on his conscience and seared any form of refuge or hideaway he could have formerly run to, reduced him to a burning, yelping animal forced to die with collapsed lungs and a screaming heart. His brain was numb to the physical pain but it was the devastating emotional agony of guilt at the treachery and horror he had committed that was eating at his soul more and more with every shaking breath that rattled through his broken throat. His thoughts were consumed with the images of the falling beams and the torn screams...

And then there was light. The light was brilliant and blinding and broke through his sightlessness to connect with his barely conscious brain. The silver light caught onto the optic nerves of his right and left eyes and traveled down the lines to his brain with more force and electricity than any pair of eyes had ever felt before. The shock jolted him out of his state and sent his mind into a scene from long ago...

He was in a water-soaked garden with the luscious calls of glorious songbirds reverberating throughout. The flowers bloomed with an unprecedented vigor and golden honey flowed from a water fountain in the center.

This was his Garden of Eden, visited many many times in his dreams when the night was right and his deep sleep took him there. But the person standing there on the grass with him was not the same. It was not his beautiful Eve, with her flowing auburn hair and skin that was always just out of reach. No, this was a cranky wizened man with wisps of matted, discolored hair and the skin of a rotted apple core.

The old man produced several hacking coughs between a pair of unwanted lips. He looked at the perfect ground, looked at the cloudless sky, looked at the ivy and the vines on the brick wall, and then turned and gave a piercing look directly into the other man's ruined eyes.

He cracked his lips open again, and offered these words:

"Go back. Go back now."

Vendetta for the Soul

I sat there on that mountain, my feet bare on the solid earth. My pant legs were ripped at the knee, exposing tan, sinewy muscle that only hot sun and endless running can produce. The fresh pine scent of the high-altitude air calmed my nostrils, but it did nothing for my gut. What I mean to say is, there was a sharp nag in the pit of my gut that nothing could ever console. Something was wrong, and I had to get out of there.

But, as they say, actions speak louder than words, and right now the notion of "get out of there" was just words. The mountain brook that gurgled to my left and the dulcet harmonies of the birds that fluttered through the trees were comforting realities that I didn't ever want to leave. This was my home, much more of a home than any place I had ever been. The smoggy urban dockyards of my birthplace and the trapped perfume of my stepmother's cluttered home just did not compare. Like any beaming child caught in the thrill of home, I had never planned to leave. Even if barbaric Hun armies were to transcend millenia and shove up this mountain bent on my sole destruction, I would still be hard-pressed to leave.

But the churning in my stomach troubled me to the core, and natural instinct was practically begging me to flee. My forearms shook restlessly with goosebumps and every raised hair on my body told me that something deadly was coming.

Yet I knew. In that moment, I realized I wasn't going to leave. Whatever demon was coming to rip me apart, I wasn't going to run away from it. I would defend my home, and I would beat this enemy to a pulp.

Suddenly, my head snapped to the right and time slowed to a crawl.

Everything was moving in slow motion, just like every intense action-movie ever made. And a silver bullet was sliding through the air, aimed straight at my right ear. I could see the waves of air rippling around the blunt metal projectile as I leaped to the side. I rolled across the dirt, brought myself to my feet, and glared in the direction of the attacker. It was on.