A Beginning Baked in Blood

I sit on the steps of my apartment building, the stone cutting into my thighs. The steps are a familiar place where I used to read during summers, where games were played with the neighbors. This spot was always the sign of something good to come.

Now red lights dance off of the concrete, and a group of people itch to crowd around me, being pushed back by men in gray uniforms. The men only take, that's what Dad always said. If I were to even catch the faintest glimpse of one I had to flee. They didn't just take murderers or theives. They took anyone who committed the crime of being different.

Dad doesn't - didn't, gods I hate the past tense - like it when I said different. He made sure to always use "special". My blood is different from the neighbors, by the men in grey; no one else has titan-ichor running through their veins.

A thin blanket wraps around my shoulders, somebody in a navy shirt and pants said something about shock when she draped it over my trembling form. I don’t know why she would say something like that - I’m not that least bit shocked that something like this happened.

It happened at night; it was in my neighborhood. Things like this happen all the time, perhaps she was saying she was shocked it happened to me. If that were the case, then maybe I am shocked after all. Everybody loved Dad; he was a great man that would help anyone at all.

I saw what had happened though, the sticky crimson is still clinging to my hands to prove it.

The men in grey take lives too.

Dad's body was wheeled into the ambulance, one of them at least, but it would have been more productive if they brought him away in a hearse. Yes, these steps brought joy in the past, but the only thing I can see now with my wide, glazed over eyes, is the splatters of Dad over them.