.
“Goodnight Sweetheart.”
“Mommy?”
“Yes Dear?”
“Do you think Daddy is watching us from Hell?”

That was when I was seven. I am now sixteen.
Nobody thought anybody went to Heaven anymore. The world was too full of greed, violence, and hate for anyone to be accepted by St. Peter to walk through the Pearly Gates to Paradise. If anyone ever did try to show kindness they wouldn’t last long before either becoming evil or being killed. You couldn’t walk to the corner store anymore without seeing a pale corpse, its ribboned flesh writhing with the buzz of thousands of flies and roaches feasting on the decaying feast. It was a sad day when the life of a bug was happier than that of man.
I learned early on that it’s a lot easier and less painful to flee than to fight. I still have the scar on my left shoulder where the knife entered. I even still have the knife. It had gotten stuck in the bone and just came with me as I tore home. I got lucky, the wound only got infected. My best friend died of AIDS from stepping on a needle. That one tiny needle and he died a slow, painful death.
That is the one thing in this world that I fear, a slow death. And it’s not because of the pain, it’s because I don’t ant to be seen when I’m weak. To be weak in this world is a cardinal sin, punishable by death. My sister was weak. I still keep her skull in a box by my bead to remind me of how I failed her and that I have to wrok extra hard so that her fate does not fall upon me as well. I don’t want to die slowly.
My mom made sure that I learned all about religion and the One True God, but I never really accepted it. I remember kneeling by my bed pretending to pray until I felt that she would be satisfied, then laying down and falling into a fitful sleep that never really rested me. It was after my sister died, when I was twelve, that I knew for certain that there was no god.
I know who did it. I saw it happen. I was on top of my roof like I usually was, it was the one place I felt I could relax. It had been getting older lately so I guessed it was fall. There were no calendars to check nor trees to give an indication of season. Not even any grass growing in the cracks in the sidewalk. The whole world was a barren, concrete-covered slab of useless dirt. My sister had gone shopping about an hour earlier so I figured she would be returning soon and was watching for her between my games of torture the ant. It wasn’t long before she turned the corner, but I noticed right away she was running. I soon found out why, as a group of boys turned the corner shortly after her. It didn’t take them long to catch up to her, there being four of them, probably 15 or 16 years old. I watched as they kicked her feet out from under her, splattering the asphalt with blood from her face. I wanted to go help but I knew it wouldn’t do any good. They’d kill me too without any trouble. I closed my eyes and turned around when her shirt came off. I covered my ears and put my head between my knees but no matter how loud I hummed I could still hear her scream. And all I could think was “Why won’t she be quiet? She’s going to die, why can’t she accept it. I hope I don’t scream when I die.”
That night was when I firmly established my disbelief in any god, or any satan. I remember life seemed easier after that revelation. I took comfort in the fact that there was no afterlife. Why would I want this wretched existence to continue? The next morning I went out to collect her tattered body. I remember noticing how ironically beautiful that day was, a crisp cool breeze was slowly pushing the puff-ball clouds across the gray-blue sky. I carried the body to the old cemetery and buried it in a corner. I didn’t bother putting any kind of marker. That would just attract grave-robbers looking for loose trinkets or some necrophiliac looking for a good time. It was just before I started to fill in the hole that I decided to keep her head. I wanted to make sure I didn’t forget these events or pass them off as some sort of bizarre dream. I wanted to remember everything, and I wanted my malice to grow.