That bitch of my mom hardly spoke to me. I'm almost sure she knew I'd killed my dad 'cause she was always complaining that he never came around anymore. I'd painted the house, fixed it up, bought her furniture, a TV, and even a washing machine (my fucking dad had never bought her one).
And she only spoke about him.
"Why did you make him mad? You know how he's like" the few times she talked to me, she almost always said this.
"We don't need him," I would tell her this and try to give her some money 'cause I was the one paying the bills—she never worked.
"No," she always rejected it at first; "your dad got mad about that last time. He's the one who should bring money to the table, not you."
"He's not coming back," I used to say.
"Shut up! Shut up!" she always yelled at that and got into her room.
It pissed me off that she was such a damn ungrateful bitch. I gave her a way better life, I'd saved for years to buy her all that stuff ('cause neither Darius nor any gang pays as much as they promise. In fact, they pay way less than you'' expect), and she never thanked me. Sometimes I even felt like telling her he was already dead, that I'd killed him, but then I remembered that hole in his face and all the blood dripping from it, how they dragged him away.
I never said anything to her, I just left the money on the table, and she always ended up taking it. I would lock myself in my room and look at my magic books to distract myself. Almost all of them were about spells, but I had started buying some about magical armor and artifacts, and they all said that the most powerful of all was the legendary XyzqvqzyX armor.
None of those fucking books said shit about the power of friendship.
But even if they had, I would have seen it as bullshit.
Hours passed, and I was still awake. Sometimes I'd hear a noise outside, and I was sure it was the other gangs, the police, or some traitor who'd already tracked me down. So many clowns died that way, and I've told you several times how we'd break into so many houses in the middle of the night.
At that moment, I always checked the cameras I'd installed, and almost always the noise was just the wind, a racoon, or some homeless guy. But sometimes there were cops or some guys from other gangs passing by. Probably they had tracked down someone else's house and were going to get him.
Sometimes they would pass by a lot, and I was sure that were just going back and forth to torture me, 'cause they knew that I was waiting for them.
Whenever I saw them, I always felt like going out and taking them down before they killed me—that way I'd catch them by surprise. And if they didn't come for me, someone else would come to get revenge, and I wouldn't have to wait anymore, 'cause that was the worst part, waiting night after night for them to come.
Honestly, that was the worst part of being in a gang. Little by little, the stress and lack of sleep mess you up. Sometimes, when I couldn't stay awake and was about to fall asleep, I'd hear gunshots or whispers. I'd check the security cameras, and nothing. I'd go to the bathroom and splash water on my face. I'd always look like shit in the mirror. And it was all their fault. Sometimes I'd punch the walls and wish they'd come right away, so I could kill them or they could kill me, but it would end this fucking torture.
Being in a gang teaches you to see death not with fear, but as the end of everything. And that's why we never made fun of our friends who killed themselves: it wasn't that they couldn't stand living, but that they had the guts to end it all. We were the cowards for clinging to life, for stealing one more day from death each day.
Sometimes I'd walk around my house in the middle of the night to clear my head. I'd see my mom sleeping in her room, the living room, the dining room, and everything I'd bought. Darius would say it was all thanks to the gang, but even he knew he was full of shit; it was all thanks to death. My place in the gang, the fear I made everyone feel—I earned all of it by killing.
That's why my gang's called Death, that's why my men paint themselves as skeletons, 'cause we are what we are 'cause of death.
Thinking about things like that helped distract myself those nights. Some of the other clowns were taking all sorts of shit to cope with the stress, but I liked to be in my right mind so I knew how to react when they came.
Those nights, I sometimes managed to doze off a little, but I always woke up more tired than before. When dawn broke, I'd leave my house. I'd go out into the street and look all around to make sure that no one had seen me, that no one had recognized me or found me.
But I knew that sooner or later it was gonna happen, and it did. One day some assholes came to my house. They were so fucking afraid of me 'cause it was in the middle of the day, exactly when I wasn't there.
I found out soon after, when one of our falcons told us that someone had burned down a house in that area. I got there as fast as I could, but the house already burned down. I went inside and saw how the walls, the furniture, the washing machine, everything I had bought was practically destroyed. But in the middle of everything was my mom, tied to a chair, her skin all charred.
The funniest thing is that when I saw her, I felt nothing. Death gives a criminal everything but then takes it all away in just a moment. We all knew it.
I left my house, and Darius called me. Probably one of the hawks saw me go inside.
"That house those fuckers burned down is yours?"
"Yes. My mom was there," I don't know why I told him that, I don't know why I showed weakness in front of him, but I did.
"With this they're not only making fun of you, they're making fun of the whole gang. We have to find those sons of bitches."
And so we did. With the footage from the security cameras, we searched high and low, tortured a lot of people, and in the end, we found over those pieces of shit. Darius had them in one of his safe houses and told me to go there and get my revenge. I went in and saw some kids tied to chairs with their heads covered. They were younger than me, and I didn't feel sorry for them, but I didn't hate them either; they did what they had to do.
I beat one to death, I cast very weak spells on another so that he would scream in pain while his skin slowly burned, I left the third one's balls connected to a car battery until smoke was coming out, and I filled the last one with gasoline and set him on fire.
I felt nothing. I only did it so my gang wouldn't think I was weak.