The Story of Jon Segake (Suh-Ga-Key)
I was a criminal once. I used to ask myself if I was evil for the things I'd done. I remember pulling a strong arm robbery job and the man behind the counter having a heart attack. He fell backwards with a dull thud against the ground I didn't know what to do. I quickly remembered those aspirin commercials and ran to the pain medicine aisle, giving him a few. My quick thinking saved his life I had caused his heart attack but I also stopped it, I couldn't be all evil. With the money I stole that night my family could go on. Well my 'family'
just me and my daughter, I hope that when she is old enough to realize what I'm doing, I'm not doing it anymore.
My daughter and I would take walks on the beach a few blocks from our house it made her so happy to go up and 'tease' the waves tide, maybe the tide was teasing my daughter, either way she would laugh and smile and gleefully let out screams of surprised joy when the cold water would roll over her feet. I wonder to myself if all 4 year olds are this great, she could make me just be here in the moment and forget that I could be such a bad person. Her mother had done the same thing but she had been diagnosed with cancer a year ago a died a few months later. My beautiful daughter reminded me so much of her, she was my wife's living memory.
I recall walking down the beach about one mid afternoon in Hokkaido that horrible day with my daughter. The sky that was blue had this hard red glow at the edge of the horizon, not the usual warm orange that you saw in all those postcard reminders from your vacations. I don't remember exactly what happened but I know it wasn't good, I began to hear screams. I held on tight to my daughters hand as she began to cry. I would recall for you all the rest of the details of that day but I fear that you know all to well surviving long enough for you to read this. As I gaze at the picture of her I recall her laughs and smiles and how all the horrible things I did couldn't bother me when I heard or saw those.
Today I hold onto those memories and hold out to payback the "Bane"
that took the future that could have been away from me. They gave me a 'clean slate'. As I fire rounds by the hundreds out of my machine gun every time I put in another clip I think thoughts like these,
"This is for the wedding I'll never get to give her away at,
This is for the pony she never got old enough to ask me for,
This for all the pain you caused me.
Die."
I feel the anger pooling up in me so much that I have to clench my teeth just to stop the screams of pain my heart wants to let out. The smell of these dead creatures begins to almost please my senses, if they weren't so wretched it might.
Suffice it to say after that day now I know I'm nowhere near evil.
This "Bane", this plague on the cosmos is evil it knows nothing of what I was a criminal for, to see my daughter smile and make sure she never had to do the things I've done to just survive. I had a motivation for my deeds, I wouldn't hurt people I would compromise my evil was so little compared to this.
The total destruction of all things good.
Author: E. Berndt
New Mexico, USA
Signature Character Contest Runner-up