NOVEL WEB Prologue
One particularly cold night, the faint sound of rustling and scuffling could be heard within a dark alley. If a passerby where to hear of it, they might think that it's just rats scavenging through the garbage dump to survive.
It wouldn't be wrong though.
For the young boy currently siffing through the refuse, he's always lived like a rat.
He didn't have a name, or maybe he did and he just couldn't remember it. Everyone around him just called him "boy" or "trash."
He used to have a lustrous black hair, not that he would remember, but now his head was disheveled and dirty. His eyes that were once almond colored was now dull and gray, almost as if they were dead. Dozens of bruises and cuts adorned his small and helpless body. But the small pain they caused could not compare to the unbearable grumbling of his stomach, so he put up with it and continued his scavenging for food.
How long has it been since he had something in his belly? One? Maybe two days ago? He could not even tell if it was actual food he ingested. But for an orphan in the slums, this was the only way for him to survive. He had no one else to turn to, he had been alone for as long as he can remember, no friends no relatives, no nothing. All his life he's lived the same way a rat would, just drifting from garbage to garbage looking for food, sometimes stealing from vendors, but that would only get him beat up.
As he was looking through the garbage dump, he heard a number of footsteps drawing closer and closer from the corner, the obnoxious merry making of drunkards filled the cold and dark alley.
"Huahahahaha, that was some fine wine that lass brought in huh?"
"Yeah hahaha, you could say that, too bad we didn't get to play with her"
"Couldn't be helped, She brings in the best products after all huahuahua"
Three men dressed in shabby clothes groggily walked towards him. One was a frail-looking man while the other two were brawny muscular men who held two bags at each side.
They were the flays, the three sibling group that governed this part of the slums.
Seeing the three men get closer to him, the boy hurriedly got up and tried to hide. Unfortunately, he was too weak and slow, the three men got up to him before he could get away.
These same men had beaten him up once just because they sniffed his smell as they were walking by, the boy couldn't even imagine what they would do to him if he irked them even more.
As he tried to get up and run, he tripped over some scrap and fell into a puddle. The ruckus he made caused the puddle water to splash in the direction of one of the siblings, staining his cloth.
"Oi you motherfucker! Look at what you did! You stained my clothes!"
"Oya? Isn't that the foul smelling brat from before? I'd recognize those black hair of his from anywhere"
"Oh yeah! you're right! That is him! You fucker, you still haven't learned your lesson huh?!"
The boy desperately scrambled to get up and run, but two of the siblings were quick to move, they seized him by the legs and dragged him across the mud, dirtying him even more.
"You fucker! How dare you stain my clothes, how the hell are you gonna pay me huh?? Worthless trash!"
They stomped on him with such force that the boy's cuts and bruises opened up and bled, they then picked him up by the arms and took turns punching his small body.
As he was being beaten, he tried to beg for his life, but blood was making its way to his throat, rendering him unable to speak the right words, all he could muster were small groans and moans.
After the trio's hands went numb from beating the poor boy, they threw him into the garbage dump, all bloodied and beaten. Almost no semblance of his former face could be seen, he was now a red and blue piece of meat.
"Serves him right for dirtying my clothes"
"The little fucker got blood on my clothes too! What the fuck"
"Just leave him, we won't get anything from him, and my hand's hurt. Let's just go"
As they turned away from the boy, one of the siblings stopped in his tracks and looked back, as if realizing something. He then called out to his other two siblings.
"You two, go on ahead! I'm going to go get some more wine from that lass!"
"Are you sure? You're pretty drunk as it is no?"
"Yeaah, but I'm gonna try sweeping her off her feet, see if she might want to play around yea? Hehehe"
The man said that as he happily jogged past the boy they had beaten up.
"Jeez that guy, if I hadn't had my clothes dirty I might have gone with him"
"This might have been his plan, to get us dirty so he gets all the action tonight, conniving little prick"
With that said, they continued on their path feeling no remorse or regret over the atrocity they had just committed. To them, the boy was nothing more than trash, a refuse of society that couldn't even be put to use, that was why they could do the things they did without any shred of guilt or shame.
The same could not be said to the boy they had just left, his weak and faint breathing could still be heard as he groaned at the pain he felt. But he could no longer muster his strength, he couldn't even move his head, much less stand. He couldn't feel his body, or rather, he could only feel the coldness creeping in from the lower half of his body. It will soon envelop his wholesome.
[So this is.. what dying feels like?.. It's.. cold.. as I expected.]
The boy thought to himself as he felt his consciousness slipping away from him. The body was broken, and so was the spirit, he tried to grasp at something, anything to live for, but he couldn't find anything. He had nothing, nothing to lose, no one to look for him, no one to mourn him.. he thought to himself to just die and be done with it, be done with the suffering, and that he did. He surrendered.
As he laid there breathing his last breath, he remembered all the pain and suffering he went through.
He shrugged and chuckled faintly to himself.
[Oh well, no use crying over spilt milk, at least it's over now]
He released his consciousness and descended into the cold, dark abyss. The boy had let go of his sole possession, the one thing he owned when he was alive, his short and very unfortunate life.