Everyone was in the middle of the town. I was leaning against the side of a building near the back of the crowd with a few other people. We didn't want to get to close to where all the attention was. The town had voted to kill someone; pretty ironic that we were fighting murder with murder. Regardless, someone was set to die. I can't really remember his name. It was some white dude; can't really tell you much more than that. He seemed a little stubborn; at least, that's what others had told me.

They brought him up to the stage. I think the voting was kind of close. I can't remember if he just barely "beat" them by one or more votes. Anyways, he was brought up to the stage and laid him down on a wooden table. The police stretched his arms out and tied them to the ends of the table. The table was then rotated so that he was leaning over a vat. I don't know what was in the vat, but it seems pretty dangerous. The guy tried to move, but he was tightly bound to the table. The police chief walked to a podium that was on the side of the state and began talking to everyone.

"It's been a terrible past few weeks for everyone in this town. We've lost many loved ones, and for seemingly no reason at all. The murderous psychopaths who are doing this will be stopped. And already, we are taking steps to assure that. Today, you all voted to execute one of your fellow townspeople on the basis that he is in cahoots with the so-called "Mafia" that has tried to bring fear and terror to our city. I assure all of you that they will not win. We will find them all and bring them to justice. Now, as for the man you all have voted for."

It's a good thing everyone got a transcript of that statement or else I would've never memorized it. The police chief turned to the man tied to the table and gave a nod to the policemen. The policemen walked to the side of the stage and opened up two cases; each had an axe in them. They took the axes and walked back to the man tied to the table. They looked at the police chief, and when he signaled to proceed, they both swung their axes at the man's arms. The man began screaming in agony. After a few swings, the man's arms and torso were only connected by a few strands of muscle, but those quickly tore in half as his body began falling straight down into the vat. His arms were dangling from the ropes that they were constrained by, blood dripping down and all, and to be honest, I don't remember whether the man's screams or the sound of his body melting in the vat was louder. After a few seconds, he stopped screaming, so I guess there wasn't much left of him. They pushed the vat away from the stage and began cleaning up the blood. Everyone went back to their normal routines.

The sun was beginning to set, but I wasn't tired at all. I decided to take a walk around the city and see what was going on at night. After walking around for a few hours, I decided to go get a drink. Oh, right, I remember now. The guy they killed on stage. His name was Pr0nogo.

It was 2 or 3 in the morning, and I was just walking around the town. Hardly anyone was out; maybe just a few guys walking home from the bar, or some late-night "workers" finishing up their "jobs." I turned the corner and started walking down a relatively deserted street. Near the end of it, I saw two men. One was lying on the ground, and the other was pointing a gun at him. They exchanged a few words, and then the gun went off. The guy that shot the gun tucked it underneath his shirt and walked down the street out of sight.

I walked up to the dead guy and looked at his face. After a few seconds, I recognized who it was. It was GeneralPie.

A stage was brought out into the middle of the town again. Everyone had gathered again to kill someone off. Seemed kind of barbaric to me, but oh well. The police chief – well, I think it was the police chief – came out from his office and stepped up to the podium.

“We’ve all been greatly troubled by the recent crime wave that has taken hold of our city. I know that it's hard to look at the positives when we’ve lost so many people already, but I implore you all to trust me when I say that these senseless killings will come to an end. I will make sure that these criminals’ reign of terror will come to an end swiftly and without mercy. Today, you all have chosen a man who is believed to have taken part in these dastardly actions. You have condemned him to death, and that is the price he will pay.”

Two policemen brought a man up to the stage in chains. They tied him to a post and brought the local doctor up to the stage. The doctor had surgical equipment with him, and he took his knife and began cutting away at the man’s scalp. The man screamed and begged for mercy, but nobody listened. After the doctor had cut all the way around the man’s scalp, he removed the top of his skull. The man’s face is covered in blood, and it was obvious that he only had a few more minutes to live. After the man’s brain was revealed, one of the town’s chemists came up to him with a beaker of acid and slowly poured it on him. The man’s brain sizzled, and he screamed in agony. He died pretty quickly after that, and everyone began to disperse. As they were all leaving, the policeman took to the podium once more.

“The deed is done! OlimarandLouie is dead!”

Just then, a man came up to the police chief and handed him a piece of paper. The chief stared at it intensively and then turned back to the crowd.

"It has been brought to my attention that another one of this town's members has been a part of these heinous acts that have damaged this city so greatly! I have, on this paper, damning evidence that directly links him with all the murders that have taken place as of late! Bring him up to face justice!"

The policemen brought up another man and tied him to the post. Again, the surgeon came and cut the top of his head off, and the chemist began pouring acid on his brain. Positively died even faster than OlimarandLouie.

---

Trust and loyalty don’t exist anymore. You think you know someone, someone you can really trust, and just like that, they stab you in your back and move on with their lives. I’m not one to take betrayal lightly. My friends aren’t either. That’s why, after we had pieced together what had happened to us, we decided to seek out the only logical thing: revenge.

Let’s go back a few months. This is before I got my head fixed. I’m in a bar with some of the guys – Azrael, lil-Inferno, Raitaki – and a guy that works for one of our … “friends” … walks in with some big ass men. They look like friggin’ bodyguards or something. We say “hello”, pass him a beer, and continue on with our conversation. But then he smashes his beer on the ground, so we all look up and stare at him. He says his boss has had a change of plans and doesn’t need us anymore. He wants us out of town by tomorrow. We tell him to fuck off; we don’t take orders from some second-hand man. So he motions to his men, and they get in our faces, trying to look tough. We don’t back down, so they grab us by our heads and bash them against the countertops. I can hear my skull cracking, and everything gets dizzy, and then suddenly, it all goes black.

I wake up in a hospital next to all my friends and none of us can remember what happened. The doctors tell us that we were in a bar fight, but none of us remember it. For days we sit around trying to remember what happened in that bar, but we can only recollect small images and phrases. We remember some guy coming in and telling us something about his boss, but we don’t remember what he looks like or who his boss is. And get this; it’s not just that night that we can’t remember. It’s everything that’s happened since. We keep forgetting everything we do, seconds after we do it. It’s like some sort of severe case of short-term memory loss. It drives us crazy; we can’t even get into our cars without forgetting where we’re trying to go.

For months we struggle with trying to adjust to our new lives. You won’t believe how many times I left my front door wide open in the middle of the night, or how many times I didn’t even get a chance to do that because I was stranded in the middle of town with no recollection of where I lived. And that’s the annoying part; the things we forget, they’re not static. It’s not like I always forget the same thing. No, one day I’ll remember someone and forget something else, and the next day, it’ll be the exact opposite. Fuckin’ drove me and my pals crazy. So yeah, for months we wander around town aimlessly, always trying to remember what happened that night, but we can never figure it out.

One day, I decide to shave my head and grow out my beard. My beard gets pretty long; almost to the point where nobody can recognize me. I go into a bar one day and sit down next to some shady lookin’ guy. I glance at him, and he looks a little familiar. I quickly turn my head and get a good look at him, and suddenly, all these images start popping up in my head. That night in the bar becomes clear to me, and I realize that this is the guy that came in with all those bodyguards. This is the guy that gave us brain damage. This is the guy we’re going to kill.

I get the guys and tell them what I saw. We all agree that this is the bastard that ruined our lives. So everyone shaves their heads and changes their appearances so that we can get closer to this guy. This is when all the killings start happening. Everyone’s in the middle of town going crazy – rioting on the streets, screaming for the police to do something – and then the Mayor comes out. He says that he’s putting the law in our hands, allowing us to pick a person to die each day until this thing is settled. So everyone votes, but not me. I know none of these townspeople are the ones doing it. I know exactly who’s doing it, and my friends and I don’t want some public execution. We want it to be painful. Anyways, everyone votes for this guy named OlimarandLouie, and holy shit, maybe I was a bit quick to judge the town’s mercy. The shit they did to him was more painful than anything that I ever wanted to do. They cut the man’s skull off and pour acid on his brain. Pretty stupid thing to do; killing an innocent man and all. I could tell them who the real culprit is, but me and the guys want him for ourselves.

I’m walking around town at 3 in the morning after the lynching takes place. I turn a street corner and see lil-Inferno and some guy fighting. The guy falls to the ground, and Inferno pulls out a gun and shoots him. I run up to him and ask him what it’s all about. He says that this is one of the guys that was in the bar that night we got our asses kicked. I look at the guy, and then I remember. It’s GeneralPie, the piece of shit thug who had just gotten out of jail a few months back. Good riddance.

The next day there’s another lynch. Some guy named Pr0nogo is called for execution. They lay him on a table and tie his arms to the ends of it. The table is rotated, and he’s now leaning over a big vat filled with some acidic waste. Two policemen with axes walk up to him and chop his arms off, and his body falls straight into the vat, incinerating him almost immediately. Another dead innocent. Still pretty stupid.

I walk around town again that night. I get thirsty, so I go to a bar and get a beer. Some guy walks in and asks for a cup with ice, no drink or anything. He rubs his head with the cold cup, and I notice a big gash right above his neck. It must’ve been close to four inches long. He says he got attacked the night before and had been left in a ditch the whole day. I still had that memory problem, so like a dumbass, I leave the bar at about 5AM, thinking that I was late for a meeting. Turns out I didn’t have it until noon. I walk around town looking at all the previsions taking place; people putting up signs prohibiting hoods and big jackets in their shops, police cars on every street corner. It was getting pretty crazy, but if the town could just endure for a little while longer, we would have our revenge and everything would return to normal.

I go down an alley and enter this shady looking building. All the other guys are there, and there’s a TV playing in the background showing the stage being set up in the middle of the town. Another innocent being killed, no doubt. We all go into the basement and talk things over. We agree to put our money together and buy whatever we could to get the job done – guns, ammo, whatever else we needed. We leave the basement and begin walking towards the center of the town. The Mayor comes up to the podium and calls out a name we were hoping not to hear: Wing Zero.

But nobody knows where he is. The crowd looks at the policemen to see if they have him, but he’s nowhere to be found. Then, Azrael gives me a nudge and points towards a dark alley. We see Wing Zero running into it. Azrael grabs a metal pipe lying on the ground, and we run towards the alley. The sun starts to set, and whatever light it’s giving off gets blocked by heavy rain clouds that quickly come in. It starts to rain, and when we turn into the alley, we see Wing Zero at the end of it, looking for an escape. He turns around and sees us running at him. Azrael hits him in the head with the pipe. He falls to the ground and looks up, asking who we are. We laugh; this guy doesn’t remember us. Isn’t that ironic? He tries to get up and run, but he stumbles and falls on his face. All the blood is being washed away by the rain, and Azrael slowly walks up to him, dragging the pipe behind him. Wing Zero begs for mercy, but we’re not the merciful type. Azrael swings the pipe at his head, over and over again, and I hear the sound of his skull cracking, much like how I heard my own all those months ago. Azrael swings at him for what seems like forever, and then he stops. I don't even recognize Wing Zero anymore; the guy's head is completely bashed in. I look at Azrael, and he looks back at me. And then he says four words.

“It’s over. We’ve won.”