1 Chapter 1: The first signs of Sanity

Am I the narrator of this story? Am I a character? Both?

After all, until a few days ago, many people said I was crazy, but I always thought it was an exaggerated way of my friends and family talking to me, as if it was a way for them to "highlight" something in my personality that they liked, but after what happened that day, I now really think I am crazy.

I always had problems with my parents, two alcoholic smokers who looked like they came out of one of the str**t fi**ter games so much they fought, but they always tried, in their own way, and they raised me well, but that day, when I went to visit them after almost a month, everything changed.

Not that they had stopped drinking, smoking, or fighting, they were as normal as my parents had always been, but something was different.

When I opened the gate and saw them fighting, every time my father screamed, the veins in his arm bulged in a very strange way.

Usually, when I saw them fighting I just ignored it, but this time, the subject they were discussing caught my attention, my father was talking about something that had to do with some kind of ranking, something like that, he was shouting that when they got married he was ranked 8, and that he had a bright future, until that jerk was born.

When he said this, I knew he was talking about me, after all, my older sister was "daddy's favorite", he would never say something like that about her, but he always thought I was something like that, even though I scored 267 on the WAIS test (one of the most accurate IQ tests in psychology, where the world average is between 90 and 100) and was considered a genius by many people, he always saw me as a "nuisance".

I kept watching, afraid that what was happening to his arm was some kind of illness, or something recurring due to his addictions. In this case I would have to call an ambulance, or use what little knowledge I had of medicine, from the time I was interested in anatomy, for help in case something went from bad to worse.

But, the more the discussion heated up, his arm looked more strange.

After he talked some more about how I was the worst thing that ever happened in his life, the veins that kept popping out on his arm started to "glow". It looked like someone had glued an LED to every red blood cell in his blood, and every time the veins pulsated, the glow appeared, stronger and stronger.

I was already very upset by the situation, and that strange glow seemed to bother me even more, so I went over to stop them, something that was unusual for me, I usually let them handle themselves without interfering, but that glow and the way my father acted, it seemed that something bad was about to happen.

As I approached, my parents finally noticed my presence, and, to my surprise, they turned pale.

My mother looked panicked, as if everything she had done all her life had been destroyed.

My father, as surprised as he looked, I could see relief on his face.

Those were the last words I heard from my father, "Finally I'm going to be able to do what I should have done when I saw this freak!"

As he said this, the glow on his arm seemed to transform. When he was arguing, the glow had been coming and going, like a pulse in sync with his heartbeat, but now it was different, it was solid, as if before it had been appearing out of impulse, anger, but now it was on purpose.

He came running towards me, I had been bullied at school, and I knew he was running to fight me, but, what happened, this, in my 21 years of life, I had never seen.

When he closed his hand, formed a fist, and punched me, I naturally dodged, but what followed was abnormal.

As I deflected, the punch that was aimed at my head hit the family car that was right behind me, and to my surprise, it looked like a battering ram had hit the car.

Part of the door and the roof of the car were smashed in a frightening way and the car itself was dragged back a couple of feet.

I couldn't hide my surprise. A 52-year-old drunk man who had been smoking for at least 30 years and was pre-sedentary had just done something that you would expect H**k to do.

I knew that if that punch had hit my head, his target, I would have gone straight to hell, and he seemed to want it, because he kept trying to hit me.

He was willing, and eager, to send me to the grave, so I responded just the same. I had always carried a pocket knife with a bone handle, a gift from my grandfather, and I drew it.

My father and I had always been the same height, 1.75. I knew the advantage in physical strength was his. I knew that the physical strength advantage was his, after all, he had just crushed a car with his bare hands, but the intellectual advantage was all mine. He must have had at most a 97 IQ, which, compared to my incredible 267, looked like a dummy trying to compare himself to Einstein. After hitting a 2-ton metal machine, his hand seemed intact, so I knew that my simple pocket knife would not hurt, unless I aimed well, and hit points on the body where the musculature was fragile or non-existent, the part covered by the glare was clearly impenetrable for a simple pocket knife. A .50 might pierce, but I didn't have one in hand, and I didn't want to kill my father, no matter how much he wanted to kill me.

As I dodged his punches, his frustrated face seemed to get worse and worse, as if for him this was something impossible, and humiliating. More and more of his punches were imprecise, predictable, and full of rage.

In one of them, as predictable as a Mexican soap opera, I managed to find an opening to his armpit. I knew that in the armpit are the nerves that control some of the most important muscles in the arm, and there aren't many muscles protecting them, so that's where I aimed, a cut, as precise and fast as I could.

To my surprise, my pocket knife went through. A clean cut, almost surgically separating the nerves that were there. His arm stopped moving, and so did his face. I didn't even know that a human could express so many emotions at the same time. A mixture of anger, pain, and confusion mingled on his incredulous face.

The arm that I had cut off no longer had that strange glow, but the other one still glowed, only instead of the solid glow that it had had when he attacked me, it had returned to glowing like a pulse.

My mother had just recovered from the shock when I cut his arm.

I looked at her, who looked as incredulous and confused as my father.

An instant, just a few seconds, was all I spent staring at my mother, and that was enough for my father, who I thought had given up his attack, to attack me again, and this time from behind.

My hand shouted, "CAUTION!"

My movements were automatic, by an almost superhuman reflex. My father, who had aimed at my spine, was leaning over, attacking me from below. My movement was clean, quick, precise, and, above all, terrifying.

I had never killed anything in my life. Apart from ants, mosquitoes, cockroaches, and the occasional rat, I had never taken a life.

But, by reflex, my move was unique. With my pocket knife, a single cut was made in the jugular vein, passing just above the trapezius muscle. The blood gushed out like a fountain.

When I realized that I had just killed my father, I just stood there, staring, so many things were going through my mind, but I couldn't seem to think of anything.

I don't know how long I stood there looking, but the next thing I remember was hearing a policeman's voice shouting, "Hands up! Azazel Granger you are under arrest for the murder of Antony Granger, anything you say can and will be used against you in court.

By Divine irony, or perhaps a joke of the Devil himself, it seemed that I had gone completely insane, after all, the policeman had horns and almost 10 feet, and the sky, which had always been blue, was green.