A Man At The End Of His Middle Age

 As I had aged throughout the years, I had always pondered over who my parents were, I never once would have believed I'd find out the hard way.

 Growing up, saying I had a hard life would... hopefully be an understatement to most of those breathing and deceased.

 I had started life off in an orphanage, living my days out learning and being a normal kid, an oddball at the least but nothing someone wouldn't shrug off- You know, things like eating bugs and reading books about human anatomy, nothing too abnormal... right?

 Anyways, to the age of eight I grew. Slowly becoming more of a recluse yet never truly minding the necessary social interactions of day-to-day life; I suppose some of the kids there did not like that.

 They viewed me as the odd one out- someone who never fit in truly: an outcast if you will.

 Some of the kids began to bully me, always doing things like leaving my books in the fountain in the front of the orphanage, picking on me and even pushing and tripping me... things that I suppose every bully does when they start young.

 Delving deeper into the life of what was once my past, the caretakers never stepped in to help, seemingly to let it happen with intention, turning a blind eye to my plight- never listening to me and never helping; eventually the orphanage was shut down due to some sort of "excessive funding", and I was relocated to a foster home for a short duration.

 When I arrived, everything seemed very calm and welcoming on the surface with smiles and pitying hugs, however that was just a light pretense for what was yet to come, a darker shade of the family was yet to surface.

 I had experienced equal terms of distress with the foster parents' children as I had the bullies in my previous living arrangement, it only began after they scoped me out enough to note how contrary to the norm I was, which admittedly took a short time... I wasn't that strange, was I?

 Hah... regardless, the children treated me horribly, they were at most three to five ages older than I was at the time, so when they got physical with me, the pain was drastically more intense than with the orphanage's bullies of similar and younger age compared to me... and exactly like the time with the caretakers', the parents did nothing to stop their children and even sometimes took part in it themselves.

 Alas, I decided to run away. Why become subject to this constant onslaught of plight that none shared pity of me for?

 I packed my things in the dead of night- not that I had much anyways, most of what I had was either taken from me or destroyed... I only took the schoolbag on my backpack and some waters and snacks I had stockpiled over the weeks, and then I ran out the back door: my heart beating frantically, a burst of adrenaline shooting through my entire being...

 Only to have what felt a bucket of ice-cold water dropped atop my head, my hope to escape never to be fulfilled.

 They knew for a while now of my plans, they had waited for the day to come, and then they acted on it. I wonder why back then I had never questioned once why they gave a child who doesn't go to a school a backpack...

 The man was standing outside waiting for me, he threw me under his shoulder as quickly as I had run out the door. The woman gagged me to prevent the noise I was spewing, I was thrown to the floor, tied hastily, blindfolded, and then thrown into the back of their van under a sack, in the deep of night. NO resistance I could summon was enough to prevent.

 With my mind as of an age that it is then and now, I cannot count the time of the trip to my next destination... it could have been hours, a day... maybe even multiple; I had defecated multiple times upon myself, tired and exhausted... when finally, the time had arrived, I was hoisted upon a shoulder once again, arriving now at what I call "The Boat".

 Two years! Two years I spent on that damned boat! Never stopping for too long, days in a cell at the bottom of the ship, only arriving on the deck to sweep or assist in slight labor lugging boxes. I can't deny that the food and treatment for my health was good, but that was only so that they could keep their slave- me, alive.

 I was not the only one there, others of different ethnicity and age existed there too, and most importantly, were treated differently.

 Some died of the natural effects from staying on a ship for too long, others would die from starvation or thirst, some would just be outright killed by our captors, however most died from the incessant and insufferable torture method practicing. 

 I could never discover which way they would categorize the slaves as "useful" until much, much later... however I had experienced some of the torture methods myself, perhaps they were just waiting to see at which time we would break completely, but the torture would never stop. Never completely.

 Like any other day, I was receiving torture but like was normal, never enough to kill me, yet destroying my will and sense of very being itself when... a man much different than the others had appeared before me during one of The Boat's standstills; I was held in captivity, wrapped in chains as per the norm while not busy being tortured nor used as a labor mule.

 He looked at me in my eyes with a dead cold gaze vibrant with a crazed storm burrowed deep, and he said to me- I'll always remember it...

 "Your last choice, I wonder what it may be. Die here as a slave or die as my slave." 

Words tugging on the very remnants of my secluded will!

 ~

 After what seemed to be several minutes of thinking but was only tens of seconds, which "he" wouldn't know, he had agreed to become the man's slave. Much of these times he remembers but has chosen to lock it away, so it must be told from a different perspective, so you see?

 The boy who had grown to a man at the end of his middle age, he had lived after being trained to be a cold-hearted and calculative killer who would do anything of necessity to complete a task, it was just a chore was it not after all?

 He was implanted with an explosive chip hidden somewhere in his body at the age of eleven, so he grew with it while he trained in the techniques of killing, and by the end of it all, he could kill in thousands of different ways, thus becoming a slaved hitman at the age of seventeen.

 The knowledge and training bore fruit in the missions that he had executed, leaving solely the experience, which was gained, creating what had become known as the "World's Shadow"; something that was only deemed as a myth, a legend.

 He had completed missions across the globe, taking out any that was deemed a target by the man he was a slave to; slowly, his heart had grown numb to it all, he had been finely crafted into the world's deadliest hitman.

 You could even call him an assassin... the reaper himself; there existed too many names that had been labelled upon him.

 There was only one sentence that could have ever awoken his ever unyielding will, frozen since long past.

 It was during one of the transitions between assignments, the man whom he had become a slave to had told him to go fetch a folder from the archives, deep within.

 He had obtained the folder and was set to leave when he had spotted another folder, covered in dust and old, just as much as he... labelled with a name he had long since forgotten and will forever remain shrouded in mystery, his name.

 Who knows if it was curiosity or fate that led him to pick the folder up and read its contents, but as we all may know, curiosity kills the cat just as well that fate does.

 Shaken to his core, he was. Enraged, grieved and however strangely enough it was, he was delighted.

 The man took the folder he was tasked to fetch and brought it to his owner, handing it to him, whilst also using a trick that he had been taught by the very man he was owned by. Pickpocketing.

 With a smile of many emotions on his face, he surveyed the room, noting all of the inhabitants resting around the conference table, conversing amongst one another, some in hushed tones and others quite loudly.

 Taking a step forward, he placed his hand on his owner's shoulder, neither rough nor gentle... just the right amount of force to let him know of his presence.

 Opening his mouth, he spoke loudly for all to hear.

 "Father, mother. Grandmother, grandfather. Uncles, aunts... My dear family."

 He looked between all in the room as he spoke, each one by one. With his hand on his father's shoulder, a crazed smile and fire in his eyes. He burned the sight of their faces as they watched him in disbelief and... fear.

 Rightfully so the fear was, as in just one second after the momentary silence, the man had thrown himself to the middle of the conference table, and detonated himself right then and there, using the device he had pickpocketed from his father just seconds before.

 ...and that's where the story ends folks!