His hands were shaky, stomach queasy, and mind uneasy. Tonight he would earn stripes, not for slanging rocks smoked through pipes, but for pushing one button that would end a life. His journey to realizing his place among the demigods ended here— he can’t give it, only take it. And so he took with each contraction of what he used to call his index finger, but was now a scythe used to siphon the power of fear. Regret is heavy on the mind even before a crime, but the elephant constructed of bloody memories that stand over his heart weighed more than the world. Unlike Atlas, his back had broken from his once frozen emotions that were beginning to melt. Balancing a checkbook was no task, but the acid in the rain from these glaciers eventually became the reason for his downfalls. Despite the bruises he always got back up, continued to stack cash up, counting blessings in his empty glass cup.

Our history is rough and we have proved tough through our ability to overcome. The will of human kind lays somewhere between the brain and spine, surrounding the heart where it has been left to accrue.

Even a killer counts his blessings… why can’t you?