Mark's Little Homie

This was how 2Pac killed most of his victims. He would do it efficiently and cleanly so that the prisoners wouldn’t suffer. The fighting tournaments were planned for elaborate executions and 2Pac was Princess Death Row’s executioner. Disguising an execution as a fighting tournament gave a lot of prisoners false hope, thinking they could fight their way to freedom. Mark was one of many. Out of all the deaths, Mark’s death was the cleanest. After executing Mark, 2Pac recorded the decapitation and stored it in his memory cloud database. He kept other recordings of sinister executions in his database.

After 2Pac killed Mark, the simulated young partygoers and the nightclub setting inside the stadium-sized room shut down like a smartphone screen being turned off. The Virtual Materialization Simulator’s four massive white walls returned, and the millions of tiny 3D printer lasers retracted back into the walls like a power antenna on an old 1980s Cadillac.

A silence echoed from the crowd of prisoners. They were forced to watch the battle between Mark and 2Pac on a movie theater-sized holographic screen. Every prisoner in the arena witnessed Mark’s death, including his son, Lukas.

Lukas stood between two Death Row Infantry-men. The child’s eyes were locked on 2Pac, who walked out of the VMS room carrying his father’s headless body over his shoulder. Lukas tried to go to another place in his mind and he tried to be strong like his father told him, but being strong was something that would be difficult for Lukas to do.

“Wow! That was amazing!” Irena shouted to the crowd with a sickening bubbly enthusiasm. “It’s sad to say none of my prisoners has beaten 2Pac,” Irena spoke with a slight pridefulness in her voice.

Lukas swallowed hard when he saw Irena approaching him. The child tried to run but the two Death Row Infantry-men he stood between quickly grabbed his little body.

“I’m so sorry that you had to watch that,” Irena spoke down to Lukas through a dry tone of voice.

“Papa!” Lukas screamed out when he looked past Princess Death Row to see 2Pac handing his father’s body to a disposal unit. The little boy cursed himself for breaking down in tears in front of Irena. He told his father he would be strong.

“Take him down to the facility and prepare for conversion,” Irena told the male and female Death Row Infantry-men who were both holding Lukas by his arms. “Make sure that you convert the child thoroughly for conversion. I want no unprocessed remains of his body left over. Our work here is finished and I have a meeting to attend.” After Irena gave her orders to the soldiers, she looked back down at Lukas. “I’m sorry about your father, baby. You shouldn’t cry because you’ll see him again.” Irena thought she said something comforting to Lukas. She smirked a little when Lukas moved away from her hand. She also rolled her eyes at the boy before telling her soldiers to take him away. The CEO turned her back on the child forcing the tentacles connected to her gothic flowing black dress to follow behind her.

Lukas swallowed hard when he felt a trimmer in his stomach. Before the little boy could stop himself, he hurled on one of the Death Row Infantry-man’s boots.

“You little sh#t!” The male Death Row Infantry-man growled down at Lukas while raising his hand to strike the child across his face.

“Don’t hit him!” The female Death Row Infantry-man snapped at her partner while grabbing his hand before it could come down on Lukas.

“The little bastard just vomited on my boot!” The male Death Row Infantry-man was still grumbling and mumbling from behind his dark visor helmet.

“The kid just lost his father, so take it easy. Besides, you have a million of those sh#tty looking boots at home,” the female soldier said through a slightly irritated inflection in her voice.

Lukas kept his eyes closed as he felt the two soldiers grabbing him by the back of his small arms and leading him away toward the arena’s exit. Lukas tried not to think about his body conversion process or the creature that would eat him. Instead, while being guided out of the arena, the child tried to think about how his mom would sing to him every night before he would go to sleep.

***

Lukas kept thinking about his mother’s lullaby. He swallowed again when he saw a huge steel cage and could hear something massive violently stomping around inside of it. The boy felt another trimmer in his stomach when a squawking roar that didn’t sound human emerged from the metal cage. The cage’s windows were smoked out, but Lukas knew what was inside.

He remembered the squawking roar he heard the night his mother was executed. He felt the ground tremble beneath his feet from the creature walking.

Lukas remembered the clicking sounds and the crunching. He was standing five feet away from the huge steel cage, but he could hear the orchestra of all the familiar sounds of death. He could tell when someone was being eaten, because their screaming would get cut off and replaced by the sounds of slurping, squawking, clicking, and crunching. These were the sounds he heard after his mother’s screams were snuffed out.

Lukas had nightmares involving his mother’s screams for help. In his nightmare, he would stand in front of a tall metal cage listening to his mother cry out to him from inside. His mother would scream out, “Lukas, honey, Mommy needs help! It ate Mommy’s legs and I can’t come to you!” Lukas would wake up when an inhuman clawed hand would break through the cage’s glass, overshadowing him and grabbing his face. The child at least had his father to comfort him and hold him. Now, since Lukas’ father was dead, he had no one. The thought of being inside the cage made Lukas panic. He had a short out-of-body experience when he felt a man’s hand dragging him toward the cage.

Lukas flipped. He threw a fist at the Death Row Infantry-man when the soldier grabbed him and tried to lead him closer toward the cage. The little boy remembered what his father told him about being strong. This was Lukas’ moment, and he fought for his life. The child fought like hell to prevent the Death Row Infantry-man from dragging him closer to the dark steel cage.

“Let me go!” Lukas screamed up at the soldier before biting into the man’s hand.

“You little son of a bitch! Goddamnit!” The Death Row Infantry-man roared at Lukas as he tried to free his hand from the boy’s toothy grip. After freeing his hand from the child’s mouth, the soldier struck Lukas across the face while reaching for his handgun. The man had it set in his mind to shoot the child on the spot.