"Please, Dominik… I just need you to plead insanity, going to jail is a death sentence".
The woman's voice was measured and soft.
She stood before him, and looked at the young man bound to the steel chair like a rabid animal.
"Insanity?" Dominik scoffed, clearly amused. "I never did anything wrong".
His eyes were calm, disturbingly so.
Both arms and legs were cuffed to the metal chair, with leather straps drawn tight across his chest and thighs, as if he was still a threat, yet his voice didn't have an ounce of anger, he was just stating facts.
"The world is better now. They killed, raped and then paraded past justice like it was a joke, all because they had money and the power to hide their doings. I did what everyone wanted to do but were too scared to try".
He leaned back slightly, eyes locked on hers.
"I'm not insane, I'm right".
She didn't reply, she couldn't, so she just stared at him for a moment longer, lips pressed together, with a flicker of sorrow in her expression. Then, wordlessly, she stepped out of the room.
The guards stepped in after her departure, the chair creaked as they unshackled him, and led him away.
Dominick for his part wasn't screaming or begging, he just walked like someone who had already accepted everything.
......…
It had been three months since his final act.
The bar shootout was still fresh in the media's memory. Twenty dead, including the governor's son, found with his head open and his brain matter mingling with the portrait on the wall.
The media painted it like a massacre, a terrorist attack committed by a maniac.
They said a lot of things, but no one talked about why he did those things.
No one mentioned that the bar was a known meeting spot for the Royals, the gang that had been squeezing his neighborhood like a parasite for the past five years. The same gang responsible for the burning of a small family restaurant, his sister's favorite place to eat.
He was 15 when it happened, just a quiet kid, a little awkward, but mostly normal.
That night news of a fire broke out, then information reached everyone's ears.
A restaurant owner refused to pay the gangs for the right to operate in their territory. So they went there one afternoon, torched the place with everyone inside, and shot those who tried to flee.
His mother and sister died, consumed by the fire, and in a way, so did he.
What was left of him after that night couldn't be called a child, grief didn't crush him, it mutated into hate and insanity began to take hold, he wasn't gone, he knew who he was, and also understood what he was capable of doing that sleepless night.
He made a promise then.
He would kill them all.
......…
His first act was clumsy, some drug addict with loose lips talked and talked as he tortured him for information, withstanding all the while the nausea and initial hesitation to inflict pain.
He continued forward, and with time, he learned to banter, to play, if only to give even a bit more dread to this trash, or to find an escape through false amusement for his failing psyche.
Police in the area had long since stopped showing up at night, so he was free to roam.
He used what was left of his family's money to buy weapons, only that cold steel gave him reassurance on his quest, yet little by little his funds dwindled.
First, was the stash his mother had left, then the furniture, the tv was next, alongside his console and the only game he ever owned.
Piece by piece, month by month, he stripped the house bare.
To get money he resorted to stealing from the trash he burned, yet it often wasn't enough.
By his second year, whispers spread through the area of a ghost wandering on the alleys, others mouthed devil, yet no one knew his name, only the aftermath.
Gang bodies in alleys, warehouse fires, executions in plain daylight.
One day he found something odd after a raid on a local drug smuggler, a small stack of comic books on a box, and he took it without hesitation.
He began to read, heroes, villains, justice, and sacrifice were common themes in the stories, that, alongside his old laptop, the only electronic he kept, allowed him to immerse himself in the world of superheroes and adventures, but he liked the movies better.
Yet, he knew he wasn't a hero or will ever be one, but at least he wasn't like them either, he only hunted monsters. So inside his little world he continued with his ploys, believing he was right because...
He needed to believe it.
......
Three years passed by until he found his lead.
A weak willed addict talked without hesitation, gave him locations and names.
The Royals, he learned, weren't just a gang, they were part of a larger network tied to two local crime lords and a very real political shield, the governor's son himself.
The ones responsible for that fire were there.
He had found them.
For a month after that, he kept a close eye on their activities, then found out a meeting of the big three was set up at a popular bar next month, and so he waited.
He sold everything he owed by then, even the house, to buy as many weapons and bullets as he could to be completely ready.
Then, the day arrived, he walked in alone, and opened fire without hesitation.
He didn't kill everyone because he had to, he killed them because they chose to stand with monsters.
The governor's son?
First one down, two in the chest, one in the face.
He then turned to everyone else and let everything fly, without hesitation, or remorse, even as bullets struck his bulletproof vest or even his unprotected arms or legs, he didn't relent.
That night was his final chapter, so he didn't run, didn't try to escape, and when everything was done, he just poured himself a drink from one of the still intact bottles and waited.
The trial of course was a farce, the media painted him as a deranged killer, a mentally broken kid who snapped from trauma, as they chose to ignore the victims, and damage those he killed had inflicted on everyone.
Life in a maximum security prison, that was the verdict.
He laughed.
'Life? As if'.
Three days later, in his new cell, the door opened.
Three inmates stepped in, tattoos visible on their arms and face.
Dominick just stood up and smiled faintly.
"Governor sending his regards?"
That was the only words said.
The fight lasted less than two minutes.
Three bodies fell.
One limped out of the cell.
One inmate had a chunk of his neck bitten, another had a makeshift knife stuck in one eye socket.
Dom beside them just looked at the ceiling, his body growing cold and rigid from the stab wounds.
His only regret?
Not finishing the last piece of trash before going down.