"Nngh~... Aaaahhh~ more~~ deeper~~!!!"
Loud moans filled the fairly small room. They came from the open laptop. A young man of around eighteen sat on his bed, watching a video of a middle-aged woman getting railed by a younger guy. In the dimly lit room, it was hard to even notice him if not for the light emitted from the screen.
"Can you turn it down already?!" A loud bang came from the nearby wall, then another. "I swear I'll kill you, you fucking pervert. Day after day, all you do is watch porn! Are you fucking kidding me?!" The voice belonged to a young woman. She was fuming, annoyed by the daily gooning of her neighbor in the apartment next door.
"This bitch..." the young man cursed under his breath. His name was Max, a high school dropout. Ever since his mother kicked him out of the house, he had been barely scraping by in the run-down apartment he had found in an ad.
Anyone else would have found it suspicious that it was free, but not Max. He saw the opportunity and took it. Even now, he didn't care that he had to sleep with rats running over his face at night. To him, it was home.
"I told you to turn it off! Fuck! I'm done!" One last bang hit the wall, this time harder, as if someone had thrown a heavy object at it.
After the banging stopped, Max kept staring at the naked woman with lust, feeling his crotch burn. Around five minutes later, he found himself staring at his door as it crashed down.
Several large men burst into the apartment. Behind them stood a young woman of striking beauty.
"This is that trash? Shit, look at this place... smells just like him," one of the men mocked. He cracked his knuckles and slowly walked toward Max, who retreated backward on the bed until his back hit the wall.
"Wait, wait, let's talk about this." For the first time in his life, his legs shook with fear. He had only seen things like this happen in movies. One thought remained in his mind now.
Would he die today?
For what? For watching porn? This was absurd.
And no matter how absurd it seemed to him, the answer lay in the hundreds of notes stuck to his apartment door. Months of festering resentment from the woman toward Max had finally exploded, driving her to such drastic measures.
Punch after punch bruised his frail body until he forgot what he was even being beaten for.
"I told you I'd kill you one day, you trash." A soft voice brushed against his barely conscious mind. Sharp pain rushed through his scalp as a soft hand yanked his head up from the ground. The woman was holding a kitchen knife in her hand, smirking at Max with killing intent.
Max's lips moved, but he stopped himself from begging for mercy. He was not the kind of person who would crawl on the ground before others, even if it meant death.
A cold blade pierced his flesh just below the ribs. Hot blood painted the filthy floor as Max's vision blurred and twisted. Surprisingly, it didn't hurt. His brows furrowed in confusion. What had happened today? Why him? Again and again, why was it always him who had to suffer?
"Leave him. Let's get out of here before anybody notices," one of the grunts said in a hushed voice. His eyes were filled with fear. They had just witnessed the girl kill someone.
"We didn't agree to this. Are you crazy, you bitch? You said we'd only beat him up to warn him!"
"Let's go. I don't want to go to jail again."
Max's limp body hit the floor with a thud. The one who had stabbed him now wore a pale face. Her lower lip trembled as reality finally sank in.
"Shit... what have I done?" Even so, she didn't try to call an ambulance for him. Instead, she rushed to the bathroom and scrubbed her hands with soap, as if she could wash away the sin of murder. After that, she hurried back to her room, locked herself inside, and left Max to bleed out alone.
"Alone... again... alone..." Max's lips moved with difficulty, his voice barely audible now. His muscles had already given up on him, and the last of his strength was slowly fading away. "So... thirsty." He smacked his chapped lips, desperately searching for any source of water.
The soft sound of water spilling onto the floor echoed from the bathroom. The old sink couldn't handle the flow, clogging up and letting water spill over the edges.
His eyes gleamed. He hated giving up on anything other than himself. He hated the thought of people seeing him like this, seeing him die. He refused this fate. He refused the Grim Reaper. "I won't die here..." Strength he didn't know he possessed suddenly filled his body.
Little by little, he crawled toward the water, his tongue nearly sticking out in his craving to taste the nectar of life itself. "I can't go out like this. Shit, I don't deserve this. I want to live, to be powerful, to rule others, not crawl for all eternity..."
The moment he reached the water, leaving a trail of blood behind him, his eyes lit up. Like a starving beast, his lips latched onto the dusty, filthy water on the floor. Yet no matter how much he drank, he could not quench his thirst.
"Why?! Why?!" he tried to shout, but his lungs did not have enough air left. His vision darkened until all he could see was a narrow tunnel.
But then something caught his attention. In the water, he saw a reflection.
"A village?" he whispered to himself, his hand reaching toward it. In that moment, he thought he had already died. And the reflection in the water looked like heaven. Anything was better than hell, he thought to himself.
But right before he could touch it, his vision faded, swallowed by darkness. His head slumped to the floor, lifeless. He lay unconscious for only a brief moment, but then the reflection on the ground rippled, and a hand reached out through the water and grabbed him by the wrist.