125 The Mud Who Eats Souls (1/2)

Ten thousand souls....they were that many? Ten thousand innocent souls....He didn't know. He didn't even count. Who would have time to count in that situation? But wasn't there a time when he entrapped a young girl that he stopped for a brief moment after he saw the confusion in her eyes when she saw him?

The young girl was more than a little child. Ten years old with a grimy face and the smell of poverty around her. Richard found out that children as young as that girl gave off the sweetest smell in terms of soul quality. Their souls were transparent, very light and exuded a freshness that, when swallowed into his stomach, immediately cleanses every nook and cranny of his mud body.

That kind of soul had the power to peel off layers and layers of dirt on his skin, staunching the decay and rot around him, invigorating his mind with its fresh fragrance. The young girl looked at him without fear, until he broke her neck and he waited for her soul to peek out of her startled mouth.

The soul when he saw it, peered at him with curiosity. It did not shimmer as he was expecting but was solid, still retaining the physical form of the young girl he had just killed. It still carried the faint aura of her curiosity, and yes, her pity. Richard could see it in the girl's soul, as it peered at him without surprise even when he opened his mouth and filled his stomach with it.

The instant the soul reached his insides, a miracle seemed to happen. Maybe something about the girl's pity touched off something inside him because the layers of mud that covered his body started peeling off. He started to see skin, clean human skin on his hands, the formerly muddy claws that he used to maul and kill his victims with have acquired the actual shape and hue and color of a normal human. He was still spirit but the human hands looked like the way they were before his fall.

Richard stared at his hands then he slumped down in a corner and sobbed. He suddenly felt lost and frightened and alone. This was punishment he did not feel he deserved. He was not a criminal, a pervert or a destroyer of women. The only curve that really changed his life from its normal straight path had been his infidelity with Valerie. But even then, he felt love and desire. He had made a mistake by marrying a girl he only have feelings for as a friend and didn't know how to conduct himself once he found the real thing. But after all the heartache and pain and humiliation he had put his wife into, he still had wanted to go back to her, wanted to finally be a husband to her and take care of her and their child.

The thing he had trouble accepting was that he was never given a chance to redeem himself. He was not a bad man or an evil tyrant so why was he not allowed to repent and was even condemned to a life in purgatory and even forgotten? Where was god when all this was happening? It would have been more acceptable to him if the punishment had been given when he was still alive because then there was still hope, there was still a chance to talk to An Ning and tell her he was sorry and that he loved her.

Richard could feel himself boil with wrath. That was the one thing he could not accept about this...whatever it is. And that was that he died before he and An Ning could be at peace and reconcile their differences. He died with An Ning hating him. He died without her knowing that he knew about their child, and that he loved her. He and she grew up together, their families were friends and she followed him all her life until the day he betrayed her. He had wanted for her to know that he made a mistake because he was really stupid and that he didn't know his own heart and that mistake cost him her love, cost him their child. But he also knew that given a chance, he could have worked harder to earn her forgiveness, make her love him again, and in the end, maybe they could start again as a family. But that chance was taken away from him with a single snap of horrible fate.

Again, what was his crime? He didn't know and he didn't really understand. So, in the end it became clear what he must do. Conscience never really figured into it. He realized that he must do whatever it is to survive. Everything else was secondary to that fight. So he went back in the game, killed a couple of thousands more innocent kids until the mud completely fell off his body and he again retained the shape and aura of his human form. He was still soul but no longer covered in mud; he was still spirit but clean and free and no longer covered in the rank stench of his former decay.

Why should he be guilty? Being separated from his body to crawl as mud was equivalent to him being condemned without a trial to specify his guilt or not. Everything was part of the game when somebody condemned him to that non-existence and yet here's this asshole from hell demanding that he should feel guilty for surviving. Winner is king; loser is thief. Isn't that how the game is supposed to be played?

He killed a lot of people to reassemble his fragmented soul and after he had done that the first thing he did was look for An Ning.