Upturn (2008 anthology story)

For an insomniac half-breed, nocturnal by night and diurnal by day, there is no faith. There is only hell, and the hells that lie beyond.

The half-breed stared where there should have been stars- where, if the Goddess was as the government claimed, there would have been. What Merciful Mother would create a being who almost never slept, and force him to live so close to Temple City that he had never seen an authentic star in his life?

As he stared, blankly contemplating the lack of meaning of existence, he heard something below him. He frowned; the only other occupant of his house was his mother, who slept almost 16 hours a day and never woke up for any reason between midnight and sunrise. The only exception was ruled out as a possibility- after all, no one returned to life had yet repeated the act that had gotten him murdered. Well, except for heroes. No, there were simply strangers in his home. Perhaps they were rummaging through his belongings, perhaps they were merely waiting for a set number of seconds to pass by to complete a dare. Regardless, they had broken down his door, and had otherwise made enough mistakes for him to notice them from the roof. He wasn’t part elf, after all- it took as much effort to gain the attention of an orc as a human.

The half-orc lazily rolled off the side of his roof, landing on his feet and catching a glimpse of something moving toward the horizon. Without a word he took off after them, pumping his superhuman leg muscles as hard as they would go after a week without sleep. He screamed silently, his muscles protesting the sudden acceleration, but he ignored them. He had endured pain before; as long as his legs kept moving, they would be fine. Already the endorphins were beginning to do their work.

As he ran on, his targets came into full view. A handful of teenagers, just as he thought. He growled lightly in his throat, and gave an end to speculation. If he gave in to his father’s side, he would sleep tonight. Never mind the blood, the bodies. He would clean them up in the morning. It was probably a safe bet that no one would come looking- after all, if someone knows where you are, you usually don’t break into houses. It would be just like the time his father came home.

Letting his thoughts vanish as they so often did on sleepless nights, he ran on. He squeezed his hands into fists until they bled and, confident that his nails were still harder and sharper than a pure human’s, he opened them into claws. As blood dripped down his hands, he leaped into the air for a flying tackle. Had he still been bothered to think, he may have found it ironic that someone who probably watched the same wrestling shows as him was going to this move as the last thing they ever saw.