Gravedigger roams the slums, the place he used to call home. It hasn’t changed much. It’s carnage.
“Any place can be a wasteland to those left to wander it.
I was six years old. Hungry. Not that kind of ‘oh I could eat’ kinda hungry, but that belly rumbling and growling kind of hungry.
I had nothing. I had no-one. I roamed the slums hunting for food and warmth. To my young six year old mind, it was a wasteland. Humanity was few and far between. Women spread themselves on street corners for their latest customers. Drug dealers dealt openly in the street and vagrants were passed out in storefront doorways, vomiting blood and choking their life away.”
He carelessly walks down dark alleyways, ignoring the screams and violent guttural yells of victims throughout the Slums.
“Desperate criminals would openly kill for what they wanted. It was lawlessness. Zeus didn’t care about those trying to survive down here. In his palace of gold and diamond, he was safe.
I wasn’t ever safe.
A boy of my age didn’t just see things. Things happened to me. Things I couldn’t comprehend at the time and dare to mention now. My formative years were full of abuse and desperation. The wasteland was unforgiving, only we called it life. It was The Slums; it was every single day.”
Gravedigger comes to the end of an alleyway that’s blocked, turning to look back at the street in which he just came.
“On every corner was another tale of the wasteland. In front of my eyes, before my person and upon it.
My tapestry is woven with the whispers of every minute I suffered that wasteland, Jay. Every molecule of my being aches with the memory of wandering that wasteland, wondering where my next meal would be, or if I’d sleep safely tonight without an unknown figure trying to mount me.
You claim to have lived in a Wasteland, but the crumbling remnants of civilization has always been down here. Look at it, Jay; this isn’t a game. It’s not a fairytale, it’s a nightmare. People don’t dress up like a steampunk virgin and pretend they’re cosplaying the end of the world.”
He smirks.
“The end of the fucking world is right, fucking… here.
And do know what I learned, Fury? I learned that when the end of the world coming knocking, you don’t have a choice about opening the door. The only choice you have is what you do when you open it; you either be the victim or become the monster.
I walked the Wasteland and I made my choice. I have more blood on my hands than I’ve dug graves, and I wouldn’t dream of washing it away. There’s no questioning whether I was a ruthless raider or a fearless scavenger…”
Gravedigger is soon approached by two men, each with blades in their hand, noticing his being trapped in the alley.
“Do you know why?
Because I was alive.”
He grins as they get closer.
And it was always… always…
Any grave but my own.”