Artyom Dereschuk - Hate the Sin

Tsetse showed that he wouldn’t reply to that snide remark. The General suddenly felt disgust for the man in front of him. His pride in him was gone. It would be the best if he remained a distant memory of the kid who had followed orders and never showed any emotions. If he had known that he was so sentimental, the General would never have pushed him to open up.

“Go away, Tsetse. I don’t want to see you anymore. Don’t show your face to me.”

Tsetse, however, didn’t budge. He kept standing where he was, staring at the man. Waiting for something.

“I said go!” the man shouted at the top of his lungs. “Vanish! I don’t know why you came here and what you expected but you won’t get it.”

Tsetse suddenly raised his finger and noted: “Do you hear that?”

The General stopped and listened. And as he listened, his eyes went wide.

He could hear people shouting something. Many voices, all full of disdain and anger, were shouting his name. And not only that.

His title.

General Malaria.

“What’s this?” the General wondered, and when he saw the expression on Tsetse’s face he understood; he asked just the right man.

“Don’t you recognize them? This is your congregation, General. They’re coming to discuss a few things about your past.”

“What did you tell them?” The General frowned. His voice was angry but his eyes were betraying the fact that the man was scared.

“Me? Nothing. But the people from the village jumped at the chance to share one story from twenty years ago when they recognized your photo. I have been searching for you for twenty long years, and as it turns out, I wasn’t the only one.”

“They won’t believe them,” the General said, but his voice wasn’t very confident about its message.

Tsetse cocked his head, listening to the roars of the crowd, and then summed it up: “I think they already did.”

“Then what was this all about? All this… Tsetse, my boy. I know I was harsh to you boys, but you have to understand, it was for your own good. I’m a changed man, I truly—”

“I knew that I wouldn’t get through to you,” Tsetse interrupted him. “But… I never hoped to, anyway. I wanted to be sure that you’re still the monster that I had sworn to kill all those years ago.”

Tsetse leaned into the terrified man, and whispered into his ear: “I don’t remember a day in my life when I didn’t want to shoot you. And I’ll regret the fact that I won’t be the one to kill you till the end of my life. But I made a promise. And I know that you don’t fear death by a bullet. You fear loss of control. I saw it in you when your soldiers were abandoning you.” He leaned back, and the General’s eyes went wide when he realized what he was seeing. After all of those years, he had finally managed to catch a glimpse of emotion on Tsetse’s face.

Captain Tsetse was smiling at the General, for the first time in his life, and that smile didn’t promise the man anything good.

“As much as I regret not killing you, knowing that I gave you the worst death possible will be a nice consolation. The boys didn’t get their happy ending. But I know that they would at least be happy to see you end like this,” the captain said as he turned around and walked toward the door.

The sight of him leaving pushed the man over the edge.

“You think you’re better than me?! What you did today was vengeance! Vengeance, Tsetse! I was right, and you’re not above it! Don’t act so high and mighty!”

“This isn’t vengeance,” Tsetse coldly noted. “This is punishment.”

“Let’s go, Dolo,” Tsetse called Puppy Slayer by his name, but the man shook his head. “I want to stay and see. This… This is the only death I ever wanted to see.”

Tsetse opened the door, and before he could even take a step outside, the ravenous mob—angry, unforgiving, betrayed—rushed in like a current, swarming the man they had adored just an hour before.

“He’s my soldier! He’s one of us!” The General pointed toward Tsetse and shouted, but he wasn’t heard. He tried to explain that Tsetse was just as guilty, but before he had a chance to do that the strike of a sickle severed his voice chords.

When morning came, the biggest piece left from General Malaria, the fearsome warlord who used to be in charge of The Revolutionary Brigade of Liberia, could be fit in the change compartment of an average-sized wallet. If the General had known any better, he might’ve chosen a different war name. Maybe it would have been associated with fewer deaths but, at the very least it, would have been remembered.

As things stood, however, his title failed to eclipse the thing it was meant to borrow the dread from. Very shortly after his death people stopped making the distinction between his crimes and deaths caused by the disease, and his name, instead of becoming history as the man had hoped, became just another line in medical reports.

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A group of “black diggers”—criminals that seek the mammoth tusks in the Siberian permafrost, have dug up something that should’ve remained buried and invoked the wrath of a mysterious “Master of the Forest”—an unyielding and vengeful entity that leaves only torn bodies behind.

In the Siberian summer, the Sun never sets.

You’ll never learn who or what he is. You’ll never find out where he’s from. The only thing you’ll know is what he’s done. What he’s taken away from you.