Page 1 of Sin

Chapter One

Because of me

Dandelion fluff pirouetted on the breeze, reminding me of when I was little and used to make wishes as I blew the little seeds into the wind. Back then, my wishes were simple: I wish for a million dollars. I wish for the newest gaming system. I wish for unlimited pizza. I wish for Arnie Klein from gym class to notice me.

Now, if I were to make wishes, they’d be more along the lines of: I wish the prison cooks would add salt to the food. I wish the other inmates left me alone. I wish my friends would come visit again.

You know, normal adult wishes.

There were so many wishes I could make, like getting out of this Godforsaken shithole. But deep down, I knew I wasn’t ever leaving here. Because wishes made from sinners went unanswered, even when carried along the wind by dancing dandelion fuzz.

Besides, I knew I deserved to be here. To pay for my mistakes.

Which was why, when Charge and his cronies crept up on me from my perch on the prison yard bleachers, I didn’t try to run. Even when Charge stormed up to me with a promise of pain etched into each crevice of his face.

The blow caused me to bite the inside of my cheek, and blood splattered the ground as a result. I hardly felt the pain at first. This was just another Tuesday for me, these days.

“Stupid, bastard,” Charge growled, using the full force of his powers on me. It hurt like a bitch, considering he could absorb and store kinetic energy, then unleash it at his leisure. Which, taking into account the state of what were most definitely broken ribs, dislocated shoulder, and bloodied face, he’d apparently been storing his power for a while.

Once a week, our power-dampening handcuffs were briefly disabled, and we were allowed to use our powers in a supervised and highly warded area outside. The warden felt it was important to allow this to keep us from going insane.

Because that’s what it felt like to lose your powers: Insanity.

So I could have stopped Charge, used my power of persuasion and ended this. I was one of the strongest Villains in the prison when it came to powers, after all, but…

“I lost my daughter that day!” he half-sobbed, half-yelled. His fist crashed against my nose, and a gush of blood followed the flare of pain as it broke. “She was only seven! And now she’s gone.” Another power-packed punch. “She’s gone. She’s gone. She’s gone.”

And that was the reason I didn’t fight back. Because I deserved every hit, every drop of blood, every bite of pain.

This wasn’t the first time one of the inmates had attacked me, nor would it be the last. So many of them had lost loved ones because of me. Because I was stupid enough to trust the man who sired me and broke him out of the very prison I now lived in.

Flashes of memory battered my mind, causing a headache to form as I tried my hardest to block them out and keep them locked inside.

My dad, standing before a crowd of men, women, and children as he pinned a broken man beneath him…

The screams of the man as his power was ripped from his soul until he was no more than a civilian…

It wasn’t long after that day that I’d had my own power ripped from my body, though briefly, by the very same man I called dad.

I’d seen how the man had convulsed beneath my father as he took something crucial to the man. Had heard the man make sounds almost inhuman as his power was stolen, leaving him broken and ruined.

I now understood that pain, though I hadn’t at the time. I never could quite explain the sensation because there weren’t words to describe it. How did you put into words what it felt like to have your very essence torn away?

The closest thing I could compare would be peeling part of your very soul from your body, leaving you with a phantom ache so intense it sent you into shock. Those of us who’d temporarily lost our powers and managed to live through it understood what I meant by insanity. Our gifts were interwoven into our being, our DNA, and to have them forcibly ripped away left us damaged and unstable.

I could still remember the dead look in my father’s eyes that day as he’d carved the man’s heart from his chest in vengeance. Could still recall the following chaos as my father’s minions attacked the audience who were unfortunate to witness such a heinous act.

There had been so much blood. So much death.

Because of me.

Another punch to the face helped clear my head of the intrusive memories, and I slowly came back to the present. I welcomed the man’s hits. It was less painful than reliving my past.

I didn’t know how long the assault lasted, but by the time the alarm began ringing, signaling the end of the hour, I was alone and bloody on the ground. The cuffs had been enabled once more, forcing my power to withdraw inside myself. Once my powers were officially locked away, two officers found me. They hauled me up and dragged me to the infirmary.

The nurse, Cyril, a man in his late seventies, eighties, or possibly even nineties—honestly, I couldn’t tell—tsked when he saw me. “What happened this time, Mr. Gonzalez?”

I shrugged because I wasn’t a snitch and winced as pain tore through me at the simple movement. “I tripped.”

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