Fiction | Writing Prompts | Dystopian

The Relentless Villain of Your Future

He’s driven by a vision of the world to come…

This story is for Zane Dickens’s challenge: Writing Challenge: Villains to Vanquish. You can find it here. The idea is to “inspire any worthy writer to pull pen from a stone and rise to vanquish them… enough that a writer can take it and run with it.” All villains will be added to an Official Microcosm Villains List to be linked to from future writing exercises and prompts.

Hawk Malkin. Your mortal enemy, whether you know it or not. He will kill you and everyone you care about.

Or at least — everyone that you have left.

Hawk was my high school friend. Believe me, he doesn’t look down on the surviving civilians of Earth. He doesn’t even enjoy the killing. Never has. But he’s got a mission. And his pursuit of that mission is relentless.

File on Hawk Malkin:

Name: Zachary ‘Hawk’ Malkin.

Age: 32

Height: 6’10”

Weight: 225lb

Occupation: Outlaw/criminal.

Aims: Reduce the population of the Earth to below one thousand.

Village by village, refuge by refuge, Hawk Malkin comes, and he kills. Then he returns with his death squad lackeys, The Hounds to their secretive forest hideout.

If by chance, one or more civilians escapes, believe me — he will pursue. He’ll track them down. He is not a predator by nature, but he has become one by profession.

And now, finding and shooting the surplus population is nothing to him. No obstacle can get in his way. It’s almost too easy, like the first level of a video game.

Does Hawk think about the feelings of his victims? If asked, perhaps he would say:

“I know they have feelings, just like bugs beneath my jackboot have feelings.”

No.

I think he would say:

“Yes, they have feelings, and that is why they need to die. So that they can be spared their pain, and everyone else can have a better world.”

He sees it as a holy mission. That returning the world to the way it should be is a matter that can’t be valued in normal terms.

It’s the only imperative.

I knew Hawk long ago, in a different life. We were kids. In a twisted way, I still understand him. He always loved plants, forests. Animals… not so much. Other kids, not so much.

But I wouldn’t say he was cruel by nature. More… driven.

He never slept much. Now, so they say, nobody ever sees him sleep. I wonder what dreams could terrify a man like him. It can’t be normal stuff like the death of a family or the destruction of his homeland. Stuff that fills the nightmares of ordinary people. It has to be something darker.

Either way, when his Hounds awake, Hawk’s eyes are always open.

Watching.

Waiting.

Perhaps he just needs to retain his focus until his holy mission is complete, and he can rest.

If you see him, it’s over for you. You will try to escape him, of course. You should try. But you won’t stand a chance. He’s relentless. He never stops. He’s almost preternaturally tall and strong, and seems to feel no pain. His aim is flawless. Disarmed, he can kill just as easily with his bare hands.

And of course, he shows no mercy.

As he kills, he murmurs the same phrase, over and over:

“For a better world.”

Thanks for reading! Check out Zane’s challenge below, and find more of the stories that have been submitted in this list.

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