Chapter 11 Night of Melancholy
Kimblee remained submerged in his memories, and amid the distant murmur of the prison and the cold brush of the walls, he returned to the first time he killed. He was twenty-one years old. It was not on a battlefield, nor under orders from the State. It was an ordinary night—insignificant, like so many others that fade from the memory of men.
He was in a seedy bar, the air thick with alcohol and sweat. Kimblee was already drunk, laughter coming easily, his mind drifting through disconnected thoughts. The world seemed slow to him, almost kind. When he staggered out into the street, the night cold bit at his face and brought back just a trace of clarity. They were there: three men, poorly defined silhouettes under the dying light of a streetlamp. They did not say much. Their looks spoke for them. They suspected Kimblee had set a house on fire. They had no proof—only anger and fear, and that was enough.
Kimblee raised his hands clumsily and laughed, a tired laugh. He told them he was drunk, that he didn't want trouble, that he wasn't in the mood to fight that night. For a moment, he thought it would be enough. He turned to leave, dragging his feet, thinking only of his bed.
Then the blow came.
Sharp. Brutal.
The world burst into black and white as his face struck the ground.
They fell on him like animals. Kicks, insults, formless rage. Kimblee felt the pain surge through his body, but it wasn't that which awakened him—it was something deeper, something that had been waiting a long time to come out. Between gasps and laughs choked by blood, he brought his hands together. His fingers trembled, not with fear, but with anticipation. From his trouser pocket, he pulled out a small handful of gunpowder. Nothing refined. Nothing elegant.
"This will be enough," he murmured, almost sadly.
He scattered the powder over them as they stared at him in confusion, unable to understand what that drunk on the ground was doing. The silence lasted barely a second. When one of them raised his foot again, Kimblee touched his body.
The explosion was violent, chaotic—beautiful in its brutality. The blast triggered the rest of the powder, and the other two men vanished in a rain of fire and flesh. The sound ricocheted down the empty street, but no one came out to look. The world kept turning as if nothing had happened.
Kimblee remained on the ground for a few more seconds, staring at the night sky, breathing in the smell of smoke and hot metal. Then he struggled to his feet. He looked at the remains scattered across the pavement—the mangled, unrecognizable bodies. He felt no guilt. He felt no pride. Only a strange calm, almost melancholy.
"Apparently none of them knew they could fly," he said softly, more to himself than to anyone else.
He laughed. Not with joy, but with a hollow laugh, like someone who has just understood something irreversible. He turned around and walked toward his home, staggering, still drunk, leaving the corpses and the silence behind.
That night, without fully realizing it, Kimblee understood that he had crossed a threshold from which there was no return. And far from tormenting him, that certainty stayed with him like an old, sad song—one that never stopped playing in his mind.
(End of the Chapter)