36 JOSEPH AND EMILIA

bout Joseph

Joseph Manganielo

What to do when you are forced to kill a man at the age of nine? Yes, thank you because if he hadn't taken her from me, I wouldn't have had to. That's where it all started...

My life turned into a sea of blood, when William Campbell killed my mother in front of me and bathed me in her blood, I was just a child, I was three years old but I can remember it like it was today, my dear mother asking help, looking at me with compassion and saying that everything was going to be okay.

But it didn't turn out well. She is gone and with her my soul.

After that day I was left still covered in my mother's blood, on the doorstep of our house. I grew up with that trauma, every night I dreamed about it, I cried for hours until my father managed to calm me down. Years later, at school, I would hurt my friends when they wouldn't do what I wanted, or when they wouldn't let me play.

I was just a boy, but something inside me, which I now call the inner demon, cried out for that, for hurting people and seeing them cry. All of this got worse as I grew up.

So Jeffrey, my dad, made me kill Mom's killer after six years. He almost went into depression if it weren't for me, who he had to take care of. He devoted those six years to educating me and trying to deflect evil from me and finding the bastard who killed her.

Worst of all, I liked it, I felt good and happy, it doesn't matter if it was just an illusory happiness. I avenged the one who gave birth to me, the one who looked at me with a plea for me to live.

I went very slowly, I cut his skin into little pieces, then I took out an eye, then each of his nails, until he begged me to live, just like my beautiful mother asked him to. What I didn't grant is clear.

The problem was that after that, I couldn't sleep anymore, I woke up at night with emotional crises, crying and screaming. I couldn't think of anything else but: killing again.

It was like a drug, which I had tried and wanted more of, then my father realized that he was part of me, I was a killer by nature, so he trained me and taught me everything I know today. Being cunning and silent, like an animal that kills its prey in silence, starting with some of his enemies, he would capture them and let me torture and kill them.

My father as the head of a criminal organization, there was no shortage of enemies to exterminate. He always won, his only and worst defeat was the murder of his beloved, by his worst enemy, but as I said, later I took care of him.

But it all got out of hand when I started hunting alone, yes hunting, as I call it. I began to search at my own risk, kill and clean up the tracks. My father's enemies weren't enough, I wanted more, much more.

There were more than ten victims a day, I was becoming more and more obsessed with killing. And just killing criminals wasn't enough for me, when one day I got into a fight and ended up punching the guy to death.

My father picked me up and took me to a small town called Manchester in the countryside of England. And he made me promise that I wouldn't kill any innocents. As he was the one who trained me and taught me how to get away with all murders, I owed him a lot and respected him above all else. So I promised.

After a few years my father died of natural causes, all his mafia money went to me. Killed all the motherfuckers who wanted to take his place, I'm done with that organization shit. The fault of the misfortunes of my whole life was that shit.

I started to live alone since I was seventeen years old in an obscure mansion. After twenty years have passed, I continue with my work, hunting murderers out of here and anyone who might dare to approach the city.

I remain as a kind of guardian of this city, not because I am good, which I am far from being, but so that my peace is not shaken here.

People here are afraid of me, I know. They don't dare go more than ten kilometers from my residence, no one has ever seen my face but they know about my conduct.

And that's what I like. From fear, fear fills me with strength and feeds part of my addiction.

And I intend to live like this, in the shadows without anyone knowing my name or my face. Just rumours, I don't care.

If anyone in this damn town dares to bother me one day, or snoop into my life, unfortunately, I will have to break the promise I made to my father.

##About Emilia

Emilia Antonelli

Our city should be called the village of secrets. Because we all keep secrets from each other here. I always find out about some, my work helps a lot in this, because I'm a clerk, extroverted people arrive who end up saying more than they should to me, many times, things I'd rather not know.

During my seventeen years, I find myself in a monotonous life, house, work, mass and sometimes I go out with friends. After finishing my studies, I started working in the city cafe at the age of sixteen, to pay for my college since according to my family college has to be paid for by ourselves, which I don't understand since we are a rich family, anyway. There I met a lot of people, almost the whole city goes there, it's the best coffee in the region.

I also met some friends there, totally different from me, they are young rebels who go out to parties, drink and have sex before marriage. One of them, Roman Polanski, has a 'crush' on me, whenever he can he's making jokes about how beautiful I am and how I'd look better naked in his bed, his jokes are always lame and full of slutty.

There's also Malvina Sanchez, she's of Mexican descent and has lived in England since she was three years old, she's crazy about sex and she's always telling me how good it is and how her partners vary between good and bad, she's always full of boyfriends, but deep down she's a beautiful girl with a giant heart.

There are also twin brothers, Jessica and Rocco Pitanga, whose parents are very close to mine. The sister is the most distant from me, even so we consider ourselves as friends, maybe colleagues, because whenever Jessica can be teasing me or playing charades because of Roman, whom she is intensely in love with but won't assume even if the world ends, Your pride is so strong that sometimes I wonder if it's possible for someone like that to be happy one day.

Rocco is incredible, unlike his sister, he is extremely nice and happy with life, he is always smiling and treating me with kindness, he has taken me out to eat several times and once we even kissed, but we promised that we would keep this secret forever. seven keys because he is dating the daughter of the city pastor, Susana.

My parents are affectionate with me and my brothers, there are six of us in total; Emília, Sophie, Melinda, Teodoro, Enrico and Thomas. I am the oldest, now eighteen years old. Lately I have noticed a strange behavior from my parents, they are almost not at home and when they are I hear them fight, my little sister even asks but as an older sister I disguise it and leave her distracted with something else.

The only boyfriend I had was Marcel Gérard, we were together for three months, but we broke up as soon as he moved to another city in order to pursue a career in music, I suffered for a total of two days, I was a little in love, then I realized that it was the best thing to do. Nothing more happened between the two of us than making out, for my safety of course, if it were up to Marcel we'd already had sex, but inside me there was an immeasurable desire to wait until the day I got married, and I'm totally devote to it.

The city I live in is the most peaceful in our region, there are few people who live here and most of them know each other, however it is a little dark, among all the secrets that surround it, there is something that intrigues me a lot, the mysterious mansion at the end of the village, it is a very large and dark house in its appearance, but far from being something ugly, the house is incredible in all its details that were certainly designed to frighten anyone who dared to invade or something like that.

There is a rumor about a man, they say his name is Joseph but nobody knows for sure as nobody has ever seen or heard from him, all we know is that he lives there and also that he is a supposed murderer, according to stories that the people account, so what comes to my mind when we whisper about him, is that he is a real Freddy Krueger, with a burnt face or some macabre mask. All I know is that it's just rumors and also that I want to stay the hell away from that house.