Hernonymous [A Hacker's Diary]

Between sleep and awake[Prenonymous]

I open my eyes and find myself on a basketball court. The ground beneath me is slick with the sweat and blood of my fallen teammates, I am the last surviving player.

On the other team is my mother, father, my brother, mama, Papa and Amanda's mother. They all wear shiny blue suits and are pointing white guns at me.

Somebody fires. It is Amanda's mother. I see the bullet coming towards me and know I would never be able to dodge it at this distance. I would die and they would win this game.

In slow motion, I watch my fans in the audience scream my name. They are wearing shirts with my face printed on, and although I don't see it, I know they have the number '666' written on the back of their shirts in red. It is heartbreaking that even though they are cheering me on, I would still let them down.

John jumps in front of me, taking the bullet right to his face and spraying liquid electricity all over me. He turns towards me with the bullet still lodged in his face, giving me a thumbs up with robotic hands.

"Do your best" He says, before collapsing and sinking into the bloody floor of the court

As he slowly sinks into the ground, I feel his strength seep into me, along with a strange "self-assuredness". John has given me a chance. I would win for sure. I would win for John.

The woman who fired the bullet grunts in anger and throws her gun at me, but I sidestep easily, catching a glimpse of the tiny-print label etched into its side before it passes by. It says, "Dextra's blessing"

The gun passes by me and hits a wall at full force. Before any member of the other team can react, I jump into action.

The basket ball is an extension of my arm. I dribble past my mother and father with ease, side flip over Amanda's mother's head and shoulder slam papa out of the way so that he falls to the ground and shatters like glass, sending blue suit pieces, bone fragments and chunks of skin in all directions.

My brother rushes towards me, and I can see mama behind him, readying her gun for when I manoeuvre past him. I don't, I simply jump and shoot.

I see the other team's fans stand up in anticipation of my loss, their golden wings flapping sporadically and their halo's vibrating intensely above their heads. I see my fans stand up in anticipation of my win, their horns are an electric blue and their voices deep as they chant my name. My ball is going in for sure, I just know it.

I never get to see it go in. I blink for just one fraction of a second and when I open my eyes, I am standing before a Golden Gate, staring directly at the face of the angel I know is called Michael, who is idly patting one of the heads of Cerberus, Hades's guard dog.

"Am I dead?" I ask him

"Yes, you fool, you are D-E-A-D as a doornail" he says in an angelic "head in the cloud" tone that doesn't fit.

"Look at that scale," he says to me, pointing at a large old measuring scale that suddenly appeared in the sky "your heart is on one side and on the other is a grain of sand. If-" He cuts himself short as the scale drops with a clang on the side where my heart is "oh shit, you are rotten" he says.

Cerberus growls at me and jumps, sailing through the air with all three heads fighting each other for the first bite. I raise my hands to defend myself and in one motion Cerberus bites everything from my wrist down clean off.

The pain shoots up my arms and my eyes snap open. I am in a big room, lying on a soft bed that is wet with my sweat. What the hell was I dreaming about that made me sweat this hard?

I bring my right hand to my face to clean the sweat that is about to drop into my eyes, and I almost scream when I see it.

" My hands, what happened to my hands?"