“Páfsi! Halt!” 

The human snapped his gaze to me as I barked the command. His eyes were wide, his face bloodless, and his thin, emaciated frame shook as his fate dawned on him. He parted his cracked, bloodied lips in a silent beg, pleading through tearful eyes as he stood in the cellar, frozen in what I knew to be a sickly combination of exhaustion and shock. 

In his cadaverous arms, he clutched a burlap sack clearly stamped with the symbol of a rose, one with angular petals and sharp edges. Printed under it was the word “stratiotikó”. Property of the Royal Military of Senekio.

Without any consideration, I placed my hand on the revolver at my hip. 

As Strategos, military general and governor of my district, I always knew very well what was expected of me. I always carried out my duties according to the law, the law to which I’ve dedicated my long life protecting. 

This day should be no different. 

The man, with his round ears and stubbled chin, stared hopelessly down the barrel of the revolver, his jaw going slack as he began to accept his end. The sack slid out of his grasp and hit the ground, out tumbling a loaf of bread and exactly four potatoes. 

I’ve extinguished many flames like his before. It was of no real consequence to us who bore the rose on our lapels and peaked caps. Because, well, humanity was akin to vermin. They were the lowest of society, the stupid and the ignorant with their asymmetrical, worn faces and lumpy bodies. Affording them life was more or less an act of cruelty, because how can anything like them not only suffer and stumble their way through their mere few decades of living? 

…Is what I’ve been told time and time again by my colleagues and superiors since I first attended university over a century ago. 

But with every year that passes, with every human being in whose eyes I gaze and whose life, or family, or wealth I rob, I question, little by little, what truly is it that makes them so inferior. I see it in their eyes; their intelligence and rationality were no different from our own. But they also had something more. Something that I didn’t quite understand although I found myself desperate to.

And this man before me laid it out for me to see, clear as day. 

No person, no matter how hungry, mad, or wretched, was foolish enough to steal from a government building; it was almost certain to end in death. And I recognized this stoic awareness in his frightened gaze. He was not taking for himself, but for others. Only that act of selflessness would warrant such recklessness. 

You would never see one of us even think to do such a thing. 

I furrowed my brow; I couldn’t pull the trigger. Something so instinctual, purely routine, suddenly felt foreign in my palm. 

A glimmer of hope appeared on the man’s countenance as he saw me hesitate. 

“Please, sir,” he finally spoke as he broke the shackles of shock. “My family.. My family is starving to death. Please, you have to understand.” 

“Silence!” I snapped at him, and he immediately shrunk away from me, from the pointy-eared, sharp-toothed monster that held his fragile life in clawed hands. “If I don’t kill you, someone else will.” 

What was that feeling, that pang of emotion in my heart? Why couldn’t I suppress it? Why couldn’t I? 

I remembered myself, when I was a youth who had just passed his examinations with flying colors and was so proud, so delighted to finally enlist and serve his nation. I stood on the cobbled road outside the Capitol, clutching my badge in white knuckles as the horses and their carriages passed me by, as black smoke churned and twisted above out of old smokestacks in the distance. Back then, there was nothing more I’d ever wanted than to flaunt my loyalty to my country, because I was convinced there was no greater calling in life. 

I could have never understood the position I was in right now. I would have sworn at this older, discontented version of myself, would have spat on his boots.

I had to let go of the him in the past, because what he thought of me should not be any of my concern.

I dropped my arm to my side. The man’s hope shone brighter. 

“Fine! Leave, but you’d be a fool to take the bag.” 

I initially couldn’t register the expression on his face, until I realized that it was gratitude. 

When he was gone, I smiled to myself briefly. I made my own decision, regardless of my duty, and I showed mercy. I was capable of such a thing. 

But not even a minute later, I heard the gunshot ring out. It appears I was right.