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  The night was calm and the air was sweet but it burned his lungs as he breathed it in. It would have been a beautiful night if not for the circumstances.

  Fury churned in Mural's stomach and rippled through his veins.

  Goosebumps raised on his skin and anger balled in his throat. His left hand tightly gripped his forehead and tried to rub away the pain, then slid down to his eyes and wiped away his tears.

  A rustling from the charred grass and timber spun him completely around. He quickly and loudly unsheathed the sword in response and gazed around the wreckage for movement. Slowly shifting his feet forward through the broken vestiges of his home an eternity passed until something poked itself free just ahead of him. Even in the dark, with the shadow cast from the fires, Mural could see something red. His arms were taut with fear; his muscles yearned to strike at that evil color. The color of the men that burned his house. The color the man he shot bled.

  Without a thought of caution or an inkling of mercy, Mural flipped the sword and stabbed the blade into the debris with all his force. The sword sunk down and stuck into the ground. A flash of the memory of the soldier's malevolent faces made him twist the sword back and forth. Mural had to protect what was left of his family and the redcoats had already tried to take their lives once, it wouldn't happen again. A muffled sound Mural wanted to believe was a cry of pain came from the wreckage beneath his sword, and then died quickly, sounding more like an animal than a person to him. But he wouldn't know.

  "The redcoats are more animal than man," Mural muttered.

  A small fire still flickered nearby. Mural walked to it and lifted a burning board from the fire and tossed it directly atop where he had stabbed with the sword. He kicked boards on top of the flame, hoping it would burn away the vermin. He watched the flames eat the rubble and, without him knowing it, gazed angrily at the last vestiges of his childhood burn away. Content with his decisions and his makeshift revenge, Mural ran back to the bonfire.

  "Listen, Nathaniel," Mural announced, lost in a plan formulating as he spoke, "We can go round up a chicken at Old Man Henry's coop and then bring it back here to roast. Then at daybreak we head to Boston. To join the Continentals and kill all those lying bastard redcoats."

  Caught up in his excitement, Mural forgot that Nathaniel was already curled up asleep by the fire mumbling, "Mother...come back..."

  Mural patted his brother's head, "Dream they return, Nathaniel. Dream and hope."

  Mural calmed down yet didn't want to sheath the sword; he enjoyed seeing the red stained blade. Such an evil color yet so persuasive. He would have to coax to be on this side from now on.

  Chapter 5

  Mural rose with the dawn. He stretched out with the first rays of sunlight and walked to the dead house again. Kicking around the grass and ashen boundary of their scorched house, trying to make sense of what he knew was goodbye, his foot discovered yet another metal object. It was smaller than the sword he found and clutched and he didn't recognize it at first. He pushed around and pried it from the dirt and saw it was their mother's wedding band. It gleamed between his ashen fingertips. Mural stared at it and gently rubbed it clean.

  "This is for Nathaniel," he said and walked back to wake him.

  Nathaniel cried most of the morning after he received the ring. He stared at its shimmer and didn't, couldn't, break eye contact for everything in the world. It was the horrible evidence of their mother's fate and he couldn't accept it. Mural let him cry until the sun had gone beyond the horizon, but had to get them moving. He didn't have much trouble getting Nathaniel to his feet and making him travel away from their home of old, their home of childhood. Nathaniel was lost in a mournful trance. They walked in silence until Nathaniel, still gazing at the ring, complained of ill health halfway to the family printing press in Boston.

  "What is the matter with you?"

  "I don't feel well, Mural. I hurt."

  "Was it the chicken? Did I not cook it right?" Mural asked.

  "I had a dream. It was my dream Mural. Mother came to me in a dream last night. I didn't know who she was at first. I couldn't see her, but it felt just like her. She was bright, brighter than fire, and she gave me something. It was round like this ring but different. I could feel her smiling at me as she handed it over. A loving feeling came from it. It was like when she tucks us into bed. She placed it on my palm. It sat still for only a second before it began to spin on its own. It spun so fast that it turned into a little ball. Then the ball soaked into my skin and it was cold inside of me. I looked at my hand and it was almost invisible, then I looked over myself and all of me was almost invisible. Mother then whispered something into my ear and I didn't understand it. That's when I woke in a cold sweat. I was so cold I had to get within a foot of the fire to keep warm. That's when I knew she was dead and then you gave me the ring and ...but I already knew ...then ...it was strange but ...I saw Father."

  "Father came back?" Mural interrupted as his heart jumped.

  "He tried to," Nathaniel continued. "He and his friends ambushed the people who burned down our house. I swear I saw all this in the woods just beyond the fire last night. It was like the branches and trees spread apart like curtains and the firelight shone enough for me to see everything. Everyone was battling and, during the fight, a man sneaked up behind Father. The man reached down to his side for his sword, but it wasn't there."

  Mural looked down at the sword in his hands. He knew the sword he held was the one his brother was talking about. If it had been at that man's side, he would have killed their father.

  "It was supposed to be there - you changed that - but it didn't make any difference," Nathaniel continued, "Father thought someone was behind him and turned around and swung his sword, but the man ducked and father only knocked his cap off. He had blond hair and a big pointy nose like the man who burned down our house. It was the man who held the older man you shot Mural. The blond man came up with a knife after father missed and stabbed him in the chest. Their eyes met and father knew him. Father called him Ben before he fell to the ground. The fighting moved away from Father and I came up to him as his breathing stopped. I touched him and he was cold and then I was cold. I looked up and saw the blonde man looking right at me. He smiled and waved. Mural, I don't know what I was doing or what happened, but after all the fighting was done, the blonde man was the only one to survive. I think Father's dead, Mural, and the man is coming back for us."

  Nathaniel shuttered and tears welled up in his eyes. He gazed down at the dirt path beneath them and then fixed on the ring again.

  "Nathaniel, I think everyone is dead," Mural stated coldly, scolding himself for believing this dream his younger brother had for even a second. There's no more room for fantasy, no more time for the fancies of youth; survival is the only thing left.

  "I'm scared. I don't understand any of this. I know this is more than a dream. Why would mother appear to me? Why?"

  "I don't know. What I do know is that it was just a dream."

  "No, I think mother was trying to tell me something. I think she's trying to help somehow. I think she came down from heaven as an angel to warn us."

  "Goddamnit, Nathaniel, they're dead! They're all dead! Everyone we love is dead and we're the only ones left! You had a nightmare, plain and simple. We have to worry about what's real and what's in the now. About what's here."

  "That is what I'm doing. It's here."

  Mural stewed angrily as they walked and Nathaniel gazed at the ring in his palm, flipping it over itself hundreds of times as they strolled into Boston at nightfall.

  Chapter 6

  The brothers saw little of each other over the course of the war, but wrote often. Mural wrote of his promotions within the Continentals and his appetite for vengeance while Nathaniel complained of his continual dreams and headaches. On the occasion that their regiments would meet, the brothers spent their leave catching up.

  Nathaniel had grown to an average build, seemingly stunted by his over
ly delicate nerves that wanted nothing to do with growth. Mural, on the other hand, kept on growing. On one of their meetings, Mural had passed the height of Nathaniel's horse and he still wasn't out of his teens. And with each meeting over a half decade's time, Nathaniel watched with sensitive dismay, as his brother grew infected. He watched the disease of blood thirst grow strong within Mural. It had grown so large and so obvious that Nathaniel began to fear it in his dreams, unable to escape it.

  The second to last time they ever met was to decipher the fate of the printing press, mere months before the war ended. The last leg of the war had turned Mural into an assassin and Nathaniel into a wreck. Neither slept much, out of fear of murder. Mural's life had death at his doorstep every time he was defenseless and when Nathaniel slept, his dreams assaulted him with seemingly tangible terror.

  "I need people I can trust Nathaniel. Why won't you join me? I need someone who can actually see the red of the redcoats. It's become all gray to me," Mural said as the brothers sat on a hill looking out onto the Atlantic Ocean.

  "There's enough death in my dreams Mural, I don't need to add anymore. I want this all to be over. The killing has to stop - there is too much blood on my hands already. I can't wash it off anymore. I want to settle down and get back to the press. Uncle is getting too old to run it."

  "I've been thinking about that too, and since you will not join me, I couldn't think of a better person to run it than you, brother," Mural said with a smirk.

  "Thank you. It does seem the logical thing to do. Well, you said in your letter that there was something else you wanted to tell me. Something big."

  "Yes ...now, don't get mad because I was out for a long time, but before I left, around six months ago ...well anyway ...you have a sister now."

  Nathaniel's brain reeled. He pictured their little sister Becca, swathed in her Sundays, sweet and perfect in her unstained dress. Splotches of red spread across the virginal white cloth and Nathaniel cringed. His anger permeated him. The gall that Mural had, thinking anyone could replace Becca somehow. Nathaniel's blood burned. Mural held up his left hand to show off his wedding band.

  "Wow ...I don't know what to say. Uh ...congratulations. Who is she?"

  Nathaniel began to calm, his heartbeat and breathing slowed back down to normal.

  "Remember Veronica?"

  "Yes," Nathaniel said groaning with disapproval, "the one who got around."

  "Don't you speak ill of her!" Mural bellowed and jumped to his feet, fists shaking in the air. The rage that Nathaniel feared reared its ugly head, it was always just a matter of time, but Mural realized his outburst and quelled for his brothers sake.

  "That's all I remember of her, I'm sorry."

  A long and tense salt breeze of silence breezed between them for what felt like a lifetime. The brothers sat silently until a question blurted out from Nathaniel that he had wanted to ask for years.

  "What has happened to you Mural? You're so violent now. I worry about you. All you do is hate."

  Mural groaned like he had been expecting a lecture from a parent.

  "How about you? You think you see mother everywhere. Get over it, she's dead!"

  Another, more familiar silence hung between them. Years of anger and love filled their eyes. Neither needed to argue any further; both knew everything behind the other's words.

  "Listen, Mural, I'm coming back here to Boston and running the press and am going to try and live a normal life. I want you in it no matter what. I know you think that I'm pretentious with my 'high and mighty talk,' but I do not mean it that way. I just want you safe and happy. You are my family. I'll always do what is best for the family. To save rather than destroy. We've seen enough destruction."

  Mural stewed with fury but he knew his brother was right. Nathaniel always knew what to say to make everything better. He was always planning for the long term. Mural wished he had that kind of foresight. The present was all he had counted on for so long; it was all he could ever count on. It was the only time he felt alive.

  "I will come back on my leave and start my new life here, with my wife and brother. The war can wait. I will spend December here."

  The two wrapped in a hug and agreed. Two things they hadn't done in ages.

  "I'll see you in three months then," Nathaniel said as they parted.

  That day was the most of Mural's past that he ever wanted to revisit. That day marked the beginning of the end. Ever since that day, his every attempt to make pleasure, his every hope, had turned into pain. Everything he thought wonderful turned out to be terrible. It was all or nothing, Mural learned that from the war, so he chose all. But nothing chose him.

  It killed him to even think about the days after that one, so many good intentions and nothing but bad to show for it. Mural blocked it all out from his memory and remembered the war instead. Everything was simpler then. It was pure and simple survival. Once the fighting stopped things got complicated again. Their country was free and Mural paid for that freedom heavily. Mural wasn't a farmer or a banker; he was a killer and knew it. Once the war was over and there were no more enemies, Mural adopted a completely new purpose, one that was the problem and the solution.

  It began for Mural when he embraced his color-blindness. His eyes and heart, at some point during the revolution, both saw in coarse black and white with shades of gray. He often wondered if it was his values, or even his soul, filtered out the good and the bad, coming to rest on the oh-so gentle and forgiving gray. But as time passed Mural's morals, the lines he drew in the sand, disappeared like they did in the war, while his new purpose harmonized with the black and white he saw in.

  And shortly after the war ended he began his familiar flirtation with violence again. It was all he knew. That violence would ring in his skull and cry out for nourishment. At times he would try to recall when these cries began, but it was like trying to remember the first time his stomach cried out for food.

  Mural's new purpose involved him sitting in the taverns that lined the streets of Boston with a pint and a plan. Women that hobbled out onto the cobblestone streets were the ones to fall into his web. Out on those dirty paths covered with lust and pain, he watched through the pub's window as whispers within his head told him which one to choose. Everyone within these taverns would laugh and chatter on as Mural clutched his head in agony, and the night only seemed to amplify these sounds in his head.

  Walking the streets in the day, the screams were lessened by sunlight it seemed and left him alone, as if to force him in a nocturnal life. He would lug his nearly seven foot tall frame along the streets, doggedly refusing to give in and become a creature of the night. But as soon as the sun set, nothing else but these women whispered in his mind. They enlightened him on the plights of the entire city. He would have thought all was right with the world after the revolution - after all the hard fought bloody battles, but these whispers told him that one fight was over and another was beginning.

  This city used to be so great, bustling with life, with carriages drawing ladies and gentlemen to the theater. Great ships lingered in the bay with sails shimmering in the moonlight and perfect clothes draped like curtains in the shops. But not anymore. Mural's beautiful city was going to Hell and he knew he had to fix it. No one would ruin his Boston. The air blew freshly free in this city of great heritage. War's stench still resonated on the people's minds and they lacked the stomachs to another war so soon. But not Mural. Corruption would not return, not in his lifetime.

  His hands shook with anger at the thought of Boston's degradation. He slammed his pint down and foam sloshed over and onto his hand, angry that not one single woman in the tavern caused a peep in his head this night. Even as prostitutes stood in the shadows enticing with their bodies, Mural still heard no whispers to persuade him to kill. These women, no matter how indecent, had one thing in common - they were all liars, corrupting God's grace through terrible abuses of their marital vows. Mural saw them as they slobbered over random men, using their vile
words to take their wicked impulses upstairs or down to the alley. They would meet, heavy with lust, touching every inch of bare skin as they grinded against each other. Their sex stink filled the air. Once these hags drank her fill of lust, she would send him away; crinkle him up and throw him in the dirty street, praying the water would wash him down the sewers and out of her mind. Then, she would run home before her husband grew suspicious.

  Her wedding ring would appear like a magic trick from her hiding spot, most likely in her shoe, gleaming in all gold's twinkle before it slipped onto her soiled ring finger. With a spring in her step and engorged with the feeling that life just can't get any better and sex stink, she rehearsed her lies and planned her next night full of infidelity. And Mural would be ready to see that they would not go unpunished. Once was enough for him to go through such similar treacheries, and no man, no man, should have to suffer like he had.

  Mural shuffled his feet ready to leave the pub when the cry he was waiting for sounded. His pint tipped over on the table again, spilling across his favorite smooth table as he pushed passed dozens of drunks towards the door. Most of the swaying drunkards shuffled away as he lumbered out the door, they had grown used to his antics, but the inattentive and unaware would kindly receive a hefty shove out of his path.