Sid lay asleep. In a lonely, dark solace, he dreamed of the stars.

Then the shadow came.

The shadow slithered into Sid’s twisted mind. It could feel his burning hatred; it could hear his screaming passion. The shadow had searched for one like Sid for a long time.

It licked its way into Sid’s ear, and it whispered to him.

“Wake up”

Sid’s eyes snapped open. Red lines pulsed across fiery green. He squinted to see in the dark. All the other workers were still deep in slumber, safe in their hive of rusty bunk beds.

What the fuck is going on? Sid wondered. He had never woken up before the alarm. Not once. It must be the drugs. Damn drugs.

With his head lying flat, Sid gazed across his bunk like it was his own private, endless world. Holes were worn and chewed through the fabric, giving way to springs as rusty as the frame the bunk sat in. The cloth was yellowed with piss and stained with jizz that Sid knew was older than him.

Then the shadow whispered again.

“I know what torments you, Sid. There would be nothing worse to you than working and working until you die, withered and forgotten and alone”.

Sid shuddered. This couldn’t be the drugs. Something was talking to him.

“What the fuck do you want?” Sid spat, looking around wearily.

A few dim lights danced through the mesh ceiling and played across Sid’s features. His was pale and wiry, dark hair hanging down around his worn, sneering face. The metal piercing looped through his ears stood out like eerie stars in a cloudy night sky.

The dim light left Sid’s face and he watched as it fanned over the hundreds
of other sleeping, snoring workers.

“They are slaves to a system,” hissed the shadow, “living out hollow lives. They are living only to die. Serve me, and you will be spared their fate. I will give you eternal life”.

Sid smirked. His heart races with excitement. He could feel the pounding in his head; the war drums of an army about to tear down its enemies.

“I’m listening,” said Sid.

“I am the serpent. I am the prince of this world,” the shadow whispered.

“And you are the Man. We are old friends, you and I. We both seek destruction, and you are the angel that will deliver it to this world. All your dreams will be fulfilled. You will shape the world with fire and metal and when you die, you will live on forever through respect and through fear”.

“What must I do, Lord?” asked Sid in awe.

“You must shed blood,” whispered the shadow.

Sid felt a tongue liking into his ear.

“Fuck!” he yelled in shock, bolting up out of his bunk. His head smashed into the bunk above his with a clatter. He could feel the sleepers begin to stir.

A blonde, prettyboy face grinned down at Sid from the bunk above his. He’d woken up Andy.

“Sid, you little shit”, barked Andy. “I’m going to come down there and kick your ass, bitch”.

“Your life starts now” the shadow whispered in Sid’s ear.

Andy dropped down to the mesh floor, twisting a dirty white baseball cap onto his head.

“You’re gonna get it now, bitch” said Andy.

Quietly, Sid stuck his hand through a hole in his bunk and wrapped his fingers around the metal knuckles he kept there, his hate-filled eyes locked on Andy.

Andy lashed out and flipped Sid’s bunk over, sending him crashing to the metal floor. Sid kicked the bunk off him and jumped to his feet. As Andy lunged forward, Sid smashed his fist of metal into Andy’s face. He smiled as he heard the crack of bones and the splatter of blood in the dark. Andy staggered backwards, choking down his own blood and feeling for something to grab on to. Sid pulled his fist back like a snake ready to strike and smashed the metal into Sid’s face one, two, three more times.

Andy’s hands clutched at the bloody pulp where his face used to be. He knees buckled, and his choking, broken body fell to the ground with a clatter. His blood-stained baseball cap fell of his misshapen head.

“Your first kill” said the shadow. “Now you’re really alive”.

“Yes”, breathed Sid, adrenalin pumping through his veins. “Hell yes!”

With a metallic slam, blinding lights flashed on over the hundreds of workers. Alarms blared. It was work time.

“Time to go” hissed the shadow.

“Yeah, dude, I’m not a dumbshit” spat Sid impatiently. He pulled on his long, dark coat, snapped on his black work boots, grabbed his pack, and started to sprint through the isles of bunks just as the hundreds of other workers were starting to stir and rise like a cave of bats.

“Good morning from the Combine” crackled a female voice over the speaker.

“The date is April 20th, 2046. Shift one starts now. All shift one worker to the mines”.

Everyone here was a corporate slave to the Combine, the last authority in a dead world. They lived out their lives mining landfills that were filled before World War Three had turned the world into a wasteland. But Sid had a new life now.

Fire burning inside him, Sid peeled around a corner as noise and light and crowds flooded the world around him. He flew down a long hallway, his boots crashing on the metal. He raced past cage elevators full of workers going to ground level to mine. Jaded, dirty faces turned as he shoved his way by.

A Combine guard strode down the hall, wearing a blue uniform and working at his chewing tobacco like a camel. He turned his head as Sid drew closer.

“Hey, you!” the guard growled, reaching for his gun to put down the crazed worker. But Sid got there first, smashing his metal knuckles into the guard’s face over and over until the guard lay in a pool of his own blood on the floor.

“Damn pig!” laughed Sid. He slid the knuckles into his pack and took the guard’s gun.

All the workers around Sid had stopped what they were doing and where staring at the psycho. Sid clicked the safety off and cocked his gun, waving it around.

“What the fuck are you looking at?” he roared, challenging them, power glowing in his eyes. “Get the fuck back!” he hissed, eyes bulging. The scared sheep moved slowly out of the way.

Sid jumped into the nearest cage elevator. It was just starting to fill.

“Out!” he ordered fiercely. “Get out!”

When it was clear, he kicked the elevator switch with his boot and waved goodbye to the scared workers outside the elevator. Metal bars shifted around him as he descended down into freedom.

Sid wandered through the wastelands for three days, kicking up sand. He stopped in burned out ruins to drink from the canteen in his pack, rest in the shade, and hide from the Combine strikers flying overhead.

Then the wandering was over. The shadow had lead Sid to his prey. Sid stood at the edge of a dried out river, his long dark coat whipping in the wind as he looked down at his victims.

Five figures were walking tiredly through the riverbed. They were kids, only a few years younger than Sid. Three boys, two girls.

“This is only the beginning,” whispered the shadow. “Keep the girl for yourself. Gut the rest”.

“Which girl?” laughed Sid.

“The pretty one” said the shadow. “Her name is Amber”.

Sid waited until nightfall. The he swooped in for the kill.

The five were asleep in their bags around a dying fire. Sid held his blade between his teeth and crawled forward like a wolf.

As he neared the first boy, he spat out the blade and snapped it open, plunging it under the boy’s chin into his head. Blood sprayed the bag. He’d wanted to kill the boy in one, silent stroke, but he was alive. And he was screaming.

“Shit” spat Sid.

The other four were up and out of their bags. All hell broke loose. One of the boys grabbed a hatchet and swung it at Sid. Sid kicked it out of the boy’s hand, buying him enough time to slap a clip into his gun and cock it.

A gunshot rang out across the wastelands, and the boy fell dead, shot between the eyes.

The other three made a run for it, fleeing into the night, panicked and screaming. Sid sighted on the boy, but missed and hit one of the girls in the back. Blood sprayed and she fell to the ground.

“Lucky shot” hissed the shadow. “That wasn’t amber”.

Sid clicked the safety on, put the gun away, and ripped his bloody knife out of the corpse it was lodged in. He chased after his prey in the dark, his coat waving behind him like a crow’s wings.

Gaining on Amber, Sid grabbed her and pulled her slender body against his. He put his knife to hear soft throat and felt her collapse helpless against him.

“Don’t move or I’ll kill her!” Sid roared after the boy.

“What, like I give a shit?” the boy yelled back. He turned and kept running. Sid drew his gun again and another shot rang out.

“It’s just you and me now” Sid hissed to his prey.

Amber gave off a faint whimper.

“I know your name, Amber” Sid said. He pulled a needle from his pack and injected it into Amber’s neck. She fainted in his arms.

When amber woke up, she was lying in some ruins, shirtless, tied up, and gagged with rope. With perverse eyes, Sid watched her full breasts heave against the bonds that stretched tightly around them. Light hair framed her pretty face and wide, scared eyes. Sid kneeled down by her and ran his hands over her, feeling her soft warm flesh struggling under his touch.

“You’re my slave now” he said. “He pulled her to her feet and then, dragging her along, he walked on through the wastelands.

Sid soldiered on through the desert unleashing a spree of killings that etched a road map of terror and death.

“I am the Jesus of Fear,” laughed Sid as he watched the rising sunlight dance across a dead world.

“And I’m your Mary Magdalene” said Amber lovingly, kissing him. She was his slave now in every sense of the word.

Before them lay the New City, a corporate hive of metal. Here was the Combine’s seat of power. Here they could leave a scar that would never heal.

Sid handed Amber a rifle. “Let’s go”.

When Sid and Amber walked into City, they were in a square crowded with people.

“The shadow talked to me again,” said Sid gravely.

“What’d he say?” asked Amber.

“The more death we spread, the longer we live”.

“We’re immortal,” laughed Amber. “We are the fangs of the serpent”.

“All right” said Sid happily, suddenly full of energy. “All right, let’s get down to it!”

They cocked their rifles in perfect unison, and opened fire. The thud of weaponry echoed across the square. Screams erupted, people panicked, prayed to their god, ran in every direction. Bodies and shells hit the ground. People were mowed down by the dozens. The world was a blank canvas to paint red.

When silence fell over the carnage, Sid and Amber stopped firing. While they reloaded, they walked among the bodies of their victims.

“Who the hell are you, man?” asked a crying man, cowering by some crates.

Sid looked down, his rifle resting on his shoulder. The wind whipped his dark hair around his face like a nest of serpents. Then he sneered. “I am guns. I am drugs. I am disease. I am everything that forces people to fight or die”. He leveled his gun at the crying man. “I am your reason to live”.

He was about to pull the trigger when bullets rained down from the sky, kicking up dirt and debris. Combine strikers were hovering overhead, shrieking like ghosts. Sid dove for cover. A stray bullet struck the crying man in the face and he fell to the ground.

“Amber!” Sid roared. “Let’s get the fuck out of here!”

The pair moved through the shadows, hunting for solace from the combine. Then they saw it, a rich family’s house resting in the hive of metal, just above the fog of darkness. They scaled the wall, grabbing pipes and rails.

Then Sid smashed in a window, and they slid inside.

The house was lined with expensive carpet and stocked with luxuries, nothing like the gutters below. Sid and Amber found the family eating at a long, finely carved table. They wore suits, bright colors, and fur coats.

Amber skipped around the room happily “We sing la la la la, lalala” she cried, “we sing la, la, la, la, la”

Sid stuck his tongue out and hissed at the terrified hostages. They both cocked their rifles.

“Up against the wall motherfuckers!” Amber yelled.

Vic worked for the Combine, but only to pay the bills. He was thoughtful, quiet, and hated the world around him. His job title was weapons engineer, but most days he just sat in his cubicle and stuck blank paper in the paper shredder to pass the time.

To him life wasn’t a bitch. Worse than that, life was just damn boring. Vic had human desires he wanted to satisfy. Jagged, hollow spaces in his life that he hungered to fill.

Tonight he would fill the empty spaces. Tonight he would join a revolution.

Vic clicked off his paper shredder, and the buzzing came to a stop. He listened to the silence in the air. Something was wrong.

He rose from his cubicle and strode down the hall, turning his head to see into other cubicles. They were all silent, they were all empty.

He found the other slaves in the break room, hypnotized by a TV that took up a whole wall. Vic always wondered what the hell the point of that was.

“…holed up inside the expensive house” a reporter was saying calmly. “The terrorists are refusing to free the hostages until their demands are met”.

The screen flickered and showed a man with dark hair and pierced ears. He had angry, wild, commanding eyes.

“The rich run the Combine, they run everything!” hissed the terrorist. The screen said his name was Sid Iblis, a wanted murder. “I worked my ass off mining trash, and I didn’t get shit! These people never worked a day in their lives and they have everything!”

Sid held up a fragile, handmade vase with diamonds sticking out of the sides.

“Look at this shit!” roared Sid, smashing the vase at his feet. “Who needs this? There are people dying down in the streets! I should know, I just killed some of them!”

Sid drew closer; his burning eyes seeming to stare right through the screen at Vic.

“If these rich fucks won’t use their eyes to look at the world around them, then I say they don’t need them!” said Sid. “We will not let them leave here with their eyes in their heads unless the Combine steps down!”


“Do you really think the Combine will really step down?” laughed Amber.

“Fuck no they won’t,” said Sid. “It’s not like they really care about these asswipes” he slapped the suit wearing man in the face while he chewed on a piece of his chicken. The family was tied and gagged in their seats, but the food on the table had been through around the room. Sid had dumped a glass of ice down the shirt of a busty teenage girl tied to her chair.

“But this way we got our demands on the news” sneered Sid, choking down the last of the chicken. “Now we’ll have followers, all the followers we need”.

Amber laughed and started to skip around the room again, singing “Ka-boom ka-boom, ka-boom ka-boom, I like to la la la la love you”.

Sid laughed with her and picked up a bread knife from the table. He cut the teenage girl at the cut of her shirt and took in her muffled scream. Then he bent over and started to lick the blood from her squirming body.

He looked up and caught Amber’s angry eyes.

“Don’t be jealous, baby” said Sid sadly. “She’s nothing, you’re the only girl for me”.

“Then you won’t mind if I do this!” yelled Amber, shooting the girl in the face in a rage of jealousy. Muffled screams echoed the gunshot and didn’t stop.

“Shut the fuck up!” roared Sid viciously, waving his gun at the family, blood pooled on the floor as it ran off the dead girl. Silence fell. Sid looked at Amber and sighed. “I’m sorry, baby,” he said deeply.

“Why do you wanna fuck other girls?” begged Amber. “You have me”.

“You know why, baby. You’re willing. I can’t help it.”

“We can pretend,” said Amber, making cute helpless eyes. “It’ll be like our first time, when I didn’t want it. I’m you’re slave. I’ll scream and struggle and try to get away while you take me”.

Sid stepped back and looked at himself, realizing how fucking lucky he was to have a girl like Amber.

“You’re the only girl for me,” promised Sid in a gentle, calm voice. “From now on, only you. I won’t touch another girl”.

Amber smiled and bounced up and down with laughter. She threw her arms around Sid and kissed him deeply.

“Let’s change the demands,” Sid whispered in Amber’s ear. “We’ll just get a way out, then you and I can find a room somewhere”.


Vic stepped into the elevator and hit a button to go up to his floor. The hostage crisis had been cool, but it looked like this was going to be another boring, lonely night,

It wasn’t.

Vic heard the ding and stepped out into the hall. He took a second to stare out the window and watch night fall over the shit world before he turned to walk to his apartment. When he got there, he knew something was wrong.

Someone had smashed the doorknob clean out of his door, and the lock was lying broken on the ground.

The door was cracked open, and Vic could see dim lights moving around inside.

Vic reaches into his jacket pocket, pulled out his pistol, and switched the safety off. He had a thing for guns.

He quietly nudged the door open. Vic would never dream about calling the pigs first. After all, this was a chance to legally shoot somebody. Vic smiled.

He moved into his apartment slowly, back pressed to the wall. The first thing he noticed was that someone had smashed open his display cases and taken all his guns. Now Vic was pissed. He wasn’t physically strong, but he was always armed.

When Vic leaned around the corner, he thought he’d see some stupid kids, grabbing all his shit and stuffing it in a bag. That’s not what he saw at all.

The apartment had the stench of alcohol. And sex.

On the bed, his bed, were the two terrorists from the news. The girl, Amber was on the bottom, chained up and naked except for a tight leather bustier. The guy, Sid, was naked and biting her neck like a vampire, his dark hair hanging down and shadowing his face. A black Celtic cross was tattooed across his back, the symbol of revolution.

Vic leveled his gun and cocked it loudly. “You’re on my bed”.

Sid looked up startled. “Shit!” he yelled, snatching his rifle from the nightstand and pointing it at Vic. They were at a draw.

“Son of a bitch!” spat Amber, who was helplessly chained up.

“So what’s it gonna be, man?” sneered Sid. “Gonna shoot us?”

“I could,” said Vic. “But I liked your speech”.

“Oh yeah, on TV?” laughed Sid. “Thanks man, never been on TV before”.

Neither of them lowered their guns.

“Look man” said Sid, waving at the black flag with a Celtic cross on Vic’s wall. “You got a corporate job, but I know you’re like us. Come with us”.

Vic hesitated.

“It can’t be a fucking coincidence that we felt like breaking into this one room,” said Sid. “You’re supposed to be the first to join the revolution, you’re supposed to be like my second in command or some shit”.

Vic lowered his gun slowly. “All right”.

Sid reached over and took another drink of his vodka. Amber threw up all over Vic’s carpet.

“Excuse me,” she said.

“Dude” said Sid “can you clean that shit up?”

“You can’t hide much longer,” the shadow whispered. “If you don’t leave soon, they’ll find you”.

“What should I do, lord?” asked Sid.

“You have enough disciples now” hissed the shadow. There were 5 others staying in the cramped apartment with Sid, Amber, and Vic. There were 15 in other places. “Go to the hall. It is the Combine’s seat of power. Slaughter them all like the sheep they are. Then your work will be done, the Combine will fall”.


The Hall was the Combine’s government building, a temple of greed on white pillars. The politicians, businessmen, and priests met there to decide how they’d screw everybody.

A few black vans peeled to the curve in front of the hall. From a building across the street, Vic watched. He saw Sid stick his head out the window of one of the vans and look around.

“Vic, I think they’ve been following us” spat Sid over the radio.

“What?” laughed Vic. “You’re just being paranoid.”

“Yeah, aight”, sighed Sid. Sid gave the signal and 21 armed figures in dark clothes stepped out of the vans. It was Sid, Amber, and 19 other disciples.

They hadn’t even started to run towards the hall when bullets rained from the sky. One of the vans exploded in a blossoming cloud of fire, and Vic saw two of the disciples go down. Combine strikers had come out of nowhere, and guards were swarming the lawn.

“Paranoid?” roared Sid. “So I was being fucking paranoid?”

“Yeah, you were right,” sighed Vic.

The 19 left alive ran across the lawn, returning fire. Blood from both sides splattered across the green grass. A rocket danced up from a launcher and blew one of the strikers to smoking shards.

“Vic, Michael, now” snapped Sid.

Vic and the other disciple on the roof opened fire with sniper rifles. Vic’s crosshairs went from target to target like the eyes of god, cutting them down in a ghostly white line.

Sid and amber ran inside the hall with a few others, while the carnage raged on outside.

Time seemed to slow down, bullets gliding through the air like snowflakes, blood falling like rain.

Then Sid and Amber ran back out of the hall, Amber skipping and singing and Sid waving his arms wildly, roaring with triumph.

Then Vic hit the switch. The bombs that they’d set went off and the Hall exploded. The fire and smoke and ash were a glowing sunset, a beautiful, hellish perfection.

Sid and Amber held each other and watched.

Society burned to pieces, and they danced in the ashes.

Vines grew over cities, and they climbed them.

Blood flowed from power, and they drank it.

End note:

There are a lot of hidden messages in here, if you saw them. They have to do with Marilyn Manson, the Sex Pistols, the Columbine shootings, anarchism, Satanism, the SLA, and myself and my life.

Ian Tichrist is a guitarist and writer living in Kansas City. He's interested in music, anarchism and the occult.