• DEDICATION •

❝——To us villains,

to pretending to be the heroes of our stories.

And to the real heroes we had hurt especially those

we had tagged as nameless, I hope you heal from

the wounds we never bothered to care for.——❞

They say everything has a beginning and an ending, but when have they ever been right?

Isn't it fascinating how we put so much trust in words from faceless people without names? It is actually. I did once and now so do you because at this moment I am just but a form, I have no gender, I have no face, I have no name, I have no voice. But then you have already assigned those to me, haven't you?

That is the beauty of storytelling. The act knits scenes and beings from mere words. Here, in the pages of this book, I'm the storyteller. We can even say I am a they.

This story, our story, our words, our sweat, our blood weaved out from a series of disastrous circumstances, it didn't have a beginning it was an explosion that was dropped out of nowhere on us. There is no chapter one, it was seized from us.

We didn't ask for this, we didn't ask to be forced into this stratified society, we didn't ask to be shoved into this pyramid of prey and predators. We didn't ask to be born.

But alas, life doesn't need permission before it is thrust into a person, snatching away the bliss of ignorance, of nothingness. They say life is beautiful but that is to only those that the world appreciates. Life is violating.

And yet we fought, tooth and nails, to preserve it, to protect the false images our lives exuded, the perfection, the glitter, and the gold.

I like to think everyone's beginning started when the need to be alive, and to breathe became a necessity. The point where we individually thought we had something to fight for, to stay for.

And our ending, as the point where we can forgive those we have hurt, those around us, and ourselves.

But forgiveness is a rare gem to come by which is why we may never truly find our ending.

We'll never get our happy ever after.

This is our curse, our inheritance, to be born a Mohreen, an Amari, a Sinclair, a Fagunwa, a Talha, an Amaechi, a Madichie. A founding member.

To be born in this never-ending competition that held Whitepocket, to be born in the slums of Backtown where desperation was one's twin at birth. To be locked in the hell which is Everest.

Yet, in spite of all I have blabbered about we need to start from somewhere, from one of the many stories that entangled into this ball of insanity, from one crushed spirit or troubled soul.

And there is no one better to begin with than her. Our chapter two.

But beware no person involved is purely good or purely evil, we're all humans after all. We are not entitled to your sympathy nor do we care for your hatred.

We are selfish, greedy, tainted. Our vanity and need to maintain the images that had been set for us, to break the chains that divided, to purely succeed made and set up all these lies we had deemed as harmless, little, measly.

The more we did, the more we rotted, the more we ruined and were ruined.

Those ugly white lies dug our graves.

Do you wonder who I am? Do you think you deserve to know?

I am nameless.

I am timeless.

I am retribution.

I am the Butcher of Everest.

You can say I am the best liar of them all.