Excerpt: I Am Skorpio

“It’s not murder. It’s nature.”

I stood looming over the fallen form of the young man. He was battered and bruised, bleeding from his lip, nose, and a jagged laceration that formed an ugly line through his eyebrow. He had broken ribs and could barely muster a breath deep-enough to satisfy his need for oxygen, and with his ankle shattered, he was writhing in too much pain to take any obvious notice of my words. His breaths were shallow and rapid, as one might expect from someone experiencing the anguish he was in, but his apprehensiveness was compounded by the knowledge that he was about to die and could not find any way to escape it.
"Ez nem gyilkosság. Ez természet," were the actual words I had said in my native Hungarian, but he had not understood them.
“What?” he challenged in exasperation and pain.
“It’s not murder. It’s nature.” I had answered all-too-calmly, translating the words into English. “It is what we are. You took my name without earning it. You weren’t strong enough to defend it. You dared to call yourself ‘Scorpion’ without first making sure someone else hadn’t taken the name.”
Despite his writhing in unbearable agony, his pale green eyes went wide in horror as he looked back up to me.
“Skorpió?” he asked in terrified disbelief, unconsciously shifting on his back to attempt a retreat on his elbows.
“That’s right,” I confirmed with a small smile, stomping on his broken ankle to halt is withdrawal, causing him to shriek hoarsely. “So you have heard of me. That’s tragic. Now you can’t even argue that it was an honest mistake.”
“Keep the name!” he offered between gasps for air. “I promise, I’ll never use it again. I’ll call myself something else.”
“Don’t make this worse, boy,” I chastised him, leaning down to grasp the front of his shirt in my clenched fist, pulling him up closer to my face so I could look him in the eye. “You’re a damned killer. Stop acting like a scared child and die with some fucking dignity.”