A World of All Heroes

A world of all heroes, no villains.

We all thought it was a brilliant idea, at first. Just imagine it: people would help old ladies cross streets, building fires would happen less frequently, the number of crimes would certainly go down. So we did it. We set up legislation that it would be illegal to be a villain. The only problem was that the UN made it illegal across the entire world. And because we couldn’t have villains walking around even if they weren’t harming anyone, we’d have to do something.

First they started putting them in jail. That was okay, until they all started filling up the jails. And then when there wasn’t any more room in a jail, they all banned together and escaped. Many of them had destroyed the whole jails’ infrastructures. The police couldn’t hold them off because they overpowered them. Then chaos struck out, far worse than before.

The heroes knew they had to act fast. My friends, family, everyone blessed as being a hero knew they had to react somehow. They got together in a quick meeting; they couldn’t let it go on very long because who knew what next disaster was going to strike? They came up with one solution and they knew it had to be done. If the villains wouldn’t let civilians live, the heroes wouldn’t let the villains live.

Everyone told me that this was the right thing. If I ever saw a villain, they told me what to do. I carried a knife around with me everywhere. I was prepared.

For so long, I believed this was the only solution. Until the day when I actually had to enforce these rules myself. As I dug my knife into their skin, and as their piercing scream escaped their mouth, my hand released the knife. It was still embedded deep into their stomach, but I couldn’t do anything. I didn’t want to do anything.

I turned around, and I screamed myself. Tears stung my cheeks. A hero came up to me – I didn’t know who they were – and they patted me on my back. They told me “Don’t worry, you did the right thing.” I don’t know what they did with the villain exactly, but when I turned around, they both were gone.

This has been going on for months now, complete genocide of the villains. They keep telling me “it’s for the best”, “we’re making the world a better place”, but I don’t believe it. What’s going to happen when the villains are all gone? What would the heroes be doing? They’d have no one to stop.

And that’s when I realized, we weren’t the heroes. We were the villains.

I scoffed. “A world without villains... yeah right.” I said. “All we’ve done is create a world with nothing but villains.”