Death creaked, a wet odious and painful sound. The lament of death was dry as it was repetitive. Cacophonies of torment followed the reiterated tapping of the man.
Tap. Tap.
A sequence of two. A constant frequency. Yet the echoing taps were sometimes accompanied by the metallic ramblings of the man’s shackles.
Tap. Tap.
It resembled a heartbeat, a heartbeat that the man didn’t seem to have. His constitution was skeletal, with not much meat in his body, but nobody could deny he was alive.
The tapping was interrupted by the squeaking of a creature. The high-pitched sound may lead people to believe that it originated from a rodent, but the creature reeked of death.
It indeed looked like a mouse, but strange protuberances spawned from its head like demonic horns overgrowing its host and gnawing down the flesh. The flesh in question didn’t even look alive. It was grey and sickly, decayed. The unhealthy skinny man had more brightness in his skin than whatever that being was.
The rodent approached the captive with a thirst for blood in its eyes and drooling hunger in its mouth. Yet it didn’t squeak anymore to find what had been its deadly mistake.
Before the mouse-like creature could indent the man’s leg with its visceral teeth, the captive’s flesh warped. It happened in a single instant. A prior moment ago, the mouse was ready to feast on the restricted human, yet the following moment, only its dry and pale blood remained.
“Augh...” The man exhaled in a tired sigh. “They taste horrible.”
His tongue caressed his teeth in a slow and dazed movement, even though his mouth had been nowhere close to the abomination.
“Yet that is infinitely more entertaining than this.” He added in a soft whisper, a dry voice that had never known the touch of water.
The captive’s dead eyes focused on the silhouette before him. Tens of twisted yet vertical dark lines.
Bars.
Since the very conception of his consciousness, that’s all he had known. Captivity.
Not a single memory of a time before his stay in the cell lingered in his mind. He wholeheartedly believed that was because there wasn’t a time before his imprisonment.
Tap. Tap.
He began tapping once more, for it was his only way to tell that time did, indeed, exist. In the lightless prison, where only faint sounds of torture and death were present, it was difficult to keep oneself focused.
For there was nothing else.
* * *
Silence dominated the darkness, everpresent, ever-stressing. It wasn’t a good silence. It was filled with muted cries, gelid whispers of the wind, and rugged breaths.
Sometimes, when he opened his eyes, there would be people warding his jail. Though maybe ‘people’ was too strong of a word.
The brutish and tall creatures appeared human, or at least, humanoid. But to consider them people was too huge of a step. Unlike some of the denizens of the prison, they did possess flesh. White, like ash. They were also incredibly muscular, with throbbing black blood vessels showing underneath the tight skin.
The wardens were disgusting to look at.
They weren’t as abominable as the rodents, but there was something off about them. They felt alive, unlike everything else, the problem was, that they weren’t.
The man exhaled, his breath turning white thanks to the low temperature.
He was staying awake for too much time now, and there wasn’t any critter nearby to consume to recover energy.
The simple act of staying conscious was inducing him a headache.
He tapped the back of his head against the cold rock wall. The gentle touches reverberated through his cranium, bringing him some inner peace. But not much.
Clarity and lucidity were hard to come by.
As the taps weren’t enough, he stopped. He didn’t know many things, but if he continued to traumatize his head, the headache would only get worse.
He tried drinking a bit of moisture to focus his mind.
Water didn’t exist in his cell, and the wardens would certainly not bring it to him if there even was.
No. To hydrate himself, the man had to rub his skin against the small pockets of moisture on the brick of the wall and floor. The best sections were the ones that had become frost because there lay more water hidden in them.
His shackles ground against the stone floor as he moved his right foot to reach for new virgin areas.
Every time he went to sleep, the cell would slowly rehydrate, making it easy for him to ‘drink’ after waking up. But today, he felt a lot thirstier. His throat was dry, and his lungs burned.
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The man didn’t even know that burning was a thing until now. He had only known cold and frost, touches of gelid wind. Yet as his lungs pained him, the newfound sensation felt cozy. The heat was... soothing.
Soon enough, he had drained all the moisture of the stone in a one-meter radius. Even as he stretched his legs, popping the bone out of the knee, the shackles impeded him to move beyond that limit.
His eyelids felt incredibly heavy.
It was getting increasingly difficult to keep himself awake, even the warm feeling in his chest couldn’t outmatch the tiredness.
The headache got worse.
Sounds became muted, his thoughts a mushy mesh. It was as if his mind was drifting in a sea of mercury. Then he realized he didn’t know what all the things he thought of even were.
It happened from time to time, intrinsic knowledge infiltrated his mind, an invader of information. He knew that knowledge shouldn’t be there, because he had only known the jail since birth.
There still were remains of his eggshell littered around the cell, though much had been decomposed or gnawed by rodents.
A vague hint of a cough came through his throat. It contained no moisture, only dry and warm air.
The pain in his head got worse. His vision began to falter, colors losing their intensity as everything turned to a greyscale.
He moved his arm upwards trying to grab his head, yet the shackles impeded him to do so.
But the pain was getting worse, maddingly so. It was like drums of war drilling through his head, but there was no sound to speak of.
“Stop...” The man whispered, his head limp, lurching forward. “I can’t... Please cease...”
His lucidity and remaining energies were slowly draining, as it was his body heat.
Once more, he tried to bring his hand to his head, but the shackles ground in negation, screeching as the man tried to put the white hand on his red head.
And he pushed. And then some more. The headache was so violent that he no longer cared about his hand’s skin being torn by the shackles, he just wanted to soothe the pain.
“Aahh...” He muttered in pain.
His eyes burned. It was as if a fire had burnt them, and the flames lingered. But what were fire and flames?
The poor and ancient metal of the shackles continued screeching as his hand got ever-so-close to patting his head.
Now his forearm burned too. He noticed that it was because the shackles had bruised too hard against them, showing the pink and red flesh under his white skin.
But that burning feeling was infinitely less painful than the one in his head.
The man lurched his head closer to his hand as the shackles prevented his arm from bulging forward. He saw black and sharp silhouettes, claws appearing on his fingertips where his nails had been.
Those weren’t straight, but visceral and vorpal, like a mixture of the rodents’ fangs and horns.
He didn’t care about the logistics and science of that, he just knew that with his claws, he could now cover the remaining distance from his head to the hand. Then he scratched his scalp. The ebony claws parsed through his blood-red hair.
“Oh...” He moaned in satisfaction.
The scratches were enough to alleviate the pain, or so he thought. But it only took a moment for the disgusting feeling to return. It was stronger than before. In a way, he knew he wouldn’t be able to soothe the pain in his mind by scratching the outside of his head, but he would be damned if he didn’t try.
He lurched his other hand to his head, this time was a lot easier than before.
Scratch. Scratch.
With both hands, both sets of claws, he got double the alleviation.
But the pain returned. It was doubled.
His claws grew, longer, sharper, more of them. Three claws per finger, two hands, five fingers each, a total of thirty claws scratched his scalp.
Scratch. Scratch. Scratch.
The pain didn’t cease. It just got a whole lot worse. Even worse so, it was no longer quantifiable, such complex numbers were beyond his simple mind. Everything burned.
He scratched more, drawing his claws closer to the scalp, hoping the pain would just cease.
It was maddening!
“Stop it, prisoner!” A voice shouted. It was furious.
The man looked up to see one of the wardens looking at him. This was the first time he saw them from the front. They wore dark armor, similar to the ebony claws. But what surprised him were the warden’s eyes.
They were empty. Holes where the eyeballs should be. But at the same time, there was something. A spectral light substituting the eyeballs. The mystical light was grey, and it didn’t flee from the socket, but stayed in place, as eyes should do.
The warden grunted as the man didn’t respond to him and turned back to his previous position.
Why did that get a reaction from him, but my early cries for help did not? The man thought, his mind a bit clearer than before, but not by much. At least thinking was possible now. He no longer felt like a ravaging beast.
Then he noticed the heat. The damp, flowing warmth.
He rolled his eyeballs up to see the trickling red substance. It had a crimson shade, and it was beautiful. The man had never seen something like it before, but he knew the name of the substance: blood.
Wanting to taste it, he licked the trail that was flowing down from his nose.
“Augh...” He said in repulsion. “It tastes like the shackles.”
This ‘blood’ had the same metallic taste of the shackles, maybe even stronger, more concentrated. A drop of blood fell on his naked crotch. He looked at the spot for the first time in his life and felt like something should be there, but there was nothing.
“I said silence!” The warden reiterated in a powerful scream.
His fellow warden gave him a tired look, drowsy as if he wasn’t even in his body. A mind blank of thoughts and will. The slight tilt the other warden gave allowed the man to see its eyes. Unlike the angry warden, the tired warden had black eyes. Well, black light eyes. This one also didn’t have any eyeballs.
The man directly looked into the angry warden’s eyes. His sight was tainted red as blood covered his retinas. It was uncomfortable.
“Why do we have to spend eternity watching over a random mortal?” The angry warden asked the tired one. “We could be torturing corrupted souls or thrashing the world of the living, but noooo, we must watch over some dude. It would be easier if he was just dead!”
The tired warden gave him a nod of understanding, the movement was so slow and clunky that it looked like more of a spasm than an actual gesture.
“Wait,” the angry warden stopped in realization, “that’s it. We have to kill him. No one will notice the man’s death. And then we would be free!”
The tired warden gave another nod, though this one was more vigorous.
“Oh, I’m a genius!” The warden congratulated himself and reached for the key chain on its belt.
It picked up the single key in the key chain and opened the cell gate. The man looked at it with confusion. The angry warden smiled in diabolical satisfaction as he grabbed with enthusiasm the handle of his war axe.
He turned his head to the tired warden. “You know, now that I think about it. Killing him would be a waste, why don’t we have a little bit of fun first.” He cracked a perverse laugh. “It has been a long eon since I was on the torture wing.”
But before the warden could have its fun, it noticed the protuberances coming out of its neck.
“Wha-“ Its voice stopped as dark yet milky blood came out of his mouth.
The warden looked down to see meter-long claws embedded in its throat, thirty different claws raking his throat. As unlife escaped from its body, the warden couldn’t think of anything.
On the other hand, the man just thought of something else.
“This blood tastes better.”