"Bitch, are you crazy?" the man asked Jessie, as the group of men surrounded her.

"Yes," she said, and stabbed him in the face. They didn't know she had a bowie knife hidden in her biker vest. Crazy or not, she was well prepared. Jesse drove it into his cheek, and it came out the other side, cutting off his tongue in between. The blade scraped against his teeth, and Jessie cringed at the noise. Sound of metal on teeth would make her cringe under any circumstance. If somebody in a restaurant slid their fork on a tooth with every bite, she'd have to leave the place. Almost as bad as the sound of people chewing their food loudly. 

The other cultists circled, taking their time. They must have been infected for a few days, so weren't as impulsive as the first one. Clearly the man who shouted at her was newly turned, as he still had some personality and anger. Which just got him killed first. Cultists who had been converted for a few days would have no interest in calling people names. It was comically tragic that whatever madness took over these people's minds, making them less human, made them less petty and dickish. Sure, they wanted to sap your free will and turn you into a mindless slave, but for some of these assholes, having their personalities removed was an improvement. Not that Jessie could give a fuck if someone called her a bitch. But calling her crazy was ironic, given that cultists were insane, more sanity lost each day, until their brains literally stopped functioning and they died. Then again, Jessie was hunting down people and killing them, so most normal folks could also say she was crazy. It was a word that was thrown around so often, it didn't have any meaning. The only time Jessie ever said, "That's crazy," was when someone was telling an annoying story and she was pretending to listen. 

There were four men left, and their intent wasn't to murder her, but mentally enslave her. They were cultists. If they had been good men to begin with, they never would have been turned. Nobody was perfect, but most people were inherently good. Most. There were, unfortunately, enough assholes in the world that if they had a chance, would fuck over others just to get ahead. It could be reduced to good and evil, but it was better described as some human beings simply having less empathy than others. Some folks didn't mind causing others harm if they gained from it. On some level, humans knew that whatever this malignant force was, it was gonna harm a whole lot of others. So good folks wanted nothing to do with it. But selfish assholes? They drank it up, feeling the power, wanting more, too greedy to know the first person they'd be fucking over would be themselves.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Jessie would have to kill all four of them. They wouldn't surrender. Jessie still had the bowie knife and swung low at the next man charging her. Swing high, people can usually get their arm up to stop an attack. Slash low, they don't expect it. Jessie cut the man's gut open, and his intestines spilled out, like a plastic shopping bag giving way from too many groceries.

The other three reached her, tackling her, one grabbing a hold of her knife hand. Slamming her to the ground, they used their weight to hold her down, as they all chanted, eerie as fuck, slithering their faces towards her ear, desperate to sing their cryptic words into her ear, like an unholy gang rape. 

A former Marine, Jessie was strong, and in prime physical condition at 25 years old, but there were three men on top of her. Fortunately, her jiu-jitsu expertise allowed her to lock her legs around one man's neck, choking him while battling the two others. Still, nobody can out wrestle three people. She wouldn't succumb to the energy that would turn her into a cultist, but if they kept singing that song in her ear, her mind could unravel.

Jessie screamed, not out of fear, but anger, and hoping to drown out the hideous echo that bellowed from their throats. It was meant to split her mind open, to pull the reason and rationality out of the brain and turn a person into a servant. Whatever force drove them to enslave others, Jessie wasn't sure. It wanted something. Jessie didn't know what that was, either.

Her teeth rattled as she felt her skull vibrate. She didn't have that ugliness inside her for this force to ignite. If it couldn't bend her to its will, the force would scramble her brain. You either joined or died.