“...NO WAIT AA-aah?” Elliot woke up, fearing for his life as he was still in the air. It soon faded when he realized he wasn’t falling. Instead, his feet were off the ground, but he wasn’t going anywhere. He was just… floating. In the middle of the cold dark emptiness of hell. Hell, huh…

“What did I even do?!” He shouted, flailing midair. He only stopped when he realized he was actually spinning, making him sick. After a bit of dry heaving, he finally pulled himself together. This didn’t make sense! He was nice to people, he walked his dog. He even donated his spare change to charity sometimes! …sometimes. …well. ”Fine! I knew they were all friends! I just thought they’d have the same sense of humor since they knew each other. I didn't want to start anything! How was I supposed to know they would get mad!?” He kept flailing until his brain started failing him, eventually having him hang loosely mid-air.

He wanted to cry. “Man… Come on, god. We all know this kinda thing happens! Do I really deserve this!?” He didn’t. He swore he didn’t! So why was he even here? A voice responded to his thoughts, though it didn’t give him an answer. “Da hoc corpus…” It was ethereal, otherworldly… and completely terrifying. The voice faded for a second before returning, clearer this time. “...animaeque licentiam sancimus.” The voices repeated the words until they became deafening.

Even when he tried to cover his ears, nothing happened. Silence never came, replaced with the drawn-out chanting that never ended. It wasn’t long before Elliot himself started shouting, desperately trying to drown out the cursed voice with his own. He couldn’t take it… No matter how damning Hell was, it couldn’t be this bad, right!? What could he do to stop it? He’d do anything!

“Please! Stop it! Goddammit…” The droning chanting didn’t stop, even when he begged… Eventually, an hour passed, and Elliot was left a broken mess in the air. His head was pounding, and he couldn’t even see his own body, his senses drowned out by the chanting. It wasn’t until that point that the voice hitched, leaving a brief moment of clarity in the cursed darkness. The world stopped filling with darkness, and in front of him, he could see an old man clad in a dark cloak, grabbing his own throat as he looked at him with fear and pain.

With resolve, they took their hands off their throats and pointed them at Elliot. In a daze, Elliot wondered what they were doing until he heard it. He heard it from their mouth. “Da… hoc corpus…” Their voice hitched just before his vision went dark again, coughing blood as they hacked in pain. This bastard… They had done this to him. Something inside him snapped when he realized that. He was so focused that he didn’t even notice his own pale white skin, or the fact that he was completely in the nude.

He didn’t notice the clawed fingers that had appeared on his hands, even when he used them to slash through the man’s eyes, leaving him just as blind as they had left him… as they had left him. He grinned, looking at the old bastard on the floor as thy tried crawling away. He kept going. It wasn't long before they were dead, but that didn’t excuse the torture they had brought upon him. Humans were quite fond of their reputation, to have their bodies mutilated even after death would surely bring them great suffering. Even when they were out of his reach…

He reached for the man’s throat.

Then he was brought back to his senses. He pulled back, mortified. It had been a slow realization that he’d done such a terrible thing. The body below him was his fault. Shakily, he tried standing, only to fall backward. His legs might as well have been made of wet noodles. God… the smell. His head was full of blood and juices, he vaguely remembered getting covered in intestinal juices when he’d disemboweled the man… The only thing keeping him from throwing up was the fact that he’d actually been conscious through the whole ordeal.

He'd had those thoughts.

His stomach lurched, and he finally found the strength to fumble away from the man’s corpse. He kept dry heaving onto the ground until he realized his stomach had nothing to give. He was empty, he was hungry. He looked around, looking for anything to eat. Only then did he finally see where he was. It looked like the middle of goddamn nowhere. All he could see were trees, not even a single bird in sight.

The area around him looked just recently cleared out, as well. The old man had just barely come here, just to do this. He looked down at his hands, realizing the sharp, dark claws that had seemed to cover his hands like armor had disappeared. All he had left was a pair of delicate, pale, nimble hands…

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Did he just dream those up? He looked back at the old man, seeing the wounds on their body that looked a bit too much like stab wounds. He wasn’t going crazy, was he? Was he really just going insane and killing a man after they’d tried to help him!? He picked himself up, checking and rechecking his body. No, it was just too different. He was a foot taller than before, and his body no longer had the muscle he’d spent so long training.

The more he inspected the body, his face, the more he realized… He looked like a goddamned spoiled prince. The only thing that made him sure he wasn’t a girl was what he saw when he looked down… Only then, did he suddenly realize he was naked, which probably meant a lot about his mental state at the moment. “Fuck… where do I do now? …What?” He grabbed his throat, realizing this had been the first time he’d spoken. His voice was different… it felt more pronounced in his throat, and a lot smoother. It had a pleasant tint that he couldn’t explain, either.

“Hello? Testing, testing… One, two… Fuck.” Even when he tried to make his voice shift jarringly, it seemed to control itself perfectly, as if he wasn’t the one talking at all. It kept a constant, cold tone about it, completely unlike his own. It was a bit awkward, speaking like this. Especially considering he usually used his words badly enough already… Goddamit, this was just too strange. “What do I even do now?” He’d killed the only guy there who had any answers, and even now his brain was still trying to comprehend what the hell was happening, so his thoughts were stunted.

It was a shitty situation, through and through. His mood lightened a bit when he looked past the old man’s corpse and saw a primitive-looking traveling bag. There had to be an extra pair of clothes in there, right? He gently stepped over the old man’s body, groaning when he realize the grass underneath him had slowly been filling with blood, dirtying his admittedly already bloodied feet. It was still gross to feel the warm squelch of the thick blood, though.

His stomach grumbled for some reason as he thought that. Gross. He made his way to the travel-sized bag quicker, not sure if his insanity would soon make him a cannibal. The bag had… almost everything he needed. The first thing he saw were two jugs full of water, and he immediately used one to wash the blood off his chest and feet, using a quarter of the other to wash his face before immediately drinking it all.

God, that was fucking quenching. He went back to searching the bag and found… clothes. It was just a pair of loose shorts, as well as a… a cape. That was it. He had a mental battle, considering using the cape and the shorts together before agreeing that that would make him look a completely fucking insane flasher. He’d rather just live with the fact that he was in shorts.

Even for his new, flimsy-looking body, the shorts seemed to tighten around him. Why the old bastard had such a pair of clothing, he wouldn’t ask. At least it was thick enough to hide his… naughty parts, made out of some kind of dark leather that looked like it belonged on a wallet. Needless to say, it was uncomfortable as hell, though very easy to move in. Besides, he’d rather have it be uncomfortable than be sent to jail for… He looked back at the corpse of the old man he’d desecrated.

A bit too late for that, huh?

Despite how serious the situation was, he grinned at his own joke. While going through the final bits of the bag, he finally found a box that contained some goddamned food. It was only dried meat but the smell had his stomach reeling with hunger. He tore through it like butter, only noticing after the first few chunks of meat that his teeth felt different. He touched one of them to realize they had become sharp all, of them. He almost panicked until he felt a weird, tingling feeling in his mouth. He checked again and they were gone, replaced with normal teeth.

That settled it. He was actually going insane. He chuckled, the overexertion in on his mind causing him to find all this funny. What the hell had happened after he’d fallen down from that building? Was that even a real memory to begin with? Tears fell down his face as he continued stuffing his mouth full of jerky, his teeth once again becoming sharp again. He didn’t mind it this time, though. It was all just in his head, right?

Dammit. He just realized what must have happened. The bastards must have not wanted to get caught when he’d “died” so they dragged him off into the forest to hide the body. The old man must have been some weird fucking foreigner who’d been trying to help him, and he’d gone completely psycho on the poor guy. And his new body… he hit his hard pretty hard, so he could have just been seeing things.

…If he found Leyla again he was going to tell her off so fucking hard. He shoved the last remaining bits of food down his gullet, feeling dissatisfied with the whole situation. How was he going to explain this to the cops? ‘Oh, sorry mister officer, I fell down a building and was dragged into the forest but the moment I woke up I straight up killed a man. Oh, why don’t I have any scars on my body? well…’ …wait a second. He checked his neck and the back of his head, even reinspecting the body he’d so carefully checked before.

Nothing hurt. His body was completely fine. No, that could have just been his mind playing tricks on him. Only one way to really make sure. Tentatively, he took a step forward, hanging on one leg for a while before leaping into the air to check his balance. Bad idea. “Wha!?” His sense of balance kicked in, and he readjusted himself so he’d hit the branches feet first. He grabbed onto a branch with his hands and feet just before he started falling again, hanging onto the tree like a sloth.

…eleven feet in the air.

That… that was not normal.