There isn’t anything else to say. I have hated this man for a long time, that is true and clear as day, but now I…

Why didn’t I leave?

I just didn’t leave, that’s the way of things.

The man put Caruncle inside the carriage and covered him with a blanket since he was trembling. He then covered his face with a face mask to stop him from scratching his eyes due to the pain the streetlights were causing him. I didn’t see much, but the street seemed to be desolated. He sat down at his side and tried to hold Caruncle from falling over with one arm now that he was crouched in a fetal position in the seat inside the carriage, trembling from the cold. Another man sat on the front, he was dressed with a black suit, you know, penguin style, he looked a lot older and he had quite a long mustache covering his face. The man in the trench coat told the driver to go ahead and we finally started moving. While looking out the window, he started smoking a cigar.“You will have to apologize for my harsh language just now in the basement,” he said while looking at Caruncle “one can never be too safe.”

Caruncle moved his head towards where the voice of the man was coming from. His teeth were still chattering.

“Now, I’ll present myself, my name is Custodio, Custodio Esparza. The man in front of you is Mortimer Muller, he’s not just my servant, but also my right hand.”

He turned around to where the servant was, but the servant didn’t speak.

“Once we arrive, you’ll take a good sleep and we’ll talk about what shall be done tomorrow, for I need you in a lucid mind for I will have to ask you.”

After that, the man stopped speaking and Caruncle let his mind drift away.

Two hours afterwards we arrived at our destination, but I didn’t see how the place looked, for I felt as dreadfully tired as Caruncle did, and let myself drift away just the same. Custodio took again Caruncle in his arms and then took him to another room, what room it was I didn’t know, I wasn’t in the spirits to open my eyes either, but I could feel just like him than we went down through many many stairs until the air turned stale yet again. For a moment I thought we were being taken again towards that basement.

Afterwards, we both fell asleep.

The floor was uncomfortable, maybe it was the fact he had slept for so long on another floor, but his dreams kept haunting him. He would feel we finally woke up only to realize he was still in a dream and then fell into a fake awakening again at least one hundred times.

After a long while, at what I thought was likely the next morning, Custodio entered the room, his steps made a heavy, dry sound with every move.

“Sit down.” He told him, he took off his facemask and closed the door behind him. He was still wearing handcuffs and leg shackles, so it took him a while, but with some effort he managed to sit, after a while he managed to see Custodio with the dim light of the candle in the room.The man in the leather coat kept looking at Caruncle carefully, but he wasn’t changing his expression.

I looked around, it was a very small room covered in gray brick walls and no windows to other rooms. There was almost nothing in the room, aside from some things on another table on one side, and a bathtub on the other side of the room.

“Do you know why I bought you?”

Caruncle stayed still, but after a while, he shook his head.

“Look at me when I am speaking to you.” Custodio spoke, his voice was loud, and his tone was empty and dry. Caruncle raised his head towards Custodio, but his eyes didn’t seem to be looking at him at all. “I’m going to give you a choice, and I need you to listen to me carefully.”

Caruncle’s eyes seemed to finally focus on him, he came out a little out of his lethargic state and more of his more anxious demeanor returned to his body.

“There is something I have been looking forward to doing in the last few weeks, and as things are right now, I’m running out of time, so because of this if you say no, I will be forced to kill you.”

Caruncle felt a chill down his spine and his heartbeat started to accelerate. If I could, I would hug him. Custodio noticed that Caruncle started to hyperventilate, so he kneeled down a bit, and offered his left hand to him.

“I need you to calm down for the choice you are going to make. I did select you, because there is a big probability that our goals are aligned, so we might be able to help each other out.” It could probably have been my impression, but Custodio’s tone seemed to be as silent as a whisper. It was hard to hear, maybe my own soul had already lost contact with reality and I couldn’t perceive reality the same way I did before.

Caruncle slowly took Custodio’s hand without saying anything, Custodio took Caruncle’s shaking hand and he put his own hand on top of it. “You see, my daughter died a few weeks ago, I’m trying to revive her. Her body is slowly decaying, and I only have so much time before it turns into nothing. I’m doing as much as I can, but there is only so much I can do to slow down its deterioration. I can restore anything from her body, anything, as long as it is in good enough condition, but to revive her I am going to need another brain, your brain.”

The cranky guy looked back at Custodio terrified, his heart was going at full speed, for a moment I thought he was going to have a heart attack, but Custodio started caressing his hand slowly and that seemed to have some effect on him, at least, at least, it looked like he wasn’t going to hyperventilate anymore. In the few moments I was close to him, I could feel a fluttering on his stomach as he focused on the feeling of his hand.

“If you accept and allow me to give her your brain, once I am done, you will be revived, and you will be able to walk, eat normally, do anything you used to do before you were imprisoned.”

Custodio’s head pointed to the bathtub in the back of the room. Looking inside of it, I could see the body of a woman submerged on ice, she was probably in her late twenties, no, she was probably younger, but I wasn’t sure. Caruncle looked at the body behind him and then back at Custodio.

“To you, it might feel like a change of clothes, so to speak.”

He looked confused, he frowned as if trying to grasp the situation, but without actually succeeding.

“Yes, I’m asking you to be my daughter.”

Caruncle tilted his head, he opened his mouth as if trying to speak a couple of times, but nothing came out.

“If you accept, I can guarantee that the process will be a success, and once I’m done I will also take you under my care as well, as my daughter, you will stop being a slave. If you reject my offer, I will have to use your organs to keep her body fresh enough, if I don’t do it, I might run out of time before I can finally find another proper candidate to use for her brain,” Custodio gave him a sad smile as he raised his eyebrows, like he was looking for his sympathy.

Stolen novel; please report.

The fluttering on Caruncle's stomach had turned into a hole. Custodio finally stood up and took his hand from him.

Caruncle touched his face.

“You might go to heaven, to hell, you might start a new life or just disappear completely, before you ask me, no, I don’t know what happens to mortal souls after death or if some God takes care of them, but I know that this world has been abandoned. If you accept my offer, we will stay here for a while, but if you don’t, you will just find out what comes afterwards just today.”

Caruncle slowly lowered his hands while looking attentively at Custodio, the words now fully weighing on him, he didn’t say anything, but his eyes were fully opened, as if he had just seen a monster.

“I am giving you an hour to think about it.” Custodio turned around and opened the door. “Whatever you decide to go through, I promise it’s going to be quick.” He walked out of the room and closed the door after him, Caruncle and I were left alone, with only the weak light of the candle illuminating the room, in the whole hour afterwards, he barely moved at all.

The whole ordeal was probably pointless anyway, the man had lost his marbles, and most likely, he was going to die in the next hour or so, that’s what I thought. Caruncle on the other hand decided to entertain the thought of the proposal the man had given him as a way to keep himself busy until his death. Even if he lived, even if he escaped, he had nowhere to go, he was useless, he didn’t have the guts, he didn’t have the brain, he didn’t have anything, he might as well drop dead.

In the whole time I spent with him, I kept wishing he would reject the offer. I knew it was selfish of me, but I thought that perhaps, maybe, there would be a day where something would happen so I could be relieved from my existence as a ghost and go into the afterlife sooner so we could finally meet, if he took up the deal Custodio gave him, even if he left this world, I would still have to wait for him until my sentence was over, or, most likely, we might never meet each other ever again.

I was speaking directly at him, “please, Caruncle, don’t accept, please, hear me out,” but I knew it was pointless. At some point, I just stopped talking, and sat right at his side, caressing his hand, imagining he could actually feel me. Sometimes, I would peek inside his mind, the options were clear, and despite the fact one of the choices gave him an exit to the world he still saw as foreign to his eyes, the events that awaited him after death scared him. It was too big of a gamble, he could perfectly end up being taken by some higher being and be given a better fate out of the pity, or he might just end up in the hands of Jazmin once again.

If what was awaiting him was nothingness, that would still be preferable to the Jazmin he was living in right now, but something inside him was creeping him out. The feeling that Vespera was waiting for him for once he died, and, since he had failed to carry out the events that had happened in a previous iteration of this world, the events that Jazmin had held so dearly in her heart to write complete books about them and that led into the change of the world she had made, he felt that her reaction wasn’t going to be positive, and he was terrified of it.

He couldn’t still forget her eerie eyes.

After the hour had passed, Custodio came back, he slowly opened the door and closed it after him, slowly, as if not trying to make a sound. He turned around and then looked down towards Caruncle.

“Now, I want to hear your choice.”

Caruncle looked up at him, but he didn’t speak. For what felt like a couple of minutes, he didn’t say anything, Custodio didn’t say anything either, neither of them moved or made a sound, they looked at each other with an expression that to this day I still quite can’t comprehend.

He nodded at Custodio while looking him in the eyes.

“Very well, do you have any last words?”

Caruncle shaked his head in negation.

The man didn’t move for a while, as if he was frozen, then he closed his eyes and sighed, but the expression on his face didn’t change. He kneeled down and with a worn out key, he started to open the locks from the chains that were in Caruncle’s neck as well as every limb of his body.

“Are you familiar with the name of Darius?” He spoke to him, a bit more softly this time. Caruncle didn’t speak and just shaked his head, Custodio continued. “That is the name of one of the men that Jazmin met a long time ago, she was his mistress.”

After Caruncle’s shackles had been removed from him, Custodio slowly took him yet again on his arms and Caruncle allowed himself to be carried, he barely moved or made a sound, he only kept looking at Custodio's face with an expression of fear and wonder.

“Darius was a demon, and on more than one occasion, he decided to come inside and visit one of the worlds Jazmin had made,” slowly, Custodio placed Caruncle’s frail body on the table at the side of the bathtub, he also took out the woman’s body from the ice tub and placed it at Caruncle’s side, but he didn’t look at her, he only kept staring at Custodio, hearing his story.

”What happened after he entered is still unknown, what is said is that it didn’t end up well.” Custodio took a small hammer and a thick nail that was below the table, and after cleaning them a bit with a rag, he directed himself back to Caruncle. “The blood he carried ended up being passed to his children, and those children ended up extending through the whole planet. The whole human race in this world, came into existence” He put the nail in front of Caruncle’s head in the middle of his two eyes, and raised the hammer with his right hand. Caruncle stayed still, no longer thinking further about what he was seeing with his own eyes. “His blood is the venom you and I carry inside.” With a quick movement of his arm, he slammed the hammer into the nail with all his strength, one instant after that, Caruncle was met with pure darkness.

I saw Custodio splitting Caruncle’s skull in two. After forcing his hands for a while, he managed to open it completely and managed to reach the brain, he was starting to forcefully cut the connections towards the spinal cord, but I couldn’t keep looking further, I looked towards the woman lying at Caruncle’s side, and I realized that her skull was empty, her eyes were hastily glued together, but the head was wide open, which terrified me. I couldn’t feel anything anymore probably due to the shock. I turned around once again and closed my eyes. For a long while I heard Custodio working on getting Caruncle’s brain out with his own skull with his bare hands, I was about to start crying.

I got close to Caruncle, if his soul started to leave this realm soon, that would be the last moments I could spend with him. I got close to him and tried to reach him, feel him, there was darkness, only darkness, no feeling, no thought, no sound, no emotion. I opened my eyes and looked back at Custodio, he had hastily placed Caruncle’s brain inside the woman’s skull and then continued working on it.

I closed my eyes and stayed with Caruncle for a long while, maybe now that he was dead, he could finally feel me, but there was still nothing, nothing, time passed, but there was nothing inside him, nothing around him, he was gone. It was when I started to feel my own mind dissipating away that we were hit with a sensation of pure and freezing cold. Suddenly, Caruncle’s heart started to beat once again, and after a couple of seconds, he grasped for air and opened his eyes in shock.

I backed away on that instant and looked back at him, but it wasn’t Caruncle who was moving, it was the woman at his side, his body was lying there on the table, pale and stiff. The woman’s body was shivering due to the cold after being left in the bathtub for so long. There were marks on the skull and some on the limbs and torso, but some of the hair managed to cover part of the head.

I reached Caruncle again, the body had opened its eyes but he couldn’t see anything more than the blinding light of the weak candle at the top of the room.

“Close your eyes, your body is still weak, so now, I need you to rest.” Caruncle obeyed, but couldn’t stop shivering. He took a big worn out blanket from below the table and covered the shivering body with it and then opened the door of the room once again. Afterwards, he took the body again in his arms and carried it out of the room.

“I appreciate you have accepted my proposal, Elena.” He said this time with a relaxed tone, but still a stiff expression on his face, and he walked up the stairs.