“Dad, are you okay?”
“No.” I answered the void.
My dead daughter’s voice had been talking to me since yesterday. Or was it two days ago? Maybe it had only been an hour, but the sensation of emptiness in my stomach discredited that theory.
It had been forever ago since I slept. Never had I felt so tired, and even the blinding lights in front of me couldn’t have kept me awake. The weird liquid I felt inside my arms, burning me from the inside and making my heartbeat so loud I could feel it in my tongue, that could and did prevent me from sleeping.
I was thirsty but didn’t want to ask for water again yet. I had soiled myself ages ago, but at least did not smell bad. Asking for water was not only quenching my thirst; it washed me as well.
Not in a pleasant way.
The powerful water spray that had come from above the lights almost felt like being waterboarded.
“Do you want to die?”
My daughter had been too young to ask such questions, and I tried not to answer my hallucination, in vain.
“You promised me you would live, didn’t you?”
“You were dead already, I told that to my therapist. You did not know that.” I responded despite myself.
“Am I not with you, always?”
“Shut up.”
“That’s not a nice thing to say to your daughter.”
“Shut up!”
I opened my eyes by mistake. Behind the lights, echoes of black tendrils were trying to inch closer to me, repelled by the brightness. For now.
I knew it was mostly all in my head, but more and more I was doubting myself. Wasn’t I in the basement of a mad scientist? What hellish things could be here with me? What had happened to the two hundred and more subjects that had come before me?
Beyond the impossible exhaustion, the cold of the metal table piercing my back and the ghosts of the darkest parts of my relatives, dead or not, not knowing why I was here, what was going to happen, what had happened to those before me, that was the worst.
“There could be one of those subjects just behind you, for all you know.” Taunted my daughter.
“Fuck off.”
“You know what would be funny?”
“What!?”
But I received no answer.
“What! What is it?” I felt my heart pummel hard in my chest. Then pain. Then I felt even more tired and…
“Cardiac arrest detected. Administrating N-1.” Interrupted the computer.
It had been the first time it had spoken since I had asked for water.
It took me a full minute to understand what it was saying.
“Cardiac arrest?”
Was I dying?
I didn’t want to die. I had promised. But then, wouldn’t that let me sleep?
Liquid fire answered my questions, entering through my arms and quickly propagating like a vicious wave of lava.
As I screamed, I heard a new voice.
“Suffer in silence, no one cares.” My dad told me.
My voice died in my throat. I opened my eyes, trying my best to look at the familiar face, but only seeing light, and the hellish darkness trying to pierce it. No one had found me I was… I was hallucinating again. The pain receded at the same time I realized the truth, but I felt weaker than ever.
“Water…” I begged.
Immediately, cold water pummelled me like a boxer on a rampage.
I tried to open my mouth, but I wasn’t sure if I was drinking or drowning.
After minutes, it finally stopped, setting off a violent frenzy of coughs.
It made it difficult to understand what the computer was saying.
“Tw…ty-four hours… elapsed, switching to night mode.”
“Cough…what? Cough…cough…twenty-four…” I tried. After finally catching my breath, I asked again.
“It hasn’t been only twenty-four hours. It’s been days. You’re lying to me! YOU’RE LYING TO…”
The LED lights suddenly turned off, and I felt the black tendrils finally reach me, touch me, whisper horrors inside my brain.
I immediately screamed, my brain reaching such absolute terror I felt my consciousness slip…until the liquid in my veins pushed me awake once more.
“Help! Help me! It’s not real! It’s a lie, Days! Sa…me! Heeep. Lie. LIE. LIE.”
“See? Wouldn’t that be funny?” Asked my daughter once again.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
“Thirty-six hours have passed.”
“LIE!” I shouted back at the computer.
“Stop shouting so loudly.” Disapproved my father, as usual.
“I’m worried about him, he’s successful and young, he shouldn’t be so down because of one dumb girlfriend who couldn’t take the pill like everyone else.” Added my mother.
“ALL LIES.”
Then the lights turned on.
My shouts were mere whispers now, and I realized I hadn’t ever stopped screaming.
Finally, my thoughts came back, and I saw the tendrils recede into the darkness.
To me, pure silence. The lights and computers weren’t even registering anymore.
Then I heard the door open in a weird futuristic ‘whoosh’.
“Subject 247, results.” Asked Benedict. His footsteps coming towards me.
“Peak reached two days ago with 302 FHM.”
“Mhh, so nothing weird on that front.”
“Don’t listen to him, you’re hallucinating again, because you’re weak.” My dad told me.
“No I’m not.” I creaked.
“Oh, did you say anything?” Benedict questioned. He was in front of me, I could tell with the sudden shadow, but I was too tired to open my eyes to look at him.
“You…it’s been less than two days. You lied.” I whispered.
“Mh, yes I did. It’s been eight days, not a week and certainly not only two, Bonnie is such a joker.”
“You lied…”
“I can barely hear you. Bonnie, where are we in terms of nanite injection?”
“N-7 Benedict.”
“Put N-8 through 10, let it heal its vocal cords. Who was able to make full sentences after phase 1?”
I wanted to listen, but the sudden pain in my veins obscured everything.
When it finally stopped, I felt slightly better. My throat didn’t hurt anymore. I was too tired to care.
“Interesting. 247 did you know that every subject that went through extreme sleep deprivation reached the same FHM? Always around 300, no outliers with more than five points of spread. A true common factor in humanity. Most sapient beings in fact. All of them sleep, and all suffer from the same madness index if it is prevented. Fascinating, isn’t it?”
“Let…me…sleep…please.” I pleaded.
“Oh, don’t worry, now that you’ve gone through phase 1, your madness index is good enough. Great recovery on your part by the way. Very fast, there are only 2 other subjects that reached your baseline.”
I listened to his words, but none of them made any sense.
“Sleep…”
“Bonnie, you can stop administrating the compound now.”
“Administrating compound A.”
My heart started beating even faster, the pain in my chest reaching unprecedented levels…
“STOP administrating compound A.”
“Understood, stopping…Cardiac arrest detected.”
“Well, obviously. I’ll be back tomorrow for phase 2.”
The pain, the cold…and then it stopped as if nothing happened.
I panted, catching my breath… But finally, everything was okay, as I felt the liquid in my vein dissipate. At last, oblivion took me.
I woke up in the dark, and immediately felt the tendrils of darkness reach for me again. They penetrated through my ears, my eyes, my mouth, and nose. I couldn’t see anything. Fully awake, it was even worse than in my half awareness of sleep deprivation.
“Help!” I started to scream pitifully, before realizing I would get no such thing here.
Despite the blackness entering my mouth, my shout wasn’t blocked in any way.
Wasn’t the darkness a hallucination caused by my exhaustion? I didn’t feel as tired, most likely having slept a full day or more. I couldn’t hear my daughter nor my parents, so did that mean that it was real?
“What’s happening?” I pleaded to no one. Once again, even though I was certain my mouth was full of the evil thing, nothing prevented me from speaking normally.
I concluded that I had gone crazy.
Weirdly, that helped.
If I was crazy, then everything could be in my imagination, and I wasn’t being held hostage by a mad scientist, being face-raped by shadows.
As I started laughing, the lights turned back on, and I immediately saw the blackness leave me, hiding behind the lights and above my head. Most of them had gone up, was there something ungodly up there?
My thoughts and my manic laugh died as I heard the door open, and footsteps echo closer.
“Bonnie, status report.” Commanded the scientist.
“Baseline at 38 FHM, peak was 52, currently 21.”
I looked at my jailor.
“Why. Why are you doing this?” I asked.
To my surprise, he answered.
“I told you already, I want to fill up the stone to the brim, see it’s upper limits. I wouldn’t say it is humanitarian in objective, as I don’t really care, but managing to shatter it would bring quite the peace to all of the K worlds.”
“You’re torturing me…to save the world?”
“Worlds. The whole K dimension, all its worlds. The demon king has destroyed twenty-five since first observation, you can’t imagine the number of sapient beings that makes. But as I said, that’s not the purpose I’m prioritizing.”
“You’re insane.”
“Hardly. I consider myself a very pragmatic individual. But I suppose I could show you some proof. It will be necessary for the start of phase two, as it stands. Bonnie, lights at twenty percent please.”
“Twenty percent.” Answered the computer. At the same time, the LED lights in front of me dimmed considerably, making me see my captor clearly for the first time.
He had a very thin face, close to anorexic, his cheeks deeply hollow and his nose almost triangular. He had completely inexpressive brown eyes, and a start of baldness on his light grey hair.
He raised his right hand, holding a weird apparatus that I couldn’t… a selfie stick?
No, it looked like it, but it was a pincer of some sort. He aimed it above my head, to somewhere I could not see, then lowered it down with a weird dark purple crystal in the clasps.
As he brought it in his shadow, I saw the tendrils of blackness emerge from the crystal, trying to reach me as well as him in a very creepy octopus-esque manner.
“See?” He stated, not caring about the horrifying things coming out of it.
I was speechless, the tendrils were real? That meant I wasn’t crazy, not yet at least.
But I focused on him instead.
Now that I could see him, I could try to find out something about him, read him somehow.
“Sure, it’s hella creepy, but different worlds? Demon King? Please. I’m not going to take you word for anything.”
“Oh that is good, that is good. It is necessary for you to trust me slightly though, as the point of phase 2 is to start the body modifications and raise fear and horror. You not knowing when I’m lying to you or not is essential with that matter.” He was as inexpressive as always.
“Why the hell are you telling me this?”
“Bonnie? FHM please?”
“75.” The computer answered him immediately.
“See? Apprehension is a great part of fear, and even though complete ignorance lets imagination go rampant, having a very faint idea of what is going to happen makes it even worse. At least to my current understanding. So, in the next few months, I am going to start maiming you, remodelling your body to fit the demands of one, very sick individual. Sometimes I’ll tell you honestly what is going to happen to you, for example I’ll remove your legs tomorrow, always a great start in case you somehow manage to get out of your bed, and sometimes I’ll lie to you. Just like this being the Demon King’s stone is an obvious lie.”
“You sick fuck.” I tried to spit in his face, but my mouth was too dry. It wasn’t that I had forgotten that antagonizing my captor was a bad idea, it’s just that I had stopped caring.
“I am perfectly healthy. Oh, and by the way, I was lying.” He gave out the fakest smile I had ever seen.
“What?” I asked, puzzled by the uncanny expression.
But instead of answering me, he pushed the crystal to my face with his pincers.
“GIVE ME YOUR BODY, MORTAL, I SHALL DESTROY…”
The most atrocious voice broke into me, one so deep and powerful it pierced my skull, shattered my teeth, and gripped my brain in a grip so heavy it became only pulp.
Behind it, echoes of millions, billions, of agonizing screams, pleading for an end that would never…
It stopped. I vomited heavily, only bile coming out, and as I finally tried to blink awake, I saw Benedict had moved the crystal away from my face and taken a few steps back to avoid what was contained in my innards.
“Haha.” He said it like it was a word. “I managed to dodge it this time. Let me put the K world stone back. I hope you’ll trust that some of the things I tell you are true now.”
And as he pointed the clasps over my head, I lost consciousness.