A light clinking wakes a man, his body suffused with pain. His head felt stuffed and muted, as if filled with wool. One eye was swollen shut, but the other opened carefully, the fevered brightness in it reflecting his pain. He looks around, confused, noticing his body pulled toward the ceiling. He felt disoriented, and sick. He looked toward the floor, only to feel the movement as a painful effort. Looking at his feet, he notices a chain wrapped around both feet, leading toward the floor. Around him, he could see dark silhouettes around him, in the same position and more. What was strange was that on the ceiling, he could see a the shadows of objects that looked like a workbench, a chair, perhaps even a brazier.
Realization dawned on him as he struggled to look around. He was hanging from the ceiling, upside down. The disorientation he had felt was slowly disappearing as he came to. He could see a light down a stone hall against a far wall, flickering as it came closer. The sound of a grinding noise could be heard, approaching with the light. He hung still, his single eye filled with fear. A figure came across the open portal way, its features causing his heart to catch in his throat, the cry of fear just stifled in time.
The figure was massive, both in width and height. It was vaguely humanoid, but covered in stitches all over its body. Its face was covered in an iron mask, the eye holes and mouth the only openings, the thing's flesh pressed tightly against the mask, and it's ears were small against its fleshy, bald head. It had fat arms, ending in fleshy fists, and its legs were much the same, its feet pushed into what looked like boots that were stitched together from various multi-colored and furless leather. In one hand, the creature held what looked like a jagged, wicked butcher's knife, but it was shoddily made and massive, it's shape reminding the man of western soldiers' scimitars. In the creature's other hand it carried the naked bottom half of a man's torso and legs, tattoos covering the legs and thighs of the corpse. The source of illumination was a lantern on the thing's belt, holding up what looked like badly made stained, rotted trousers that looked much the same as its boots.
The man screwed his eyes shut and stifled his breath as the thing entered the room. Eventually, it shuffled past the chains and man hanging from the ceiling. It stopped against the far wall, well away from the man. He heard it slam the corpse onto a table with a wet slap, then heard various wet sounds before the thing grunted and ripped something out. It started to shuffle away from him as he opened his eyes just a sliver, watching as it shuffled away into a dark hallway, the corpse's pelvic bone in its hands. The man could feel his bile rising, but he stifled it. He noticed the lantern was left on a hook by the workbench, the massive butcher's knife lying bloodily next to it, the corpse in pieces on the workbench.
With the illumination, the man looked around him, noticing other naked corpses hanging up like he himself was, chains wrapped around their feet. He noticed his oldest son hanging, his eyes lifeless and whited out. The man's anguished cry was weak in his mouth, barely a whisper, as he reached out for his son. He cradled the hanging corpse's cheek with his own dirty hand, drinking in his son's features, remembering every detail, thinking back to the previous day where they had been tending to their wagon.
They had been traveling through a forest, his son slowly taking over the management of their farm and homestead. He had just gotten married two summers past, his features had been happy, his wife smiling along with him in the beautiful summer afternoon. The two were expecting their first child, and the man was old now, excitedly waiting for his grandchild to come into the world, his own wife long passed into the afterlife. Those happy days coalesced with the scene in front of the man, and he cried bitter, horrid tears, choking his breath.
He could see other people's bodies in the dim light in various states of decay, but none of them covered in flies or the like, which the man marked as strange through his anguish. Now that he could see, he looked up at the chains around his feet, noticing that it was just a simple loop, hooked lightly. He pulled himself, painfully and slowly, up his body to his feet, then slipped the hook up, making him fall to the ground with a dull thump against the rough stone under him. He could feel his blood rushing back through his lower body, causing his vision to blur and blacken, and his stomach to wretch heavily. After a few moments, the tingling ran its course through his body, and he pulled himself to his feet, then walked to the table, his body shaking from the emotional and physical turmoil. He took hold of the lantern in one hand and tried to take the knife, only realizing how heavy it was. It was nearly as long as his entire arm, and at least twice as thick at the end, so he left it and turned toward where the creature had first come from.
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Taking one last look at his son hanging from the ceiling, he went down the portal way and walked through the hall. There were side passages to the left and right, and it seemed like the hall would last forever, but at the very end, he came to a set of stone steps leading steeply upward. He gripped the wall as he climbed them, slowly, the light barely illuminating the intense darkness above him. After what seemed like years, he finally stepped onto a landing next to a thick, wooden door. He turned the handle and pushed it open with a gasp, entering what looked like a vast hall.
As he stepped through, the lantern illuminated a column in front of him. Its base was ornate, the entire column what looked like marble, but chipped and stained with dirt and other unknown substances. The floors looked much the same, seeming almost marble in nature, but covered in various shades of dried and caked old blood and dirt. The man stepped further into the hall, noticing three more columns, spaced in a rectangular fashion, a pair of each on either side of massive, ornate double doors to his left, a massive, dirty half-circular window above them, and a set of large, sweeping steps to his right that led to additional floors. The man raised the lantern to see up the steps and to the other floor, but the dim light couldn't reach the top of the gloom, as if the ceiling were unfathomably and infinitely high up into an abyss.
The old man limped toward the double doors, his steps echoing into the hall. He grasped the handles and tested them. The handles turned, and he could almost open the doors, but something seemed to block them. He put all of his weight against the door, barely making the doors budge, slowly opening. With a final, wheezing gasp he slammed his shoulder against the door and squeezed through the small opening. After he was through, the door swung easily open, and the man tumbled down a set of stone steps to the ground below, the lantern shattering underneath him. He gasped in pain, then looked back as he cradled his shoulder, picking out shards of glass from his skin. Nothing was blocking the door, and it stayed wide open, as if the hinges were greased and well maintained, but he could have sworn the more he had pushed, the harder it was to open the doors. He grasped the stone steps, sat up, then picked himself back up, leaving behind a small pool of blood where he had lain.
The sky was a dreary, cold and evil grey color, and the grounds in front of him were dirt, with nasty weeds growing in tufts here and there. He stepped away from the doors, and looked back at the structure, realizing it was a castle. Its shape was foreign to him, but it seemed familiar as well. The windows were dirty, some shattered or boarded up, and he could swear he could see figures going between different windows, but every time he looked at the ones he could see, they were just fluttering curtains. Far, far up above him, from a balcony looking outward, he spotted a white-clothed figure looking down at him, what looked like a veil covering its face. His eyesight was already not good enough to see that far, but made even worse from only having one good eye. He shivered as it looked at him, before he turned and limped toward the end of the castle's dirt drive. A large metal fence covered the perimeter, its gate ornate and covered in vines and faces. If the surroundings around him were brighter and more cheerful, he would think the detailing would be happy and welcoming, but in the dreary day they just seemed desperate and despairing.
He limped quickly to the gate, and pushed against it, attempting to open it, but he couldn't tell any sort of way to do so. It stayed unbudging and implacable. The way past the gate led downward into a small city, a few people milling around the streets. He railed against the gate, crying out to the people, but no matter how loud he screamed or shouted, not a single one of them turned to look at him, as if they couldn't hear him or he weren't real. He continued crying out until his voiced cracked and his lips bled, but eventually the sounds coming from his hoarse throat were only wheezes and gasps, whispers of help that none could hear.
The man dropped to his knees, crying, snot dribbling from his face and into his greying beard, when he felt a massive hand grip his head tightly. He tried to cry out in pain, but no sound could be heard from his spent voice. The hand lifted him off the ground and turned him, coming face to face with the creature with the iron mask, its green eyes glistening from the holes, cracked, fat lips wheezing lightly through shattered teeth and an engorged, sickening tongue. The old man could feel himself piss down his trousers as the creature slammed his face into the gate, darkness taking over the man.