Standing before the weathered wooden door, its surface marred by countless cracks and the ravages of time, Luke felt the oppressive weight of darkness pressing in around him. The faded flat number, barely discernible amidst the rust and decay, seemed to mock him as he hesitated before it. Enclosed by cold, unyielding concrete walls that seemed to pulse with a malevolent energy, he shuddered at the sensation of being watched by unseen eyes. Behind him, the railing overlooked the yawning abyss below, the rusty metal elevator grinding and groaning as it ascended and descended in its relentless cycle.

The Phantoms of people in the Real passed next to him, some faces he recognized, some were foreign. As if by magic, no one came close to the doors he was facing, always few steps away, as if by on instinct, repulsed by the place.

A tremor coursed through his body, his chest tightening as his breath grew erratic. But as the darkness receded from his eyes, clarity washed over his mind. He knew where he stood.

"Home..." he whispered, his voice barely audible over the din of the surroundings. With a trembling hand, he pushed against the door, the hinges momentarily giving way as the wooden panels crashed against the ceramic tiles with a resounding bang. The sound echoed upward through the staircase, unnoticed by the oblivious occupants of the building.

Entering his own home from Beyond the Veil seemed shameful, even more humiliating then when he did it in his youth. With his head bowed down, he took a step, feeling the chills run up his spine as his foot hit the cold tile and cracked it. He flinched, his body remembering the price for making ruckus in this hellhole.

His fist tightened with a visceral intensity, the knuckles blanching against the taut skin of his hand. Tendons bulged beneath the surface, veins pulsing with a rhythm that echoed the pounding of his heart. The nauseating sound of skin scraping against skin reverberated through the oppressive silence of the home, each echo a reminder of the violence that had stained these walls.

The hallway of the flat always felt too confining, suffocating even. Now, with his altered physique, his larger frame seemed to strain against the confines of the space, the walls and ceiling closing in around him like a vise.

It was as though the very atmosphere was choking him, squeezing the breath from his lungs with each passing moment.

The once-vibrant paint on the walls had long since dulled with age and stained with diffrent splashes originating from the torment unspoken. He couldn't even recognize the color it was meant to represent. It was flaking off, cracked in the places he somewhat recalled his body being bounced off it.

As he moved forward, he passed by a large mirror that spanned from floor to ceiling, its surface marred by cracks and dents that seemed to fit his forehead and cheek with eerie precision. Raising his right arm, he absentmindedly traced the contours of his face, his fingers brushing over the scars and roughened tissue that concealed the remnants of old wounds, buried deep within.

He gazed into the mirror, meeting his own eyes with a mixture of detachment and introspection.

So tired.

He turned left, traversing deeper into the cramped hallway, his head ducking under a doorframe that had long been absent, even in his own memories.

Standing in the center of the hallway, his gaze bore into the floor beneath him. This was the spot.

This was where his mother had drawn her last breath.

"A year..." The doctors had told her. A year, at most, to live. Advanced breast cancer in its late stages, leaving little hope in its wake. They had advised her to make peace with herself, to settle any unresolved matters in her life.

But she had refused. She had a son to care for, a chubby boy barely four years of age. And a husband she could not trust, irredeemable yet kept in check by her iron will.

She fought, fought with a courage born of love and desperation.

Seven years—seven agonizing years of torment, of willingly ingesting poison in the form of chemotherapy and radiation. She endured the loss of so much: her hair, her nails, her strength. But amidst it all, she never lost her smile, never lost her warmth.

Her bones became brittle, so brittle, fragile as porcelain, they broke when she tried to lift her little boy up while taking him to school, and she wept, tears fell onto his confused face. She cried not from pain, but from sorrow, sadness, she knew that she was getting closer to the end, she mounrned the loss of him. She mourned his fate.

The boy grew, and he understood. He was told what was stealing his mother away from him, and he drowned in sorrow, so she became his anchor. She was his pillar of strenght, and quickly he learned from her. He became hers. Whereever she went, he trailed behind. Whatever she grabed, he carried. They both knew their time was limited, so they made most of it.

She fought on, fought the loosing battle.

The cancer spread.

Her body, once full of life, was ravaged by disease. The doctors wielded their scalpels, cutting away flesh and bone in a desperate bid to save her. They cut away pieces of her, more and more.

More chemotherapy, more radiation—each treatment a cruel reminder of her mortality, each dose exacting a toll on her weary spirit. But still, she fought on, determined to defy the odds and cling to life for as long as she could.

She refused to let her illness dictate her life. Despite the relentless onslaught of nausea and the slow erosion of her body by toxins, she continued to work tirelessly, driven by the need to support her family. They couldn't afford to rely solely on her husband, a man who offered little help around the house and even less in terms of financial support.

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Each morning, she rose at the crack of dawn, her son by her side, embarking on the daily ritual of school drop-offs before heading off to work. There, she threw herself into her duties with unwavering determination, advocating for those in need and waging war against insurance companies to ensure that promises of assistance were kept.

Returning home, her duties were far from over. She cooked, she cleaned, she tended to her son with a love that knew no bounds. She was a marvel, a testament to the strength of the human spirit.

But even the strongest among us are mortal.

And mortals die.

Death came for her slowly, stealthily, unyielding.

At the seventh year mark, at the end of summer, the doctors proclaimed a total remission of the cancer that plauged her. Her chest, lungs, other internals, all seemed fine. She could relax.

She could have hope.

She could feel safe.

Those feeling lasted for three months.

Then came December, and with the fall of snow, the world turning pure white, so did she turned more pale.

“The cold just got to her...” he remembered the lies he told himself, and his fist clenched, his teeth grinding against eachother.

With each day, she was getting weaker.

She smiled.

But the smile was feeble, the eyes were losing their shine. That ray of hope.

She knew.

With each passing day, her movements grew more labored, until even the simplest tasks became insurmountable obstacles. Recognizing the need to prioritize her health, she made the difficult decision to take time off from work, assuring her son that it was just a temporary setback. "Just for Christmas," she promised, "I'll be back on my feet by New Year's."

Her son clung to those words like a drowning man to a life raft, desperately hoping that they held some kernel of truth. The thought of a world without her was unfathomable, unimaginable—a void too vast to comprehend.

But as the days stretched into weeks, her condition only worsened. The return of her vomiting episodes left her weakened and emaciated, her body too depleted to sustain itself. She pushed aside plates of food, too exhausted to even contemplate eating, her energy drained by the relentless assault on her frail form.

As Christmas drew near, her condition took a drastic turn for the worse. Three days shy of the holiday, she lost the ability to move, reduced to a mere shell of her former self. Her once-able body now lay helpless, unable to even lift her own hands.

He was consumed by anguish, his pleas falling on deaf ears as he begged her to seek help from the doctors. Tears and mucus streamed down his face as he implored her to reconsider, to give herself a fighting chance.

But she remained resolute, declining his pleas with a gentle but firm refusal. She insisted that she wanted to spend Christmas at home, by her son's side.

The following day brought further deterioration, her speech slurred, her gaze unfocused. She winced in pain when she thought he wasn't looking, her suffering evident even in the moments of reprieve as she drifted in and out of consciousness.

On Christmas Eve, silence enveloped the home as she rested, her frail form barely stirring. He sat by her bedside, a silent vigil, whispering reassurances to himself as he watched over her.

She stirred from her slumber, but her words eluded her, lost in the haze of her confusion. He fought to hold back tears, his body trembling with the effort to remain composed. He had promised to be strong for her, and he intended to keep that promise.

Tears were welling up in his eyes, his mind a storm of despair and terror.

But he refused to let despair consume him. Not when she needed him to be strong.

With a heavy heart, he forced a smile, determined to be a source of strength and comfort for the woman who had always been his rock.

With a radiant smile, he began to speak, filling the room with nonsensical chatter infused with cheer and joy. Though his words may have been gibberish, his infectious enthusiasm seemed to bring a sense of peace to her weary soul. She weakly returned his smile, basking in the warmth of his presence as he sought to repay her kindness in any way he could.

Hours slipped by, his voice growing hoarse and his eyes brimming with unshed tears. Evening descended, casting its gentle glow over the room as the first star of the night twinkled in the sky above.

Her husband, a distant figure in their lives, appeared in the doorway, wordlessly beckoning for his son to assist him. Together, they carefully lifted her emaciated frame, her fragile form barely registering in the arms of the eleven-year-old boy.

Together, they lifted her frail form, her weight barely registering to the eleven-year-old boy as they carried her through the threshold. She seemed weightless, a mere wisp of a woman, her skin as thin as parchment stretched taut over brittle bones.

So fragile.

A sudden change rippled through the air as they passed the new mirror that his father had installed in front of his son's door. In an instant, right in the heart of the narrow hallway, she collapsed, slipping from their grasp.

Her body crashed against the cold tiles with a sickening thud, convulsions wracking her form as she lay wordless, caught in the grip of violent spasms. The boy's scream pierced the air, a desperate cry of anguish and fear.

“Mom!”

Tears blurred his vision as he reached out, his hands trembling as he grasped her head, trying to shield it from the impact against the unforgiving floor. His heart pounded in his chest, a frantic rhythm matching the chaos unfolding before him.

Her mouth remained clenched shut, her eyes rolling back in her head as her body trembled uncontrollably.

His father's voice, distorted by panic, reverberated around them, but the words were lost in the chaos. Confusion and terror gripped the boy's heart as he struggled to comprehend the unfolding nightmare.

With trembling hands, he inserted his fingers between her clenched teeth, prying them apart in a desperate attempt to ensure she wouldn't swallow her tongue.

Her jaws clamped down, grinding against the flesh of his fingers, but he refused to withdraw, determined to maintain the passage for her breath. He rocked back and forth, his voice rising in a desperate plea, begging her to stay with him.

He caressed her head, his touch gentle yet urgent, as he implored her not to leave him alone. Time seemed to stretch endlessly as he fought to keep her tethered to the world, his own fear mounting with each passing moment.

Two agonizing minutes slipped by, her movements growing weaker.

His voice wavered.

Five long minutes dragged on, and still she lay motionless.

Silence descended like a suffocating blanket, enveloping him in a cocoon of despair and heartache.

Eight agonizing minutes crawled by before the ambulance arrived, the paramedics rushing to her side and whisking her away to another room.

Ten long minutes passed, and the solemn pronouncement of her death echoed through the house.

The paramedics gently broke the devastating news to the shell-shocked boy, revealing that she had been lost to them the moment she collapsed. It was later discovered that cancer had stealthily invaded her spine, creeping upward into her brain to deliver the final blow.

The anguished cries of the boy filled the air, reverberating through the silent walls with palpable sorrow.

In the days that followed, time seemed to lose its shape, each moment a blur of agony and grief.

The funeral happened three days later, hundreds of people came to pay their respects to a woman who brought so much joy and warmth to their world. They paid their respects to her family. And left.

But for Luke, the days blurred together into an indistinguishable haze of emptiness and sorrow, his existence consumed by the overwhelming weight of loss.

What remains etched in his memory is the moment his father made the fateful decision to end his suffering.

How it happened.

How it started.

How the true hell and torment began.