(This one is a... longer chapter. Lol. Sorry that I didn't post one over the last three days but I was too focused on playing Overwatch and the now F2P, Evolve. Love the game so much. I hope you enjoy this chapter.
Edit, 12.07.16: I have resolved some issues and contradictions at the end and tried to make some scenes more immersive, just small changes really. Hope you can enjoy it some more now.
Leave a comment below if you liked this chapter, criticism is welcomed.)
"Urgh... Ahhh... Argh... Damn... What the fuck happened?!"
A terrible headache assaulted me as I laid there, covered in darkness with thick fog clouding my consciousness.
"Arghh... Where am I?", I wondered and began turning my aching body, though to my dismay it stopped at pitiful tugs. I was lying uncomfortably and my mouth felt dry, my chest heaved up and down in painful exertion, the very motion sending chills down my skin.
Smacking my lips together I felt the iron taste of blood run over my tongue.
"Oh God!"
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For Michael and Andrew it was the last day of their two week long hungary holiday. It should have been.
It was decided they would spent their last few days away from Budapest, the capital of Hungary, and experience more of what the country has to offer. Their town of choice, or rather large village, was Kalosca. A small south-sided town, peaceful with rich culture.
They hit it off in a nice small diner, a family owned restaurant in some byroad. Starting the evening with a glass of Zwack and a bowl of Gulyás they soon ate their way up to the pecsenye and a freshly made loaf of Lángos. The personel was friendly and their meal enjoyable. With a last glass of wine they left and made their way back to the hotel.
But on their way they stumbled upon a small bar, hidden away in the winding alleys, and after a couragous shrug and affirmative nod they entered.
The decor was shabby and it smelt rank, the wrap didn't lie this time, and only a few small groups of men were playing cards in the far off corners.
With grit they convinced themselves to approach the broad shouldered barkeeper and soon enough they got in some friendly banter. Glasses of fruity Pálinka were downed and the bartender even had some bottles of vodka in store, hidden away from the less friendly customers.
It was a wonderful time and they greatly enjoyed it. After an hour of drinking Andrew and Michael decided it was time to leave. They waved Jószef, the bartender, goodbye and left with satisfied smiles.
Though the night was far from over.
From there on out they began raiding every bar in sight, joining in on festive laughs and frolics until their throats were sore. All was fine until the seldom-so-drunk duo floundered over a neon lit entrance.
It was one of the more.... extreme pubs.
Both their gazes were immediately drawn to the pair of smoking hot girls sitting at a table with their brutish looking company. As drunk as they were they just giggled the signs of dangers off and approached. And in fact, nothing happened to them.
Maybe because they paid for the next two rounds. But whatever.
All seemed fine and dandy until one of the men procured a small bag of snow-white powder. Too intoxicated to judge the situation the duo did two of the well ordered lines of, presumably, coke. Though it wasn't.
The night afterwards blurred into oblivion, just a hazy smear of smudged memories, barely coherent and with sense. The night sped up, everything was flying past them both, and then they crashed. Hard.
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"As I woke up I couldn't feel my fingers anymore, merely static, my limbs were numb and only intense pain and heat radiated from my wrists and ankles.
My throat was devoid of water and the taste of fresh blood was continously pouring into my mouth. It was weird for the first few seconds, I thought I burst my lip and forgot, but it stayed steady for the next few minutes or so and I began to worry.
I felt around with my tongue, sluggish at most, and found three of my front teeth missing. My jaw hurt and felt dislocated and the jolts of pain from the uncovered nerve ends began rattling my mind. I couldn't focus and make heads or tails of the situation.
It didn't take long until the pain was unbearable and I began shaking and wrenching myself free, struggling to get my limbs loose. But the only result my frantic pulling amounted too were bruises and cuts. I didn't feel them at the time though.
From the pain induced exhaustion, mentally and physically, I calmed down enough to begin reasoning the situation with myself.
Shying the pain away and straining my jaws while I grind my teeth to dust I tried to hark to any sound and look out for any kind of hint.
Merely a few.... excruciating seconds later I could swear to have heard something, nigh inaudible.
It was very faint at that time, just a few whimpers of panic and calls of distress and although it was only muffled noise my intent mind could instantly recognize it. It was Ivan. I just knew it.
It made click and I finally understood what was going on. We were being kidnapped. The whys and wherefores were still unclear to me though.
And... and then it turned from a slightly discomforting nightmare into something far darker. It only took a single switch and man to step in, no, a devil.
I...I just can't understand how somebody, how something HUMAN, could do something so.... cruel and vile... to somebody else. It... it just makes no sense to me. It's... absurd.
It is kinda pathetic isn't it? That I survived just by a stroke of luck. But Ivan, hah, Ivan my good friend... he had no such luck. He... He... *Sob*... Fuck... I'm such a coward..."
Michael's voice trailed off as he stared at the coffee mug in his hands, the chocolate coloured brew sloshing over the edges as his hands begin trembling.
One of the many officers tried calming him down with reassuring pats on the back. "Boy, you need to tell us in detail... even if it means tearing old wounds open again...", the old captain confronting the haggard man croaked.
"Y-yes... Of course.", Michael blubbered out.
"Officer Csaba, I'd advise against it. The man is clearly still under shock.", a slim man with framed spectacles whispered into the old captain's ears.
"I know. But we need his help.", Csaba sighed and took his own sip of sugar free coffee.
"So... where was I?", Michael asked no one in particular with eyes that were gradually losing their spirit.
"Uhm...", the captain murmured and let a pen trail over a notepad. "You noticed that Ivan was with you."
"Ah, right.", the broken man answered with a sad smile.
"As I was saying... Ivan was there with me. In this room, or cellar, or whatever it was. I wanted to call out to him but my throat was sore and my voice hardly distinguishable against the faint splashing of waves in the background. Oh yeah, we were on a ship... But I guess you know that already.", showing another vacant smile Michael continued.
"Before I managed to get his attention a door swung open. It came so suddenly and with the influx of blinding light I had to close my eyes for a good few seconds.
After the noise and the light came a bang, a cracking sound, and then a pain unlike any other flooding through my chest. I could only cough and moan under the searing ache but as it was relentless it was short.
Then came a cackle, it was a man with a whip that stood inside the now fully lit room. From there on I could see once again, exposing myself to utter scenes of madness and bloodfest.
It was a bare room, without furnishing except two tables, one which both me and Ivan were chained against. They were cold and hard, resembled those tables you find in hospitals. Aspetic and metallic. What sent a shiver down my spine though were the spots of crimson spalltered all over the ground and even ceiling.
I craned my neck and managed to catch a glimpse of my body. It was worse than I thought. My skin was blue and black all over, red wounds seeping thin lines of blood while the first were already festering. Another thick red line freshly drawn across my stomach by the man. I was likely suffering from dehydrationa at that time, my head was beginning to spin as information and perception downright bombarded it.
Though what... what appaled me the most was not my own body and its condition but that of Ivan. He was bleeding all over, his hands and feet missing a few fingers and toes while pieces of bone sticked out every few inches of his fractured body. He was dying, right infront of me. The groans I heard before his last vestiges of strength that remained...
The man cracked his whip through the air once again. It hit Ivan across the famished ribs and sent him retching red foam and gurgle for air.
And then... and then... surprising the man and myself, Ivan stopped moving all of a sudden. He gave a final, pained and tired groan before his head snapped back while all the build up tension seething within his ravening muscles began subsiding. Instead of struggling against the call he decided it was time... yeah, to rest. He died, his black-beaten arms no longer wrestling with the bloodied cuffs.
My blood drained from my face, and I wanted to cry, but I couldn't... my body missing the necessary water that was vital for such a basic act of... sorrow. Yes, I just felt Ivan won't take another breath, and so did the man.
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I cried silently with agape eyes but the man... that MONSTER!..., he only frowned; until this same frown turned into a beaming, malicious, sneer.
The bastard directed his question at me as he leaned forward with that... gruesome, foul, smile on his face. Frankly, that was the first time I genuinely wanted to kill a man.
Uhm... He wore some kind of suit and a white masquerade mask as well as a tophat, but you know that too, right?
So, after his... remark... he turned around and faced the ceiling. There I saw a black camera sticking out of the corner.
Let me hear you sing.> It was all the... WHORESON!... said before readying himself. He took a few steps back and cracked his shoulders. His arm reached back and whipped then whipped forward. I heard the crack right after and closed my eyes. Things then started to become weird... You have to believe me on this!", Michael pleaded as his story reached its climax. "I waited, just wanted to die already, before I grudgingly openned my eyes as no pain ever reached me, thankfully so. I looked up and saw him stepping back once as the whip slipped from my exposed chest. That bastard looked as confused as I did, his whip laying softly by his side, his smirk fading. "Argh!", I prepared myself and winced out of fear, the crack booming a second after. But again I felt no pain, or rather, the whip wasn't even being registered. I thought the man was tricking me at first, deceiving me and giving me hope just to shred it afterwards! But there was genuine confusion in his eyes, one that spoke volumes. And so he tried again and again, this time I grimaced at him with open eyes each time he cocked his arm back, only for the same result to occur for the uptenth time. Seeing how the whip didn't hurt me or caused any kind of wound he began pulling out knives from a belt underneath his dress shirt. But as with the whip the knives didn't even manage to scratch me, the tips just faintly pressing against my skin. I myself was stumped but couldn't thwart the smile that was growing from my lips. The bizarness of the situation should be... clear to you. After all, you saw it. But alas you want my side of the story. It happened all in a second. The man was skulking around the room, scratching his chin while he took out other tools of torture, before he turned towards... Ivan. He stalked forward, a spey knife in his hands. He grabbed one of Ivan's arms and pressed the knife against his skin. The resounding crash made me look to the side where I saw him weakly standing up, the knife pointed forward and panic etched into his face. And... *shiver*... then IT happened. You see... for me it was... eerie. My torturer thrown against a wall, shouting and screaming at the top of his lungs as blood trailed from his mouth... I couldn't have been happier, nearly began laughing.", Michael slapped his leg and guffawed, tears of equally joy and sadness flowed down his cheeks. "And then, and then, it just ended. Hahahahahaha! You... you know what I am talking about, right? How he got turned into fucking meatpaste! Like he was being grinded from the feet on upwards. He screamed and I was dying from laughter as he fell face first on the ground. My hoarse cackles drowning out his cries. It got silent afterwards. And there he stood. He... uhm... was a boy, or maybe a bit older, a young adult maybe? He had brown eyes, light brown hair and stubbles on his chin and cheeks. Even with the hood and loose jeans I was sure he was on the more... stocky side. A burly boy, muscular but not all too fit. He had a phone in his hands, a smartphone of sorts and began dialing as I tried to desperately call out to him. The youth just ignored me and held his phone against his ear, talking in some weird gibberish; a second later he disappeared. And now... I am here.", Michael slouched down on the chair after he finished and began lazily stirring his already cold coffee. "Hum... Interesting story you got there Michael... Though that doesn't answer how the cameras couldn't pick up on him.", officer Csaba sighed and massaged his temples. He didn't actually doubt the man's words, he couldn't! The proof was lying by his side. Tens of tapes documenting days of utter torture for the man called 'Ivan', while Michael was carried out by some shaddy characters and subject to some unsavoury perversions. He was quite shocked by the video. A man sent flying through a room by... well, nothing... and then simply thrown into an invisible meat grinder. And then there was the anonymous call, coinciding with the moment where Michael explained how the mysterious man began talking to his phone. They received it as some form of audio encrypted message. Strange mumblings that, so explained the experts, were a combination of tens of languages at the same time. "Twenty seven people dead on a ship, one wounded and fourteen incapacitated. The ship is on the Danube, coordinates: 46.522719°N, 18.894892°E." A short message that contained everything they needed to know, and some more. "Things will be changing soon. Be prepared." An ominous message, one that was kept in english and more so growled than spoken. "Ok.", Csaba scratched his chin. "Tell us again, slowly, what has happened. Everything, weeks before even, people you interacted with." "Allright.", Michael, downtrodden as he was, still complied and began reciting everything that he could remember. A long night awaited the police officers of the somnolent city of Kalosca. --------- "You thought that was funny, eh?!", I shouted at the damned phone in my hands. God tricked me. He MADE me kill those people, made me noticeable by the bloodcraving thugs. I had to defend myself, I just HAD to. I-I didn't want to do it... I didn't want to kill these people, I am innocent! Though there was this remnant of craze still budding inside me, one that unleashed its sanguine rapacity onto the final man of the group. As I saw the first man dying, God called him Ivan, I was speachless, I was enraptured by terror and ecstasy likewise. That another could end one's life so easily, with not the slightest speck of remorse, it made me fear for the future of this corrupted world but at the same time it gave way for a mindset unlike any other. That there are simply people that do not deserve to live, they do not posess any merit, no reason to keep them alive any longer. People that couldn't be redeemed. Demons hiding under the flesh of humans. Trembling but swiftly reassuring myself I began noticing my change of heart, realized that those people were about to face a reckoning, a divine retribution for all those they wronged. I sweared that their deaths won't be swift, they won't be painless, and even if I will suffer the consequences of my doing, scorning and despising myself for all those that I will kill, it calmed me somewhat still. It appeased my crumbling psyche, lying to it that I was fighting for the right cause with nothing but goodwill. Mentally in disarray and physically suffering from the still lingering stench of piss, blood and other liquids I unsteadily walked towards my bed, feeling hundreds of images already beginning to slink onto me, willing to turn wistful dreams into harrowing nightmares. "There.Will.Be.More.Deaths.In.The.Future.,.Rest.First.', I took the message by heart and slowly wriggled my way under the blankets, although the sun was still out, the celestial body uncaring of what had transpired on this small world. 'Not even a minute has passed, huh...', I murmured and watched the clock still snagged at 8:30. Closing my eyes with a tired sigh the drowsiness began washing over me. My sleep was filled with the frightened faces of thos I have... slaughtered. Though a small part of me felt that it served them right, a part that began growing over the next few days, a part that helped me swallow my aversion and rip those people to tatters that knew nothing but greed, torture and evil. I wouldn't let it consume me, but I would let it guide me. Until then I can only bask in blissful ignorance and shut all those grieving souls out, be it as painful as it is. Maybe I was a bit crazy already?