Naruto: The Seraph Project

Chapter 50: Tortured Alive

TW: Gore, Blood, Torture

"LEAVE HIM ALONE!!" I scream, struggling harder and harder to free myself from those unbreakable shackles.

I try, again and again, until I feel my blood slide down my arms, but I cannot free my wrists bound by these metal rings and firmly fixed above my head. My similarly tied ankles keep my feet from lifting off the floor stained with years of torture. In the helplessness and pain inflicted by my own despair, my eye paralyzed with fear witnesses the abuse they're inflicting on Naruto.

Chained to this stone surface as cold as a winter night, the teenager struggles more fiercely than me, screaming in agony, and his cries break my heart. I am unable to see what they're doing to him since their backs block my vision, which is hampered by the paradoxically lit half-light.

The light on this hell table dazzles me even though it's dim. In light and dark, I watch them exchange tools of death that have become Chinese shadows. These instruments soiled with freshly taken carmine fluid butcher the skin without pity; sheaves of blood fly, staining the stone walls cracked with horrors and my whole immobilized being. His still hot blood warms my icy body, mingles with mine which escapes from my open wounds, from my flesh raw and mutilated by my own sadly vain efforts.

I try to scream, but only pitiful whispers leave my lips; my trachea crushed by this lump in my throat no longer allows me to vibrate my vocal cords or produce the slightest sound. My unstable, useless breathing prevents the air from sneaking into my atrophied lungs. My organ of love is tormented, squeezed, stabbed, and burns my whole chest, as if sadistic flames were licking it with their orange glow.

The smell of blood lingers in my nose. A sharp pain tortures me. My red eye is doomed and unusable; my chakra reserves are dry. In this infernal tumult, my ears hear everything and I am unable to cover them and therefore escape this reality in which I am imprisoned, without any hope of liberation. The echo amplifies this shambles of cruel sounds which I have no choice but to listen to...

Then silence.

No more noise.

Nothingness.

Naruto has stopped screaming and no longer fidgets. These vile beings exchange muted whispers as the worst possible scenario bombards my head; I feel my own heart stop and crumble bit by bit. Without realizing it, without saying it in words, Naruto just took his last breath. In shock, I am frozen, paralyzed, petrified. I try to convince myself in vain that I am misguided with malice and madness.

"...Na... Naruto..."

Slowly, their heads turn and they gaze coldly at me. My eye shrouded by despair darkens and no longer derogates from the tortured body that I contemplate with dread. I know it's him, but I don't recognize him.

His skin, which had turned cadaverous white, was flayed. His arms were severed along their entire length and then opened, exposing the shattered bones and simmering in a mass of black and red flesh contaminated with gangrene; his legs and tail suffered the same punishment. The entrails were removed from his carcass, including the carefully removed organs which now rest in metal dishes among surgical utensils of all kinds.

His face, bloody and marked with countless cuts, is unrecognizable. He no longer has lips; his teeth have been pulled out, though the oversized fangs are still there. His protruding, empty eyes froze in horror and pain; a tear of blood leaves one of the swollen and half-punctured orifices.

All that's left is a butchery adorned with red hair that was once blond.

In this forbidden trance, I get back in touch with reality when they're in front of me, looking at me with their scarlet irises and possessed by a diabolical entity. Surgical masks cover their faces, but I can see their wicked grins driven by the pure pleasure of inflicting indescribable evils.