14. Can you hold my hands,

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Trigger warnings: Gore

"THIS TIME IS NOT THE LAST

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"THIS TIME IS NOT THE LAST."

Mom was never afraid of blood. When she was a child, she would be the strongest out of her siblings, having the courage to wring a chicken's neck and string it up on the ceiling outside. It would sway like a windchime in the breeze, the dead fat noises of feathers fluttering filling the air like an incoming warning.

You feel like you've inherited that sort of violence.

You try again.

"Mom?" You say, looking around. You expect your mother to be disguised as one of the scientists, her ploy of suicide simply a getaway plan, but no one is there.

You shake your head. You were just suffering from the adrenaline of killing. You are fragile and unholy, and your suffering came from a dark place within you that grew larger and larger with each desecrated body. You step over the bodies strewn across the floor and walk to room A5.

The door handle yields.

The room is flanked with technical equipment and bookshelves lining the walls. The light is dim, as if the paper itself would be damaged by high exposure of light. The paper is behind a glass box, with a keyhole at the very bottom left of the box.

You rap your knuckles against the glass; it seemed thin, less than an inch thick, so you decide to brute force it through.

You smash your elbow at the top of the glass box, and it shatters upon impact. Glass shards rain down the table like diamond rains of Jupiter, and you snatch the paper into your hands. The paper itself is lineless and slightly yellowing, and you fold it into quarters and tuck it into the inside of your pocket.

You quickly exit the room just as you entered it.

"I got the paper," You say into the earpiece. You can hear Fyodor hum, before the line silences. You press the elevator button after wiping down your hands on your pants, which were now streaked with browning blood stains. The elevator doors open and you're met with the fearful, lamb-like stares of the survivors.

"Spare us!" One of them cries, falling onto their knees. You sigh, reaching up to your earpiece.

"What do I do with the rest?"

A pause. "Let their souls be salvaged."

"All of them?"

"Yes."

You turn the earpiece off and begin to approach the masses, before breaking out into a charge. They shriek and before they can disperse, you're crashing into the crowd of people, becoming the spectre of these bodies, and the noise of hoarse screams and bones cracking and muscles tearing and bodies smashing into the ground ensues. Haggard breaths. The slow methodical growing pools of blood. A hand reaching out for God in the pile of bodies, frozen and pale. Blood explodes into a great fan of crimson, dripping down your head and dewing on your eyelashes. It drenches your clothes, turning the fabric into cerise as though dyed with beets.

mother, mom, ma | d.fyodor/o.dazaiWhere stories live. Discover now