Spinning around and getting a good look around the room now that I'm back to my senses I noticed the blood that trickled down the walls, the blood mixing into the hardwood, soaking deep into the cracks and embedding itself deep within the heart of the building. Looking up, I almost let out a shriek of terror. Intestines, long and bloody, hung from the chandelier, dripping blood that echoed through the room like a ghostly melody. Looking around frantically, I noticed a table with what seemed to be a small cauldron on it. Oh good. Maybe it has water in it. I stumbled towards it, mind fogged with dread and I peered inside.
That was not a good idea.
The cauldron was littered with bones, polished and gleaming white. They were all small, sharp and seemingly belonged to a child. One in particular caught my eye. Teeth. A small child’s teeth, that was likely imprisoned here, screaming for the rest of his days and being brutalized for god knows how long. Under the same wooden table, my foot kicked against something.
I didn’t dare look at it.
Quickly, I averted my gaze to stare at something, anything else. Beside the cauldron was a dark lump, soft-looking and delicate. I reached over to it, thinking it was a shirt before I gripped something coarse and matted, drenched in the same liquid and laced with the scent of iron. Recoiling in fright, I soon realised what it was.
The hair. The hair of some innocent person. And judging by the texture, those locks of hair had been there for a while.
And looking past it, I could see where it came from. Another body, mutilated and with dark burn marks marring his skin, hung in between two chains. Gashes and tears criss-crossed his body, and his eyes, soulless and empty stared at the ground, where an iron table lay before him, with shackles on it as well, which I assumed he was previously chained to. The bloody body imprint seemed to suggest so.
Squinting under the table, my eyes focused on what seemed to be a firepit...a brazier. Multiple of them.
And I realised what had been done to this poor fellow.
They had chained him to the iron table and lit the braziers underneath him, heating the table to unthinkable temperatures and likely watched, as he shrieked in agony, writhing in pain and pleading for mercy. And judging by the burn marks on his wrists, I could assume that they heated the manacles that clamped so tightly around his wrists that they were red and raw.
Turning my gaze back to his body, one of his arms was hanging at an odd angle, and as I couldn’t help myself and looked closer, I noticed something of great force had nearly cleaved his arm clean off the body. The skin around it was dark and charred, and I could tell what they had done to the sword to make burn marks that severe.
Frantically I stepped away in fear and retreated back into the bathroom, putting back on my soaked clothes. Rushing to find the exit, slowly, I realized the rest of the house was in the same shape, just without the excessive butchery. Eventually I made it out of the slaughterhouse and into the open, sucking in a lungful of clean oxygen. I glanced around for any means of transportation, but there was nothing but trees and some overgrown pathways. Without thinking I chose one and ran, panting and gasping, my shoeless feet thudding on the ground as the burned in pain.
The sky soon faded to an inky indigo blue and yet, I was still running for my life in the dark of the night, the moon deciding not to appear and put me at the mercy of the wolves and bears who inhabited the woods. My body felt weaker and weaker the more I continued to sprint and slowly, my body started to shut down, but my iron will to escape kept me up and running.
“Keep going [REDACTED]”
But fragile little humans weren’t built to run forever.
“Tire yourself out, make your body give up”
Eventually, the adrenaline drained out of my body and my pace began to slow, my gaze hazy and foggy with exhaustion. The determination and terror I once felt that fueled my energy to flee had now left my body, and I crumbled to the ground, darkness hounding the edges of my vision and slowly, my eyes closed.
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