Chronicles of Myth Volume One: Twisted Daydreams

Scene Twelve

I woke up in a warehouse, I could smell the ocean air outside… I’ve been here one week, slowly rotting away at the hands of psychopath; in this time I’ve gotten to know Nolan… the real him, and he saw my true colors; we were happy with what we learned about each other, our insanity was irrelevant here after all we were are just two peas in pod… but only thing that kept me from becoming a monster like him was my humanity and identity.  I had a blue serum injected into my neck, the fluid was a motor functions inhibitor that exacerbated the pain of contact by a thousand fold, for example if you poked my forehead with your finger if would feel like you stabbed into my brain with a knife. Slowly the feeling in my extremities were gone… I couldn’t move my body; this time the torture was for real… tap. Real to me and Anguish, Nolan intended to steal whatever identity… humanity I had left… personally I knew why he did this, he saw me for I what I was, for what I will become and he wanted to save me from that. Strapped to a reclining chair bolted to the ground with iron stakes, I had my wrists and ankles under cuffs attached to the chair… having pierced into the muscle under my tear duct just a minute ago; tap… tap… tap, slowly I began to lose my sense of self; the most brutal form persuasion if you can call it that, every minute slowly ticked by as my humanity eroded away throwing me deeper into my well of insanity. Normally people who go through a transorbital lobotomy lose their identities after a dozen taps, after around twenty taps they beg their captors to end their lives before they lose anymore of themselves; the needle dug deeper headache “51…52…53 taps already… how are you holding up, hey buddy don’t die on me yet… we’re not through”. By all rights I should have become vegetable by now, I forced my body to become numb to the pain; “I like you… you like me, ok fine it’s like a stalker following you, watching your every move; don’t you feel scared that I might take away what keeps you from going into the deep end”. I looked him the eyes, “No… I have nothing to fear… I served my time hell, this… exercise of ours pales in comparison to what I had to live through”. Nolan took out the needle from my eye, “Sixty seven taps to the brain… you should be dead by now, damn you’re one tough bastard”. Nolan unlocked my restraints, injecting me with the antidote for the previous serum… “I give up… why can’t I break you damn it”! He got out his combat knife, and rushed me, I sprang out of the chair and tackled Nolan to the ground, I grabbed his wrist and disarmed him of his knife by twisting his arm, holding the knife in my right hand I stabbed down, staking the blade into the smooth concrete floor a couple centimeters away from his right ear, I bound Nolan to the ground with cursed seal. I backed off and went to get my gear on the nearby surgical table, “I don’t want to lose what I have left of me... do you understand… I don’t want to myself”. Nolan looked at me with disdain, “You’re a fool, who would accept you… give up… there is no savior for people like us, I’m trying to show you compassion is weak—“I heard enough”, I stomped his face and heard it crack apart. “No more suffering, no more misery, no more death; Nolan I want to live for once and not have the guilt of being the monster I am, I asked myself everyday why I had to become this thing… why good souls have to take so much from the world, why I couldn’t fight back… I will never accept this side of me, I’ll tell you why you can’t break me… I have surpassed my demons, now I am my own demon”. When the antidote took hold in my body, I slid my foot on the ground; I clenched my fist and out the circle came out a prison of razor sharp stalactites of red crystal. From my back I formed six scythes out of my arms, I crashed the appendages into the circle and it exploded circle behind me in a deep pink flash of light… Nolan reformed himself in front of me with streams of white and black particles… “You never change do you”? He said smiling, “Neither do you jackass”. “Go… we’ll be seeing each other soon enough”. I walked up to lock mechanism and opened the steel doors by releasing the latches, I slid the doors flush, taking the fresh sea air, and I felt at peace once more; “I’ve never hated you… Nolan, I just wanted to better than what I was… can you forgive me”. I said walking out into the pier, I felt a hand on my shoulder: “You’re the first person I’ve cared about in a long time, I couldn’t bear to lose you… you’re the only family I have left now; do me favor and don’t die, freedom comes at a cost… I want to know if you’re willing to pay that price”. “Of course, life wouldn’t be living otherwise”. The hand let go and I stepped into bright morning. I walked back home, and found Death himself sifting through the ruins of my home, in the parking lot I saw five body bags; he crossed out five names in his book and turned toward me; he looked back at the body bags disappointed. I walked over and he hung his head in sadness, “Would you like to join your friends… in the memorial”. I looked at Death, “I’m sorry for your loss… you should speak with them once more before they permanently fade out of this existence”. “You’re going try to save them aren’t you”? “Ragnarok, answer me”. “I’m not losing them, they have so to live for… no one is taking that from them”! “Very well, I will open the vault for you”. I looked at Death, and he opened a portal to his vault of souls; “collect them and bring their souls to their bodies before midnight today… understood; I’ll patch up their bodies in the meantime”. “Thank you”. He nodded and smiled: “Faith divides us and death unites us”. I stepped into the portal and walked into a ballroom with my friends walking about in the middle. Astoria saw and ran toward me, she wrapped her arms around my waist for a hug, but she just phased through my body. I knelt down and looked at Astoria in the eyes, “Are we going to die”? “No, I’m going to keep that from happening”. “I’m scared, I don’t want to die”. “Astoria, just walk out door of the ballroom and you’ll back home… I promise, a friend will watch over you for time being”. I wiped the tears from her face, “Go home we’ll join you soon”. I walked over and touched the others, anchoring their existence for a just few more moments, my presence alerted them; they looked at me more startled than anything else, like children being stirred from their sleep. “The exit is open you know”. I felt a tingling in my gut, I ducked and dodged a sword swing to my head, I stepped back and slicing through the afterimages of my friends one by one, my enemy appeared out of the wind; he was dressed in ultra-reinforced nanofiber suit, on his back there was an EX-41 grenade launcher, a riot shield, and in his hands he held a vibrating sword; I drew my sword and sealed the portal behind me with a snap. Covering his face I saw one of the masks hanging on over the fireplace of our destroyed home; there were ten masks on the wall, for all of the elements present… so wait this jackass is on my team with Nolan… damn it where is fairness in that?  “Where did you get that”? I felt my anger started to boil inside staring at the mask; it was a fireball of orange and red; then I saw his eyes… a stormy grey, there was no evil intent in his heart or mind just the mentality of getting a paycheck to eke out a living, I looked at his body and saw his entire outfit was the color of tiger lilies, I reached into my pocket and found my mask; I wonder how this got here, but now it doesn’t matter; I have answers to look for and it starts now with, interrogating the man in front of me. “Your friends are in the company of my employer Thane. And I expected a thirteen year old girl, not you”. I put on my mask, what he was staring at was a piece of grafted face of some poor bastard with the expression of horror on his face as it was cut off from the rest of his head, covering the rest of the mask is a piece of burlap painted with dry shades of blood. Boogeyman… I like it. “Well to bad, I hope you can settle for me”. I put on my mask, the face was s I drew my sword and composed myself: play it cool… I have plenty of time now, my friend’s bodies and souls are in the physical world, that’s the good the news… but why does name bother me so much? I clashed blades with my opponent, from his body language he knew that we were both holding back. My blade hissed at the vibrating metal, I withdrew my sword and jumped back to dodge a downward vertical swing and the purple shockwave that followed it smashed into one of the pillars holding up the ballroom. I drew out my QBZ-95, I took a shot and from the barrel came flying out a burst of three streaks of fire; I rolled out the way and dodged a 40mm grenade… only four of six supports now remained, “You should fight back before I collapse the roof over our heads”. “You’re insane”. “So are you”. “Let’s be friends”. “If we both make it out of this alive, we’ll talk over some coffee… where are my manners? I forgot to introduce myself: I’m Louis”. “Ragnarok, nice to meet you”. My only lead in an ever thinning trail, I hope can trust this guy… hell he’s probably thinking the same; at least we have that in common. Louis, Thane, Nolan, have revealed themselves… one remains... I can sure as hell bet he’s the one working with Thane. It came to me… I knew Thane, at one point… he was vapid, insignificant man; only concerned with keeping his spot at the top of the food chain of criminals in the underbelly of this city… consider him as a mobster, a more charismatic type of evil… you call us friends even, except there was one thing that bugged me the most about him… he wasn’t evil for a purpose like me. Like the man in front of me… I could tell Louis and I came from the same place in terms of ethics… they could very well be thrown out the window if they impede our ultimate end goal. He wasn’t evil because of being driven by his inner demon like Lex, he wasn’t evil because he went crazy from the conflicting wills inside like Nolan… no he was much worse than all of us, even me a complete axe crazy psychopath has standards to follow by… so does Nolan and Lex, even Louis a bounty hunter has his limits and knows what he won’t do for money. Thane is a complete monster to put it shortly… the worst kind of scum and evil, his name makes me sick. I’ve eaten him once, he tasted like the intestines of a fish on the verge of spoiling and very thought of him planning something scares me to death. I still remember his last words to me, “I can live neither with you, nor without you”. His epithet was the angel of genocide… that man has ended all things he considers impure, the ultimate nihilist… the man, the monster that sent me in a downward spiral.  He made me into what I am today. Not all dark is evil, not all good is light; what makes either us good or evil is dependent on how we use our light or darkness.  

“Are we going to stand here all day or are going we going to fight”. “Sorry for taking a moment to gather my thoughts… I’m on a short fuse today, by the way I’ll buy the coffee for us… if you yield here and now”. Louis drew his sword, “Not a chance in hell”; he said smiling. “That’s what I thought… now let’s take this nice and easy”.