Of Monsters and Men ₰ The Originals

Chapter Thirty | Sacrilegious Sacrifice

     In my moment of need, she abandoned me, yet even through my silent pain, I pursued after the golden fruit that was our friendship.

     But she never saw that. Maybe she was so enamoured by her flames of anger that she couldn't even care anymore.

     But by now I know better than to chase after a fruitless dream.

     Davina.

     Emmanuel.

     True happiness.

     But I had Aaron, and he chose to open his demons to me by taking me to that room. People couldn't just do that. Having an emotional scar like that burns like you have poured salt on it, no matter how much time passes by.

     They say that over the years you heal. However, truly, that is not the case. You never forget, just fill your pounding head with other problems until Death carries you away into icy, gelid torrents of nothingness.

     By his actions, I now knew that I was capable of having someone care for me, without compulsion.

     He cared, he cared, and I could feel the slow glimmers of what were the closest bits of happiness I could possible experience simmer to the surface. They were like the beginning of lava pushing out of the caverns they were entrapped in. I couldn't tell if I liked it or not. I suppose only time would tell.

     The atmosphere changed rapidly.

     "Something's off." I mutter under my breath.

     "What?" Aaron asks. I shake my head, not expecting him to understand the growing sense of unease that was bubbling within me. Through my vampire powers, I sensed the presence of numerous people. However, there was something wrong. There was no noise, or movement, or heat. It was like they were dead.

     Were they dead?

     Were they solely human?

     I frown deeply, turning my attention to the sides of the alley way, searching for a door, or a window, or any kind of entrance. I spot one eventually, green and faded, the paint flaking off its surface, landing lightly on the concrete steps before it. It seemed ordinary enough to a normal human, but to me, I could tell that something was hidden behind its dusty camouflage. Something dark.

     "Melissa?" Aaron calls after me in confusion as I take up the three tiny steps before the door.

     I twist the door handle, and the wooden veil swings open to reveal a house of horrors.

     I gasp in disgust, raising the corner of my collar to my nose as the reeking stink hits my nasal orifices first. It doesn't smell of death, but instead of bodies that haven't been washed in weeks, left exposed to the moisture in the air, giving off a gnarled, sweat-entailed aroma. As a member of the supernatural, it hit me even worse, sending me reeling momentarily outside to take in a lungful of clean air, my lungs wheezing.

     Then, my eyes streaming with tears at the stinging waves those things radiated like a fan, I see what exactly was the morbid horror that I was growing anxiously about.

     Dozens of human bodies lay strewn across the floor, with their limbs spread out as though they were going to be drawn and quartered. What was worse, if possible, was the fact that they were arranged systematically and numerically, as though the sick bastard who did this had whipped out a gigantic protractor to draw and measure angles.

     Maths would never be the same to me.

     The bodies were encircled in a perfect, white three-hundred-and-sixty degrees circle, with branches adjoining to each limb. Forcing myself to walk forward, I walk deeper into the room and briefly study a few corpses. Odd, Viking-like symbols were carved into the middle of the foreheads and on either side of the the white chalk lines. Vaguely, distantly, I can hear fading heart beats beating in synchronisation. I let out a sigh. I do not know if it was a sigh of relief or macabre terror. Who knows what these people did to deserve such a punishment.