Awakened (manxman)**Halloween Story

Chapter 1

Betrayed

(Old Mill)

Seth

When I woke up this morning, never in my wildest dreams did I think that by nightfall my entire life would be flashing before my eyes. Hot tears of defeat, betrayal, and ultimately regret welled up in my eyes. I felt them as they spilled over and rolled down my temples to mix with the cold sweat dampening my hair. With every breath I took, I felt a jarring pain radiating across my battered rib cage, but what frightened the most was the fact that I could actually hear the rattling of my broken ribs. I had long since stopped trying to move any further than where my body had landed when my fraternity brothers circled around me and stomped on me the way they had planned it.

Between their feet, their hands, and whatever blunt objects they used batter not only my body, but my very soul as well. They had thought it was necessary to maliciously inform me of the reasons why they were punishing me, beating me within an inch of my life, and leaving me here to die like an unwanted pet. With every excruciating blow to my curled up body, they spewed their poison. My so called friends, the people I have spent the past year of my life with, people who I thought cared about me as a person turned into these vicious pack of blood thirsty bastards who just jeered and told me that I was nothing but a cocksucker.

A queer, a useless piece of shit, and a fudge packer like me didn't belong among decent folks, much or less pledging to be an Alpha Kappa man. After they had pummeled me into the dirt packed floor, I was left a bloody broken mess. They took their insults even further, and I was showered by hot streams of urine that burned it's way into my open bleeding wounds.

I couldn't even move to protect myself anymore. None of my limbs were obeying the commands from my brain to move how I wanted them to. I could no longer feel my fingers or my toes. The overwhelming fire streaking across every cell in my body slowly became a maddening throb. I paid little attention to the little shuffling noises around me, nor did I try to decipher what was making those noises.

The only thing piercing my agony was the thought of what my family will do when they realize I'm missing? What will those bastards tell them? Will they miss me? A weak sob tore from my dry throat. My father most likely won't give a damn, and my mother will give a melodramatic performance worthy of an Oscar award. She will garner all the sympathy and attention provided to her from her society friends, and she'll bask in it for as long as she possibly can.

I could smell the metallic tang of my blood as it cooled into a thick black puddle around my battered body. It mixed with the sharp ammonia scent of their urine and the resulting aroma almost made me wretch, but that wasn't my biggest problem at the moment. I was getting colder by the minute, my heart felt like it was barely beating, and I began to drift in and out of consciousness. Everything was going from scales of gray to black. No that there was any light other than the weak moonlight shining through the broken slats in the roof above me.

A puff of air escaped my parted lips, and I saw the dust billow across the floor closest to my mouth, and I closed eyes with a resigned finality. Death was soon in coming and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it. The knowledge that my current condition wasn't caused by some random act of hate, and I wasn't attacked by a drunken bunch of strangers out to prove something, but by my own friends. Guys I grew up with, played ball with, and basically shared my entire life with, were the ones to do this to me hurt more than the life threatening the injuries they've caused.

I knew that somewhere out there, some religion or some wise man said that you are not to die with hate in your heart, but right now with the feeling the injustice and the unimaginable pain caused by my their betrayal of our life long friendship made me not just hate them. Hate was too simple of a word for the boiling fury that consumed what little bit of energy I had left.

I surely hoped that after I depart from my physical body that I'd become some sort of Spector, an eternal ghost so that I'll be able to haunt those fuckers for the remainder of their natural lives. I wanted to become their urban legend, the secret that they won't be able to live with. The one unforgivable deed that will follow them and make them live in fear and regret until their very soul shrivels up and dies leaving them a husk of a human they once were. If only the fates would be so kind.

As I laid in the dirt shivering and alone in the cold old mill, I couldn't bring myself to dwell on all the opportunities now lost to me. I only knew my reality, and right now I was miles away from any form of civilization. No one around to hear me if I tried to scream for help. My arms and legs were useless, I couldn't even drag myself across the floor much or less the forest to get help myself. They had smashed my cell phone and taken my wallet from me, they made sure to leave me with no identifying markers, other than my loose teeth and my mangled hands.

"Oh God, Death. Please be quick. If I'm to die like this here tonight, then please be quick and merciful about it." I whispered out loud to the empty musty space surrounding me or so I thought.

A startled gasp excaped my lips and I was sure I was hallucinating as my eyes tracked the dark figure moving faster than I could comprehend. The thing was large and it stayed deep within the shadows of the dilapidated building.

"Wh...whose there?" The question croaked out of my decimated throat. I heard nothing but silence as a response and my eyes moved frantically around the limited range that I could see, and there was nothing there, yet there was because I could literally feel the presence of something in the room with me.

I forgot myself for a moment and I tightly clenched my jaw and mentally willed what little strength I had left and the coordination to turn over so I could see behind me. Little by little I rocked myself until I landed square on my back, a scream of pure unadulterated agony tore from my lips as my broken ribs and bruised spine absorbed the impact of the movement. Rivers of sweat and blood ran fresh from what felt like the entire surface of my body. I had to take deep centering breaths through my nose even with the fresh stench of the mixture of spent fluids threatened to gag me, as I waited for the burning to cease back into only a tense throb. I regretted my actions and it seemed like eons before my tormented body settled into some type of numb purgatory.

It took a few more deep breaths before I was able to open my eyes and what little oxygen I had left stuttered out of my abused body like a deflating balloon. Almost directly above face were a set of brightly glowing amber eyes. I was scared shitless, the face of whatever was staring so intently down at me was covered by a tangle on ink black hair. The eyes were the only thing I could see and they didn't even blink as they scanned me from head to toe before returning to my face.

"Wh...Who are you? Wha...." I attempted to ask, but I stopped mid-sentence when the thing growled low, a deep rumbling sound that felt like it was a warning, and I immediately took keed and shut the hell up.

The thing turned its head like a curious animal and those gold orbs changed position. Then faster than my eyes could track the movement, those glowing eyes disappeared from my line of vision altogether. The next thing I knew was that the teeth clenching full body misery returned with a savageness I couldn't even fathom.

My entire body jerked like I was being electrocuted. I started praying to every deity out there as I continued to convulse from the pain now ravaging me from head to toe. I tried to scream but the only sound only that came out was a wet gurgle. That was the last thing I heard before I was enveloped in blissful darkness. I heard myself sigh as I welcomed the gift of oblivion.