Blood and Beasts

Chapter 33

***Trigger Warning***

***This chapter contains graphic violence, some of it of a sexual nature, and torture***

The tunnel didn't go on for eternity. That panicked thought crossed Jack's mind numerous times as their broken bodies were crushed on all sides in complete darkness. An eternal claustrophobic terror, with only the slow grinding of the stones to remind them that they were physically still there. But eternity is a tricky concept, isn't it? There can be no perception of anything without another experience to compare it to. Jack found it easy to believe that some souls sent to Hell had found themselves ensnared in tortures like this with no means of escape for so long (an eternity to a conscious mind) that they had simply gone insane, forgotten all about who they were, what they were, or anything else that tied them to humanity. This, he reasoned, was how men became demons, evil creatures that knew only pain and suffering. Perhaps it was only this understanding of what he could become that allowed him to stay sane, to fight when everything else urged him to let go. He only feared what the state of Rachel's psyche might be if they ever made it to the other side.

A faint red glow in the distance was eventually their salvation, after an immeasurable amount of time in that pit. That glow, and screams.

The tunnel slowly widened, and they were no longer being pushed through by some unseen force, like meat through a grinder. Jack found he could move his arms again. The ache was intense but a stark relief after the tunnel. He crawled, his arms doing most of the work as his legs slowly freed up behind him. His body was piecing itself back together. He had been ripped apart as they tumbled into this pit, but now he found himself whole once more. After a few more feet of crawling, the obsidian stone still doing its best to cut into his newly healed flesh, the tunnel had widened enough that he could glance back. Squished in the thin tunnel he had just crawled out of, he saw Rachel's face, bloody, following behind him. One blue eye blinked at him, as she made a deep grunting noise. The message was clear enough, "Keep fucking moving!"

Jack pushed further along to the point where he could fully turn around. Rachel had one hand free now, sticking out towards Jack. He stretched back and grabbed her; pulling best he could, not wanting to rip her arm off. Soon her whole face scrapped free, patches of her scalp missing. She cried out, part pain, but mostly relief. Her body pieced itself back as she moved further out of the tunnel towards Jack. Once she was whole and both were free, they wrapped their arms around one another. There was such relief simply to have a body to hold with. Jack held her face in his hands, wiped some of the blood off her forehead before it could drip into her eyes and kissed her.

They held each other, hands pressed around the others head, foreheads locked, and they laughed hysterically. Jack saw in her the same fear he'd had while in that pit, that this was now existence for them. But it hadn't been, they were still there, still going. The laughs did turn into tears though.

"I can't take this anymore, Jack," Rachel sobbed. "I want to go home."

"I do too," he gasped back. "That's why we have to keep going. Cara said this is the way out."

"But how does she know?"

"I don't know. But I trust her. We have to keep going. We'll go insane if we stop here." And that he did feel to be true. Jack felt a hand on his leg; he assumed Rachel's hand as they held each other. This was not the case.

Hands gripped his leg tight and ripped him from Rachel's arms, dragging him down the length of the tunnel.

"Jack!" Rachel called out, reaching after him desperately. New cuts opened along his chest as he was pulled across the stone. He felt his testicles rip apart and potentially free from his body entirely. These injuries, though painful, did not frighten Jack, as he understood such wounds would heal here. The body healed so it could be hurt again. That was the mantra of Hell it seemed. But this unknown thing dragging him was frightening.