None of the people were familiar, yet their identities seemed to change every time he looked away from them. The only thing consistent was that they were all naked and all had sustained some kind of fatal wound. Regardless of the injuries they appeared to bear, every stranger was sporting a euphoric grin from ear to ear and with their eyes as wide as could be. Even with blood pouring from their bodies, they had the expressions of kids running through the parking lot of Disney World. Achieve death; they screamed that line over and over again, yet Jason had no idea what it meant. Normally he would be hearing the instructions for creating new nails, but this ambiguous phrase was playing in his mind like a broken record.
Once their voices reached a volume where the two words they had been repeating could no longer be understood, the nightmare advanced to its next step. Dripping off their bodies along with their blood, globs of liquefied flesh rained down as if the screaming apparitions were actually wax sculptures over a fire. Layer after layer of skin was peeled away in viscous drops, while in their limbs, their joints twisted and snapped until the bones broke free of their restraints. With melted skin now running down the invisible wall and painting it a sludgy mix of tan and crimson, the next layer of tissue on the apparitions began to fall away.
Like piano strings snapping and lashing out at the nearest surface, strand after strand of muscle was severed and shot off. The muscles cords were peeled away, falling down towards Jason. Pelting the marsh of gore he was forced to kneel in, the severed muscle cords squirmed and writhed like worms in sunlight. Swimming through the thick blood and melted flesh, the crawling abominations grew spindly legs like centipedes and began swarming to Jason. Screaming in terror, he tried to swat them away and keep them at a distance, but with insatiable bloodlust, they crawled across his body and ravaged his skin with unseen stingers. While he fought hopelessly against the horde, the people dangling along the walls continued their chant, their voices completely unhindered by their exposed organs turning to ash and the last of their muscles being stripped away.
As the eyes melted from their skulls, a bright red light shone from the depths of their skulls, just like the bloody star Jason saw in every dream. Increasing in intensity with the exposure of each beam, the red light filled the chamber like a gas cloud. Down at the bottom, Jason was still fighting fruitlessly against the stinging crawlers. They had all swarmed on him at once and every inch of skin had now been torn to pieces, yet the tiny horrors refused to let go of him. He felt like his whole body had been lit on fire, while the flames themselves weighed his body down while they devoured him. More and more of these human flesh centipedes crawled onto his body, enveloping him like a sheet, then like a thick winter coat, and finally as just an amorphous pile. Reaching out for something he could grab onto, he watched the crawlers move in front of his eyes, obscuring his vision and leaving the red light outside as the last thing he would ever see.
The banging of a fist against his cell door woke Jason from his delusion, prompting him to immediately throw up into the nearby toilet.
“Stevens, you got a visitor!” the guard outside barked.
Glad that he had someone to talk to and distract him, but also wondering if he had the stamina for a visitation, Jason slowly got up and moved to the door as it was opened. As per routine, he stood as still as a statue in the doorway while the guards secured him in shackles, both for his hands and feet. Even if he wasn’t a real inmate of this prison, he had to follow most of the rules. Real prisoners in solitary confinement would of course never be allowed the luxury of visitations.
Being led down the hallway with his chains rattling and guards on either side, Jason tried to figure out the time. He was never allowed to see a clock unless he was in the visitation room, but it seemed too early in the day for his family, Christi, or Professor Nelson to be visiting him. Either way, he tried to shake off the remaining jetlag-like effects of his nightmare. This was beyond torture, he felt like he was actually dying every time he woke up. If this didn’t end soon or at least get better, he might not even be able to keep from killing himself.
As usual, the visitation room was empty. It must not have been proper hours. He was probably the only “prisoner” who could meet with someone outside of visiting hours. Being sat down at the round table in the middle of the room, he watched as his visitor was checked behind a wall of reinforced glass. It was a man, portly and with a dark complexion. Hispanic? Jason’s vision still had not recovered enough for him to make out the details, but he knew that this man was a stranger to him. How did he know Jason? How did he know he was here? Why was he visiting him? He certainly wasn’t dressed like a lawyer.
Looking like he had just seen a ghost, the man was let into the visitation room and slowly walked over to Jason’s table, taking small steps. “You’re Jason Stevens, right?”
“Yes, do I know you?”
“No, no uh… we haven’t met before. I’m uh… I’m Miguel Hernandez, I’m… Tim Jones’ brother in law… or former brother in law, after my sister’s death.”
“I’m guessing you want to know what happened to him? I’m sorry, I have no idea what he did or where he is.”
“No… uh… I didn’t come here for that. I was told to come here…” Miguel said shakily as he sat down on the other side of the table.
“Told? Who told you?”
Miguel leaned forward with his head in his hands. “I don’t know what to do. I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, I can’t even think straight. This is tearing me apart, I just want it to stop!”
A terrifying shiver snuck up Jason’s spine. “Who told you to find me?!” he demanded fearfully, preparing to jump out of his chair.
“The whispers… they just don’t stop! They keep telling me to do things and they hurt me if I don’t obey! I’ve fought against them for as long as I can, but I can’t take it anymore!”
Jason hurried to his feet. “Guards! Guards! He’s got a weapon! Someone get in here and help me!”
Hearing his alarm, prison guards streamed into the room from both the entrance and the exit, charging towards Miguel before he could use whatever weapon they thought he had. Reaching into his pocket, Miguel drew a Black Stigmata, the twin to the one that Tim Jones had found, both men having come across the body that had bore the relics and each one taking a nail.
“WE MUST ALL ACHIEVE DEATH!” Miguel screamed at the top of his lungs, holding the nail high above his head and triggering a blinding flash of red light.
Blood, Jason could taste blood, and a lot of it. He couldn’t close his mouth, something was stuffed into his cheeks. Gum? No, it was softer than gum. His stomach also felt full. Had he been bleeding into his stomach? Was he wounded? Forcing his eyes open, he stared up at the ceiling of the visitation chamber. He could hear something… something wet and squishy… as well as… laughter. Pushing himself up, he looked around to try and figure out what was going on. The tables and chairs in the auditorium had all been pulverized, and only one guard of the original swarm remained. He was busy painting the walls red with blood, using the sundered body parts of his former coworkers as paintbrushes. He laughed as he smeared the torn muscle and flesh against the beige drywall, having completely lost his mind. It was obvious that the guards had all died horribly, probably in a large psychotic brawl.
Looking around, Jason paled as his eyes fell on Miguel, laying just a few feet away with his face torn off and his throat completely destroyed. It looked as if a wild animal had torn into him… or a possessed human. Rolling his tongue around in his mouth, Jason summed up the taste of the man’s blood and immediately vomited onto the floor. Spurt after spurt of human blood and chewed up flesh poured out onto the white tile, with Jason mentally begging for any god that may exist for it to not really be from Miguel. He didn’t know if he could live with himself, live with the knowledge that he had not only killed, but EATEN a person. Coughing several times on something bulbous in his throat, he was forced to face reality when one of Miguel’s eye dropped out of his mouth, still with the stalk clinging to it like a strand of spaghetti wrapped around a meatball.
Realizing what he had done, realizing what had been in his body, Jason screamed at the top of his lungs, shouting at the messy floor until the veins in his scalp bulged and his face became beat-red. Hearing his screams, the deranged guard stopped what he was doing and turned to him. Having clearly gone mad, the man limped towards him with his club in hand, the end broken into a sharp tip. Now facing Jason, the wounds he had sustained while fighting his coworkers were visible, such as several broken fingers, a piece of one of the metal chair legs stuck in his shin, multiple deep lacerations across his face, and a chunk bitten out of his arm.
Hobbling over with one leg barely able to hold his weight, the guard laughed as he raised his nightstick above his head, about to plunge the broken end straight into Jason’s chest or simply beat him to death. Fueled by adrenaline and acting on instinct, Jason kicked the protruding spike of metal in the man’s leg, forcing it all the way through and sending him toppling to the floor. With crippling pain temporarily breaking the hold of the Black Stigmata, the man was wide open. Having learned to stop hoping everything would turn out to be a bad dream, Jason quickly crawled over and wrapped his chains around the guard’s throat. His teeth bared, his lips pulled back, and red foam dripping from the corners of his mouth, Jason pulled on the chain as hard as he could, kneeling on the guard’s back to keep him pinned. The man struggled against him, but his attempts only enhanced Jason’s fear and thereby increased his strength.
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