After several seconds of his heart beating in his ears like a war drum, Jason finally felt the guard go limp, dead by his hands. Shaking all over, he looked around with new eyes and ears. He could hear sirens, gunshots, explosions, and countless screams of agony both in and outside the prison. Was there a riot going on? Had the Black Stigmata triggered a revolt with that flash of red light? This place was no longer safe. He had to get out!
‘Wait, the Black Stigmata… Where is it?’
He looked around, trying to find the nail that Miguel had brought in. He wasn’t holding it (he had learned to check), they weren’t in his pockets, and a quick search of the room brought no results. Had someone come in and stolen it? No matter, it was better that he didn’t have it. Just being around it could cause him to do… what he did to Miguel.
With so much adrenaline in his veins that he felt like he would suffer a heart attack, he checked the dead guards for the keys to his chains. After all the nightmares he had experienced from the Black Stigmata, no corpse and no amount of blood could scare him. Jammed into the mouth of one of the guards, he found a ring of keys and managed to finally free himself. After a second search of the corpses, he retrieved a few cans of pepper spray and a pair of bloody clubs. With a baton in each hand and enough mental stability to know that he looked like a clueless idiot with a baton in each hand, he ran out of the visitation room in search of an exit. From the way that guard had acted, it was clear that this riot was the work of the Black Stigmata, and that meant that he was essentially trapped in a giant box of metal and concrete with a pack of rabid dogs. He had to escape if he were to have any chance of survival.
Leaving the visitation chamber, he ran down the hallway leading towards the scanning area, where visitors to the prison were searched for weapons. Somehow, Miguel had managed to sneak the nail in past the guards. Perhaps the Black Stigmata as a whole had learned that metal detectors could lead to separation from their Hosts. The hallway was stained with blood, all of it still wet or at least gelatinized. Reaching the first checkpoint door, he grabbed the metal bars and shook them wildly, trying to overpower the electronic lock. Beside him was the window to the small office holding the controls for the door, reinforced so that prisoners like Jason couldn’t just smash their way out. Lockdown was in effect, so there certainly wouldn’t be any doors open to him. Even the ring of keys were useless. Cursing his luck, he doubled back and returned to the visitation room. There had to be another way out of this place, THINK!
‘The yard…’
He had seen the prison yard when he first arrived, an expansive field of sparse grass and sand surrounded by wire fences. Like all prisons, guard towers with guards armed with sniper rifles secured the yard. With the Black Stigmata screwing with the minds of everyone in the prison, there was a strong possibility that the towers would be abandoned or that the guards would be too crazy to even aim at him properly. It would just be a matter of climbing the fence. But that meant… crossing the entire prison.
So he had two options: hide and wait for help to arrive in a prison full of possessed killers, or cross said prison and try to escape. No, he had to get out of there, if not out of fear from the other inmates, then to get away from the Black Stigmata before it could push him into the same psychotic stage as everyone else. Taking a deep breath, he walked over to the twin doors leading to the rest of the prison and opened them wide.
Jason ran as fast as he could down the corridor of the first cellblock, hoping to be unnoticed in the carnage. Every inch of the floor was slick with blood, the air was heavy with smoke and tear gas, and a choir of screams and laughs alike served as an endless soundtrack. The corridor was three stories in height with cells lining each side and catwalks for the second and third levels. Possessed by the Black Stigmata and robbed of what little humanity they had left, the prisoners were torturing, raping, killing, and devouring each other. They weren’t alone; guards were also taking part in the bloody riot, having completely lost their minds. Most often, the victims of the group assaults were the few inmates who seemed immune to the affects of the Black Stigmata, but that only allowed them to suffer with more clarity.
In one cell he passed, several inmates were ganging up on a single prisoner, using shivs to carve holes in his torso through which to sexually assault him, all while he howled in agony and begged for someone to help him. Jason could see the prisoner’s hand reaching out between the bodies of the men piled on top of him, desperately trying to grab something that would let him escape or reach for someone that would help him. His fingers twisted and curled with his screams, projecting every particular bout of agony.
In another cell, Jason found several possessed inmates brawling with shivs in their hands, completely unaware of the injuries they were sustaining and focusing only on harming each other. The more they slashed and stabbed each other, the more of their blood was splattered across their walls and ceiling. Like the guard Jason had killed, they laughed as they attacked each other, and laughed even harder when they themselves were hurt. They seemed completely immune to their injuries, continuing to fight even when their organs were stabbed, their throats were slashed, or their eyes were gouged out.
On the other side of the hallway, guards and prisoners alike were feeding on each other, resembling a pack of zombies around their victims. Tearing into the guts of their coworkers or fellow inmates, they slurped up intestines like lengths of spaghetti, squeezed severed limbs like oranges to drain the blood into their throats, chewed on brains, eyes, and the toughest cartilage like gum, and ate until they would throw up, then resume eating. Their attention would sporadically change and they would attack each other, as if bored with devouring corpses and wanting to once again taste the flesh of the living.
From the railways of the catwalks, prisoners hung from nooses made of bed sheets or even human intestines. Many of the lynching receivers kicked and fought with the “ropes” around their neck, while spectators cheered beneath them. Those that weren’t left to suffocate were lit on fire, turning into dangling torches after being doused with prison-made alcohol or flammable chemicals and then ignited with lighters or prison matches.
Turning a corner onto the next cellblock, Jason found himself facing a mixed group of prisoners and guards. They were all holding makeshift spears made of anything from mops and brooms to the frames of cots. They were holding their spears high above their heads, laughing at the skewered corpses dangling atop them. With each jostle, the corpses’ blood rained down onto the killers and was ravenously licked up and swallowed. Fearing that they would turn their attention to him, Jason ducked into a nearby cell.
Trying to think up his next move, he nearly shat his pants at the sound of automatic fire just outside. At the other end of the corridor, SWAT officers were mowing down the crazed guards and inmates, but they did so with bloodshot eyes and sadistic smiles behind their transparent helmets. As the butchered carcasses hit the floor with smoking bullet wounds, the officers turned on each other, emptying their clips into their comrades or beating each other with the stocks of their rifles.
‘Prison guards aren’t allowed to carry guns, even the riot control guards! Were they from outside?’ Jason thought to himself, slowly crawling out from under the cot of the cell and returning to the hallway.
Casting aside the batons he had taken, he sprinted over to the corpses of the SWAT officers and searched them for weapons. They had used up all the ammo for their automatic weapons, but he was able to take two sidearms and a few spare magazines. Thinking back to movies and TV and feeling more like an idiot than a badass, he checked each pistol for a chambered round and moved on to the cafeteria.
Much like the visitation chamber, the cafeteria consisted of a large auditorium with dozens of round tables and a counter across one side of the room where the food was given out. Like the rest of the prison, the cafeteria was filled with both inmates and guards, slaughtering each other in the most brutal and bloody ways possible. Screams emanated from the kitchen as the chefs dissected and butchered captured victims, burned their faces off on the grills, or drowned them in the boiling grease tubs.
Hearing a laugh, Jason turned to the entrance of the kitchen, finding himself staring at a blood-soaked chef, scrawny and with a tan complexion. There was a wicked grin on his face and a carving knife in his hand.
“Stay back!” Jason fearfully shouted, aiming both pistols at the man with trembling hands as he saw the chef raise the knife.
“We will all achieve death!” the chef cackled.
Swinging his arm, he stabbed himself in the throat with the handle protruding just above his collarbone and the tip of the blade being deflected off his spinal column. Already in the process of bleeding to the death, the chef pushed down on the knife with all his strength, cutting down through his chest and torso. Maneuvering the blade around his sternum, he sawed through his ribcage, shredded his heart, cleaved through his entrails, and pulled the knife out just above his pelvis. With his dying strength, he pulled the flaps of his torso open, letting Jason see his insides while his torn organs poured out onto the floor.
As the chef fell to the floor, one of the guards stood up, interrupted while ripping the face of his coworker with his teeth. Pointing at Jason, he released a bloodcurdling screech, alerting the other killers in the room. Unsure of how many bullets he had in each magazine, he raised both guns and took aim at the approaching psychos. He had never shot a gun in his life, but considering the fact that he had just strangled a guard to death… this wouldn’t likely traumatize him.
Leave a Reply