Walker Of Worlds.
The excruciating suffering ended only after the sun had gone to the other side. Kage's and Morani's look from the day before had been exchanged.
Today Morani looked like a hanged, drenched chicken while Kage looked ill out of his mind, on his shirt and face entirely, were vomit stains and residues from his stomach.
Today was the same, they had again endured a long day of punishment.
Except tonight, tonight was different.
Ramone and Moriah looked shrunken and humpbacked, almost cadaverous.
Their eyes were swollen and around them were huge dark circles.
Tonight everyone was tired, no one talked wanted to talk or at least hard any strength left in them for talking. Tonight Morani laid down facing the wall, not looking at anybody, not wanting to talk to anyone.
That night was silent, and everyone slept uneasily.
••••••
December 20th.
Dawn broke and they were again ushered into the rooms, Morani and Kage with lighter hearts as their punishments were to be ended today.
The day passed, a worsened version of the day before.
Soon or at long last the day darkened, Ramone and Moriah the only ones being ushered into the room. The cold place seemed darker and forlorn than it already did, perhaps it was because Morani and Kage were absent from the room.
Neither Morani nor Kage saw Moriah and Ramone for most of the day, they only saw a glimpse of them in the early hours, but if they did saw them in the late hours, they would be horrified by their looks.
In a matter of a few hours, their physique had thinned drastically, their skins were dry, wrinkled and a sallow grey, their eyes were now sunken into the dark rims around them. Their backs were arched and hunched and they only stumbled and fell when they tried to walk themselves.
They both seemed out of their minds, their eyes sometimes had a thinned wild savage look, and other times, a dimmed filmy faraway haze covered it.
Neither of them slept that night, but spent the night squat on the floor, wide eyed, staring into null.
December 21th.
Morani and Kage had no way to reach out to Ramone and Moriah, they had just come out of punishment, hence were being watched all the way.
Some visitors came today and gave out gifts to the children unfortunately Morani was absent as she had caught a severe fever in the afternoon.
The boy(Not Kage)was missing, none of the kids knew him well enough, as he only kept to himself, to care and the staffs of the institution were unperturbed by his disappearance.
However under the floor, in the underground an uncanny air spread, giving off an eccentric and weird vibe.
The last of the children finished their chores and soon it was only a few staffs that loitered along the hallowed halls of the institution.
In a small wooden cottage, a little girl of nine stood inside.
The bright orange sun shone through the windows and into the home.
There were no noise, all was silent, all was still. The street was devoid of people and passers by.
Elliam blinked repeatedly in confusion. There seemed to be something wrong with her eyesight but other than that, where on earth was she?
She scratched her head and made to take a step but missed and fell to the floor.
"Oohomph!"
There really was something wrong with her eyesight. It was halved.
She touched her eyes. One of them was closed shut, and when she tried opening them she felt a sharp pain, like someone had poked a needle through it from its inside.
Was she blind in the right eye?
She tried opening it again.
It seemed so.
What was going on?
Maybe if she could remember how she got here and where this place was... But unfortunately couldn't remember anything about she how she wound here.
Was it an accident?
Was this heaven?
The sunlight touched her arm and she hissed in pain, the sun was too hot for comfort.
Definitely not heaven.
Too hot for heaven, not hot enough for hell.
Elliam sighed, what if she had been kidnapped? She looked around.
But as she did so her eye caught sight of something on her left arm and she looked closely at it.
It was a tattoo, drawn from her wrist to her elbow, it was black and gave off a curious feeling.
She looked at it trying to figure out what was drawn on her arm.
It seemed to be a series of letters or numbers written in an oddish manner.
She turned her head sideways and found she'd been looking at it the wrong way.
It looked like a line of numbers; two zeros, a one, a two and two more zeros. It only made her more confused than she was already. It was useless of her to try making sense of this situation, her head felt muddy, like there was a thick liquid inside and she couldn't remember anything, not even her name.
She looked around again with uncertainty in her eyes as a slow warm shock came over her. Where she was seemed recognisable to her.
Wait! This was her house!! She was home!!!
Her eyes widened and watered with tears as her perturbed and stoic face broke into a large and happy smile before a loud excited laugh broke through.
Elliam forgot her fears and quickly walked about the place, going from room to room and reliving past memories.
She was in the hallway when she stopped suddenly. Where were her parents?
They should've been home by now.
'They are dead,'
An onerous voice said in her head as her vision blurred.
Then it cleared again and in front of her was a vision of the front of her house, she could see her house and a lot of people standing in front of it, but their faces were blurred by the bright red and blue lights that hindered her vision.
Then she said clearly two blurry figures carry a black bag into a van. The zip unzipped and Elliam could see a person's face.
It was her mother and she was bloody. She wasn't awake.
The vision suddenly disappeared as suddenly as it had appeared.
She opened her eyes again and saw that she was on her knees.
She couldn't stand up yet as her body was still shook from what she'd just seen now.
Elliam was shaken by the vision but tried not to take it too serious, her parents were alive. She knew that.
The house was doused in the orange from the sun and was getting hotter by the second.
She felt a sudden pressing need to find her parents. She had walked all over the house, but as she spent time there it seemed like the house either grew larger or gew a new room in a place where she knew was definitely smaller or had no room there. She was confused.
What was going on? This felt like a fever dream.
She continued about the house, but it only got bigger, added more rooms and she couldn't find the persons she was looking for.
She was considering going outside in the sun when she heard footsteps outside.
She jolted up immediately and looked towards the area where the sound had come from.
Elliam narrowed her eyes, having a deep rooted feeling that whoever that was, wasn't her parents.
She stood up silently, now more doubtful than ever. She heard another footstep echo again.
Elliam heard the footsteps continuing into the living room, slowly making it's way right into the hallway, the exact place she was!
Elliam narrowed her eyes once more and retreated her steps to the head of the hall.
Whoever was there seemed to walk a mocking saunter.
The footsteps were sounding closer and closer and she could see it's shadow carving out a humanoid shape from the sun rays on the floor.
Then following the shadow on the floor a figure entered through the threshold of the door and Elliam felt a dark chill down her spine.
It was a girl, with a bodily physique with uncanny resemblance to hers, she couldn't be sure though that it looked exactly like her as due to the way it positioned it's face, she couldn't see it.
But it cast off an oddish and unnatural aura, a silent violence, like a floor of strong ice over a sea of boiling lava, waiting break through and destroy everything.
The light from the sun fell on the clone's back, casting an eerie shadow on its yet unseen face.
Elliam looked at the figure, herself feeling apprehensive, expecting a violent movement from her or it, wondering whether to fight (if it could be fought) or flee.
The figure only stood there with it's head lowered to the floor.
It was at that moment she realised that an awful amount of blood was dripping or more like pouring from its face.
Elliam frowned as she watched the steady pitter patter of blood on the wooden floorboards.
The figure slowly raised its head and revealed to Elliam, its face.
Elliam involuntarily reeled backwards in shock when she saw clearly its facial visage. She felt a knot forming in the pit of her stomach.
The creature looked exactly like her. Except the black pupils that covered most of the whites in its eyes, in the middle of the large circle of black in its eyes was a small ball of unnatural light.
And where the lips were supposed to be, reaching from the eye level of the side of her head to the other, a large hole carved to resemble a smile hole was there.
The edge of the injury was cut with incision, with the precision and smoothness of a surgical operation.
Elliam felt the knot in her stomach tightening and folding so, she almost puked out her guts.
The hole was open to reveal it bloodied teeth, which was tightly gnashed against each other.
It's 'smile' was dark and spine chilling and made Elliam's heart palpitate in fear.
Elliam put her back on the wall behind her in shock as she turned to run into the room beside, but as she made to do so, her vision darkened.