The Coroner II

"You're insane."

"I'm insane!? Me!? You are a literal necrophiliac, molester, and pedophile! But I'm the crazy one!?" Tempo smashed the Coroner's teeth out with his baseball bat and the Coroner let out a ghoulish scream before Tempo reversed the time around the Coroner's teeth and placed them back into his mouth.

"Say another word and I'll leave that jaw of yours broken." Tempo's threat muted the Coroner for now. Already, the tides had shifted. The Coroner was the one taking demands now. Tempo backed off and began reaching for something out of sight. The Coroner could hear metallic rustling before a black duffle bag emerged from the darkness. Tempo pulled the zipper slowly before turning the bag upside down, revealing over one hundred tools meant for vehicle maintenance or housework; however, they would serve a different purpose on this night.

Tempo used the first hour to break the Coroner's knees, shattering them with his bat and other tools before reversing the damage over and over. With each impact, the Coroner's screams reverberated inside Ky's Temporal Bubble, his screams only being heard by Tempo and no one else. When Ky was bored of attacking the knees, he moved to the hands, focusing on those for another hour. 

Using pliers, started breaking the Coroner's fingers and peeling his nails. The Coroner's screams were earsplitting, so much so that Tempo was getting frustrated. "Shut the fuck up!" Tempo smacked the Coroner in the face with the pliers, knocking a tooth loose in the process. However, Ky did not reverse the damage and left that singular tooth to rot on the ground beneath their feet. "Don't fucking talk."

Though this may have seemed like a power move by Ky, to establish dominance, the real reason why he demanded that the Coroner remain silent was because his screams unnerved him; they reminded Ky that he was torturing another living being. Though Ky viewed the Coroner as something beneath humans, even beneath an animal like a dog or cat, the screams still haunted him.

There were moments where he would ask himself, 'What am I doing?' but as if there was an angel and devil on his shoulder, his own voice would chime in. 'Removing this swine from the planet, sending him to hell where he belongs.' Ever since Tempo first broke free from the game's influence, all of his actions were done under his own volition. His thoughts, those thoughts glorifying violence, were none other than his own. It was all Ky Tempus, his true self he kept hidden under the facade of being a soft-spoken young man who kept to himself.

This true self was in partial display when he fought Clarence, his bully. The game hardly intervened when Ky decided to beat his bully to a bloody pulp, in fact, in a way similar to Ky's current situation, it was only rewarding Ky for doing what he truly wanted. Of course, when the game did interfere and prompted Ky to kill, he refused. He told himself that he wasn't a killer, however, as seen through the eyes of the Coroner, Ky was more than just a killer when pushed too far.

This internal rage had always been inside of him, festering over time. Anger that first culminated with his mother's death, only to then be fueled by his feelings of inferiority at school. His loneliness turned into resentment and for a while, video games were an outlet for him. However, video games were nothing more than a substitute. He needed a way to truly let out that anger inside of him, but he needed a reason to release that rage.

It only took him experiencing what Jacob experienced, the victim he saved but was too late to truly save, to let that rage within him free. The Coroner didn't understand that when Ky experienced the memories of the boy, he wasn't just watching what happened. He was truly experiencing them through the mind of the child. Despite Ky knowing that he wasn't a victim to the Coroner, his mind and body felt as if he were a victim. It was the downside to his Psyschometry ability. Any pleasure or pain felt by anyone was felt by him and implanted into his own mind, including any trauma brought with it.

"Any time you speak, I will take out another tooth. Not another word." The Coroner said nothing in response to these orders. He continued to let Tempo do what he wanted to him, just like how his victims could do nothing but watch through their own eyes, unable to stop what was happening to them.

Like his victims, the Coroner was powerless. Ky's body was covered from head to toe, so even if he miraculously broke free from his chains, his powers would have no effect on Ky. If they were to fight, Ky would win. 

Every once in a while, the Coroner would instinctively beg Ky for forgiveness, only for the time manipulator to pluck out one of his teeth in retaliation. By the first twenty-four hours, thirteen of the Coroner's teeth had been removed and his skin was battered and bruised. Even though Ky could reverse the damage done to the Coroner's bones, he could not reverse the damage done to his skin or organs. The times when Ky would accidentally damage an organ or kill the Coroner, he would reverse time itself rather than reversing the time around the Coroner's body. Doing it this way was no good though. There was no point in harming him if the pain wasn't remembered. 'I need to be more careful. Hurt him, but not too much.'

When the bucket of water was half full, and Ky could see in his visual field that there was only one day left of torture, he sat down in front of the Coroner and took a break. He wanted to get a good look at the damage done so far. "Only one day left." said Tempo as he slammed the bat into his palm. "Look at you. You're a mess."

To the Coroner, it seemed that Tempo was speaking to him, but in reality, he was speaking to himself. Tempo wanted this to end, but he needed to see it through. He needed the man to suffer the full forty-eight hours just as his victims did. 

The Coroner remained bound and suspended in the air, his eyes blank. By the end of the first day, he was completely broken. Tempo saw him as beneath human before, but by this point, the Coroner truly was no longer human. He was no longer a man; just an empty husk housing a brain without any thoughts. He merely existed.

Once the Coroner stopped reacting, it made Tempo's torture methods go down easier. With no screaming involved, Tempo could just pretend he was hitting a practice dummy and so he did for the next twenty-four hours.

With just seconds remaining, Ky threw down a wrench into a bloody pile of tools and sat on the ground in front of the Coroner, staring blankly in front of himself.

"Time's up." Ky whispered, not even looking up at the bruised, bloody pulp in front of him. The Coroner, still barely clinging to life. Ky had killed him ninety-one times, but he reversed each one. It was time for him to die until the timer was up.

"Please, kill me." the Coroner said his first words in twenty-four hours. Ky chuckled and shook his head. "Why should I?" Ky asked. "Why would I grant your request? Because you asked so nicely? Do you deserve death?" 

The Coroner was confused. The whole point of this was to end it all with his death, yet the boy was refusing to do so.

Ky began packing the bloody tools, not even looking up at the Coroner as he begged. "I only said I'd kill you to give you something to look forward to. The thing about me is that I don't believe in the death penalty. Not because I don't think criminals who do vile things like rape or murder shouldn't be killed. No, I think they should suffer for their crimes. They should rot in jail. The thing is, I'm wearing this mask but you've seen my face before. I can't send you to prison. Even if I did, guys like you don't last long in there once your crimes become known by the other inmates. So, this Temporal Bubble of mine will be your prison."

The Coroner shuddered upon hearing his fate. "Please..."

"For as long as I live, you will be stuck here. You won't die from your injuries as time does not exist here. You will live in perpetual agony until this bubble is destroyed. When that happens, and time does resume, your injuries will kill you. I don't believe in any afterlife, but I hope when your life does end, you are sent to the deepest, hottest depths of hell."

Tempo zipped his duffle bag and put it over his shoulder. "See ya, Coroner." The Coroner continued to beg as he watched Tempo walk out of the Temporal Bubble, only to disappear once he was no longer inside. Tempo looked back, only to see that there was nothing behind him; this was an effect of the bubble. Nothing can enter or exit the bubble without Ky's permission and to any outsiders, the area where the bubble was present just looked normal. 

No one could save the Coroner.

There was only one thing Ky had left to do. 

[Mind Erase]

Ky used his mind-erase ability to erase the last ten seconds of his own memory. Time did not exist inside his Temporal Bubble, therefore zero seconds passed while inside. In other words, Ky found a loophole in the rules of this ability so now, in Ky's memories, he simply knocked the Coroner out and placed him inside of the Temporal Bubble for eternity; the entire two days of torture had been erased from Ky's mind.

And so, Ky was able to move on, living a normal life none the wiser to the fact that he'd tortured a man for twenty-four hours. Unlike Ky, however, the Coroner, trapped in Tempo's bubble until it pops, would remember the pain for the rest of his life.