Act 2: Descent into madness
I died… and yet here I was, alive again.
'I really want to know what the hell is happening…
The hell is happening…
The hell…
I'm in hell.
*SCREECH!*
Terrifying shrieks from a flock of crows brought me back to the situation on hand, I was probably in hell going through endless torture but that wouldn't mean I'd give up.
My body feels completely fine, so I can keep moving.
I looked around, some kind of forest, a lot of bushes, fallen leaves and giant trees stuck between blooming and decaying.
There was no need to waste my energy running so I calmly walked around, looking out for anything that wanted to kill me.
As I was about to step forward through a patch of relatively high grass I saw a little reflection of the pale moon right below my descending feet, so I stopped it in mid air.
A bear trap.
I retracted my foot and crouched down to look at the hunting trap from closer, it was a bulky chain triggered bear trap, old and rusty so that the sharp jaws could immobilize and heavily wound the prey at the same time.
So I'm up against a hunter, I won't be able to run away from it like before if it shows up again.
I don't even know if there is something but if there is I need to look out for traps, an eventual hunting rifle or anything that could be hidden within this somber forest.
I picked up the trap, making sure not to trigger it in case the sound would attract anything unwanted. I brought it over to the bottom of a small slope and continued exploring the place, making sure to remember every tree and hiding spot on the way.
"GUHG!"
I heard something and immediately hid behind the large stump of a tree.
Footsteps, neither light nor heavy. Raspy breathing… through a mask. Clicks and clinking… I don't know what kind of weapon that is.
I could look out of my cover to check, not if I want to live.
The footsteps continued, it's hard following where exactly through sound but I'm sure he was walking away.
I stayed in my spot for another dozen minutes before quietly moving in the opposite direction from where the killer left.
No idea how much time passed, I just continued wandering in the woods, repositioning traps as I found them, eating shriveled berries and drinking from a muddy pond.
Feels like shit but I can't be picky.
The days went by, I was able to sleep twice after making sure I was surrounded by my own traps, always stuck in a state of paranoia, oversensibile to any changes in the surroundings and dread.
Survival in enemy territory, spent fearing for my life.
*BANG*
A moment of inattention while drinking the vile water was all it took.
I felt a sharp pain in my back before I lost all control of my body as it fell over into the swamp like water.
The bastard shot me in the spine, it fucking hurts and yet it didn't kill me, no. What would kill me was this small lake that kept me alive, now drowning me unable to swim back up to the surface.
My vision became blurry, I let out the last air in my mouth, letting the bubbles rise while I continued sinking. Death number three by the hands of a killer I didn't even see.
[₮ł₥Ɇ : ₮Ɇ₦ Đ₳Ɏ₴, ₣łVɆ ⱧØɄⱤ₴ ₳₦Đ ₣ØɄⱤ ₴Ɇ₵Ø₦Đ₴. ₱ⱤØ₲ⱤɆ₴₴ł₦₲ ₮Ø ₮ⱧɆ ₦ɆӾ₮ ₲₳₥Ɇ.]
(Time : ten days, five hours and four seconds. Progressing to the next game.)
And I'm back, ugh… when is this going to end?
That's how things went, finding myself in an eerie location, against monsters, killers and beasts, all of them fitting in with the theme of the area and having their own powers.
Visiting a japanese murder castle, a south amercian poison jungle, a german slasher skyscraper, a spanish ghost ship…
I don't really know when, but I remember being chased by an army of wooden puppets and just being fed up with this.
I started hitting and skewering them with a fireplace fork, ripped out one of the puppet childrens arm when my fork broke and used it to beat the others, once it broke I used a wooden leg, and then another arm and once I didn't have anything else to hit them with I started punching them with my bare fists, ignoring the pain on my knuckles and the blood that splattered around.
I was eventually overwhelmed and massacred by tiny puppets that ripped out my flesh small pieces at a time until I died from pain and blood loss.
From then on I stopped running, the dumbest idea that went against most of the horror rules but I couldn't go on anymore, I needed a victory.
Location, abandoned hospital, probable killers, doctor, nurse, mental patient…
Possible powers, health drain, electroshock, mental attacks, binding…
This was a reflex for me now, determining everything I was up against in the first few seconds by observing my immediate surroundings.
I moved around quietly, making sure to hide from as many wide angles as possible, listen to any sounds that could tell me the location of the killer and take every useful but light object with me and place the other useful but heavy ones in an easily accessible location.
Basic traps, escape routes and hiding spots were also planned out in an instant. I armed myself with a scarily big syringe and quietly made a spear by ripping out the hand long needle and taping it onto the broken metal pole of an intravenous fluid holder, making a makeshift spear.
I heard some noise at two O'clock while I was tinkering so I broke another rule and quietly walked towards where it came from.
Killer spotted me but so did I, a skinny guy, inside a mental patient restraint jacket, so no arm movements possible, very likely to attack with some sort of psychic powers.
Blue and white sparks surrounded him as he laughed crazily, the sparks spread to the surgical tools around him as they floated up, so some kind of telekinesis, good, I prepared for that.
I didn't let him launch his weapons at me as I knew that's what he would do, so I did what he was planning to do and threw my spear like a javelin.
There was no way for me to accurately hit his head so I aimed for the thing that would help me the most without risking cutting the binds on his hands, his legs.
The makeshift spear lodged itself into the "poor guy's" knee making him wail in pain and anger, not giving him more time. I took out one of the dozens of scalpels I had found, ran towards him, stabbed him in the eye and ran out through the door behind him.
He shouted again but I didn't look back, the killers have always been monstrous existences that didn't give a shit even if they walked into a bear trap, I wasn't seeking to kill him in one go but rather to anger him. Both a stupid and a smart move.
I let him follow behind me as I led him through all the traps I placed beforehand, using the escape routes with lockable doors or small objects I could vault over and he couldn't so that I could keep my distance.
I never once looked back but I could clearly hear his screams as he got stabbed by a pair of scissors that swung at his thigh from around a corner, a tension trap I have repeatedly used against this guy.
At some point I turned around the corner of another old hospital hallway and hid behind a pile of debris.
The crazy electro patient passed in front of me a few seconds later, unaware I was now behind him. I quickly noticed all of the wounds on his body and all of the surgical tools that were still embedded in him from my traps.
He continued walking forward on the strangely wet floor when he noticed he lost my trail. Before he could turn around, I pulled on a long stitching string that went from my hiding spot towards the killer's location.
The string pulled along with it a small plastic cap from some kind of gas tank and metal piece that caused sparks as it rubbed against another with strength.
"Sayonara mother fu-"
*BOOOM*
The tank right next to the killer exploded causing half the hallway to go up in flames and the ceiling to crumble and crush the killer underneath.
"Ahhh… The sound of an explosion has finally become something good… It seems like using medical alcohol to burn him was a bit overkill. Meh, at least I have something to drink now."
I know that medical alcohol isn't the best beverage but right now I really didn't care, I just wanted to rest. So I sat down on a waiting bench and waited to be transported to another crazy location.
But nothing happened, I waited and waited. I was getting so bored, I was getting used to being constantly on alert, chased by someone that only wanted to see me die, have my body pumping out adrenaline like a factory… so used to it that I didn't know what to do now that the killer was dead.
So for the rest of the day, even though there was no sky in here and a lot of clocks were still working, I rearmed my traps, made makeshift weapons, and strolled around.
Exactly 24 hours after I killed that mental patient, a red hue like aura blasted out from the spot where his corpse was. Even though I am pretty far away from there I could still accurately judge that that was where this came from.
It didn't take me long to find out what had just happened as I heard the craziest laugh I ever heard, his, he was back.
AGAIN AND AGAIN AGAIN AND AGAIN AGAIN AND AGAIN AGAIN AND AGAIN AGAIN AND AGAIN AGAIN AND AGAIN AGAIN AND AGAIN AGAIN AND AGAIN AGAIN AND AGAIN AGAIN AND AGAIN AGAIN AND AGAIN AGAIN AND AGAIN AGAIN AND AGAIN AGAIN AND AGAIN AGAIN AND AGAIN AGAIN AND AGAIN AGAIN AND AGAIN AGAIN AND AGAIN AGAIN AND AGAIN AGAIN AND AGAIN AGAIN AND AGAIN AGAIN AND AGAIN AGAIN AND AGAIN AGAIN AND AGAIN AGAIN AND AGAIN AGAIN AND AGAIN AGAIN AND AGAIN AGAIN AND AGAIN AGAIN AND AGAIN AGAIN AND AGAIN AGAIN AND AGAIN AGAIN AND AGAIN
This scenario repeated itself, with him, and with all of the killers after him.
I killed them again and again while they killed me, again and again. In an endless loop of slaughter.
I basically became like them, learning how to kill in the best way possible, learned their skills that didn't require devil like powers and killed them and became better with my schemes.
The gap between our strength was far too wide, something that I could never overcome with something as trivial as training.
All I could do was think faster, think smarter, think colder…
Traps, faints, bombs, running, hidding, trapping… all of that to finally get an edge over those bastards and personally get to slay them. Rip off their masks, hoods or bandages to lacerate their disgusting faces for my short lived excitement. Dismembering them in the hopes that they would rise weaker than before. Hanging, cremating, freezing, slicing…
Killing was all I did, the only reason I searched for food and water was so that I could live longer to kill them more than they killed me, I just want to kill those fucking monsters!
Those bastards!
I just want to kill them! Them and the bastards responsible for my arrival in this hell!
This fucking purgatory that never ends!
I don't even remember my life before ending up here… What, what was my life like?
This world has no day and night cycle, no clocks and no way for me to accurately judge the time I spent here. It feels like, after all this time, that I've actually always lived here.
… I looked at the puddle of water next to me, at my reflection that showed little to no changes since my stay in purgatory.
My jeans and white hoodie were completely soaked, not only by the ever-going rain this particular world had but also by a deep brown, red like color of both fresh and old blood that had splattered on there, both my own and foreign blood.
Most of the time I kept my hood over my curly black hair, a red hood that often caught my decapitated head when a killer cut or broke it off, thus having been stained completely red after all those years.
I don't have any wounds right now, my entire body and clothes get restored every time after my death.
And yet the clothes remained dirty and my body continued to ache from the endless chases.
As for psychological wounds… well if everything is broken then everything is the same and everything is healthy right ?
"I make no sense… Do you think so too?"
I looked in front of me at the undead quarterback laying in front of me, its bony legs cut off and its entire body battered and damaged by countless attacks.
It slowly crawled towards me, unresponsive to my question, determined to reach me and kill me.
I stood up from the wooden bench I was sitting on and walked closer to the athlete.
Stomping on his helmet as well as the skull and rotting flesh underneath into a paste. Even till the end this little skeleton had never been able to touch me.
The little pieces of shlesh and blood that remained on him decomposed into the stadium's grass, fertilizing the shriveled lawn.
Blood makes the grass grow.
I didn't even need to look into one of the mud puddles to know that I was smiling like a madman, what? There isn't a lot for me to entertain myself in this world so I need to have fun killing no?
"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA KA HAHA KA HA KA !!!"
I suddenly had an urge to laugh, a crazy and heavy laugh that resonated within the entire rundown stadium and ended with a cackle.
"Haaa… This skelly is worthless, I killed him twenty times and he hasn't taught me anything… Well, let's go to the next one."
I took a lacrosse stick, broke it in two with my knee and plunged the broken part in my neck before ripping it out and letting a fountain of blood follow. All without hesitation or pained expression.
First my sight goes blurry, then a wave of lethargy spreads all around my body, my heartbeat progressively slows down as I start feeling sleepy.
I had gone through such a scenario too many times to count.
3, 2, 1… and I'm dead again.
*DING!*
'Huh? What's that sound?'
[₮ł₥Ɇ : ₮₩Ɇ₦₮Ɏ ₴ɆVɆ₦ Đ₳Ɏ₴, ɆⱠɆVɆ₦ ⱧØɄⱤ₴ ₳₦Đ ₣ł₣₮Ɏ ₴Ɇ₵Ø₦Đ₴…]
(Time : twenty seven days, eleven hours and fifty seconds…)
[₵₳Ⱡ₵ɄⱠ₳₮ł₦₲ ₳₵ⱧłɆVɆ₥Ɇ₦₮₴…]
(Calculating achievements…)
[₳₵ⱧłɆVɆ₥Ɇ₦₮ Ɇ₳Ɽ₦ɆĐ : ₴ɄⱤVłVØⱤ. ₴ɄⱤVłVɆ 100 ɎɆ₳Ɽ₴ ]
(Achievement earned : Survivor. Survive 100 years.)
[₳₵ⱧłɆVɆ₥Ɇ₦₮ Ɇ₳Ɽ₦ɆĐ : ⱤɆ₴łĐɆ₦₮ Ø₣ ₱ɄⱤ₲₳₮ØⱤɎ. ɎØɄ ₴ɄⱤVłVɆĐ 1000 ɎɆ₳Ɽ₴! ]
(Achievement earned : Resident of purgatory. You survived 1000 years!)
[₳₵ⱧłɆVɆ₥Ɇ₦₮ Ɇ₳Ɽ₦ɆĐ : Ʉ₦฿ⱤɆ₳₭₳฿ⱠɆ. ɎØɄ ₦ɆVɆⱤ ₲₳VɆ Ʉ₱!
Achievement earned : Unbreakable. You never gave up!]
[₳₵ⱧłɆVɆ₥Ɇ₦₮ Ɇ₳Ɽ₦ɆĐ : ₴ɆⱤł₳Ⱡ ₭łⱠⱠɆⱤ.
₣ł₦ł₴Ⱨ ₮ⱧɆ ₲₳₥Ɇ₴ ₩ł₮Ⱨ ₳ ĐɆ₳₮Ⱨ / ₭łⱠⱠ Ɽ₳₮łØ ₴Ʉ₱ɆⱤłØⱤ ₮Ø 1/10!]
[Achievement earned : Serial killer.
Finish the games with a death / kill ratio superior to 1/10!]
[Achievement earned …] +11
[Achievements will be locked until the user is capable of receiving them.]
…
[Ɇ₦Đ Ø₣ ₮ⱧɆ ₲₳₥Ɇ₴.]
(End of the games.)
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