Trial 2 - Part 5: Determination

The world was black and an unavoidable pain washed over me like a tidal wave of despair - Is this what my body's become? A block of ice in a snowstorm? However, I could not feel the bleeding anymore - The unending suffering that came with it was gone, eradicated by the mute sensation of not feeling anything. The pain was replaced by emptiness. Something inside me had died, but the source of this cold nothingness seemed to have no connection to my life - There was just the blackness - it seemed to seep through my soul and fill every crevice of my being. I became an object, an item in a machine, no longer a person.

I stood outside of myself, not really belonging anywhere. It felt like a dream I could not remember - it didn't even really feel like a dream, not like the rest of my life. It was like a nightmare, but somehow better. Maybe it wasn't a nightmare at all.

Maybe it was a dream that had never been intended to end. When I looked around at my life, I felt no connection to it. I did not really care for my future - I felt as though I would never actually experience anything more than a few short minutes of time. I felt as though I was trapped in a bubble and there was no way out. I did not know what I wanted, but it felt like I would never have it - I was too afraid to leave the shell that surrounded my whole existence.

I was afraid to see, I was afraid to feel - so afraid of feeling the pain of seeing my own self-conscious thoughts running through my mind. I had no memory - not even a single moment of my past or what had come before the numbness. I could not remember my name - it felt as though it was not my own anymore. I was no longer the same person, but rather an empty shell that nobody could see. I had become nothing - I was lost in a void.

I crawled through the snow, the ice cold snow and the frozen ground. I had no energy left. I was like a zombie, unable to move or anything else. I was a lifeless mass of nothing, a mass of flesh unable to do anything at all. I could not even move, I was too weak, my entire body was nothing but aching muscles and nerves.

The lack of feeling was too much to bear - like it was all a terrible dream, but somehow not as terrible as it should be. I lay there, unable to move or even breathe, until I was sure I was going to freeze. I needed to find some warmth or I would never wake up again. I had to breathe - I needed to move. So I made a choice to try to make my body live once more, I gathered the strength of my will to force myself to breathe again. I opened my mouth to the sky and took in as much air as I could, to try to force my breath into my body.

My lungs felt as though they were made of stone

and would not let in any more air. I took in several gasps of air, hoping to suck the oxygen in and help my heart pump more blood. My body begged me to let it die, to end the pain of my heart being unable to pump my own life-blood around my body. It felt as though it was not my own anymore, it belonged to someone else. It wanted to give up, to close its eyes and let itself die.

The need to live burned like a fire in my soul. This time, I needed to make it happen. I was my own person again - I could do it, I could breathe, I could be alive. I could live. I had to live. I could not let the rest of my life go to waste. This was my life - no longer some block of flesh unable to do anything but lie here like a frozen corpse. This time, I had to make it happen.

I crawled and I crawled and I crawled. I saw a mass up ahead, a blob of flesh stripped of clothing - A completely nude individual lying face down in the snow. His clothes must have been taken after he was killed, although they could have been taken while he was dying - That I will never know. My body was covered in a thin layer of ice, ice formed from my own blood. They seemed to be dead, completely unmoving, unresponsive to anything at all. A lifeless mess of flesh just lying in the snow. I'm so cold... Maybe if I...? No. No, that's immoral, but their innards must still be warm, a warm paradise of blood and guts just lying there in the snow.

To peel their skin wouldn't be difficult. I just had to slide my hands underneath to grab hold and peel away the flesh from their body. They were naked and the ice was thin, but it was enough. I peeled away the skin, then slid my hands underneath and began to rip away the flesh. It was very difficult to get a grip and pull the skin away - It was like working on a glacier or an iceberg, something I had never worked on before. In fact, I had never really had to work on anything before. Even now, when I felt my grip slipping, I just clenched my teeth and gritted my teeth and focused all my effort on holding on. I could feel the muscles in my arm start to cramp up - This was nothing compared to what I had been through with the pain and suffering I had endured.

There was nothing I could do now, I couldn't help the pain, I couldn't make it go away - there was nothing I could do except keep on doing what I was doing.

As I skinned the man, the sounds of flesh ripping and bone breaking made my insides feel sick and helpless. But there was no way I was going to stop. It wasn't in me to give up, not now, not ever.

The man's face slowly broke apart as I skinned it. The skin, flaking off of his face in every direction, melted away from his face as I skinned him. It was disgusting and disturbing, watching what I was doing to this innocent man. I knew it was wrong, and I hated myself for what I was doing.

It didn't seem right for a person to just be skinned like this, not even a criminal or a corpse. I knew that at least for myself, I would never have wanted someone to be treated the way I was treating this man.

He couldn't stand it anymore. His face was ruined from what I was doing to it. It just kept disintegrating, melting away until all that was left was a seared, scarred mess. It seemed like all he had left was the meat below his skin.

The skin eventually tore off his face and his body fell onto the ground. It was lifeless. His ripped skin bled everywhere as it peeled from his skin. The worst part was what was under his skin - his insides were gone, completely eaten away by the pure power of the cold.

My body was shivering from the cold as I wrapped the flesh around me, essentially using it as a human poncho. To die now would be a waste.

To... Die now... Would... Be a waste?

A waste of what?