Calamity Begins

Genesis's fingers dug into Jezebel's flesh like meat hooks. "You stupid bitch," he snarled, spittle flecking her face. "What did you think you were doing, wriggling into my head like some diseased worm?"

She fought to pull air into her lungs, to keep the darkness at bay.

But it swallowed her whole, dragging her under into a sea of nothingness.

When she resurfaced, gasping and thrashing, she found herself back in the waking world. 

In reality, Genesis was not as powerless as she had assumed.

His subconscious, perhaps a reflection of his strong defiant character, fought against the dreamscape she had created.

He choked her in the dream, but he was doing so in the waking world as well.

"Get... out..." he growled through bared teeth.

Jezebel's struggles faltered as a twisted sense of ecstasy bloomed in her gut.

Yes, this was right.

This was justice, long overdue for her sins.

She believed that she deserved to be punished, to be disciplined for her sins.

She screamed and cried, begging for it.

With an animalistic growl, Genesis released her and she crumpled in a boneless mass.

He glared down in disgust, raising his hand as if to strike.

Jezebel flinched, dark anticipation mingling with her fear.

But Genesis's arm hung in the air, trembling with barely-contained rage.

"Don't flatter yourself, you depraved filth," he spat at last, letting his hand fall.

"I won't taint myself by touching you."

Jezebel crawled on four and clung to his legs, a pitiful figure begging for pain.

But Genesis was resolute.

He couldn't be the instrument of her punishment.

He pushed her off, his features a mask of disrespect.

He turned on his heel and stormed from the room, leaving Jezebel to cower amid the wreckage, whimpering pleas for punishment still hot on her lips.

Genesis strolled the twisting corridors, his oxfords pounding out a staccato rhythm on the aged hardwood.

Jezebel's depraved gasps still rang in his ears, that perverse longing for punishment stoking the flames of his disgust.

He shoved through a rotting wooden door and found himself in an overgrown courtyard, weeds clawing up through shattered flagstones.

Suck it in, he willed himself, the evening breeze doing little to cool his fever pitch.

You let her rattle you.

Can't happen again.

Ezequiel.

Yes, he needed to find Ezeqiuel, pull his penitent back from that brink before it was too late.

As twisted as the son of a bitch had become, he was still one of the Abyssaly Gifted.

And Genesis would be damned if he let anyone Gifted fall prey to the mansion's insidious calamity.

Not on his watch.

He is just another tormented soul in need of guidance and redemption.

Genesis now knew of 3 Abyssal Gift holders, counting himself.

Where are the others hiding?

He wondered.

When he finally reached his room, a horrifying sight awaited him.

The door was wide open, and a crowd of tourists and mansion guests had gathered outside of it.

They wore expressions of fear, their eyes wide with terror.

Genesis rushed to them, his voice tinged with concern. "What happened, brothers and sisters?"

The crowd parted, and Genesis saw Ezeqiuel.

His penitent, and fellow Abyssal Gift holder.

The reek of decay sucker-punched Genesis the moment he stepped into the chamber. A grotesque tableau of horror hung suspended before him, like some nightmarish carnival exhibit.

Perched upon a crudely splintered cross, the desiccated cadaver of Ezequiel dangled by its wrists and ankles, limbs outstretched in a sickening mockery of crucifixion.

Tattered, decay rags clung to the withered skin in festering strips, swelling slightly with each stale breath of air.

Genesis fought back anger as his gaze found the corpse's ruined face, frozen in an eternal big smile of unspeakable anguish.

The eye sockets were gouged out, weeping thickened blood and ocular fluid in serpentine streaks.

Chains bit into the purpled, septic flesh of each wrist and ankle, the surrounding meat a mass of oozing, infected craters.

His gut was disturbed at the obscene desecration of the human form.

Worst were the hordes of fat, glistening flies swarming in bloated profusion around the body. Their droning buzz provided a hellish chorus as they feasted greedily upon the rot and decomposition alongside a carpet of scrabbling, flea-bitten rats.

Genesis's jaw clenched until his molars ground together.

The air reeked of death and unspeakable violation for Ezequiel and Christianity itself.

This wasn't just a chamber - it was the belly of The Beast, Hell even!

And whatever profane force had orchestrated such an unholy crime could only be diabolical in nature.

His fingernails bit into his palms until he tasted the copper penny of his own blood. Righteous fury blazed through him, incinerating the last vestiges of revulsion as his face contorted into a chiseled mask of purging wrath.

This was blasphemy on a cosmic, existential scale.

Genesis knew for a fact that whoever had done this was an Abyssal Gift holder or an enemy of The Calamity demoness.

Why? You might ask.

Well, because this certain entity has gouged the eyes of an Abyssal Gifted man, not any Abyssal Gifted, but Ezequiel The Seer.

Ezequiel possessed the ability to see through illusion, which means that his eyes held such power.

And so, this fiend extracted these eyes for his own hidden agenda which he had to discover.

However, the unholy crucifixion was a message directly sent to Genesis, a sort of challenge invitation.

And by the grace of whatever redemptive power yet remained in this cursed world, he would see the unholy source of such repugnant sacrilege utterly destroyed in a blaze of holy light...

Or he would die, trying.