21.7

Chapter Seven

"Since you won't listen the reason and just sit quietly in a cell for a month or two, we have to go with Plan B," Professor Nelson stated, for once lacking his character cigarette.

"And what part of me being in a rehab clinic could possibly pertain to this legendary and awe-invoking Plan B?" Jason asked, pulling at the straps securing him to the bed in the small, white, padded room. With him were a heart monitor and an IV rack, and sunlight streaming through the tiny window above and a red light blinking from the security camera up in the corner.

"Because—you little smartass—this is the one place where you can scream until your larynx bleeds without bothering anyone, but of course being safely monitored. And trust me, you're going to be doing a LOT of screaming," the professor chuckled, using his choice of words to get some vengeance for Jason's comment.

"Ok, so what is the plan?"

"Tell me, Jason, how do you kill a cancer?"

"Uh... chemo and radiation?"

"In essence?"

"You poison yourself and kill the cancer itself before the cure can kill you. It's a biological game of chicken."

"A biological game of chicken, very well put. That's essentially what we're going to do with you in regards to the Black Stigmata. We are going to twist and poison your mind so badly that the Black Stigmata's influence will be shaken off you like a cowboy bucked off a rodeo bull."

"How do we do that?"

Professor Nelson held up an IV bag. "This is lysergic acid diethylamide, psilocybin, psilocin, and a dozen other extremely concentrated hallucinogens mixed in with a saline solution and a high- strength tranquilizer. It's essentially LSD and shrooms with chloroform. I'm going to put you in a medically induced coma and let your mind run wild for the next 48 hours. Of course, being unconscious, you know what will happen..."

"I'll be caught in a Black Stigmata nightmare the whole time, unable to wake up," Jason cursed while immediately becoming drenched in a cold sweat.

"Not only that, but the LSD will further heighten the vividness of your dreams. The Black Stigmata can already stimulate pain receptors with pinpoint accuracy when you are asleep, making the pain you suffer in your nightmares just as potent as any injuries you might suffer in real life. The LSD will augment that pain or even make you feel like it is affecting more areas. The Black Stigmata can show you the most horrible images imaginable and even twist your memories. As you know, it can rob you of control of your body. It can torture you and coerce you into doing things that you would rather die than commit. It can even twist you through trauma and psychological poking and turn you into raving lunatic, painting the walls in blood and laughing to yourself, while still being in control.

If you haven't figured it out, the one bastion you have during a Black Stigmata nightmare is that you maintain your sanity. You are fully aware and can rationalize. That's why a bad drug trip can be one of the worst experiences imaginable: Your mind is incapable of anything but fear or pain and you are a victim to your delusions in every sense of the word. The Black Stigmata thrive on invoking madness and the insane are the most easily manipulated.

However, the Black Stigmata cannot directly manipulate your thought processes the way drugs can, because the usage of drugs means the introduction of outside forces into the equation. The nails' influence stretches only as far as your biology and the chemicals in your brain. Drugs are a whole new ball game. It's a way to fight back. Essentially, the Black Stigmata's insanity has to fight the drug's insanity over control of your soul.

If you do this, you'll suffer for 48 hours, robbed of your only mental foundations and caught in a war between a drug trip and an inhuman will of unparalleled evil. There are no words to describe the pain you will endure, because no human mind can even begin to comprehend what you'll experience. Even while in a drug-induced coma, you will likely experience so much pain that you will scream and thrash. That's not even counting the chances of success. Based on trials by the BSC, you have a 17% chance of coming out of this alive and unscathed, a 41% chance of becoming an eternal slave to the will of the Black Stigmata, a 20% chance of just ending up a vegetable for the rest of your life, and 22% chance of dying.

Now, are you sure you don't want to just go back to a cell and sit quietly for a month or two?"

Jason bit his lip, turning his mind over and over again in this precarious decision. "While I was sitting quietly in a cell, my baby sister came into contact with my Black Stigmata. Because of it, she was brutally raped by three other women. She can never have children and it will be a long time before she is even able to walk. Her mind is an unrecognizable mess in which she begs me to rape her because she thinks she deserves it and needs to be punished for being a disgusting whore. If I had taken this route before, I could have maybe reacquired the nail from her so that she would never have suffered. She was getting raped while I was sitting on a prison cot, doing homework because I was unsafe to be out in the public.

If I hide again and something bad happens, I'll never be able to forgive myself. Oh who am I kidding? I already can't forgive myself for all the things I've done. No matter what you say about me not being responsible for what I did while possessed by the Black Stigmata, that doesn't change the fact that my body was used to torture, rape, and kill. If I should die because of this, then that will just have to be my penance."

"All right, but don't say I didn't warn you..." Nelson sighed as he walked over and hooked the IV bag to the rack beside Jason's bed, then plugged the needle into his arm.

He then reached into his pocket and drew a small half-circle case. Opening up, he revealed a rubber mouth guard. "This will prevent you from actually biting off your tongue. Boy, the BSC sure learned THAT the hard way."

Fearful, Jason opened his mouth and Nelson dropped it between his teeth. As the concoction began to drip into Jason's bloodstream, Nelson walked out. "Good luck."

As soon as the doors closed, Jason's eyes were forced shut and his mind drifted off into the delirium.

With Jason now taken care of, Nelson had work to attend to. He was no longer a teacher; in fact, he was more like a student, because now, he had a mountain of studying and research to mine through. In that bus station bathroom, he had experienced a Black Stigmata nightmare, the likes of which he had never before encountered. A god-like tree made entirely of iron, each sharp, spindly branch tipped with a Homunculus. Normally the hallucinations of the Black Stigmata consisted of simple torture, the listing of the steps to create nails, or orders for horrible deeds to perform. But that brief trance... it seemed more like a direct message from the inhuman will of the Black Stigmata.

Sitting at his desk in his dark home-office, Nelson's computer was shining its pale light on his face and the stacks of books on either side of him. Drawing his cellphone, he dialed in a thirteen-digit number.

"This is Chris Nelson, chief consultant in Section 8. My ID number is 8362F9IT7M4."

"Welcome to the office of the BSC, Professor. How may I help you?" a woman on the other end recited, speaking with a computer-like tone.

"I need to see the synopsizes for all recorded Host nightmares. I have the proper clearance level."

"This information has a 24 hour viewing limit. Please log in to the BSC server and release all privacy settings. Until we can remotely wipe your computer, you will not have access to any information."

"I'm already logged on."

"Very well sir, I will begin uploading." "Thank you."

In the bottom-left corner of his browser window, a downloading icon appeared. The computer he was using was closely monitored by the BSC. At any moment, they could see who he was talking too, what sites he was on, what information was entering and leaving his system, and completely wipe the hard drive of every bit of data in an instant. He couldn't even use a USB flashdrive or take a screenshot without them knowing. Though that wasn't to say he didn't have privacy. This was simply the only computer in which he could access BSC data from. He was free to get his own for personal use.

It took several hours for the download to complete, but considering the size of the file, it was a real testament to Nelson's Internet speed. Over the decades, millions of detailed statements by Hosts had been recorded as to the nightmares and hallucinations they suffered due to the Black Stigmata. The BSC was always in search of clues or hints that might be found in the minds of the Hosts, information that might lead to actual understanding of the nails. Cases like Jason Stevens were very common, and most often, nails could be recovered before the ritual for replication was performed, but only as long as the Hosts did something that got them arrested and their symptoms raised flags.

Upon opening up the gargantuan PDF, Nelson gave a slight grunt of annoyance. Something had gone wrong in the transfer and all the files were out of order chronologically. Pushing aside the thoughts of the brief obstacle, he clicked on the word-search application and typed in "tree", "root", and "branch". Immediately, several points were highlighted. The first file mentioned was July 15th, 1945, reported by a Brazilian host under BSC custody. Actually that was one of the earliest records for the BSC. The division itself was founded in WWII originally to fight Hitler, due to rumors that he was trying to harness the occult and supernatural for his desire to achieve world domination. It later branched off to become an international agency like Interpol. The host in Brazil said he saw tentacles of fire reach out across the sky and scorch the earth, as if a colossal burning tree were trying to block out the sun.

"July 15th, 1945..." Nelson hummed as he lit a cigarette.

Moving over to his browser window, he brought up Google and typed in the date. Nothing really important happened on that date, aside from Italy's spat with Japan during WWII, though that didn't seem like the kind of thing that would correlate with the Black Stigmata... Nelson then checked the day before that, and as expected, the only events were the usual goings on of the World War 2. But if the dream wasn't happening after something...

The Trinity Test, that was the first result of the Google search for July 16th, 1945. That was the day that mankind truly entered the nuclear age by setting off the first atomic bomb. Was it possible that the host's dream of flaming tree branches blocking out the sun was actually a cross between the iron tree that Nelson had seen and the possibility of a nuclear holocaust that was born on that fateful day? Was the Black Stigmata attempting to predict the future?

"I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds..." Nelson muttered.

The next date in the unorganized list was August 7th, 1969. Bound in a straight jacket, the woman in Ontario claimed she saw a tree drenched in blood with claw marks carved into the side. The event that followed the next night were the Tate murders by the Manson family, with the claw marks referring to the Black Panther symbols painted on the walls in the victims' blood. These killings shocked the nation, both in their brutality and their reasoning. It was the birth of a new threat: the cult.

"Helter Skelter... the apocalyptic race war..."

Nelson continued looking through the dates, each nightmare preceding some kind of horrific event that caught national or even worldwide attention. Genocides, famines, the discovery of AIDS, civil wars, riots... Was it possible that the Black Stigmata had played a part in all of them? No, the work required for many of these events was far too controlled and complex for the madness of the Black Stigmata. True, it was impossible for the presence of nails to not be involved in at least some of these events, but these were all brought on by acts of mankind. So what was the correlation between the iron tree and these events? Nothing big had happened the day after Nelson received his vision, but he knew in his gut that the image of a tree in each of these events was important.

Jason was plummeting through a bottomless chasm, made solely of scarlet clouds. He was wrapped in barbed wire like a gothic mummy and his eyelids were pulled back to keep him from blinking. Over and over again, black lightning cracked across his consciousness with deafening volume. With each strike, pure unhindered fear rushed through his blood like snake venom. The fear was of no force or object in particular, but simply potent dread and paranoia, like after consuming too many energy drinks.

He did not know how long he had been falling; seconds felt like years and years felt like seconds. After a measure of time that had no name, he at last burst out of the cloud cover. He was high up above a hellish landscape, filled with mountains and lakes of fire. Burning 747s and bolts of black lightning plummeted out of the bloody clouds, while in the distance, cities melted as if they were made of ice. The mountains were blanketed with people, all torturing and eating each other. The mountain closest to him was the scene of a gargantuan brutal orgy, with thousands of men and women all getting raped while simultaneously raping each other.

Looking around as he fell, Jason gasped in terror as a skeletal pterodactyl dropped out of the clouds above, swooping towards him and laughing like Dr. Evil from the Austin Powers movies. Its body was devoid of flesh and muscles, and instead of feet, it had a long serpentine tail made of braided hair, the end of which was tied into a noose. Shooting past him, the undead beast looped the end of its tail around Jason' throat, and upon the instant whiplash, the taste of death filled Jason's mouth. It was like gurgling the blood of old road-kill mixed with the dust of an ashtray.

With the pterodactyl pulling him across the sky, Jason watched as the world below him began to shake with biblical strength, as if nuclear bombs were being set off in the planet's crust. With a roar like that of a waterfall, a fissure cut across the landscape and sliced through the mountains themselves, throwing the insane masses into the air and casting them down into darkness. From the sides of the fissure, gargantuan sheets of bedrock were heaved into the air and pulled aside, as if the planet itself was having an autopsy performed and the rib cage had just been busted open.

From the depths of the earth, a creature rose up with a godless snarl. Tens of miles long, a Japanese dragon revealed itself with the light of the scarlet clouds glistening on its obsidian scales. Its antlers burned with hellfire and thick tar poured from every building-sized tooth. Reaching out, it slammed its hands down onto the tops of the mountains, crushing them like plastic cups beneath its talons. Turning to Jason, the dragon released a roar of such volume that it instantly made him deaf with blood pouring from his ears. He could feel the sound waves pounding his body like a thousand sledgehammers. Like hurricane winds heavy with broken glass, the vibrations washed over Jason and tore away at his flesh, sending strips of skin and coagulated blobs of gore flying off behind him in a gruesome storm.

The dragon was rendered silent just seconds after its roar began. Closing its jaws, it began to lurch forward with a repeating dry-heave, like a dog that had been eating from the compost pile. Reopening its mouth, the dragon revealed an inflamed eyeball pushing itself out from its throat. Tearing itself on the monster's back teeth, the orb of swollen blood vessels squeezed its way in between the monster's jaws. Its pupil trembling and skirting around in all directions, the eye looked across the landscape with a hungry tinge to its bloody hue. With the eye in place, the dragon leaned back like a cobra about to strike, raising itself up until its head hung just below the cloud cover. From its back, two wings burst out in foaming eruptions of blood, each membrane sail large enough to eclipse the sun and leave a city in darkness.

Just as the monster was about to release another roar of fury, a thunderclap echoed across the landscape and the scarlet clouds were pushed aside. Like the meteor that killed the dinosaurs, a Black Stigmata nail broke through the cloud cover, hurtling across the sky so fast that it was cloaked in fire from the friction of the air. Larger than the Chrysler Building, the colossal nail struck the dragon in the head with pinpoint accuracy. Skewering the eyeball between its jaws, the nail left the dragon moaning in agony, while the life poured from its body by the truckload. Collapsing, the dragon was nailed to the earth by three more Black Stigmata, each one striking its body like a lawn dart.

Falling over dead, the dragon's flaming antlers expanded and consumed its whole body like a phoenix cremating itself. Giving off more heat than ten erupting volcanoes, the dragon's body burned like a mountain range of pure powdered thermite. Having recovered from his earlier wounds, Jason's eyes stung from the intensity and brightness of the flames, as if he had just put in contact lenses soaked in lemon juice.

Having been originally been pushed back to the farthest corners of the horizon by the falling Black Stigmata, the scarlet clouds returned to dominate the sky, now being fed by the thick acrid smoke of the burning dragon. Answering the flames like a sprinkler system, the clouds unleashed their payload in the form of a downpour of blood, more intense than any natural rainstorm. Jason spat over and over again as the waterfall of blood assailed him, getting into every orifice and hitting him like waves on the stormy sea.

In minutes, the landscape was flooded like in the story of Noah's Ark. Even the tallest mountains hung deep below the churning red surface. Had the entire planet been consumed by an ocean of blood?!

But just as that thought crossed Jason's mind, a Black Stigmata nail, large enough to reach into the vacuum of space, burst straight up from the surface like a shark catching a seal and then dropped back down. As if it had poked a hole in the planet itself, the retraction of the nail brought with it the formation of an epic maelstrom, stretching across the horizon and boasting a size equal to that of the state of Maine. The swirling waves were so intense that they looked like they could obliterate mountains and sweep continents off the face of the earth, while the eye of the torrent seemed to lead to the deepest and darkest crevasses of the underworld.

Having only seconds to stare with a hanging jaw at the godlike whirlpool, Jason's stomach dropped as the pterodactyl carrying him reached down with its long beak and severed its tail, letting Jason plummet out of the sky like a duck during hunting season. Shouting in terror, Jason struggled against his barbed wire restraints with new vigor, succeeding only in tearing up his flesh as he fell. Hitting the blood on his side, Jason felt all of his bones simultaneously shatter as if he had landed on concrete, than reform instantly. He didn't know if the breaking or the repairing hurt more, but he was in too much agony to scream.

Sinking down below the blood, the barbed wire seemingly melted away, and the pins holding his eyes open disappeared. At last able to blink and move, Jason scrambled for the surface, drinking more than a liter of blood in the process. Breaking free of the heavy waves, he took a few grateful gasps of air and pulled off the noose around his neck. The power of the current was unbelievable! Just staying above the surface was like trying to swim through gasoline with a pair of concrete shoes.

"Holy shit!" Jason exclaimed as he felt a hand snap around his ankle.

Kicking off whatever had grabbed him, he turned around at the sound of a splash. One of the people he had seen earlier had surfaced and was grabbing at him. He couldn't tell if it was a man or woman, as its body was horribly emaciated and jet black, while the flesh itself was molten and decomposed. The fingernails were elongated and discolored like an elderly smoker's, the teeth were twisted and split up, and the eyes were replaced with two fist-sized craters in the skull. With an inhuman scream, the ghoul grabbed onto Jason and sank its teeth into his flesh. Shouting in pain, he lashed out and punched the creature in the face as hard as he could.

Falling back into the red torrent, the ghoul was replaced by two others, screaming and clawing at Jason desperately. Hysterical with terror, he beat them off with all of his strength, but each foe that was repelled only triggered the arrival of reinforcements. In less than a minute, more than a dozen ghouls surrounded him on all sides and his lacerated flesh attested to their ferocity and the sharpness of their teeth and claws. Feeling the current around him only increase as he and his opponents approached the eye of the whirlpool, Jason yelped as he was dragged down below the surface by a hand around his ankle.

As dark and viscous as the blood was, Jason could see what lay below him. All clambering over each other, a pyramid of hundreds or even a thousand ghouls were all reaching towards him, their fingers curling and teeth barred! Struggling against them, his mouth opened and blood poured down his throat. The bitter iron taste made him want to throw up, but his stomach didn't have the force to expel anything that wouldn't just get forced back in. As soon as his stomach was filled, his lungs were next, and he began to drown.

Unable to fight back, Jason was pulled into the ghouls' midst. Over and over again, they clawed at him and sank their teeth into his flesh. He could feel it so clearly: the skin being ripped from his body, his muscles being severed cord by cord, his veins being pulled out of him like shoelaces, and soon his organs turning into scratching posts for their jagged nails. He couldn't scream, he was incapable of releasing even a single bubble of air or create the tiniest decibel of noise. Somehow, no matter how much he blood he lost or how long he drowned, he was incapable of dying. He could only suffer.

As a crude finger dug into his left eye socket and pulled the gelatin sphere from its hold, the blood around him disappeared and the hands fell away. Looking around, he found himself cast out of the torrent and into the air above the eye, straight above the chasm of blood formed through centrifugal force. It was beyond massive, able to swallow Mt. Everest without a single pebble or speck of ice touching the sides of the maelstrom. Falling deeper and deeper into the darkness, he was able to utter a single scream of terror as a massive ghoul lunged out of the very heart of the lowest level of the eye. Roaring as it threw itself upwards, the ghoul opened its jaws and Jason dropped down into its dark gullet.

Jason cried out, feeling the sharp stone pierce his torso and shatter his spine. His body had once again been restored, and the only damage now was the large triangular stone that had broken through his torso. The hole it had punched in his body was almost foot in diameter, nearly splitting him in half. Cold, the air was so cold. His body was still retaining its heat, but he could feel the warmth bleeding away against the powerful breeze against him. The stone that had run him through felt like it was made of ice that was incapable of melting, and outstretched around him, his arms and legs were lying in snow.

He was atop a mountain, having fallen and impaled himself on the knife-like summit. The sky was dark, the wind brutally strong, and there was nothing around him but similarly lifeless mountains. Lying on his back, he looked around for something to use. He had to get off this stone. His fingers already numb from cold, he managed to pull a sharp rock out of a nearby pile of snow. Taking a deep breath, he raised the stone high and slammed the edge down onto his side. The impact bloodied his hand and tore his flesh, drawing a cry of agony. Swinging again, he struck his side a second time, tearing through the soft tissue and inching closer to the fat pike that had run him through. Two more strikes were all it took, and with a shift of his body weight, he managed to tear himself free of the stone edge.

Shit, he should have looked where he was falling...

With his entire lower body clinging to him only by the side of his gut, he tumbled and rolled down the steep mountainside. Over and over again, he hit snow, rock, and ice, falling at a 70o angle. It took only a few impacts for his lower body to be fully torn away for Jason to be reduced to just a ribcage with a head and arms. Every time he landed, he felt a bone break, and often, it was more than one fracture per pone. Over and over again, his body was beaten and battered with every bone being crushed into powder and his organs popping like water balloons. At last, he came to a stop atop a rocky outcropping. He would have breathed a sigh of relief, if his lungs were intact. Yet in the blink of an eye, his body was restored.

Cold, he was so cold. Every square inch of his body felt like it was being stabbed with an icicle, while his reformed muscles ached and throbbed from falling down the mountainside. Cold, he was so cold. Cursing himself and wishing for this all to end, he slowly pushed himself to his feet and stood up. The wind howled against him with a cruel chill, both numbing his skin and making it feel like he was being sliced into confetti. His ears and fingers felt like they were being gnawed on by rats. Suffice to say, his testicles had practically retracted into his body and he was now hung like a hamster.

Cold, he was so cold. His eyes stung, blinking became difficult. He rubbed them over and over again, but even without touching them, he could feel their surfaces hardening with the freezing of the fluid inside. Cold, he was so cold. With his eyesight failing, he looked at his hand and cursed as he saw the flesh turn from pale tan, to sickly white, to deathly blue. Terror filled him as he struggled to move his fingers, and shouting swears over and over again, he rubbed his palms together to try and get some warmth back into his skin. Cold, he was so cold.

"Shit. Shit! SHIT!" he screamed, losing the ability to control any of his fingers and possessing only the sensation of endless pain, as if he were giving a cactus a hand job.

Cold, he was so cold. He tried to continue swearing, but every time he spoke, his words were scrambled into an agonizing bloody cough, sprinkling his blue skin and the surrounding snow with frozen beads of blood. The insides of his lungs were freezing from the frigid air and the dryness of his mouth was the first indication. Every time he breathed in, cold air filled his lungs and solidified the fluid into expanding ice crystals, and every time he breathed out, those crystals broke and further lacerated the insides of his lungs. Cold, he was so cold.

At last, Jason watched in horror as the skin on his hands and arms solidified like a frozen steak. The chill was moving deeper into his body, hardening the muscles and veins and freezing them solid. Cold, he was so cold. At the same time, his legs transformed into two pillars of ice, incapable of movement. His torso and neck froze solid, robbing him of even the ability to turn. With each second that passed, more of his flesh solidified while retaining full sensory awareness. Cold, he was so cold, and in so much pain. He was now nothing more than an ice sculpture of himself, with every vein and muscle shredded by the ice crystals that had formed in his blood. He could do nothing but stare at his hand, but with his eyes frozen, that was like looking through a car windshield on an icy morning.

Up above him, a deep crack echoed throughout the mountain range and the ground beneath Jason's feet began to tremble.

'Oh please no,' he though to himself as small bits of snow began to roll past him.

Unable to turn around, he couldn't have seen the avalanche rushing towards him from the mountain summit, but even while frozen, he could feel its approach. It was shaking the whole mountain and sending powerful vibrations through his entire body. Moving so fast that he could not prepare himself for it, the tidal wave of snow slammed into him like a semi on the freeway. In a single millisecond, his entire body shattered like a glass vase, with each crack ripping across his mind with pain so great, he might as well have been divided piece by piece with a band saw.

Even while scattered into over a million tiny fragments, he could feel every jarring impact as if the shards were connected by a metaphysical net of nerves. One of the pieces of his leg, originally the surface of the kneecap and now only the size of a misshapen marble, crashed against a jutting stone. The impact was as painful as an axe strike, and Jason would have screamed if he had the ability. One of his fingers was being tossed through the water-like snow. In actuality, it was one of the largest pieces of his body. As it was tossed into the air for the umpteenth time, a piece of ice collided with it and snapped it in half at the second knuckle. For Jason, he might as well have been back in the real world, cutting off the finger himself with a pair of pliers.

After several minutes of this indescribable agony, all the pieces came together and reformed him like he was the Iron Giant, and he was cast out of the avalanche and onto a flat plane of snow. How many times had he been resurrected like this? Falling through the scarlet clouds had certainly not been the beginning of this nightmare. He had lost track of how many times be had been killed, he simply stopped counting when it reached the triple digits.

"Oh God... Please, just let this stop." "Jason, honey, are you ok?"

Hearing the familiar voice, he looked up at his mom's smiling face. She was certainly Colleen's mother; she looked like his sister's future self with the same height and auburn hair.

"Mom?"

"What are you doing out here in the snow with just your clothes? Come inside before you catch a cold!" she warned, extending her hand to help him up.

About to take her hand, Jason watched in horror as his mom was pulled into the air with her limbs outstretched around her. She was able to release a single scream before being ripped apart limb by limb in an eruption of gore. Jason had long since lost the ability to tell dream from reality. Everything he was experiencing was real to him. Refusing to believe what he had just witnessed, he picked up two handfuls of the crimson snow around him and screamed at the top of his lungs.

"Jason, what's going on over here?"

Looking back, he saw his father approaching, sporting the same wavy brown hair that had been passed down to Jason.

"Dad..." Jason gasped.

Trudging through the snow, his father reached out towards him, but before their hands could touch, his father stopped. A scream escaped from his contorting face as his outstretched hand suddenly twisted around like an owl's head. The fingers all snapped back and the wrist split open, revealing the broken bones inside. His father staggered back, his arm now snapping at the elbow and twisting until the jagged bones broke free of their fleshy prison. After his father's shoulder dislocated itself, the hex moved to his other arm, snapping all of the fingers like they were twigs before moving into the wrist. Jason could only stand by and watch as his father's hand twisted until it was held onto the body only by a single strip of flesh. Like with his right arm, the destruction moved up to the elbow and shoulder, first breaking the joints and then twisting them until the bones ripped free and the limbs hung like sausage links.

Continuing to scream, Jason's father fell over in the snow, both feet twisting all the way around until his Achilles tendons snapped like old rubber bands. Next came the knees, with both limbs cracking over the kneecaps before being spun around. Seconds later, his hips broke free and twisted themselves beyond recognition. Continuing to scream, Jason' father fell over and writhed in the snow. Utterly petrified, Jason watched as his father's lower body began to turn, the spine itself being rotated. Once the pelvis went past the 90o mark, his father's torso split open from the tension and his organs poured out on the snow, melting it as his entire lower body continued to twist. His father was finally silenced when his lower jaw ripped itself from his skull and his neck snapped all the way around.

Having just witnessed the deaths of his parents, Jason staggered back and into the warm arms of Christi.

"Hey baby, what's up?" she giggled.

Turning around, he looked into her smiling face and immediately broke down into tears, embracing her with all of his strength and crying into her long blonde hair. "Please, just let this end."

"Sorry baby, but the fun is just beginning."

As the words were spoken, Christi's skin seemed to molt under his touch, changing from as soft as a peach to as rough as a gravel road. And it seemed to be... moving? Stepping back, Jason's eyes widened in terror as the woman he was holding ceased to exist. In her place was a humanoid effigy, made solely of crimson fire ants all crawling

over each other. With gaping pits in place of eyes, the entity gave a

over each other. With gaping pits in place of eyes, the entity gave a demonic laugh and lunged forwards, wrapping its arms around Jason and erupting into an amorphous swarm that rode him to the ground. Writhing in the snow, he screamed as he felt the tiny insects sink their teeth ravenously into every millimeter of exposed skin.

"I JUST WANT THIS ALL TO STOP!" he screamed as the ants poured into his mouth.

As soon as the words were spoken, the snow beneath him and the swarming ants vanished. As if teleporting, the mountain area disappeared and Jason was set on his feet with the warm air welcoming him. Opening his eyes, he looked around and found himself in Colleen's hospital room. Basking in the autumn sunlight, his sister rolled over in her bed and looked at him.

"Are you going to rape me now?" she murmured with a face devoid of emotion.

He didn't know why, but Jason nodded and slowly walked over. He knew Colleen was his sister, he knew she was badly injured and not in the right state of mind, and he knew that this was wrong in every sense of the word, yet nothing stopped him or even slowed his steps. He was aware of these factors, but they had no hold over him. That tiny voice in the back of his mind that told him not to do things had been rendered silent. He was acting solely on physical desire, and more than that, he was being prodded forward.

Standing by his little sister's bed, he watched as she reached out and placed her hand on the crotch of his rehab pants. Feeling her hand pet his manhood like it was an animal, he became fully erect and pulled it out, letting it spring free in front of Colleen's face. He could see it reflected in her wide eyes as she stared at it, compelled to use it as tool in her self-destruction. Leaning forward, she wrapped her lips around the head and took the whole mass in her mouth. Her warm wet mouth felt so good around his pulsating erection, and she moved her head back and forth vigorously. Having learned from her tormentors that unsatisfactory effort led to pain, she did everything she could to please whoever was using her. Or perhaps it was just the fact that she was his baby sister that made it feel so good.

As she sucked him off, he reached down and slipped his hand into her panties. He pushed aside the gauze and his hands touched the stitches used to close the tears around the entrance. Ignoring her resulting whimpers of pain, he began to stroke the swollen pudgy lips of her snatch, agitating the wounded tissue. Even in her condition, the stimulation triggered a rise in body temperature and the moistening of her slit.

"Ah! Please don't!" she cried as he inserted his middle finger and stirred it around her insides.

He could feel them, all the mending cuts and contusions inflicted on her by her experience in the bathroom. She was so loose; those girls had really done a number on her cunt. As he added his index finger to the equation, she again begged him to stop. She was playing both roles, desiring to be raped and brutalized while also deeply terrified of such pain and abuse. She wanted more than anything to never experience that horror again, but her twisted soul compelled her to victimize herself. It was these conflicting desires that truly aroused her.

After her third desperate plea, he used his free hand to grab her hair and hold her head still while he forced his cock back in her mouth. Immediately becoming docile, Colleen let her jaw hang slack so that Jason could skull-fuck her. Saliva dripped from the corner of her mouth as he punched the back of her throat over and over again, and not for one second did she break eye contact with him, even when her vagina began to bleed from the agitated wounds. Pulling his cock out of her mouth, he fully undressed and climbed up onto the bed. Without ever losing his poker face, he grabbed her hospital gown and ripped it open, followed by her bra. Had her tits always been this big? Even with the healing lacerations defacing them, her breasts were beautiful, with her nipples fully erect from her horniness.

Colleen blushed in embarrassment as he stared at her breasts, but gave no resistance when he used her bra to tie her hands to the edge of the bed. "Do it," she murmured, "rape me like the disgusting little whore I am. Brutalize me with your cock. That's all your little sister is good for."

The words had no affect on Jason. He was not in the psychotic stage of the Black Stigmata, but he was truly compelled to violate her. He wasn't the cruel monster the nail had made him when he attacked that woman; he was more like a machine, programmed to mindlessly obey its programming. Forcing open her legs, he did not hesitate in ramming his cock deep into her pussy in a single shove. She screamed from the heartless penetration, feeling Jason's dick rip open several interior wounds. Her little sister's pussy hugged his manhood tightly, soaking it in her juices as if she were trying to drown it.

Sitting up on the soles of his feet and pulling out, Jason revealed a liquid sleeve of blood encasing his cock, as if he had just ruptured his sister's long-gone hymen. As soon as he was out, he forced himself back, causing another painful scream from Colleen. Remaining perpendicular to his sister, he took the pace carved into his body by millions of years of reproductive instinct, ramming Colleen's torn pussy over and over again. Every time he entered her, she would release another scream, feeling her wounds reopening and enlarging. With how fast and powerfully he was ramming her snatch, the hospital bed was rocking back and forth with a loud creak and Colleen's breasts bounced and rolled like two water balloons.

His body moving like rapid-fire trebuchet, Jason remained without the slightest expression on his face or any hint of a raised heart rate. He was breathing as calmly as a monk in meditation, while his eyes lay focused on Colleen, from the bouncing of her tits to the look of pain on her screaming face. Her pussy felt so good, like he was fucking a hot fleshlight smeared with Vaseline. He didn't even mind the puddle of blood forming beneath the two of them. After only a few minutes, Colleen's pussy began to quiver and tighten around his cock, and with a raspy voice like that of a crow, she cried out in tandem with her orgasm.

Pulling out of her, Jason immediately flipped her over and spread her ass cheeks, taking a moment to study the stitches and sealed wounds around the ring of her anus.

"Please, no more," Colleen whispered.

Ignoring her begging, Jason spat on her asshole for lubrication and penetrated her with his bloody cock, immediately opening up every healed tear and causing fresh shrieks of agony from his sister. Lying on top of her, he forced her face into the pillow and thrust downwards with his body. The hospital bed didn't have mattress springs to help him lift himself upwards, but he was able to move with general ease. Each time he entered her, he threw his entire body weight down onto her ass, driving as deep into her as was possible. Her anus was certainly loose, it seemed that the sodomy she had suffered at the hands of those three girls had left her with a permanent gape. But still, her ass felt just like Christi's and hugged his manhood with great strength.

Biting down on her pillow, Colleen sobbed in agony as Jason brutally violated her, using her wounded asshole as his own personal fuck toy. He held nothing back in his deep thrusts, and each time he pulled out, blood would splash across the bed sheets. He had his chin resting on her shoulder, listening to her pained whimpers over the sound of their bodies clapping together. For several minutes, the incestuous anal rape proceeded without reprieve or even slowing down. Over and over again, Jason violated his younger sister, but no matter how much it hurt, she never fought back against him or did anything by lie docile, invitingly even.

At last, Jason grew tired of his sister's anus. Sitting up on his knees, he pulled Colleen up on all fours. Though technically, with her hands bound at the head of the bed, it was more like up on all threes. Her ass and inner thighs were caked in blood and her legs struggled to support her weight, but nothing could stop Jason from skewering her womanhood with his erect cock. Having never even bothered to clean it after exploring her asshole, he mounted Colleen and put himself back in her, forcing the lips of her pussy to spread and accept him.

With his hands on her hips, Jason resumed thrusting into her, paying no heed to her painful screams and focusing instead on the sound of her soft ass cheeks clapping against his thighs with each powerful shove. Colleen had her neck bent, watching herself upside-down. She watched closely as her breasts swung each time her brother rammed her pussy, as his scrotum slapped her clit every time he buried himself inside her, and as her blood trickled out of her drop by slow drop, falling freely every time he pulled out.

Changing the placement of his hands after releasing her from her cloth handcuffs, Jason grabbed his sister's hair with his left and reached around and cupped one of her breasts with his right. Pulling her back, he forced her to ride him with her body parallel to his own, putting her in control of how much pain she felt. Though actually, he was only doing this because he could feel an orgasm stirring deep inside him and he couldn't hold it back and continue fucking her. After several minutes of her euphorically throwing her body against his, Jason could feel his self-control wavering. At last, he pulled out of her, flipped her over onto her back, and released stream after stream of thick semen across his sister's chest and face.

Colleen opened her eyes with a trembling gasp, waking up from one of the most vivid dreams in recent memory. She had dreamed that her brother had appeared and raped her, violating both her vagina and her anus until she bled out, and finishing by ejaculating all over her. To her, it was both a terrifying and euphoric experience, but surprisingly, her mind seemed much clearer than it had been before she experienced this haunting vision. No longer did she see herself as the pathetic whore for her brother that her tormentors had forced her to confess as. It was like she had been cursed with a song stuck in her head, and after hearing it from start to finish, she could stop obsessing over it. She had gotten what she wanted, now she could move on. She felt... calm. She felt sane. She felt like she was finally healing.

Wincing in pain, she rolled over in her hospital bed and felt something perplexing. Reaching down beneath the blankets, she probed between her legs. The gauze panties she was wearing were completely soaked, and her pussy was trembling with the aftershocks of an orgasm. Damn, that really was a vivid dream.

"So how's he doing? Still alive I hope?" Professor Nelson asked, speaking to a nurse of the rehab clinic while signing the visitation roster.

"He's ok. He finally stopped screaming a few hours ago but his heart monitor is still reading healthy vitals. Damn, I've never seen or heard someone go cold turkey so violently."

"You have no idea."

Arriving at Jason's cell, Nelson unlocked the door and stepped inside. Jason was sitting in the corner of the room, the heart monitor still hooked up to him. Beside him lay the mouth guard Nelson had given him, chewed up like an old dog toy.

"Is this real?" Jason asked, speaking with a raspy voice while turning to the professor.

Nelson saw it immediately, the change that had occurred in his former student. Jason no longer looked like some clueless nineteen-year-old that was out of his element. He looked utterly traumatized, like a veteran with severe PTSD. But there was also a sense of maturity to his eyes. He had experienced the wraths of Hell, the likes of which no one could possibly comprehend. It had broken him, yet it also made him stronger. Suffice to say, the trials of the real world could never even hold a candle to everything that had just happened in his mind. It would be a while before he could ever experience happiness, but it looked like his suffering had made a man out of him.

"What were you expecting?" Nelson asked, walking over and sitting on the bed nearby.

"I've woken up several times already, or at least I thought I did. You were always there, sometimes with my family or with Christi. Then, just when I'd think I was finally free, my hopes would be crushed. The last time I thought I had woken up, you were here with Christi. She was so happy to see me, and just when she was about to lean over and kiss me, you drew a pistol and blew her brains across the wall. Then you picked up a can of kerosene and used it to light me on fire."

His voice was barely audible, but it came as no surprise. He had just spent more than forty hours screaming in his sleep.

Reaching into his coat pocket, Nelson drew a flask and handed it to Jason. "Well the head nurse confiscated my lighter when I tried to smoke, so setting you on fire would be pretty difficult, even with kerosene. Here, drink this. It's a mixture of honey, maple and cough syrup, brandy, and a fair amount of morphine, everything someone in your condition would need after screaming." Nelson watched as Jason emptied the flask in a single gulp. "I'm surprised to see you like this, normally a patient has to be woken up chemically. I'm REALLY surprised you were able to get out of your restraints. How do you feel? Are you free of the Black Stigmata?"

"To be honest, I feel like shit. I feel a lot fucking better than I did while I was dreaming, but its like my body is remembering all the pain I had suffered. It's like getting a wound and the endorphins wear off. But I have good news: I no longer see the red symbols and I don't hear any whispers. Over forty hours of LSD clashing with the Black Stigmata... Damn it, my normal nightmares were just a few minutes... I now know what Hell looks like, better than any priest or any Satanist.

So what now?"

"Now you recover. You've gotten over the disease, now you need to get over the cure. Afterwards, we start looking for answers."

"What answers could we possibly uncover that the BSC doesn't already know?"

"Answers that the Black Stigmata wanted us to find."