This chapter is different. It's shorter and written in first person. In the scope of the story, it reads like a parenthesis, an interlude between the second game and the aftermath. The next chapter will come tomorrow as usual!
*Trigger warnings: Ideations of pain and self-harm (explicit & graphic).
I need pain.
I'm a murderer.
Bring me pain.
"Number 41, can you hear me?"
Give it to me.
Rip my heart out.
Reach into my chest and yank it out of me.
Look at it. Look now.
Squeeze it.
Crush it until your fingernails dig into its slimy flesh.
"Number 41, can you tell me if you're feeling this?"
Yes, I feel.
The problem is that I'm not feeling enough.
Feed me pain.
Take a blade and slice into my skin.
Slice through muscles and nerves.
Look at my bone.
Snap it in half.
"You've been bitten quite deeply."
I want pain.
I need pain.
Don't you dare heal me.
I hear the cracks.
Do you know the sound of a skull slammed against the ground?
I do.
"Trainer Malfoy, you shouldn't be here."
Who said murder was the gravest sin of all?
Was it God?
Did I lose the only splinter of light I had left?
Could you please break me?
Pick any bone you want.
And break them.
One by one.
I need pain.
Physical pain.
Something, anything
to balance the torture in my mind.
"No, she doesn't seem to be responding."
I have never killed anyone.
I couldn't even kill a cat.
But today I killed.
I killed for him.
For them.
And blood is in my hair.
I stink of death.
My heart smells of ash.
"I've applied salve to her arm, but she hasn't spoken yet."
Scar me, hurt me, damage me.
Please, anything.
PLEASE.
I just need some kind of relief.
A shard of glass under my tongue.
The edge of a blade on my jugular.
A needle through my eye.
The pain is dimming in my arm.
It's unacceptable.
"Number 41, don't touch the wound!"
I think there are several hands on me.
I don't count them.
The only thing I'm touching is the depth of me.
The death of me.
Tell me what is right.
What is wrong.
Are we born good or bad?
What happens when the shadows take over?
What happens when you can't undo what you've done?
What happens if you would do it all over again?
What does that say about you?
"Granger, look at me."
This is the birth of death.
The birth of a permanent pain.
The birth of a villain.
A forever scar.
Something is beating somewhere.
I think it's my heart.
But I can't be sure.
Because it sounds like skulls on the ground.
Listen to me.
I need you to harm me.
Dunk my body in boiling oil.
Melt my skin with the fire of a thousand suns.
Take a quill and pierce my lungs.
Watch them deflate.
"What the fuck is wrong with her?"
You are a killer.
You are a monster.
You are nothing.
You don't deserve to live.
You don't deserve to breathe.
To sleep.
To eat.
To only thing I am willing to give you
is pain.
Bottomless,
irreversible
pain.