Things are getting crazy… newcomers should begin here.
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Have you ever jumped out of a plane? With no prior experience? No parachute for a safe landing? All you can do is close your eyes and pray that you don’t feel the impact. The brave ones keep their eyes open, they watch as the ground slowly gets closer. That’s how I felt in that moment while limping towards the staircase. I was completely unprepared, and my chances of survival were close to zero.
When I was eight, I got kidnapped, and my organs were harvested. I somehow survived and grew them all back. Those words were bumping around in my head, like an old tv’s idle icon bumped around on theblack screen. The more I thought about it, the less I believed it. But I had to believe. I had to, otherwise all hope of bringing my dead friend back to life would be lost.
Chris’s body was heavy, I had him on my back while hunched over, holding him by his arms which were thrown over my shoulders. The tears wouldn’t stop coming.
I kept inching closer, taking small steps while breathing heavily. Once I finally reached the stairs, I hesitated. Everything about it just felt wrong, my mind rung alarm bells and raised red flags. Don’t climb those stairs. It warned me. I gulped down the saliva that had collected on my tongue and took a deep breath. I chose to ignore the warnings my mind gave me, and I took the first step.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” A deep, familiar voice announced it’s presence behind me.
I took my foot off the first step and took my time to turn around to face him. Lucifer stood a few yards away, he still wore the same black suit and black top hat I had seen him wear the day before. Lucifer stood still, like a statue. “I- I have to.” I stuttered back between my dying sobs.
“It is most unfortunate what happened to your friend.” His gaze fell on the headless body on my back.
“I grew the- them back. Maybe he ca- can too.”
Lucifer shook his head. “You’re not in your right mind.” and after a pause, he added. “I can help you.”
“You can bring Chris back?” I felt a tiny sliver of hope. I would have done anything then to bring him back, even sell my soul to the devil.
He bit his lower lip and took a step forward. “I’m not sure if your friend can be saved. He has him now.”
“My friend is on my fucking back!” I snarled back. Lucifer shook his head again. “That is not your friend.” What kind of nonsense is he saying? I let go of Chris’s arms and let his body fall onto the stairs behind me. I turned around and began examining his body. He wore the same clothes, he had the same body build, even his birthmark on the neck was in full view.
I turned to face Lucifer again. He observed everything I did with cool, unbothered eyes. Looking at his red eyes, I noticed how much they reminded me of Iris’s. “Are you Iris?”
Lucifer’s eye twitched at that question, he put his cane down on the ground and took another slow step forward. “You- You have his eyes.”
Lucifer’s stoic face showed the slightest hint of emotion, in the form of a momentary downward curve of his lips.
He opened his mouth and moved his tongue around, as if he was speaking to me. I couldn’t hear a word he said. He broke our eye contact, and then took another step forward, and spoke again. I still couldn’t hear anything.
“I can’t hear you.” I said, but those words weren’t audible to me either. I could feel my mouth and tongue move as it always did, but I couldn’t hear anything.
I wiped away the tears that blurred my eyes and sniffled. I glanced back to look at Chris’s body, feeling another giant pang of guilt, like a sharp knife piercing my heart.
The pain I felt in my heart transfered to my head in the form of migraines. My vision darkened and I blinked, holding my head. Have you ever stood up too quickly and felt lightheaded, your vision darkened and unfocused? That’s how I felt then, multiplied by a hundred. I stumbled around trying not to fall, while desperately trying to blink the overcoming darkness away.
Unfortunately, the lightheadness defeated me, and I felt as I hit the grass below. In similar fashion to the previous visions, it took some time for my senses to return. Once they did, I found myself back in my eight-year-old body. I was in a cabin. Except it wasn’t the log cabin. It was in the cabin in which the kidnapper held me.
I tried to move, but the tight ropes around my wrists and ankles prevented me from doing that. I tried to scream, and unlike the last time I was here, it worked.
“Heeeeelp!” I yelled at the top of my eight-year-old lungs. I yelled and I yelled until I heard footsteps up above. They were heavy. The secret door into the basement opened and a familiar man came down.
His red eyes widened in surprise. “How are you alive?” His deep voice said, more a question to himself, than me. It was Lucifer. I felt my entire body tense up as he got closet, and began inspecting my body. “You no longer have a heart, yet you still live.” I gulped my saliva down and tried to stop the shaking.
Lucifer’s eyes looked like a wild beasts, impatiently waiting for their pray. They were wide. His lips were curved into a wide, creepy grin.
Then, I felt a sharp pang in my chest. With one swift motion, Lucifer pulled his hand out with one of my lungs. I screamed in pain.
“Pain tolerance isn’t high..” He spoke in a clinical tone, as if taking notes.
I felt so helpless. So lost. I just wanted the pain to end, I wished to die.
He shoved his hand into my chest again and I screamed. He clicked his tongue. “That is getting very annoying.” He said in a displeased tone, and then pulled his hand out. He looked me in the eyes, it was as if he was looking at a fly, something he could squash at a moment’s notice.
Lucifer licked his lips and spoke again. “This might hurt.” He forced my mouth open and took hold of my tongue. Then he pulled. I wanted to scream, I wanted to shout. But I couldn’t. My tongue was gone. He ripped it off like it was an old bandaid. I passed out from the pain.
Everything went dark again. I thought the vision was over, and that I’d return. I feared that. Now that I knew Lucifer was behind my disappearance, I didn’t know what he would do to me.
My senses returned to me, and I found myself in a bed. Back in the log cabin. Iris was sitting on the ground beside me.
I just looked at him. I didn’t even know how to begin expressing how thankful I was for being saved from Lucifer. I wanted to ask Iris why my kidnapper had his eyes, but I couldn’t. I was merely reliving the past, I couldn’t change or affect it in these visions.
Iris looked up at me from the ground. his stoic expression curved into a friendly smile. “You’re awake.”
I nodded. He jumped off the ground and walked out of the room. A few moments later he returned with a wooden cup. “Drink.” He instructed, I sat up in the bed and took the cup from his hand. It was the miracle organ regrowing liquid.
There was something off about me. I could live, or survive without any organs and I had somehow regrown my tongue, judging by the fact that I could feel it in my mouth right now.
Am I human?
Iris had his head rested on the bed beside me, his eyes were looking up into mine. I chuckled. Iris smiled. For some reason I still felt tired, sleepy. So I closed my eyes, and drifted off into the darkness.
My senses began returning to me slowly.
I pulled myself off the ground and sat down on the grass, rubbing my eyes. The wind was whistling a calming tune. Then my grogginess cleared, replaced by another migraine. I winced in pain.
“Are you okay?” His deep voice caught me by surprise, it was much closer than before. He only stood about a dozen feet away from me. I hurried to my feet and caught whiff of an awful smell behind me, it smelled like rotten meat left in the sun for too long. I glanced back, Chris’s body still lay there unbothered. Surely his body hadn’t decomposed to the point of beginning to rot and smell in such a short time?
I turned my attention back to Lucifer, desperately trying to keep my face cool, I didn’t want him to know that I remembered. That I saw what he did to me.
Lucifer sighed and took a step towards me. I flinched and instinctively took one back, my foot was touching the first stair. He looked down at my feet with curiosity.
“Why are you backing away? I only want to help.” His voice sounded genuine, innocent. I knew that it was all a ruse, a lie. I didn’t know what to do. My options floated around in my head. Grab Chris and sprint up the stairs, hoping it transports me somewhere safe like that time with Iris. Convince Lucifer that I don’t know anything and pray he doesn’t slay me. Run off into the woods, leaving Chris behind.
I didn’t like any of my options. But I had to chose, and fast.
“How did you find me?” I asked in an attempt to buy some time. What if he was the monster that decapitated Chris? Then a strange thought crossed my mind. Where is Chris’s head?
Surely it would be laying around here, somewhere? I started looking around, trying to spot it, but no matter how hard I looked, it was nowhere to be found. “I figured you’d come to the forest, all I needed to do was follow your shouts and screams.” Lucifer placed his cane forward and took another step. There was now less than 12 feet between us, a distance that could be crossed in mere seconds. One wrong move and my head could fly too.
“Why are you so afraid of me? I’m not here to hurt you.” I bit my lower lip. My nervousness was showing itself in the form of a light tremble. I took another step backwards, planting my foot onto the first stair.
“Don’t.” He raised his voice, and then composed himself and lowered his tone. “Don’t climb those stairs.”
“Why?” I was waiting for an opportunity to grab Chris’s arms and pull him up. I’d rather climb the stairs than face Lucifer.
He sighed. “It’s dangerous.” After seeing that I wasn’t budging, he spoke again.
“Do you remember the two officers that you brought to the collapsed cabin?”
Why was he mentioning them now? What did they have to do with anything? I looked at him, confused.
“They’re missing. Presumed dead.” My eyes widened in horror. But he wasn’t done yet. “Their wives, brutally murdered in their homes. Their limbs scattered all across their homes. And the children,”
He paused, and took a deep breath. Lucifer looked sad, upset. He also looked angry, his eyes were brimming with rage. “Their eyes were gouged out, their tongues ripped out, their hands and feet cut off and their ear drums shattered.” His gaze drooped to the floor and he took another deep breath.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Was it a lie? Was it true? Did Lucifer really kill those families? If so, why? Why was he telling me this? Was he trying to buy my trust?
After breathing out he picked his head back up and looked at me again, the emotion that he had shown in his eyes, on his face, now drained to nothingness again.
“He did this.”
“Who?” I asked.
“He cannot be trusted.”
“Who?” I asked again, louder than before.
Before I realised, Lucifer lept forward towards me, and his cane connected with the side of my head. The impact threw me a few foot to the left, and my stomach connected with the ground, knocking the wind out of me. I coughed, trying to get myself back to my feet.
“Stay down.” He warned, his voice was rougher than before.
I sat up and looked at him with wide eyes. “Stay down.” Lucifer appeared right above me in a split second, his cain pointed straight at my face. He looked me in the eyes, his own showing a glint of remorse. I had missed my chance to escape up the stairs. He turned around and began walking towards the stairs.
“This isn’t your friend.” He said.
“What are you doing! Stay away from his body!” I screamed at him, standing up to follow behind, but I was too late.
I watched in horror as Lucifer placed a hand on Chris’s chest.
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