Fourth chapter of this science fiction novel. I've been working on a short story right now, so that's why Solitude Adventures is in a small hiatus right now, nonetheless I bring to you Chapter 4. I'm thinking on posting this short story than I'm currently working on in chapters because it got way longer than the story I originally envisioned. I don't even know if it's a short story anymore, but I guess that I'll posting it here while I finish it. I hope you enjoy this new chapter, and thanks for reading.
Piece of Heaven
The brutal sound of water was the only thing that surrounded my head at that moment; I didn't need to open my eyes to see what was going on. Time passes slow in the waters but fast at the same time; so slow to realize its empty harmony yet so fast that you're not longer aware that you're not there. My feet were stepping on solid ground, my eyes were still closed, a tree behind me, a rope in front of me and a fist inside my stomach. Being tied up is no funny business folks.
"You're a hard son of a bitch to find, I'll give you that" he said as he punched my face next.
I open my eyes and I look at him. I didn't even know the guy, yet he saved my life and was about to take it away. I guess that you should know the name of the person who did those two things to you.
"I almost drown trying to get your sorry ass... but it was worth it" he punched once again in the stomach and I started to spit blood.
"What is your name?" I asked him with my blooded voice.
"What, my name?" he asked me back.
"Well yeah, you just saved my life and now you're going to kill me, I guess I should know your name"
He got closer to me and then he grabbed my neck; I clearly saw his face smiling. He was a little bit younger than me, with dark hair and from Asian decency, probably Japanese.
"But I'm not going to kill you sweety, not yet" he then grabbed my hand and he pulled out a knife that was under his pocket.
A part of me thought that I was already dead and that this place was some kind of hell with my torturer in front of me, but then I quickly realize that I was still alive. The knife went through my hand as if it were butter, now I know the pain that Jesus Christ himself felt and let me tell you folks... it's no funny business.
Immediately after that, he began to twist the knife. The more he twisted, the more he smiled. I screamed at levels that I wasn't even aware that I could.
"What is your goddamned fucking problem?!" he smiled even more while I was screaming that.
When the knife gave a rotation of one hundred eighty degrees inside my hand, he pull it out. My hand was a fountain of blood.
"I guess that's the problem" he said while he was cleaning the red knife with his white shirt. "You see, I didn't even paid you to hack up my exam, I was one of the few ones who actually passed by their own".
He grabbed my other hand and he did the same thing.
"I just heard that the guys were up to kill someone tonight and I just decided to join in."
And that moment, I finally realized who that fucker was, I resolved and long forgotten mistery in probably the worst way possible. A few years ago, a series of horrible murders took place inside and outside the school, must of them we're girls who had been tortured and then killed by a series of painful knife wounds, finally they we're crucified in the forest. He quickly became known between us as the Stigmata Killer, this was the first major treath that we faced together, and what did we do? we immerged ourselves in fear and paranoia. The Stigmata Killer was one of us, but who? we couldn't trust in anyone, we couldn't trust in ourselves. We had a serial killer in our school, he had killed seven girls already and we didn't know what the hell to do. We were expecting that the Luvic Corporation would carry an investigation about this, but they never came. We filled the report at docent times but we knew that this was not even necessary, they had systems of surveillance, they knew what was going on here... or at least we thought they knew. The Stigmata Killer episode was a particular devastating one, because after that, we knew that the surveillance systems of Luvic Corporation were no longer activated, those systems represented the law and the order of this civilization and they were no longer there. There was nobody watching us, no punishment for crimes, it became just another planet without law.
Seeing that no one else responded to the treat, a friend of mine and I decided to investigate the case but we didn't resolved anything, the Stigmata Killer left no tracks, nothing, it was almost impossible to trace him. After a few more kills he just stopped, there we're no more killings left, the Stigmata Killer disappeared, but the damage he made to us was almost beyond repair, when everybody figured out that there was no surveillance in our planet, violence, crimes and murders became pretty normal in this new civilization of ours. This changed nothing for me, until this precise moment in which everybody was trying to kill me. I was always a criminal but I worked in the shadows without harming anyone, but now, with this paradigm shift, working in the shadows seemed redundant.
"You were one of those bastards who was trying to track me down eh?" said the Stigmata Killer.
I found this practically unclimatic, I didn't even know who this guy was, he was just a skinny little dude who looked really sick and weak, I couldn’t believe this person would be able to cause so much chaos.
"Why did you stop killing?" I asked him.
He walked near me and he took my right hand, he quickly purred some kind of spray over it and my hand began to heal immediately, once this happened, he stabbed the knife once again.
"I stopped killing because I stopped receiving orders" he responded while I was screaming. He was rotating the knife even more slowly than the last time.
"What the hell are you talking about, orders from whom?"
"You don't need to know, you're going to die anyway and I don't think that you would understand it."
"I'm gonna die? So you have orders to kill me?"
He didn't respond to my question and he proceeded to the torture.
My screams became a permanent resonance in the woods, unfortunately, the attention that they demanded wasn't met, but I don't think it would have made any difference otherwise. Soon, he was going to move to the kill, a victim more, this was not vengeance, no revenge of any kind, just a pointless homicide, I guess that I preferred to be killed by someone who really had strong intentions and good reasons to kill me, like any of the other fellas.
Now, the knife was inside my right shoulder, this was the greatest moment of pain in my entire life, a part of me felt that I was about to black out, I guess that wasn't a bad idea after all. The pain was beyond my limits of resistance and this weren't going to get nicer, so I was preparing to close my eyes and say good bye to everything I ever knew, when suddenly, an event that saved my life and change my entire perception of the world occurred.
It all began with music, I started to hear music and I wasn't the only one, he was listening to. To be honest, it wasn't music; they were just sounds, really powerful resonances that seemed to have some kind of harmony. The sounds became louder, like if they were approaching the place we we're on. He pulled the knife out of my shoulder, the pain moved around my entire body and my scream was the loudest of the night, but it was also silent, for the sounds were to loud and powerful that my scream became silenced by them. He began to look around us, trying to find the direction in which the sound we're coming from, but there was no direction, the sounds we're all around us, they came from all directions.
Suddenly, he stopped to look around and he froze completely, as if he had just made some kind of realization, he dropped the knife, and he grabbed his head with his two hands. Somehow, he knew what those sounds meant, and he began to worry as they approached, he looked at me and then he looked at his hands, all tainted with my blood, the sounds we're near and he tried to clean his hands, of course it was impossible.
When he realized he couldn't clean the red of his hands, he began to cry. He began to weep like a little baby. He then quickly run towards me and healed my shoulder with that spray he previously used. I saw his face and his tears closer, his eyes we're full of terror and regret, as if he was asking for forgiveness or something of that kind. Immediately, he picked up the knife that he had drop and he headed towards me once again.
I was sure that this was going to be the final moment; it seemed that his time was running low, for some reason, and he was just going to finish me off quickly. I was just praying that he didn't cut off my throat; that was the worst death imaginable, a death without screams, however, filled with blood, pain and slow agony.
He went behind the tree and I knew that he was going to do it that way. I closed my eyes and hoped that my dead would be faster than I thought. I felt a shallow coldness in my neck, the sounds approached more and more, my neck felt colder and colder, exposed, waiting for the final cut. A final cut did happen, but my neck was still intact; the rope that was around me was the one that received it. The Stigmata Killer (or whoever he was) freed me from his own trap; he rescued me from his own attempt of homicide.
I felt to the grass, tired and weak, the sounds had reached us, even though my body had never experienced these kinds of extreme circumstances, I got up quickly. The Stigmata Killer pushed to the other side. He was still crying, desperately, but he was also screaming something at me, of course I wasn't able to hear anything because of the beautiful sounds that apparently saved my life. I didn't understand a thing he said to me, but I didn't need to, his two arms we're clearly telling to get the hell out of there, to run as fast as I could, and I did as I was commanded.
While I was running away, which actually was at a much slower speed than the one that you're imagining, I could help but to ask myself: "what the hell did it just happen?", "why he didn't kill me?", "what the hell we're those sounds?". I had to know, I had to go back and see what those sounds were, yes I know, probably one of the most stupid decisions that someone in my situation could have made, but after all, I don't need to explain myself to you, you don't need to know how fucked up I am.
As I returned to the scene of the almost crime, the sounds we're still there, I was hiding in the trees, approaching really slowly, trying to find my friend. The sounds finally stopped and immediately after that, I saw him. He was kneeling down and facing the ground, his hands were in his pockets and he was still crying. I noticed that he was saying something, I thought that he was prying or something like that, so I approached a little bit to find out. Now, a little bit closer, I could clearly listen to what he was saying, unfortunately, I couldn't understand a word; he was speaking in Japanese. However, I quickly noticed something, he said a short stream of words, then he stopped, then he said another stream of words, stopped once again, he then raised his head, showed his red hands and screamed something as if it there was someone in front of him. He was having a conversation. I put my hand inside my right pocket, and found that my pocket recorder was still intact. I quickly started to record everything that he was saying, so that later I could find a program able to translate it.
I still wanted to know with who he was speaking with, his voice was the only voice I could hear, so, once again, I moved a little bit further to see if someone else was there. To my surprise, there was no one. I quickly look at him once again, and I couldn't see any kind of attachments or gadgets in his ears, eyes or head. It was easy to dismiss him as a complete lunatic, after all he was a serial killer, but, what's up with all of those sounds that we previously heard. I clearly felt that something was approaching and he to. It was unlike anything that I have heard or experienced before. I knew that it I wasn't just watching a lunatic speaking with himself, there was something more to this, there was something else going on.
He stood up, he was still talking and crying, I was recording everything. After talking and crying a little bit more, he hugged the air. He just jumped and hugged the air as if he was hugging someone, he then cried some more. "What the hell is going on?" that was the only thought in my mind. After hugging the air for a couple of minutes, he stopped and he cleaned his tears. He was nodding his head, as if he was listening to someone, he then stopped nodding, he stopped moving completely for a second. He suddenly turn around and look exactly at the place where I was hiding. He saw me.
At that precise moment, I thought that I had probably recorded enough. In less than a second, I put my recorder inside my pocket, turn around and I just ran; this time, at a much faster speed than the one that you're imagining.