⚠️ WARNING: LEVEL 3
+21
Excessive Gore
+
Hallucinations
+
Sensory & Cognitive Hazards
ـــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ
David tightened his vice-like grip on Marcile, while Tiffany produced a sheet of sandpaper, attempting to scrub his blackened face with it as if cleaning a stain. Marcile thrashed, trying to evade the rough grit.
Kylie spoke up,
"I love Gerald's hands. Come help me."
Gerald stepped forward—an old man with a pointed mustache and beard whom Milo had never seen before. Meanwhile, Kylie drew a small knife and began slashing Marcile's wrists. A fountain of blood sprayed out, coating the area, while David clamped his hand over Marcile's mouth, stifling his screams.
Kylie and Tiffany grabbed the sandpaper, and with the help of the others who had arrived to hold him down, they began scraping his face violently.
Shhh... Shhh... Shhh...
Amidst his muffled, gurgling screams and desperate attempts to escape, the person holding Marcile's feet spoke up:
"Lady Kylie, Honorable Tiffany... at this rate, you will never finish."
Tiffany paused.
"You're right. This isn't how I imagined it."
"Try this."
Another figure grabbed Marcile's legs, allowing the speaker to stand. He pulled a potato peeler from his bag and raked it forcefully across Marcile's face.
The scream intensified, and Marcile began to weep, thrashing wildly as a long strip of flesh was peeled away. The man punched him in the face, ordering him to be quiet.
Marcile, in his agony, tried to bite the man's hand with his bloody mouth. The man taunted him, moving his hand closer to Marcile's teeth.
"Here, bite it."
Tiffany fashioned a tool similar to the man's. Marcile tried to bite again but failed. As he attempted it a third time, Kylie and Tiffany began flaying his scalp with the peelers. His body seized in agony, and foam began to leak from his mouth amidst his convulsions.
Milo could not handle the sight, nor could he leave. He had to stay by Tiffany's side. Finding no other solution, he retreated into himself, squeezing his eyes and ears shut.
One of the 'Honorable Ones' from the Sixth Root, a man named Zephyr whom Milo had also never seen, entered the circle.
"I brought the salt."
He began sprinkling it onto Marcile's raw face, rubbing it into the exposed muscle.
Another Honorable stepped forward.
"What is this nonsense? I have a better idea..."
He produced a bottle of alcohol, smashed it violently over Marcile's head, and struck a light. Marcile's screams became hellish, rising in pitch as he flailed, but he was held down firmly. Blue fire danced over his head while the gang laughed. Another member walked up and poured his glass of wine onto the burning flesh.
After some time, Marcile's bloodcurdling screams faded, as if his pain receptors had been completely destroyed, revealing a charred skull. His face had melted onto his clothes like wax, parts of it still flickering with blue flame as he whimpered, begging them to kill him.
Kylie, who had previously saved Milo, spoke:
"Come here, Milo. Bring me that piece of wood."
She pointed to a sturdy wooden stake.
Milo, disoriented by the surreal horror of the scene, had wet his pants. He ran to retrieve the stick but, in his confusion, handed it to Tiffany instead of Kylie.
The two friends stared at each other before bursting into laughter.
"He's afraid of me and hiding behind you,"
Kylie sneered. "What a cowardly dog."
"See? I told you he's cute," Tiffany replied, looking at David. "Make him lie down."
Tiffany handed the wooden stake back to Milo.
"Put this in his mouth and hold his head steady."
Milo obeyed the command, jamming the wood forcefully into Marcile's mouth. Tiffany tore a piece of her shirt and manifested a sharp, glass-like knife. She began slashing randomly, opening deep wounds until the flesh parted and blood welled up. Marcile tried to scream around the stake, so David stomped on his nose, shattering it. The scream turned into a wet, snoring sound.
Kylie began cutting at his neck. She didn't want to decapitate him—not yet—but inflicted random, jagged cuts amidst the comical snoring sound of his agony. Marcile tried to push her away with his bound hands, but his strength was gone. He stared at Milo with his black and red skull, his broken nose, one eye burnt white and the other faded and dull. He looked as if he were pleading, Kill me, trying to provoke Milo's pity to end it.
Milo stood frozen. The sheer gore of the scene was searing itself into his memory; if this didn't cause permanent psychological damage, nothing would. Milo was not okay.
Tiffany stood up and placed her feet on either side of Marcile. With her glass blade, she drew a long horizontal line across his shoulders and began to skin him. Marcile's convulsions increased. Tiffany gripped the flap of skin and yanked it backward with force.
Rrrrip... Shhhhk...
The sound of tearing meat filled the air. Pink and white flesh mingled. The salt-bearer returned, rubbing the granules into the fresh wounds.
Tiffany laughed.
"Strong boys have so much meat."
She continued peeling in bursts until his abdomen was exposed. She then sliced his belly open lengthwise. Viscera began to spill out, and the thick, acrid stench of bowels hit Milo, overpowering him. She continued until she reached his chest, plunging her hand into his abdomen to pull out the guts, shoving them aside to tear at the internal organs.
Marcile stopped gurgling and simply twitched.
"Wooow, he's still alive."
Milo broke. He couldn't take it anymore. He threw the wooden stake down, fled outside, slammed the door, and curled up in a ball, weeping. The image of Marcile's bloody skull would not leave his eyes.
"D-Did you see? I t-told you that you would go out and everyone would d-die."
Milo raised his head to see who was speaking... It was the monster from the window. It was twice his height, a body of pure darkness with no discernible details other than protrusions that looked like spears.
It tried to approach Milo, who had surrendered to his fate.
Suddenly, Tiffany slammed the door open and stepped out, her hands coated in blood.
"Oh, Angel of Darkness! You are invited to dinner with us."
The Dark Angel looked at her. "And you are the guest of honor. Just leave him, please. You can sit over there." She pointed to the fire in the center of the camp.
As the Dark Angel walked away, Tiffany grabbed Milo by the arms.
"I told you, you idiot, don't wander away from me! Lucky for you, my aura has a wide range. Otherwise, the trees would literally tear your body apart and grow out of you."
She paused, a playful glint in her eyes.
"Let me show you something."
She pulled out an organ.
"Look at Marcile's heart. It's still beating a little."
Milo vomited while she laughed.
"Alright, come sit with me."
They went to sit on a log. She placed Milo between herself and the Dark Angel. She extended her hand—which looked human now—and placed it on Milo's thigh. A shiver ran through his entire body. Tiffany laughed silently, hugging him with genuine affection, rubbing her nose against his.
The gang began to gather around the fire. Creatures of the night began to emerge—shapes that looked like hallucinations. Milo could hear strange voices, sounds that resembled incantations, words that were understandable yet nonsensical all at once.
Tiffany stood up, and Milo followed her like a shadow. She met her maid, Dima.
"Isn't it time to eat yet? You're late for our guests."
"Apologies, Honorable Mistress. We were just looking for some tools."
"Ugh, damn it. I'll make them for you."
After some time, one of Zephyr's followers arrived with the appetizers. They were human heads, cleaned of blood and impurities, looking like decorated art pieces. David cracked open the skulls, displaying the brains which had been prepared to look like scrambled eggs mixed with spices and ingredients. In their mouths were glass spoons and knives, decorated with cracks that looked like lightning.
A head was given to Milo. He nearly threw up again, but David stared him down. Milo forced himself to stop and watched as David gestured for him to taste it...
Milo tried the appetizer—if he didn't, his head would likely be the next course. The taste was... delicious. Tears streamed down Milo's face as he ate.
Tiffany finished hers and began licking the face and lips of the head, biting them, tearing them off, and chewing them like gum before spitting them out.
"Yuck. Gross. I imagined they would taste like marshmallows."
Then came the main course...
It was roasted human meat, gutted and cleaned. Dorian, one of the Honorables from the Sixth Update, spoke up:
"Don't give me meat with balls. I want girl meat."
"I want a girl's breast,"
said another.
"I want a rump."
Tiffany turned to Milo.
"And you? What do you want?"
Milo, suffering from repeated shocks, could no longer speak. She took a hand and gave it to him.
"Try pulling the thumb off, like this... See? It's tender, just like a chicken drumstick."
She ate hers, then tore Milo's off and shoved it into his mouth forcefully, watching his pupils dilate.
"See? It's delicious."
David spoke in a mocking tone.
"Did you see that old man? He intended to throw the boy into the fire to join his accursed religion."
Another replied,
"Haha, despite all their precautions, here they are, dead. They will be tortured forever in the afterlife."
Dorian looked at Milo with a grin and a malicious tone.
"You're lucky, boy. You could have been cooked food right now next to them if she hadn't defended you."
Milo blushed.
"Do you love her?"
Milo looked at Tiffany. She gazed back with innocent, beautiful eyes that made him forget everything he had just seen. Her voice was childish and wheedling, her lower lip trembling.
"Will you marry me? We can get married right now."
Milo thought for a second, blushing deeper. He gathered himself and said,
"Yes."
The faces of the others shifted as if suppressing laughter. Dorian handed him one of his rings and ordered him to put it on her finger. He did, and some of them applauded.
Dorian continued,
"What will you two do now?"
"Uhh..."
"Will you let her sleep alone?"
Milo sensed danger. His face burned. He heard someone whisper to a friend,
"Haha, the kid is a pervert."
The deadly silence and the focused eyes made him tense. Milo looked to his source of safety.
He looked at Tiffany, who was still watching him with those red, innocent eyes.
"No,"
he said.
"I don't want her to sleep alone."
"And what will you do in bed? How will you make babies?"
Milo turned as red as a tomato, practically steaming.
"You know how."
"I don't know. I sleep alone. I don't sleep with anyone. Tell me and teach me how babies are made."
Milo wished the earth would split open and swallow him. He didn't want to desecrate Tiffany's beautiful body with thoughts of sex, which he associated with the shame of his pornography addiction.
David barked,
"Come on, speak!"
Tiffany wrapped her arms around him as he covered his face. She laughed, mocking the group.
"Don't bother my husband, he's shy."
She looked at Milo.
"He's just joking, trying to trap you in conversation. Don't be embarrassed."
Milo's tears began to fall. Her embrace tightened, the warmth of her lap and the beauty of her scent overwhelming him. His brain, unable to handle the collision of conflicting emotions from the night, finally shut down.
Milo passed out.