Chương 14: The Devil's Bargain:The Absurdity of Friendship
It's been weeks since Alvin died, two weeks since I gained my consciousness, four weeks since we've been in hell. That's a whole month since the beginning of the apocalypse, a whole month of round the clock and back to back torture. As time passes our grasp of it goes along with it as well, most people forget days, weeks and some have forgotten what month we are in. Not as if the concept of time matters once you're in hell, you don't need it after all you have all the time in the world.
The time I've spent in hell though hasn't been a waste, I've gotten to learn how this prison works a bit. First of we have the order in torture. Everyone from every cell has a partner they are tortured along-side with. I'm pared up with Isabel, Cayafaz is paired up with Mr. Will and others from other cells are paired up like that also. The way our cells are identified though isn't exactly clear, there are no numbers or alphabets used in addressing our cells by the demons they just call them cages. It would seem as though they have all the cells and location in mind… Well it would seem that way but I've caught them speaking about our cells and calling them names that don't sound like any language from the human race. Other than the torture though we do still eat and sleep but we can't tell when its day or night from where we are being hung. So, if were not being tortured, eating or doing something else were sleeping. The torture isn't inhumane… well depending on your definition of the word, but at least its reasonable. Each person is tortured for the minimum of two hours, maximum of four. Depending on your behavior and other factors. But after your tortured your giving three to four days of rest before being tortured and how your tortured depends on your fears or weaknesses.
Speaking of weaknesses. The clown hasn't tried to torture me the same way again since Alvin died… in fact, he hasn't spoken to me or tortured me personally since then. He always sends some lacky to do it. He's acted like nothing at all happened since Alvin's death! While I thought this to myself a demon suddenly appeared before our cage and called us for torture. The people in my cell were resting but not asleep so I and Isabel got up ready to head to the chamber for our usual routine.
Usually Isabel would kick and scream and fight anyone who tried to take her to the chamber, she wouldn't allow it. she would struggle before you could get her there but weeks of round the clock torture will do something to you. And I can't blame her for loosing her spirit, the clown brutally used her fears against her and made all of them a reality. After all she was my torture partner so I watched her sometimes as part of my torture. I was forced to watch her suffer. My eye lids were held with metal hooks to keep me from blinking and a gear was placed on my head to prevent me from turning away. If I tried to turn her head my neck would break and I'd die or the hooks would tear the eye lids off of my eyes either way. There was no way around it. I watched as she was raped, beaten, sometimes eaten by some sort of insect or bitten by animals or monsters on sensitive places. These were even the decent and bearable ones. I learned after two weeks that Isabel had a lot of fears and after two weeks Isabel wasn't… Isabel.
Anyway, I walked towards the exit of the cage with Isabel right behind me but the demon says to us
"I'm afraid the boy is the only one who will be coming"
With a puzzled expression I lean in to ask the question
"Why"
"There was no reason, his master simply only called for you. That is all"
"Oh, alright then"
Just when we were about to leave the demon stops suddenly and turns back to call two others from the cage
"You two, come with us"
The two people the demon called in question were a boy and a girl, a couple that was brought to hell together and had been staying in the same cell together. There have been what they call periodic flushes, where those who die from torture are flushed out and newly captured humans are brought in. these two joined us during one of the flushes. The couple look at the demon and raise their head. The boy Nathan asks
"Us?"
The demon responds "Yes both of you"
The girl Maya asks
"What do you think they want to do with us?"
Nathan gives a big smile to Maya to try and calm her nerves and he says to her
"Don't worry Maya. Whatever it is we will find out together"
The two stand up and we live together with the demon. I don't criticize them for having a relationship but… I don't think… Oh well, whatever. When we finally got to the room
"Ah If it isn't Edward, so good to see you my boy"
"So, you're back. That means you'll be torturing me personally?"
"Oh, my dear boy you have no idea how much I've missed you, I've been so busy because the lord of the south, that's the reason why I haven't been able to torture you so please don't be angry with me its his fault. I'm sorry I kept you waiting
"it sounds like you had your hands full, torturing other people?"
"Yes, that is what the lord called me for but it just wasn't the same. I missed my own prisoners" He says as he embraces me warmly. I respond
"God knows I haven't missed you"
"Oh eddy, now your just being cold and mean"
Maya speaks up "Um…Sir? You called us here"
"Ah yes that's right, I did call for a couple to come to the chamber" He picks up a clipboard from a stool nearby and flips a couple pages
"Are you a… Maya? Maya price"
"Uh, Yes sir!"
"And you a Nathan? Nathan Summers?"
"Yes sir"
He writes a couple things down while mumbling the words "Very good, very good"
"I was going to torture you guys but that will have to wait, your schedule clashed with his so ill have the demon who brought you here take you to another room and the both of you will be tied down to wait for me there. Is that clear?"
The both respond "Yes sir" The demon then walks them passed a transparent curtain leading down a corridor to another room
"Well they were pretty complacent don't you think Eddy?"
"They are in hell at the end of the world, I'm sure they can understand resistance is futile they are to afraid to do anything but obey their current masters. You can't really raise the scales of fear any more than that"
"Oh really? You see eddy I don't think that's true. I've come to understand sometimes the fear of something coming when nothing might actually come is of even greater torture to the mind than any pain you could inflict on the body. Expectation alone isn't a very powerful weapon itself, but when used properly…it can kill"
I guess he's right, I've seen cases were the expectation of death had caused death itself. A man was to be killed by firing squad, a man who committed; Rape, assault, murder, kidnapping, Theft and many more. The firing squad lined up to shoot him and the criminal was tied to a pole a couple meter's away. After the count the marshal gave the firing squad used all their rounds at once and fired at him. Congrats the man had died successfully, but it wasn't the bullets that killed him. When they checked not a single bullet had hit him, the entire squad missed their shots even with all the rounds they fired. But the man was dead indeed. You could say expectation killed him but in truth it was that combined with his fear and fast paced heart beat that caused the heart attack that killed him… So, I guess we can say without a doubt expectation does kill
"Anyway, enough about them, I have much more interesting things for us to discuss. The things I did in the south tower"
"Alright clown, we can talk. But before that I have to ask you"
"Huh? What is it?"
"You created the partner system in this prison for order in torture and the partner I'm supposed to be tortured alongside is Isabel" I turn to give him a good look in the eye
"So why? Why is it upon just coming back to us you call me here alone. Just what exactly are you planning"
He gives a cringy smile and says
"You'll see soon, my guest will be arriving shortly so just be patient"
"How long until this "Guest" Arrives?"
"It should be in an hour"
"What do we do till then"
He strokes his chin and hums for a bit "Well I wont torture you if that's what your asking. Instead we will pass the time talking"
"Alright then" I said to him as I walked calmly to the table ready to be strapped down. After a while of the clown preparing his instruments for us to be tortured with. While he did this the clown decided to start up a conversation
"Two weeks away from my equipment, it's only been that long and yet it feels so wrong"
"Just what exactly was it you were doing for two weeks that would make you leave our equipment? Also, if u didn't want to go why did you?"
"I didn't have a choice. I was summoned to the south for my skills by the lord of the south himself. Before this making the journey would have been simple but now the tower is in the world of the living so it's a four-day trip by air to his place"
"What was it he needed you for anyway?"
"Oh, it was nothing serious. Just the normal job of torture, getting someone to bend to your desires. That sort of thing
"Ah, then you must have had some fun"
"Yes, I actually did have a little bit of fun, but what was most fun was this quack preacher I was suppose to torture. He was the kind of man who stole money from his congregation in the name of god, performed false miracles, the people he got to do the miracles were actors he paid off, slept with the women in his congregation. The list goes on"
"Wow…just wow"
"Yeah" He grabs a small handkerchief and wipes his hands clean from the grime and dust from the devices and goes on to say "He was a real piece of work, I mean after all the crap he did without any regard for god, this man when he was faced with torture starts to cast me in the name of Jesus Christ. Can you believe it?"
The both of us laugh about it as he throws down the handkerchief after cleaning
"I have to say he was a pig and by far the funniest guy I had tortured there, the other ones weren't to interesting because they committed suicide, others lost their minds out of fear, some died from shock and well the others who couldn't believe that the world was coming to an end simply shut down. Incapable of accepting what most had try to deny their whole lives"
"Yeah it isn't easy, acceptance never is"
"But eddy"
"What is it?"
"I rebuke you in the name of the one who is above every other"
I give into his jokes and play along
"Oh my… no, no please, please don't send me back to hell, I don't want to, I don't want…. heh-heh-heh. I'm sorry I can't do that with a straight face"
"I know right?! You can imagine how I reacted when he did that, it was beyond funny and sad"
I didn't even know how or when I had gotten so carried away. I'm in hell being tortured weekly, I'm treated worse than a criminal and there's no hope of me ever leaving this place, and I have done nothing but suffer. I haven't had any reason to be happy since I woke up but yet… here I am. Alongside a demon… Laughing? We're laughing like two classmates about other people's suffering like we have no care in the world, a human and a demon sharing a laugh over a story like old friends? This is absurd. You can't become friends with your captors, a slave can't be friends with his master so you can't become friends with demons. Is what I thought but later on I found out the clown didn't feel the same way. After he had got himself together and stopped laughing he suddenly said to me
"Edward, be with me"
"Is that another joke of yours, come on your going to make me choke from laughing just stop already"
He walks up to the table and slams his left hand into it at the side of my head then grabs my chin with his right hand and pulls closer to him. He gives me a deep look into my eyes. It feels like he's trying to pierce my soul
"I mean it Edward. Don't you want to be free of this constant suffering? You don't even need the devils mark I can give you an alternative"
"And what would that be?"
With a smile on his face as he pulls me in even closer he says to me
"I could make you a demon"
"Oh please! I really don't want to hear this"
"I mean it Edward. Don't you know that demons can give gifts? If not me someone else could always make you one and then you wouldn't have to suffer, you could be by my side until this is over without feeling any pain, you can be your own man and never have to follow anyone else's rules"
I continue to ignore him
"Ask yourself Edward, why serve in heaven when you can rule in hell?"
"Stop being a slave to lower demons so I can become a slave to higher ones, that's what your offering me? Because that's all it sounds like to me"
The clown has lost his temper at this point and out of frustration he slaps one of the equipment in a fit and it smashes against the wall
"You fool! *crash* Can't you see your not like the others? Your special, I'm special, special people like us deserve to be in a special place"
"How could you have lived all this time and yet not figure it out? Special people don't exist, there isn't such a category of people in this world. You've transcended your human form is what you think and become a demon, you've lived all these years and still you don't get that? The people who are considered special are a group of people categorized by what others decided what it was to be normal and abnormal, they are the trash that don't fit anywhere in the world … The Outcasts, that's all you and I are…Nothing but the outcast of the people who drew the line between normal and abnormal"
"And so what? What's wrong with being a little different? Being a little like me? You would have a better chance at life, a good life"
"A good life? Seriously? Oh my God" I turn my head in the opposite direction in disapproval. A better life? How could he honestly look at me and say that to me with straight face? First, he tells me about being special and now "a good life" What a joke, these are both things that don't exist. So far, I've been patronized by an angel and a demon. One has pushed me to go on with my humanity, defy everything and achieve the goals I'm striving for. Either because he believes I can do it or for his entertainment. And here I have a demon asking me to forsake my humanity, dreams, desires, so that I can keep on living. At a cost, I have to descend to his level. He says he knows me, tells me I'm special, he thinks I'm like him… but he's made a fatal mistake, because no matter what offer I'm giving I concern myself more with my death than my life. Meaning…I don't want to live at all, id rather be dead than live in a world without her, a world without Akira
"So, what will it be Edward, what is your decision"
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