No.115
_Justice_
You wake up in a sterile, windowless hospital ward. It is brightly lit by a fluorescent light and beside it is a ceiling fan. You look down and see that your entire body is enveloped by bandages; almost like a cocoon, you are covered from head to toe, but your limbs are still free to move. You attempt to move your right arm but it does not respond. With an extreme force of will, you raise your arm an inch above the bed sheet, only to let it crash back down a moment later as a wall of pain breaches your consciousness and momentarily turns the world into colours. Stars streak across your vision while you promise yourself not to do something like that again. For now, you take the time to observe the room you are in (without twisting your neck; that action appears to be impossible in your current state).
There is little to say about it: its walls have been painted entirely in white and the square tiles are a light grey. Your bed sheets are also white. The metal frame of the bed is light blue. Beside your bed is a stand holding up a bag of intravenous drip, attached by a thin, clear tube to your left arm. Opposite of you is the door out of the tiny, barren room. It is of a beige colour.
As you try to grasp your predicament, your mind slowly begins to drift into the sea of the past. Memories begin to play across your vision like an overlay of film. Images of people running about like ants around a destroyed anthill oscillate in and out of existence. A warm, orange glow spreads upon the walls of the room, flickering, as if there is a flame in the room. You close your eyes, hoping to rid yourself of the hallucinations. However, you rapidly descend into unconsciousness…
No.116
It is dark - not impenetrably dark, for the full moon is casting its silver light through the closed windows that you stand beside. The room you are in is filled with damp newspapers. The aroma of gasoline permeates the air. A trickle of sweat rolls down your forehead as you tighten your grip on your hostage. You have your arm across his chest, restraining him, and your knife near his face.
"P-please, let me go, I-I'll do anything," whispers the old man.
You scrape your knife across the skin of his neck as you tell him, "Shut it."
You look opposite to you and all you see is the glint of the handgun. That is what you focus on as a third voice calmly commands: "Let go of him, drop the knife, and raise your hands slowly into the air." You stand still, reflecting the cop's cold exterior.
"I don't think so," you reply, as you adjust the grip on your victim. You free up your right hand and reach into your pocket to find a detonator, which you take out deliberately and show to the police officer. You let the moonlight illuminate it. "I think you should reconsider your position." You can faintly see the officer scowl and grit his teeth. He holsters his weapon and shows his hands.
"Now, now," he says. "Let's not make any rash decisions here. You'll blow yourself up too." There is a brief pause, during which you smirk.
"I'm counting on it."
You press the button on the detonator.
Someone knocks on the door. You peek through your eyelids to look at it. You try to answer, but nothing escapes your throat. The thing behind the door knocks again, this time, harder, making the door shudder in its frame. A sudden feeling of terror is unleashed in your heart, like a swarm of fruit flies sent into chaos by a wave of one's hand. You try to shout for help, but your mouth is sealed by bandages; instead you make a quiet mumbling sound. The door bangs again. Your eyes widen and your pupils dilate - your breathing becomes a painful hyperventilation and your nostrils are flaring. The door begins vibrating, shaking in its frame. You try to scream but you cannot. Slowly, the vibrations increase in strength. The doorknob is rattling. Despite the pain, you struggle to move, but your body feels though it is made of lead. You are pinned to the bed and there is no escape; there is only one way in and out of the room and that path is obstructed by the very thing that is trying to enter.
Your eyes are rolling in their sockets now. You are inundated by terror and dread. Your stomach is twisting, your insides are swirling, swirling. Madness grips you as you try to make a sound in vain. Your heart is palpitating so fast and so hard that it hurts. Your consciousness and unconsciousness merge into one ultimate, cacophonic will to hide, to flee - but there is no escape.
No.117
The door is shaking so hard that you feel as though it will disintegrate at any moment. Its vibrations wrack the entire room; the stand from which your bag of IV drip hangs is rattling, as is your bed's frame. The entire room trembles in fear, like a child cowering underneath its sheets, hiding from a dark terror behind a closet door. You can make out a distant howling of wind through the sound of the quake; oh, how you wish that it is only as simple as a tornado in the middle of an earthquake. But deep in the dark recesses of your soul, you know that what is outside of the door is far more malevolent than a mere show of violence on nature's behalf. As the unrelenting shaking grows, it slowly invades those recesses of your soul, destroying the barriers between them and your consciousness, bringing the most primal and animalistic nightmares forth; and still, you cannot scream, for help or out of pure trepidation.
With the force of a giant's punch, the door slams open. Silently, you watch in horror as you gaze out of the frame into a black abyss dotted with glistening lights reminiscent of light shining across the backs of a million carapaces. The howling is like the death rattles of a god. Every fibre of your being resonates with the disharmonious music. The storm in is full force now; all of the air feels as though it is being sucked into the fathomless darkness by a whirlwind. Your instinct is to run away, hide in a corner, and screw shut your eyes, but you are fixated upon the fissure of reality. You thrash about in your bed, making muffled croaks, ignoring the spasms of pain that shoot through your limbs and torso, all the while watching that aberrant gap in the wall, as though an abomination would crawl out of it. Your fear is almost palpable.
Finally, as if to collect your terror in a pail, it comes. It first appears as a dark speck moving across the pinpricks of light in the background of the unholy vista. Then, you see it flying toward you; the gallows. The obsidian structure smashes into the floor, shattering into innumerable fragments, which collect by themselves and coalesces once more into that unbearable sight - the gallows. Reflecting upon its hard surface is a conflagration devouring an apartment. Out of thin air, a rope appears above the gallows and ties itself to the hanging arm. The other end stretches towards you and wraps around your neck, wrestling you from beneath your sheets, pulling you to the gallows. You fight to break free - but there is no escape. The door slams shut but the howling continues.
No.118
You cannot tell whether the howling is from the outside or your own voice as you struggle and choke, swinging from the gallows. You claw at the rope around your neck, ignoring the pain that wracks your body. But there is no escape.
There is no escape, not for a criminal like you. There is no escape, not for a failure like you. There is no escape, not for filth like you. There is no escape, not from the despair that strangles you. There is no escape, not from the punishment you sought to cheat with a painless death. There is no escape, not from the suffering eternal. There is no escape.
When the nurses come in to check your status, they open the door and scream. They find you hanging from the ceiling fan, strung up by your IV drip's cord.
You are dead.
No.138
I approve thoroughly and whole heartedly
