Hero's Dead Brother

35. Room

"Ami, you'll be the godfather of our kids right?"

A beautiful memory came into his dreams as he felt he was slowly waking up. He wished that he never woke up...

When Noah opens his eyes, he finds himself in his dirty room again, in his 15 year old body. As he tries to move, he feels restraints around his wrists.

His whole body aches and his muscles that haven't moved for months hurt. He feels like trapped in a puppet.

He knows that woman way too well to not expect the worst.

When she enters the room, she has a glass of water in her hand and drinks it looking at him. He knows this game way too well. She's going to starve him.

That goes on until he begs her for food or water and gets a beating.

'Not this time. I won't beg her ever again. I'd rather die'.

In the painful hours of not being able to move, with his back, heels and back of his head burning from pressure, he wonders if all that happened to him was just his imagination. If the fact that he read the book just before dying made it an escape room from what was happening to him.

His stomach pain, the headache, the bruises from lying unmoved were nothing compared to that thought.

He wanted it to be real. He needed it to be real. All of that. All the people, emotions, warmth. 'Mother, father, Greg, Caleb. Mika, Joy, Swingler and even scary Kevin... I miss you...'.

After a few days, the woman got impatient. She wanted him to beg but the longer she had to wait, the more impatient and angry she got.

Because he didn't make a sound when she ate and drunk right next to him, she decided to find another way to make him beg.

She took his fingers and started to burn their tips with her cigarettes every time she smoke. Then she started to pinch his nose and mouth so that he couldn't breathe. But he was just staring at the ceiling, not making a sound.

She was beyond annoyed. She became more and more inventive with her tortures and every time she forced his lifeless face to move a muscle, she felt satisfied.

After a few days, she went to her computer that hadn't been used since Mike's death and searched how long a person could live without food and water and the answer made her frown.

One week with no water and about a month with no food. It's been five days.

She took a glass of water, forced his mouth open and poured the water in.

It took him some time to realize that she was trying to prolongate his suffering and he tried to resist. But she pinched his nose again and he started to gasp for air and ended up swallowing all the water.

The ritual continued the following week, then two weeks until she decided that it was time to feed him too.

His back, heels and under his head weren't just burning anymore. They started to develop more and more painful bruises before they started to bleed because of the lack of care and constant pressure from his lying body.

He wanted it to end but she came with a disgusting mix of anarchically random ingredients thrown in a mixer, looking like vomit and started to feed him.

She wasn't human anymore. In her eyes, one could see the deepest void and darkness. Her brain was completely destroyed by all the varieties of drugs she had taken for the last years. She had no empathy, pity or conscience. She was the scariest monster one could imagine, hidden behind an average woman's image.

No one could imagine what she was doing at home as she was shopping, walking outside, going to the hairdresser, buying movies.

It made her feel unique.

She had finally found something that made her feel powerful and important. But what she didn't know was that feeding the child wasn't enough.

The lack of care, the infected wounds, the lack of sleep and blood flow slowly killed the child and on the eighty-seventh day, he was finally gone.

Thank you for reading