DoomPet

Chapter 31

The man tried humming to distract himself from the pain, that, and the charred corpse of his comrade that sat slouched over on the floor right next to him. He was kneeling on the rough stone floor with his head pressed up against the bars, humming away as if he were a happy go lucky drunk patron of a bar. The humming did help for a few short minutes until he remembered the bruises and scrapes the floor gave his knees and how his skin was being slowly scorched off his body by extreme demonic radiation.

When they first put him in the cages deep under the floor, he could only feel a wall of searing pain, but now it came in waves, burning and blistering one minute and barely hurting the next. Looking down, he saw the skin on his hands was almost completely charred off, only blisters and bits of red skin held his tendons from popping out.

He wanted to leap up and scream and tear his sizzling skin off. It felt like bugs were eating him alive, wriggling in between his muscles and tendons, crawling inside his skull.

He screamed, slamming his head against the bars. "GET THEM OFF ME! GET THE BUGS OUT OF MY HEAD!" He wanted to collapse and writhe in pain but he knew he'd die if he gave into it. He stopped slamming his head, once again slowly pressing it against the bars and whimpering, waiting for some release from this hell.

In total he was in the radiation cages under the blisteringly powerful gaze of pure argent energy for five days. He couldn't remember much since his mind blocked out the pain, and the memories.

When they finally took him out he was almost seventy pounds lighter, a skeleton of what his muscled physique used to be. The flesh on his face had taken a beating between the radiation and near constant slamming of his head against the bars; his face looked more like a skull. The skin was stretched taught over the bones of his face, and his eyes were sunken down into his sockets.

Once he was out and the worse of his burn wounds were cleaned out. A small army of demons acting as nurses and caretakers gathered around the barely alive corpse and dragged his limp mangled body to a quiet alcove.

The man laid on the dirty floor of the alcove. He could feel grit and tiny pieces of stone getting into the freshly cleaned wounds on his back and arms, but he ignored that. All he could think about as he stared at the ceiling, his eyes glossing over from the immense pain he had endured, then he felt a strange feeling in his chest.

He felt like his heart was trying to escape. It was beating frantically, tickling the inside of his ribs. A sharp pain took over, making him seize and scream. Foam and spit poured out of his mouth and his head rolled around as though he were possessed.

The demons swarmed him, dragging him out of the alcove and into the main room. The radiation began blistering his skin once more, opening up his barely tended wounds. He was writhing in agony as layers of his flesh peeled off into the clawed hands of the demons that carried him. They were leading him towards the four large chairs in the center of the room with blades curling up though the back of them. Three were occupied with skeletons, all with their mouths permanently twisted open in terror as the blade penetrated their meaty rib cages. They yanked him upwards hovering him above the empty chair, pausing for a moment before slamming him down into it.

The sweet relief of not being dragged around anymore washed though the man, but it quickly faded as he looked down. The blade in the back of the chair had pierced through his chest, ripping his heart out. Blood oozed from the hole in his chest. His heart vacant from the spot, a cool steel blade taking its place.

An bright red Imp plucked his still beating heart off the tip of the blade severing the arteries and veins connecting it to his body. His raspy screams filled the room, begging for mercy. He didn't know how he was still conscious without his heart, but in a few seconds, between panic and blood loss, he succumbed to the darkness.