The Disillusioned Land

Chapter 8 - There will be no peace

As the door opens I catch a glimpse of a man unsteadily walking across the room. I throw the door open, prepared to face him, but am met with emptiness. The room in front of me is surprisingly spacious, the walls stretch far into my peripheral and the floor is decorated by little else but rusty metal spikes. They appear to be something akin to prison bars, but in their current condition they fail to contain anything. Still they present a significant hazard, to slip and fall in this room would certainly be deadly.

As I finish my observation a thin mist crawls across the floor. In my head I hear a voice, coming from nowhere, and yet I know exactly who it belongs to. "You detest me, I suppose? You hold me accountable? For what you've seen, for what you've heard, for what you've done? It seems there is a misunderstanding between us.". I try my best to not listen to the voice, but it seems to be emanating from within me. "Got a reaction out of you? You're starting to remember it clearly then, what you've done under my command, what you've taken. Money, technology... lives. And yet it was not my will that carried out the order, you followed without so much as a second thought. Perhaps it is simply in your nature to lie, cheat and steal.".

I begin to sprint to the other side of the room, I've heard enough of this. In my haste I fail to notice a pale hand wrap around my ankle. "Perhaps it is time for you to face all that you have taken even while you were hiding from me.". I lose my balance as soon as I take another step, my face heading directly towards the spikes. I spin to my left, narrowly escaping a frontal lobotomy. Turning back I see my assailant. Not only do I see, I recognize. A man once alive, now rotting away and crawling towards me. They were once a beggar near my home in the city. The rot they suffer from is spreading from within their throat, they starved to death. Because of me.

I hesitate for only a moment before kicking them off me and attempting to regain my balance, cutting my hands on the nearby spikes in the process. The man crumbles away in front of me, after a moment only dust remains, in another, even that fades. I look around me once more, pale figures surround me, nothing short of an army. They look at me with eyes full of disdain, rage, envy, spite. They know who I am, they remember me even through death. And now I remember them all the same, people I've stolen from, people I've cheated, people I've killed.

The mob makes a break straight for me, trampling over each other in their rage. As one falls they create a bridge for another across the brutal flooring. And yet it is not enough, by the time they reach me only one remains. A young girl stands before me, her wounds make her nearly unrecognizable. Unfortunately I could never forget her.

"I'm sorry" my voice comes out more as a whisper. The girl looks at me once more, and fades away forevermore.

As I make my way to the exit of this wretched room I think back on the events that have transpired thus far and realize that I was under her influence from the moment I appeared in this forsaken land. Those sandwiches I found rotting in my pocket, there were two. I distinctly remember eating one, so why were there two? Because they were not my own, they belonged to someone else, and so there were two once more.

I banish the thoughts from within my head and prepare to enter another room, likely worse than the one I so narrowly escaped.