Rosin

END

November 3rd
06:23pm

ICD-10-CM
Q00-Q99
R00-R99

It stunk of antiseptic and blood.
Being in this room again was prone to cause echoes in the mind, memories of haunted moments. Everything was the same as it had been before that final day here. The metal surfaces still shone white under the blare of the light overhead, the floor was yet to start making sound when the humans walked on it. Here was not the same as the woodlands. Here was quiet, always, apart from the low and distant thrumming of ventilation. The thick walls absorbed all sounds, the floor was too dense to clunk when giant feet stomped on it. No warning. Humans would come and go unannounced.

Everything in the room was uneasily recognisable. Even after a year of being away. The only difference would maybe be that the tools stored inside the cupboards would be new and clean. Fresher. Sharper.

That, and the gristle that was splattered all over the table. Glistening pools of slightly yellowed liquid and sort of... clumps of clods of gods knew what. Something that still wasn't quite dead.

The off-colour blood was somehow striking, it somehow gave the metal new character. Like a fresh coat of paint designed to catch the eye. Or rearranging furniture. It somehow made this familiar room feel different.

None of the mess was fresh, that was a probable cause of the discolouring. The droplets of blood were dry and crusted after hours of being left in the open air, left to bake in the heat of the pure white light blaring down from the ceiling. Those individual speckles that had either splattered or pattered down during each extractions from the vaults were about as true to red as the creatures' blood could be. But the bigger accumulations, the collections pooling around the lifeless bodies, was where the colour was deeper. Browner. 

The sight of blood used to be disturbing. But thinking of that time, when blood still felt like something that should be kept inside the body and the forest was more than a fragmented memory, was a perfect way to chip away at the crumbling pillars of sanity that remained. The forest was then. A time in the past. This was now, here. This room, this building, this city. And there was no going back. He had made that perfectly clear.

The blood. So much fucking blood. Impossible not to stare at. Maybe it was because of the way it contrasted the white where it seeped from. Such a claret colour against the pure white hair was something sickly.
All of the bodies. Lined up. Fragile, half formed, lifeless. The tags still on their unclothed ankles. It was enough to make anyone feel sick to their stomach. Anyone except him.

"Well..."
His voice was quieter than usual. Mellowed by his good mood. But still painful on the ears. The eyes that observed the scene below were a metallic copper sort of brown, and they skimmed over the rows of tiny bodies with all but impassiveness.

But the human was happy. Pleased, he had to be. Because of what he had in his hand. The bastard finally had what he wanted, the result of all this, pure torture for everyone involved. Everyone but him. Was it over now? The months of needles digging up under the skin, being strapped down half naked to metal tables despite how you screamed and pleaded. Was he finally satisfied?

The human had forgotten everything in the room, even himself, he was just muttering away in a feverish excitement, "This is good. Very good. I would say we're finally getting somewhere..."
He didn't linger on the massacre below him. Not surprising. Gore meant nothing, death meant nothing— everything was means to an end for this human. The blood and slaughter on this table was the means. The bastard had his ends cupped in his hand.

The sight of that was maybe worse than the blood all over the table, maybe worse than the brutality of the mangled bodies. Make an effort not to look. Look at the floor. Look at the door, forever unreachable. By the gods, look at the stained vaults that had been set down on the floor even though it was nauseating— Anywhere but the human's hand.

The human had one noticeable characteristic, aside from the coppery colour of his eyes, and that was that he never, ever smiled. Ever. Since that long ago day of capture, the human had smiled maybe twice in front of his prisoners. First, the day he found them, half dead in the charred wreckage of the forest. Second, the realisation he could use them to do this.

And now. The third time.

He looked down at them. A smile flickered. With an incomprehensible delicacy, he touched the tip of his finger to the snow-coloured skin, and released a breath.
"Warm." His eyes gleamed.
Still and senseless, he had two tiny, fragile creatures cupped in his hand. Their skin was pure white, so was their hair, and there wasn't much difference between those two bodies and the countless others strewn across the table. One thing separated them. This was a massacre, a blood bath, another horrifying result to the human's horrible torture. Usually, failure meant more testing and re-do's. But this time was different. Because they were different.
The two little bodies were identical to all the others save for one, minor detail. Their chests moved softly as they breathed in sleep.
They're alive.

The human ran his eyes over his creations and a slight smile cracked through his lips.
"They're perfect." He murmured. The smile split wider, "Perfect."
That look was enough to make anyone sick to their stomach.

The human suddenly remembered he wasn't totally alone. Realising there had been no reply to any of his comments, he flicked his eyes over to his last living prisoner. Sitting silent and still in the middle of the blood soaked table.
His prisoner looked up at him. And said nothing.
"Smile." Cain murmured. "It's all thanks to you."

He uttered a soft laugh at the silence that followed, "Always the same." And then the human lost interest, turned his eyes back to his two white-haired creations. His face split open into his rare, unnatural smile. It was the shape of a crescent moon in the dead of a winters night.

Accompanied by the scene of blood and splashed fluids, mangled bodies and the light that was still too bright, that smile was the most awful look in the world.

November 6th
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