Ruthless love

The Blackout

[Flashback - part two]

Circa anno 1698

Mason kept a safe distance from Zack who still seemed to be in a bit of a mood.

He was distracted and wandered around the woods aimlessly, with Mason not far behind him.

"You know, we'll never catch anything this way..." he murmured quietly.

Zack paused and looked at his brother, puzzled.

"What..? Oh, right.. Well, what are we trying to catch anyway? We both know that the only reason you wanted me to come out here was to distract me from my own thoughts"

"You're not wrong" Mason added, scratching the back of his neck with an apologetic expression on his face

"Did it work?"

Zack did not respond, but once again seemed lost in thought as he suddenly went in a different direction, as if he had gotten a hint of something in the distance.

"I guess not, huh..."

Mason's voice was quiet but he could not keep the amusement out of his voice as he spoke, carefully avoiding branches and twigs on the ground as he followed his brother.

At this point, he had gotten more or less used to Zack's unusual behavior and thought to himself that this was just another one of his little episodes of delirium.

He had been unable to sleep properly as he had been plagued with night terrors lately, and on top of that, he had been hallucinating.

Or so they thought.

"It has to be around here somewhere, I feel it so strongly, and yet..."

Zack looked around, his eyes wild but somehow absent.

Mason kept his distance, unsure whether it could be dangerous to interrupt whatever he was experiencing.

He watched his brother carefully as he began stirring through piles of leaves with his foot.

"Perhaps we should go back brother, you don't seem well..." he said uneasily, slightly bothered by his brother's increasingly odd behavior.

Once again he was met with silence.

Zack seemed to become increasingly desperate to find whatever he was searching for.

He was murmuring curses and ineligible words to himself as he scoured the area frantically, only becoming more agitated when he realized nothing was to be found.

Mason tried a different approach, hoping to calm his brother a little.

"Perhaps if you told me what we are looking for I could help you?"

This time he was met with a pair of murky blackening eyes as his brother turned to look at him rigidly.

Something was off about him, but he could not quite tell what. It was Zack and yet somehow it was as if he was looking into the eyes of a stranger, with no trace of his brother to be found.

A sinister smile spread across Zack's face as his eyes widened and he spoke in a dead monotone voice.

"Oh brother, how blind I've been... It's been right here this whole time, lurking within. It's powerful and calculated, what a horrid scheme... Plaguing my mind both day and night, this thing inside me, oh brother forgive me... I'm losing the fight...".