push-ups in drag

7; sublime judgements

When Gemini finally transports us back to the throne room, it's empty. Gerard, Frank, and Lucifer are nowhere to be seen. Their absence is replaced by bloody footprints amongst the puddles. Gemini looks around, huffs, and then teleports herself away without a word.

"Gee?" I ask, it echoing off of the walls with no response reverberated back

I walk through the puddles of blood, following a pair of footsteps leading from I found where Gerard was before Gemini took me. The walls give off a warm and sticky temperature from the blood, it's incredibly uncomfortable, and even more so stuffy. Each step I take makes a noise, from small splashes, to my shoe scraping the rough floor.

The prints lead to a corner, and I'm reminded of the hours before the gun; How Gerard pulled me in to the janitors closet, and how every corner in that school was so mind numbing due to the terror it put into my spine. There was always an opportunity to get caught by someone, yet we never did. We got lucky, and that's likely the only reason I'm dead today. I prefer it this way, though. If I were alive, I'd be being interrogated by the FBI or something, maybe being tortured only to be slaughtered.

The eerie essence of the room starts to get to me a bit, I start thinking that maybe none of this really happened. Maybe this is just an extensive nightmare, and when I wake up, I'll know nothing of Hell, nor Gerard. The skepticism of humanity never wore off after I was bit. I don't know how I didn't believe in ghosts for such an ample amount of time. A drop of blood falls on my shoulder hard, spattering onto my neck. I won't drink this, though, not even after I'm dead.

I stop when I finally reach the corner, half expecting to see Gerard when I turn my head, but when I do, I see an empty hallway - minus the blood, of course. There are knocked over vases, shattered on the floor, and slanted, ripped, and unstable paintings.

The dark red wallpaper is ripped and falling. Without anyone near me, the pounding in my head takes the place of any voice. It expands and intensifies itself now that nothing is restraining it. The lights on the wall, somehow still shining, bright as ever, sting my eyes. I feel the veins behind my eye twist. When I instinctively shut them closed as tight as I could manage, it feels like my skull shatters and caves into itself equally as hard.

My eyelashes weave into themselves, disabling me from opening my eyes. My knees buckle as I jerk my hand up to try and peel my eyelids apart. As my knees hit the floor, I feel the back of my calves rip themselves open and burst out with blood. I open my mouth to scream, to cry, to plead for help, but my gums swell with gore as my commissures slit back on each side of my face. I force my hands to my face to try and stop the bleeding, as if I have any power over myself, and my thenar webspaces lacerate themselves. I feel the needles that once resigned at the back of my skull now take their place on my wrists, fully piercing in one collective hack.

I try to spit out the ounces of blood that have pooled around my tounge, but the only parts of my mouth that I can force open are the gashes that sting horizontally across my face. My spine fractures itself into pieces and splinters my lungs among other various organs. I feel my back be clawed at from the inside, along with the exact moment the shattered bones pierce my skin from the inside. My nervous system squirms, and I feel it divide and move around the muscles in my arms as I crash my side onto the ground.

The tears that uncontrollably fall due to the agony I have no autonomy over burn my skin. All I can do is convulse in anguish and silence. No one is here to help me.

The one thing that makes this torture even worse, is that the release of death is unachievable. The pain beyond a tombstone has no end if you're alone.