Devil to the Damned (Prequel #2 )

2|3 - Apathy Eater

Raging hellfire licked my face and clung to the folds of melting flesh. My brain sent frantic signals to my limbs but was fretfully ignored, disparaged, even. The shadow of my father's corpse cast deeply over the left side of my face, his final cries still bouncing around my head along with the rest of my family's death gurgles.

Beyond the blinding twisting flames, was a crackling twilight black where the inner walls of my house should be. The floor was frostbitten ice, his body an eternal torch planted to punish. I couldn't squirm or speak. No reprieve waiting for me to notice. This is where I would remain forever, where I have been since my life ended. Perdition.

Do I deserve this? I couldn't help but think. What had I done in my life to warrant such damnation?

White hot knives of pure energy drilled into my skin, forcing their way into every single system that made me human. It replaced muscle and blood and spliced itself with tissue and nerves; a new hybrid. Of course, I rejected it; crying out in silence for death to take me. Even as serenity slowly engulfed me, I begged to perish; the placid girl who wears my history as scabbed décor, turned completely to stone.

My father was whispering something far away as my skin began to produce its own light. These strange misty speckles lifted away, as if someone scraped the light from a starry evening with a dry brush, and left the peel to hover around my form. His eyeballs had already liquified and his face was drooping from the heat. Even in this hailstorm cyclone that shredded my body to scraps, I could still hear his voice.

"Christine." He bellowed calmly.

"Dad!?" I shrieked over the sound of the roaring fire.

"It's all my fault. I'm sorry." He moaned, his face twisting and boiling from the heat.

I couldn't look away, but the pain beckoned me to sleep. I fought with all my might to respond. "How!? Please, talk to me! Don't go!"

I watched him shrink into a dark tunnel; his image shrouded by blood and flame, separate from the physical world. Further and further, until he was nothing more than a pinprick projecting the shape of my name. An emotional charge struck my heart, and I started screaming.

Then, I experienced flashes. Images came and went, bleeding into each other with mirrors reflecting black between the panels. A scene from many years ago. My father stood propped behind his cruiser door; gun raised at a group of three teens. There was broken glass at their feet; static-blurred merchandise in their arms, and a blinding barrage of red and blue lights. I swallowed and the scene fell into me.

A gunshot was fired. Time stood still with the bullet suspended in its destined path. From the view of one thieving boy, I could see my father locked in a stricken pose. One unscrupulous teen with a wooden bat had snuck up behind him and struck his knee with full force. The sneak attack was clearly meant to distract so the others may escape, but the sudden impact caused the hair-trigger to discharge.

Time sped up again, and I felt the bullet pierce my chest. The sound of sirens faded, the clambering footsteps of my friends abandoning me matched the beat of my failing heart, and the last thing I remember is hitting my head on the concrete and watching the police officer crumble in agony. The truth behind Jackson Rucksbury's death.

An accident.

I awoke with a start on the cold chamber floor. A swelling perceptive reach pinged from my body, distinguishing the shape of the bars, the room beyond, and a human shape. Though, that couldn't be further from the truth. My right eye peeled open just enough to piece together Sin's outline just before me.

A painfully sharp breath drooled from my throat, and with it, came a shuddering pulsation of energy. The mechanical skittering noise I produced echoed in my skull and audibly cascaded in circles around us. Sin was knelt down, close and caressing my shoulder. With each second that rushed by, I pieced together the scene.