Your Cup Of Absinthe (M X M)

Chapter 6

Bullocks.

I awakened with a throbbing headache that pounded my skull, sending my senses into a blur of dizzying colours. My limbs had a strange heaviness, similar to a few of my mornings after a forgettable night. A pungent odour of copper pipes caught in my throat and coated my tongue in a revolting film. I unwittingly swallowed, and the putrid taste slid down my throat into my gut, filling me with sick. An ever-worsening scent of rotting meat crawled over my skin, settling like a heavy blanket covered in filth, radiating an oppressive heat that paralyzed me.

Wasn't I supposed to be with someone?

Oh yeah, Loukas. That soft-spoken prince . . .

I winced and forced my eyelids open to the darkness before me. Where was I? How did I even get there? It did not matter where I was. My questions were cut off by a bloody headache that felt like an ice pick to my skull, turning my confusion into agitation.

The pain got worse with each passing second. I tried to concentrate on making out the shapes in the darkness. It was not the usual pain of a rowdy night out. It was more akin to the time a loon tried to smash a hammer on the top of my head. That pain was so identical to this—blinding, horrible, and nauseating.

I heard a soft shuffling in the darkness, and an image flashed in my mind. Loukas, the lad I was supposed to work for, wanted to show me something.

The memory only seemed to cause me even more pain. I tried to reach up and rub the spot it originated from at the back of my head. I was stopped by—

A rope bit into the skin of my arms.

My heart pounded in my chest at the realisation as the room was suddenly not as dark as I first thought. The faint light scattering in had revealed vague shapes around me, slowly defining them into silhouettes. I squinted at one of them in desperation to see something, anything. I received my wish. A limp body hung from the ceiling, swaying from a meat hook piercing its chest.

A collection of cuts and bruises covered his bare body, turning his once smooth skin into a mosaic of depravity. Some cuts oozed fluid of various viscosities: thick red fluid that still dribbled in chunks, dried brown streaks and trails that marked their wound's existence, yellow-green pockets of old infections that gushed out of their swollen craters, and thick scabs that futilely tried to save what once was alive.

Other wounds gaped at different depths, with the cuts on the chest and stomach being the deepest. They were not precise nor organised but numerous, frantic, crisscrossed, as if whoever caused them had the sole intent of awarding agony to the victim. The bruises were just as diverse; some were large swollen lumps further deforming his broken legs, others were more painted on the skin by a hurried, sloppy brush. It was a canvas of every colour and harm the human body could produce and endure.

The rusted hook stood out, coated in congealed blood. The skin sagged like folds of cloth around the instrument, looking as though one could easily peel away the rotting layer of flesh. One laceration went from his groin, curving around the tip of the hook all the way up to his neck. His organs spilled out, hanging for dear life from his abdomen, indistinguishable from each other like that bow-wow mutton I used to stomach for dinner. Smelled only slightly worse, though.

The only part of him untouched was his face. A beautiful thing, soft features with a hint of a scraggly beard of a once unfortunate older gentleman. The worsening stench of decay grew more and more unbearable, opening up more of what lay hidden in this enclosure.

Another body was beside me on a large wooden table stained with rot and death. It was less intact, and its flesh had already turned into a feast to the flies buzzing in my ears and the worms I saw writhing and dancing in the multiple flesh pockets. Next to it was a rotting head with its eyes already turned into a black gooey fluid that leaked onto the once sturdy and refined wood.