Scars (Part II of J.H. White's Puss in Boots)

Chapter Seven: Something Wrong

Scars knew he had passed out at some point. He had to have. Because now he was slumped up against a wall, and somebody was holding a sword to his neck. He looked up and saw Puss; he gasped. Puss was dead. He had seen it himself. Kitty Softpaws had been holding his head; now he was alive and about to kill him?

Then he realized that this was his chance. No matter what was going on, if he could just get the sword away from Puss and overpower him, he would prove the mercenary wrong. "Listen, Hermano," he told Puss calmly. "We don't have to do this. Let's just talk like civilized people. You're like me."

Puss came closer. "I am NOTHING like you. I kill people like you, like her." He gestured to the left, and Scars looked in the direction.

A female cat's body was next to him, motionless. She had a sack over her head with a smile and two crossed out eyes scribbled onto it, and both her body and the bag were drenched in her blood. Scars reached over and pulled the bag off before Puss could stop him. He was overcome with horror.

It was Kitty; her eyes soulless, fresh blood and tear stains making her face look like a stabbing victim had been drowned in a lake.

Suddenly, Scars got a random flash of an image in his mind, and it gave him a searing headache. He groaned and clutched his skull, wishing it would stop. But it made him watch. He saw Puss, shouting as Kitty was murdered. And he was giving the orders to kill her; he saw the dog shoot her in the head. "Que demonios?" he murmured. What was going on here? He looked around the memory and saw the pictures of Puss and Kitty on the wall together. He saw the small child wailing in dismay.

They were married. Why would Puss be killing her? Why would he do this?

"WHAT'S GOING ON?!" Scars yelled at Puss. "WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU?! YOU KILLED HER! YOU KILLED HER!" Puss smiled.

"Welcome to the SIM," he said, and then he was gone.

Scars knew what was going on immediately. He had heard rumors, rumblings that during the war, Carnage had developed advanced technology that was a simulated artificial reality that would channel the experiences of the person inside it.

Somebody had trapped him here. But why? Somebody wanted him to suffer. Or maybe something else was going on. Was this a test?

Or was something far more sinister happening?

It didn't make the mystery any more clear when he saw "Murderer" written on a brick wall in blood. It was talking about him; he knew it instantly. This was because the ghosts of everybody he had ever killed attacked him all at once.