CINCO (Five) [On Indefinite Hiatus]

Chapter 4: Calm Like A Bomb

“CINCO”

 Chapter 4: Calm Like A Bomb

 ***

A man with skin as dark as dampened sand came up to him; he was masked nose-down so that only his eyes could be seen. Emilio was half-expecting them to glow silver like Señor De Vita’s, but then the eyes he saw were as dark as granite, which were usually under a pair of crystalline spectacles. They were bare somehow.

 Señor Javier sometimes had friendly eyes. His eyes were friendly now.

The man had placed his masked mouth close to his ear, and Emilio could smell the scent of bitter medicine on him.

“Cinco,” Señor Javier whispered.

Then there was a burst of pain, and Emilio passed out before he could even scream.

 ***

 Emilio heard the ricocheting sound of a firing gun in the confines of a room as polished and as white as marble.

He looked down, and realized that he had been hit on the leg. Blood began to ooze from the wound, and it was hot as it streamed down his skin unto the floor.

Yet he made no attempt to staunch the bleeding. In fact, he even seemed fascinated. There was a moment’s bemusement, which soon turned into the moment’s amusement.

“You’re hurt, Señor Jacinto,” said a faceless voice from the nowhere and everywhere. He was the only one in the room.

“You state the obvious,” Emilio retorted. The floor was becoming slippery with his blood.

The voice seemed to share in his amusement. “Ah, yes, but do you feel any pain?”

Emilio decided for a moment before he replied. “No, Señor.”

“What do you feel, then?”

“The blood, Señor. If you don’t treat me know, I will probably bleed to death.”

The bodiless voice laughed softly. “Perhaps. And perhaps not.”

It took a short moment for Emilio to realize their intention. “You will not treat me, then. If I do die, you will bring me back to life, anyway, again and again, until you like what you see.”

There was silence for a moment. The voice returned, struggling to hide any smidgen of emotion from it. “Until we are satisfied, Señor Jacinto.”

Emilio knew the answer right away. “I will not fail you,” he said.

Two hours later, lying in a pool of his own blood, Emilio was taken away into yet another room. There was no need to resuscitate him; he merely fell unconscious, but they knew that there was great improvement from last time.

Last time there was still pain. The pain devoured their subjects and they cried out. But then they were told, mantra-like and in a dizzying tempo, that pain was all in the mind, all in the mind.

It wasn’t, Emilio recalled himself saying in a vain attempt to squirm away from the agony. Emilio was in the verge of giving up, but no; he plodded on despite the pain sucking the life out of him.

And then he was placed inside the immaculate, marble-white room once more, the same room where his life’s blood poured out of him a mere three days ago. Those three days whizzed by like a gale, but not without the knowledge that his leg had mended.