A cry for help

I ran towards it, peeked inside and screamed. I didn’t expect what I saw inside at all. My mind couldn’t grasp it. My heart skipped a beat at the scene inside. There stood my old friend who died two years ago. Murdered two years ago. He stood there staring right at me.
Fear engulfed my whole body in its embrace. His face was deadly. His eyes were murderous as if he was ready to kill. My body shivered at the realization that he indeed was ready to kill. Kill ME.
My role in his murder was the biggest. I was his most trusted friend and thus I was the one to trick him to the old abandoned warehouse where his death awaited. He didn’t doubt my intentions for a single second and I broke his trust in the worst way possible.
My nightmares have not let me sleep a single night peacefully. They made sure I remembered what I did to my friend, Shengo. My soul and my heart were both under the heavy burdens of guilt and shame because of which I came back to the old warehouse two years later to present my sincere apologies to Shengo. However I found him not in his grave but standing on his very own two feet holding the same knife I used to kill him once and for all.
I knew an apology wouldn’t cover for what I did to him but it was a start. It was a start of something new. A new start of finding the peace I once had in my life. But right now all I could offer was an apology.
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“Come on Shengo, We are getting late” I had screamed that night.
Shengo loved adventures. He thrived for a constant trill in his life, which being the reason he decided to come with me to explore the old warehouse.
To him we were going to the warehouse for fun. But to me it was time for his death. He knew too much, he was too close to the truth.
We reached the warehouse by half past twelve. It was pretty late. The roads were silent. I had no worries. We both walked towards the front door in utter silence. He was curious and I was anxious of what the future beholds. And then we reached the front door. Shengo looked at me and I gave him an encouraging smile. Slowly, very slowly he opened the door and stepped inside. That is when hell broke loose.
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Shengo was an investigator. I had no issues with his profession until he started investigating about the mysterious kidnappings of children. He went too deep for me to stay quiet. I had to do something about it in order to save my neck. For me to live he had to die. There was a thing with Shengo. If he starts a case, he doesn’t stops until he gets to the end of it. He never lets any case go unsolved. He did everything in his power to bring justice to each and every person. Whether the person was alive or dead he did not care. Because of which I had to kill him. I had to.
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“Shengo I am sorry. I really am” I exclaimed when I saw him slowly walking towards me. Not giving me a reply Shengo only sneered at me. He wasn’t even trying to listen to my explanation. Blood was all he had in his mind. He was craving to spill some blood and by the looks of it he would. He would hunt down each one of his murderers and bring them to their destined path, Death.
Shengo’s death was unfair thus he would use every unfair mean to avenge his death.
Shengo took another step towards me, and I screeched in fear. My whole body radiated fear. I didn’t want Shengo to come any closer to me because by now he was already pretty close. I wanted to turn back and run away but I couldn’t. My feet were rooted to the ground as if someone was holding me there. Not saying a single word, Shengo stalked towards me, grabbed my hand and yanked me towards a closed door. He kicked it open and I gasped. The scene in front of me was horrifying. The room stank of death as it held unpreserved dead bodies. Not just any dead bodies. But the dead bodies of my employees.
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Shengo was pulled inside harshly after he took a step inside the warehouse. I entered after him closing the door behind me. Shengo was shocked, but he covered it up soon. His detective skills helped him as he put the puzzle together and soon understanding flashed in his eyes. He no longer looked surprised or shocked. The only thing his face showed was disgust. He was disgusted by me.
“I can’t believe I had such a disgusting friend like you.” Shengo spat at me. “It’s an insult for me to call you my friend Hunter.”
“Oh does Hunter cares? No he does not. So it’s really your problem” I laughed. In the background my gang snickered.
“Do you have no shame? Do you not think of your children before mistreating those innocent children? You and your gang is sick.”
“I don’t even have children to think about in the first place Shengo and you know it” I stated “Gag him up. I don’t want to hear his voice again.
When he was fully gagged up and tied to the ceiling upside down, I narrated my plan to him. I knew it would kill him internally to watch an act of injustice live and not be able to do anything about it. I wanted to show him who was in power right now. I wanted to show him the fate of those to dared to go against me. I knew he couldn’t watch a kid being molested right in front of his eyes and thus that was exactly what I did.
By the time I was finished Shengo was in tears, hopeless tears. The screams of the child had broken him down completely. My purpose was fulfilled. Shengo was now completely unable to defend himself. He couldn’t do anything. He was broken. Now he wouldn’t fight back when I kill him. Or else it would have been a difficult task for me to kill him because of his excellent reflexes and detective training. I ordered my men to cut his ties. After they were done, Shengo sagged to the ground, not being able to hold himself together. I stalked towards Shengo with a knife in my hand.  I pulled him up by his hair and gave him one last look before slicing his chest in one hard push. Shengo fell to the ground with a grunt and soon his last breath escaped his lips and he went into an eternal sleep.
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Each one of them was tied upside down to the ceiling, with a pool of blood on the floor. Their eyes were empty and their bodies wounded and out cold. Every one of my employees was hanging there. Explains why I couldn’t contact any of them.
Upon realizing that this was probably also my fate, my heart beat increased, my blood ran cold and I felt my walls breaking. No matter how ruthless one gets, while killing others, no one’s strong enough to welcome their own death with open arms, with courage and with confidence. The facade is ripped apart by death itself.
Shengo pushed me inside the room. I gagged due to the intensity of the smell of the rotten bodies lingering in the air. Not being able to endure the smell anymore, I vomited. Right there on the ground, increasing the unbearable smell in the room.
As I observed the room my sixth sense kicked in and the room didn’t felt as emptier as it looked. I felt multiple pairs of eyes staring at me. A shiver ran down my spine as I made out the faded outlines of men standing under the shadows of the room, perfectly hidden from a non-observant eye.
Shengo beckoned his men and 4 of them came closer to me. I tried to fight them, tried to defend myself, my dignity and my respect. But they were too strong for me to fight them off alone. Irrespective of my efforts, they tied me up, like all other victims, way too easily. Blood rushed to my head and after a few minutes it started to hurt so bad that it became hard for me to stay conscious. My head pounded harder as time passed. I looked over at Shengo to see what he was up to but I found him leaning against a wall patiently, glaring at me intently. I stared back. Hoping he would change his mind and give in to my pleadings but it gained nothing.
My eyes lit up in hope as I saw him making a movement from his hand and one of his men coming closer to me. But his next action sucked all the hope that was left within me. He started to undress me. He stripped me down until I was bare to every living pair of eyes present in the room. The man made his way back to his position while Shengo came towards me very slowly. Delaying the revelation of his next move, he made me more anxious by each passing second. Finally when he reached right in front of me, he placed a knife at my on my chest and dragged it towards my stomach leaving a trail of blood behind. He stopped at my belly button. My whole body was shivering because of the cold. Bile rose up to my throat and I felt like vomiting again and I did. The smell was too much to endure. Soon I saw black dots everywhere and went into deep slumber.
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“Hurry up! I don’t have all night.’ I screamed at my men digging Shengo’s grave. I wanted to get rid of his body as soon as possible. His soulless eyes were giving me creeps. Regardless of the fact that I was his murderer, I was his friend too. And seeing him dead was disturbing.
As soon as we could we buried him in his grave, cleaned the place for any kind of evidence, dug another grave to bury the knife and left.
Ever since the day I’ve got daily nightmares that have haunted the living daylights out of me. I’ve regretted it, not harassing the child but killing Shengo, from the moment I returned home to have a peaceful night sleep after killing my only friend. To think I would even sleep that night was a big mistake on my part. Because god thought that it would be the perfect time to make me reflect on everything I ever did.
I remembered when I gave in to my temptations for the very first time. Some passing men saw me while I was busy harassing the child. They had the same weird desires like mine. They exchanged contacts with me and we became very good acquaintances. They included me in their so called gang. Self satisfaction was at its peak in my life. After few months I was notified that one of the gang members had been arrested. He was released on the condition that he would bring more people like him so that the government could provide help to them. Desperately not wanting to be arrested for his heinous crimes he gave in to the conditions and gave our contact details to the government. We were being hunted down so that we could be in the eyes of the law. Once everyone was gathered the police surprised us by actually giving us real therapists to bring us back to sanity.
The funny thing was that the therapist didn’t help me at all. To be honest she intensified my desires. She seemed new to all these things because of her nervousness. She was intimidated by my manly confidence and seriousness which further reduced her abilities. Three agonizing months later she claimed that I have actually healed. But the both of us knew better. She just wanted to get rid of me as soon as possible without any one suspecting anything.
Coming back to the streets made me look for a source of survival. And before I could as much as blink my eye, I was employed by a gang which held people like me. Human trafficking, drugs smuggling, child abuse and many more crimes were committed on a daily bases. The gang had no fear of the law or the government.
The gang became a bad influence on me. It brought out the cruelty I had within me. The evil side that I didn’t knew existed. The cruel and harsh environment hit me hard and I became deadly. I became the unbeatable. I was soon promoted to the second in command position. The gang looked up to me. They respected me and had enough trust in me to nominate me as their next leader after the death of the previous one.
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“Shengo, Are you insane? Keep that away.” I hissed.
But he didn’t listen. He kept coming closer to me with a carving knife in his hand. His intentions did not look good to me. Regardless of my protests, Shengo reached me and held the knife to my forehead. He started carving something on it. Soon screams erupted from my mouth. They did nothing in my favor but to make Shengo order his men to gag me up. He continued to bruise my forehead. After 30 long painful minutes, Shengo was finally done. He stepped back and admired his work of art. I didn’t know what he did to my forehead but I could tell that he wrote something there.
“You showed no mercy, you will not have any mercy” Shengo said for the first since I came here
“Shengo please do anything but please don’t torture me.” I begged once again. I kept aside my pride, my ego and my self-respect for him to leave me alone. But all of that made no difference to Shengo.
“Today, Hunter, I will show you what it is like to be on the receiving ends of torture, to be the victim. Today I will make you feel everything that your victims felt.”
Soon raged filled his eyes and started to burn with hate…….Disgust……..Anger, and any other emotion he could ever feel against his worst enemy. The desire to kill me ruthlessly was evident.
“You will die, but not easily. I will avenge those poor children you harassed and all those people like me who died saving them.” Shengo growled
“Exactly you died!!!!! How did you come back to life? I asked
“That’s for me to know and you to never find out.” Was his only reply before he pulled out tongs from his pockets and went for my hand. I watched in horror as he got hold of my middle finger and pulled its nail and ripped it away in one go.
Next he lighted a cigarette and brought it towards my temple. He pressed it hard on each of my temple. The burning smell of my skin made my pain intensified. The knowledge that my skin was bruised just made me feel the pain more. The room shook because of my screams but Shengo had no mercy. He kept on marking my skin with his cigarettes.  One after the other, he tortured me with complete five cigarettes.
My body was numb. My nerves were a mess. I could not feel my body because it had way too many wounds on it for me to think about one. By the looks of it Shengo had taken a break. I was completely broken, internally and externally both. Shengo had literally sucked all the life out of my body. His constant torture had destroyed my self defense. I no longer put up a fight, even though I knew with his every move he damaged a part of me in such a way that I could never recover.
Hours turned into days and days turned into weeks. By now my skin was buried deep down under the amount of dried blood covering my body. Not even an inch of my body was forsaken. Each day Shengo would come and torture by any means he could find. Whips, belts and electric chairs were the basics.
My eyes were life less and my once straightened shoulders were now sagged. Each and every limb of my body had given up hope. But it did return one day, when Shengo motioned his men to leave the room. I didn’t have much hope but it was there. I thought that this was the last day of me being tortured, and it was. It really was the last day. But I would have preferred being tortured over what Shengo had chosen for me.
The last thing he picked to abuse me with was salt. Two of his men had brought in two buckets. One filled with water and the other with water. They kept the bucket of salt near Shengo and strode towards me with the water. They splashed me water, soaking my body completely. The water washed away the blood on my body, only leaving the clots behind. Once they left the room, Shengo stalked towards me with a handful of salt. He threw the salt on my face. My bruises flamed up. If not for the restraints I would have ruined my already ruined face by scratching it. One after the other each one of the wounds marking my skin was covered in salt. The bucket was almost empty and Shengo was still throwing salt on me. Finally when he stopped, he cut my ties and I fell to the ground. My body was numb and lifeless. With a satisfied grin on his face, Shengo left the room, which had became my own personal hell.
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It has been hours since Shengo left the room and he hasn’t returned yet. I’m lying here with my hands tied, fighting my pain, and waiting for someone to come and see me and give some aid to me, anything to make me feel a little better. I can’t feel anything right now, feels like my body is paralyzed. I want to scream but I think my voice box had given up. It had no more energy to support me. I want to call out for help but I know it’s useless because who in their right mind would even think about coming near to this place. Lying here I can finally feel how it’s like to actually be the victim, to actually be on the receiving ends of torture. It feels horrible. If I ever make out of this alive I won’t even think about torturing someone because now I know what it is like. I know how badly a person gets damaged.
I can faintly hear some sirens. They are coming closer but I am loosing myself. Black spots have appeared in front of my eyes. I can feel my soul leaving my body. The sirens have reached quiet closer now. I can hear the door being smashed on the floor and footsteps coming closer to where I am. But I can’t keep myself together anymore.  I think I am going to die soon, even before the help reached me.
I give up. I can’t fight it anymore. My breathing has gotten heavier, and my eyes are now halfway closed. I lost the hope and now I can’t keep going. It’s too hard. As my last words all I want to say is that I....... …………………..
THE END
Thanks to ArtisticAmy for making this fabulous cover