"It's a long time ago..."
Anti looks up towards the sky, trying to remember how long ago specifically. He gives up and returns to the ground.
"A time when superstition and religion ruled most people's minds. I think I was in an average family of 4 children and 2 adults. I was one of the middle children... Anthony may have been my name, or my brother's name."
Anti looks up, feeling slightly more confident.
"The youngest sibling died at 1 from one of the many diseases. I don't remember if it would be my brother or sister. So it's me, my brother, my sister, and my parents. Andrew, Anthony, and Adeline... don't ask me why my parents liked names beginning with 'A' because I never had the chance to ask."
Anti pauses again, probably thinking.
"Uh... Adeline was doing fine for a girl in that time. The problem was with Anthony and Andrew. Anthony was achieving a lot, gaining the affection of his hard to please father. Andrew was.... not, but he tried the most. Anthony thought he could trust his brother, but clearly not. Andrew sold him out to some kind of cult in exchange of Anthony's achievements. An idiot move, since the cult disappeared before Andrew died of some disease."
He finds a relatively flat surface and takes a seat.
"The cult was just bad news. There was no good in it, maybe not even for the willing participants. Their ideas may have been something stupid like 'Joyful Pain' or 'Pain as Forgiveness', because these people loved pain... inflicting pain, being in pain... whatever, they loved it. Probably just a bunch of sadists and masochists, which Anthony was not.
I'll spare the details, but if I wasn't feeling pain even in my sleep, they weren't happy. They couldn't afford to clean the blades, or even bandages later on. The chains were too big in the first place, so naturally I thought... if only I was a little skinnier... the food they brought down for me was wasted to the rats and fleas.
The members weren't stupid. They caught on and force fed me, but failed to check if I kept the food inside me. Soon enough, I hated eating. Their forcefulness, and my aim caused my brain to somehow rewire itself into tricking my body so that I didn't need to eat as often. They left ugly scars on me that I thought would go away as long as my skin wouldn't stretch. Which means if I didn't eat, fat wouldn't pull on my skin and stretch the scars out. Sounds stupid, but then the medical knowledge was shit back then."
Anti concludes.
"Oh, when I arrived in the afterlife, I wasn't recognised as human so I was sent to Hell. The torture didn't work, so they recruited me instead."
He stays silent for a moment, before adding quietly,
"I enjoyed it. I just imagined that they belonged to that cult."
"Did you ever see Andrew or Adeline?"
You spoke up, startling Anti slightly.
"...maybe? I didn't pay attention. I didn't care who was in pain as long as they screamed."
Anti darkly comments, looking off into the distance with a strange glint in his eyes.
