Forbidden (BoyxBoy)

Chapter XVIII: Nueungamme

A/N 

Hey all,

Just wanted to pop in and say a big thank you for supporting this work. It started out as something that I was just writing to experiment, but it's actually turned into one of my favourite things I've ever created, so thanks again for the support. 

Anyways, the reason I'm writing this author's note is to let you know that this chapter contains references to the concentration camps of WWII and torture, so if that's triggering to you maybe give this one a skip-a-roonie. 

Love, Alison. 

___

Alaric.

I felt like I was going to pass out from shock. My legs were weak, and with each step I took to get back into my apartment, they threatened to collapse beneath me. I barely made it inside before falling against the front door and sliding to the ground. Tortured sobs escaped my mouth uncontrollably, shock and pain cutting through the numbness that I had felt only a second earlier. My head fell into the heel of my palms, my fingers clawing at my hair desperately.

This can't happening. I imagined it. My mind is playing tricks on me.

My vision blurred momentarily, my whole body growing ice cold and numb. Drums pounded deafeningly in my ears and each breath I took sent the sensation of a thousand knives plunging into my chest. With every beat of my heart, the suffocating hands of panic tightened around my throat.

I wanted to believe that what I had seen was some sort of post traumatic stress catching up to me, that the nightmare I had experienced seventy-seven years ago was resurfacing in my mind once again. But my subconscious mind was speaking to me loud and clear, and it was insistent that what I had just seen was no figment of my imagination. I knew what that mark was on Jason's skin, and I'd known the minute I saw it. It was, unmistakably, a burn: all blistered and bubbling and weeping fluid.

And the hot, angry mark had been shaped just like the silver forks in my cutlery drawer.

This can't be happening. This can't be happening.

Oh god, this is happening.

I was more sure of myself than I had ever been, and I couldn't bring myself to deny the evidence right in front of me. The vivid image of a burn blister on the hand of the boy I cared about so deeply was etched in my mind.

There was only one explanation and I despaired thinking about it. The thought made me want to be sick. It made the scars on my body ignite like they were on fire, and it made my throat begin to close in panic. A single word rang ominously through my head like some sort of macabre hymn. A word that I hadn't spoke aloud in nearly a century.

Werewolf.

I clamped my eyes shut tightly, trying to suppress the darkness rising up inside of me and subdue the hot tears burning my eyes. But my mind could not help but drift back in time.

Neuengamme Concentration Camp, Northern Germany, 1941.

When my heavy eyes opened, it was dark. Dark enough to know that I was underground, but not so dark as to not be able to see the horrifying sight in front of me.

I could barely lift my head, but I didn't need to to see the large pools of dark, viscous liquid on the floor. I could smell it. That scent was imprinted in the very fabric of my being. It called out to me like a siren's song. It was blood, old blood, and there was more of it than could possibly come out of one person.

My entire body felt as though it were made of lead, my mind hazy and numb, and my toes wet from grazing against the pool of blood beneath me. I did not even have the strength to fight against the chains dangling me from the ceiling, attached to me with a pair of iron cuffs that cut painfully at my wrists and threatened to rip my arms from my torso.