ARMAGEDDON

17: Specter

Fuck. I shouldn't be here. I shouldn't be in Hell at all, but this place is something worse than Hell, somehow.

A foreign voice whispered in my head, speaking in a tongue that was spoken before the concept of time itself. Then, the alien speech suddenly made sense. It was speaking English.

"Jason..." it kept whispering.
"Shut up!" I whispered in a hiss.

The scenery around me changed from the Crucible to a house. My house. The house was coated in darkness, but I could see the glowing red eyes of a Reaper.

It was feasting on the body of my mother, the smell of blood poisoning the air with an iron stench. I remembered that I was missing an arm. I held the stump, wondering why I couldn't feel pain.

I couldn't touch the Reaper, nor could I make it notice me. It was as if I was immaterial. I slowly walked past the Reaper, overwhelmed with the amount of fuckery going on here. The whispering started to grow harhser with each step I took towards the stairs. I needed to go down them to leave this godforsaken place. Each step I took down the stairs, the whispers turned into audible murmurs.

The air felt charged, like something was going to happen. As soon as my feet touched the living room floor, mouths opened up in the walls and started shrieking. The wailing pierced my very soul and shook me to the core. I bolted out the front door and ran as fast as I could. The screaming won't stop. I hear sirens. The world has gone mad. A Myrmidon came out of nowhere and tried to cleave my skull in half with an axe made of bones. I caught the axe, ripped it out of the demon's hands and immediately beheaded it. More were coming.

Imps, Reapers, Brutes, all of Hell seemed to be after me. I killed them one after another, covering myself in unholy blood. But there was one. A stain on existence itself. The Specter was here. All it took was an instant, and he appeared right before me. All he had to was reach his hand out and touch me, and all my self doubts and heavy burdens crushed my fighting spirit. I fell over, all the fight in me replaced by the weight of my failure.

I couldn't save my family. I wasn't there for them. Why me? Why do I have to be the sole survivor? Is it fate? God's sense of humor?

The Specter loomed over me, his gaze a faceless stare. He was winning. A weapon suddenly materialized in my hand, a Desert Eagle again. Without thinking about it, I stuck the muzzle in my mouth and contemplated squeezing the trigger. It'd be so easy.

"Do it" the ethereal being whispered. I could hear thousands of other voices whispering, telling me to put myself out of my personal misery. I wanted nothing else but to do it. But a small voice at the back of my mind stopped me.

"It wasn't your fault. You could never have saved them anyway. You would have died with them."

Shut up. I never asked for any of this. I never wanted this. I want to be with my family again.

"You have strength now, you can exact vengeance for the deaths of the innocent."

I sat there contemplating with myself. The answer became clear.

I coldly stared at the Specter. "You're only using my guilt to try and kill me. You're a piece of shit for trying to use my family against me."

I aimed the Desert Eagle at the Specter, and pulled the trigger. The round impacted squarely with the Specter's blank features. At first, noting happened. Then a piercing beam of light suddenly erupted from a crack in the Specter's mask. It's screaming was unholy, but I got up and unloaded the entire magazine into the Specter.

Piercing beams of light erupted from the Specter's wounds, and it let out one terrible and horrific shriek before suddenly erupting into pure light. The world around me started to fracture like glass hitting a stone. I could feel my consciousness slipping.

I won. That's all that matters.