Falling bullets✔

CHAP 54-"His voice rings a bell"

J I M I N

FLASHBACK

The smell of rusted metal was mixed with the pungent smell of acid, combining it into a scent that could kick in a nauseous feel and levitate your mind into a world of abstract visions, blurring everything in my sight. With my hands running through my hair in confusion, I tried to close my eyes tight and open it to get a better look at the surrounding.

The first area my eyes were fixed on was the roof above. Water droplets dripped from each corner. A roof with leaks was not a familiar location for me. With heavy breaths and half-closed eyes that hurt every time it opened, I tried to look ahead of me and found cylindrical bars concealing me in the space that formed a square around.

I was caged?

My mind said, get up. But my body disobeyed. Then my body said, get up, but my mind disobeyed.

At that point, I knew there was some kind of a drug injected in me. I let out a sigh and rubbed my fingers roughly around my eyes, moving my hands back to holding my hair again. With the anger of not being able to see clearly nor get up from my seated position on the cemented floor, I yelled, groaned and banged my hands on the floor like a complete psychopath.

"You will just hurt yourself like that, kid"

A voice so steady and soft spoke out of nowhere. The way he spoke and his voice was so alarming to me. It's not a voice I'm unfamiliar with. I'm sure I've heard him before. Or am I still high on drugs? I can't even say.

"Where am I?" I asked.

I don't get an answer.

With my eyebrows folded to the center of my forehead, I looked at the direction the voice had originated from. It was outside the bars. Nothing was clear to me. All I could see was a blurred image of a tall man's side profile. He stood a few centimeters outside the metal bars that trapped me. And I could say with the silence summoned before us that he was indeed observing me.

"Fuck you man"

No answer yet.

I lifted my hands to find them shivering. At first, I thought it was just all in my blur mind. But I could feel my hands vibrate when I held my face with it. It made me think of a very important question.

"What day is it today?"

"Just another day" he replied.

"I wonder how the drug has very less impact on you. It only lasts a few hours and I have to drug you again. Your friends are more prone to them unlike you, kid"

With those words, my head started aching real bad. Lost pieces of memories were all rushing back to me at once, making it hard for me to arrange them into a sequence. I yelled again and kept yelling holding my head until the pain settles.

"What is happening to me" I screamed those words out after which a lot of important memories were slowly joining together and I learned them one by one with my eyes wide open, staring at the wall in front of me as a canvas to sketch them down while I recall everything.

I remembered the missing cases, the disappearances of my friends, of Minrae and the moving image of Harin knocking me out and waking up in this same room.

I remember yelling at the same man every day for answers and getting drugged again and again and again to shut me up. He never let me see him. I was always at the peak of being drugged with no sense when I spoke.

But what I remember most is getting a bird tattooed on my wrist. Did he mark me? Did he just claim me? To make sure I pulled my sleeves up and saw the fine design on my wrist with blurry eyes.