Death's Bitter Embrace (#Wattys2015)

Chapter IV: An Impossible Redemption

Time as a concept didn't matter when I saw the figures face once more-it had a wide grin permanently fastened to its face, burning white eyes glowing with revulsion and thick dark black hair-it quickly exudes into the floor with a short, acerb cackle. As I awake from lifeless, being so close to death for god knows how long, I still have my wounds but they've healed, someone tended to them while I was out.

I am lost within the labyrinth of Looming Oaks-I re-opened my wounds when I tried getting up-bleeding like a half-eaten hog and have nowhere to go. I wade through the "fresh water" that I have dumped all my victims in-it's absolutely filled to the brim with bodies and limbs and finally get somewhere I haven't been before. The blood-spattered water prickles my lacerations.

The figure shows up in front of me and breaks my concentration to find an exit out of this fucked up place. As it howls and shrieks, what looks like to be souls rupture out of its gaping mouth.

I start to run in trepidation and anxiety-with abnormal speed it seems-to find an exit, I feel my ankle twist at an unnatural angle; the excruciating pain starts to consume my body.

Yeah it's only an abnormal twisted ankle but combining that with the fear of getting killed-which believe me, I don't want to die, I don't want to leave Raven and Maria-is starting to take control of my body and screw around with my mind" I ponder in panic. I am hurtling all over the forest, and I realise one of my first victims is on the bush covered path that I am pursuing "this isn't where I dumped it" I question how it got there in my mind, not even caring what gender it was.

I see a massive clock tower off in the distance, much resembling the Big Ben but covered in shrubbery and overrun with collasal vines, as I get closer and closer I see that the clock face is stained a yellow colour for being here for a really long time, 100 years maybe?

A creature of some sort must've been here because there is a distorted hand print on the clock face, as I walk in I comprehend a bell the size of a small elephant-it is all cracked and the paint is chipped, I notice a small potion of the bell is on the ground in about a million pieces. The gates had vines all over them, but somehow, the overgrow made it look even better, the gates were about 20 feet tall and were obviously built as a monument for something, or someone. It was a truly amazing sight to behold, I appreciated seeing it, it took the stress off of me. No-one else was going to see this, no-one goes this deep in a forest- especially Looming Oaks.

As I exit the clock tower I can hear the ambience and it's starting to creep the shit out me, slowly but surely-especially when the wind is whistling like the pied piper during a whistle contest

My heart lurched out of my throat for like the fifty billionth time as the figure scurried and stalked toward me, I feel a cold irritating, immense, sharp pain in my chest-it feels like my heart is encased in ice and has been shattered into a million pieces.

As dusk came around quickly, my breathing escalated hastily and briskly as the world that surrounded me fell into a deep dark slumber, all I could hear was the wind howling and echooing throught the forest like a pack of wolves.

The pain of all my injuries was a shitty mix when united with angst, the pain is messing with my mind and confusing mind over matter with what the pain is telling me-give up. In which I do, I give into Death's warm, bitter embrace, I collapse just as the figure explodes into my view, and shakes its head as it starts a monologue, here I am waiting on Death's doorstep and it decides to start a monologue.

"Giving up huh, pathetic, you are a pathetic excuse for a human Toby, kill people for fun or kill them to feel like a machine and then give up at the first sight of an ending, whatever you reason is you're still a pathetic human, you hear me, PATHETIC." It screeches at me as my vision blurred and fell unconscious.

"You didn't listen, Toby, I told you you would die, or, I would kill you if you sought me out. I told you, you chose the wrong voice, but you tried to escape" great another monologue, just when I was looking forward to death too, I think to tired to listen. It deliberately and excruciatingly rips every single stitch out of my chest, one by one-to make matters any worse than it was, it drops its hand into my stomach and rips my appendix out.

I start to shake violently and fiercely as I start to bleed out fast.

"Ha" it gives a one-note laugh "do you think you can redeem yourself, because think again you cannot-it is impossible." It sadistically says between laughing hysterically.

"This is fun for me, although, I take it this ain't so much fun for you?" It asks whilst sniggering uncontrollably. As I embrace Death the world encompassing me went fuzzy and indistinct.