Chapter 4
Oxaril has tied Ren back onto the chair and then presses the button on the metal plate on his neck once again.
As if flipped by a switch, Ren regains control over his body. Only now does he realize that the pain from the nail has merely been dulled, not removed. Small tears quickly form in his eyes, like when you hit your head on a sharp edge.
"Stop being so dramatic,"
Oxaril complains and rips the nail out of his tongue as if pulling off a bandage. A few small splashes of blood land on his white coat, but he doesn't seem to care in the slightest. To him, it's no different than oil splatters on a chef's apron.
Without another word, Oxaril turns around and grabs the pliers still sticky with blood from the table beside him, then quickly faces Ren again.
"Let's just continue where we left off last time."
Grinning, he looks Ren straight in the face and clamps the index finger of his left—still intact—hand into the pliers.
Just like last time, it doesn't take long before all the fingers on Ren's left hand are gone. This time, however, he remains conscious. Oxaril grabs a cleaver that resembles a butcher's knife and, without hesitation, chops off the boy's entire hand in a single swing.
Ren screams in agony as the floor beneath them slowly fills with blood. His vision quickly blurs, and once again, from pain and blood loss, he loses consciousness.
This sequence repeats itself over and over again. Days pass, then weeks, and eventually even whole months, without anything changing.
Every time, Ren is tied down again and wakes up strapped to the table in the darkness, staring at the glowing monitor. Once he's awake, it usually doesn't take long before Oxaril enters the room and presses the button on the metal plate, rendering him immobile.
After that, he always transports him in the wheelchair to the torture chamber—as Ren has come to call the room by now.
At first, it was only his fingers. But by now, Oxaril hacks off entire limbs, like his legs. Yet these body parts now grow back within minutes. He doesn't even feel nearly as much pain as he once did. A severed limb feels no worse than a deep cut from a kitchen knife.
Ren has long since lost any sense of time. Day after day, he lies there in the dark room, staring into nothingness. He doesn't know whether it's day or night, nor how many days have passed since Oxaril attacked his city.
When he's tired, he sleeps. And when he's awake, Oxaril comes anyway—to torture him.
Day in, day out, nothing ever changes. Except for one thing.
Oxaril's mood sinks lower and lower every time he sees Ren.
"Can't you just give up already…"
The Monster sighs as he enters the room once more.
"What? I told you already… I'll kill you!"
Ren announces with a horrifying expression. Then he turns his head as far as the restraints allow and spits onto Oxaril's coat.
Oxaril's eye twitches slightly. He's clearly irritated and on edge. Without hesitation, he takes a new nail—probably meant for Ren's tongue—and rams it straight into his left eye. With a swift motion, he then rips the nail out along with the entire eyeball.
Ren only grins at him and sticks out his tongue. Dazed, he doesn't even notice that half the blood running down his cheek lands on it.
"Do you really think that after all your torture, a little nail bothers me anymore? It'll grow back in a few minutes anyway!"
Oxaril quickly presses the button on the plate to finally shut him up. After that, it's the same procedure again, until Ren wakes up in the dark room once more. The torture chamber.
Without any restraint, Oxaril smashes and tears both of the boy's legs off. He decorates the entire chamber with a bitter, dark new wallpaper. His coat looks like he's just worked at a slaughterhouse again.
Ren, however, continues to stare at him with narrowed eyes. Despite all the pain—both physical and mental—he simply refuses to give up. He won't let his will be broken.
"Will you finally give up already!!!"
Oxaril completely loses control. Too fast for Ren to even notice, the monster swings and drives his fist straight into Ren's stomach.
Ren immediately spits blood onto the arm beneath him. Oxaril's fist is buried deep inside his body. He's punched a hole straight through him. Slowly, he spreads his fingers and presses against everything he can grab inside of the boy´s Stomach.
"Forget it,"
Ren murmurs in pain. His senses must be so numbed that he can't even fully grasp what's happening anymore.
"I will never give up. You'll regret the day you murdered my family. You'll regret the day you laid eyes on me for the first time!"
Ren doesn't just hope his words are true. He's convinced of them. He firmly believes that someday, somehow, he'll escape Oxaril's grasp.
With these thoughts, he slowly falls asleep again, as his body has begun regenerating once more, draining a great deal of his energy.
"Fuck!"
Oxaril roars and pulls his hand—decorated with blood and pieces of flesh—back out of the boy's body.
While sleeping, Ren dreams of his family.
He dreams of sitting at the table with his parents and Emma, eating dinner together. Only his brother is missing. He's probably still at work, his dream-self assumes.
Then, out of nowhere, the heads of the three fall onto the table one after another, landing on the plates in front of their bodies and filling them with blood.
Ren shudders in his dream, as if an icy chill runs down his spine. He quickly turns around and sees Oxaril, grinning as he looks down at him. He winds up and swings toward his face.
Ren flinches, quickly raising his hands to protect his chin and squeezing his eyes shut.
Nothing Happens…
Carefully, he opens them again—but everything around him is black.
"What's going on now?"
Ren feels strange. It doesn't feel like he's dreaming anymore. Yet he can move freely, which means he can't be awake. Otherwise, he'd still be strapped to the table.
Out of nowhere, his body is shaken by a small shockwave and shoved forward. Startled, he turns around again and sees a small, dark red light.
Another wave pulses from the light, making his entire body tremble.
Slowly, he approaches it and notices it growing larger and larger. The shockwaves are released at rhythmic intervals, like a heartbeat.
Drawn to it like a moth to a flame, Ren moves closer and closer until he stands directly in front of it. The pulses it emits are unimaginably strong, as if they could destroy entire houses around it. Yet, for some strange reason, Ren is no longer affected by them.
Only his hair and clothes whip violently, as if he were standing next to a raging storm.
The boy swallows and gathers all his courage. Slowly, he reaches out with his right hand and grabs for the only source of light in the dark space.
The moment he curls his fingers into a fist, as if grasping something, he wakes up drenched in sweat.
Dazed, he looks around.
"Wait… I can look around?"
Ren lifts his head and hastily scans the dark room. For the first time, he notices another light source in the room, aside from the strange monitor.
His right arm—the one usually connected to the injection pipe—is glowing intensely. It's wrapped in a strange aura, the same color as the red light from his dream.
His entire arm grows redder and redder. At the same time, he feels an increasingly unbearable burning sensation. It's hot. Extremely hot. As if he were holding his arm in a barrel of molten lava.
The structure of his skin slowly changes as well. It looks like small, tightly pressed stones of dried lava, yet at the same time still appears fluid. Like a mixture of hardened and still-flowing dark red lava, burning everything it touches—the restraints and the table beneath him included.
The longer he looks at his transforming arm and the smoke rising from it toward the ceiling, the more intense the burning pain becomes. He can actually feel his skin burning away, only to regenerate again and again, like an endless cycle.
But none of that matters to him right now.
There is only room for a single thought in his mind.
He lifts his arm and stares directly into his glowing palm.
"I… I'm free?"
After a brief moment of realization, he quickly tears off the remaining restraints with his arm, which burn away in his grasp. Overwhelmed, he slides to the edge of the table and stands up—only to collapse immediately.
Ren feels weak. How long has it been since he last stood on his own two legs? His body now looks like that of a starving man, from all the lying around and the lack of food. At this moment, he feels like a newborn taking its very first steps.
Focused, he looks forward and stands up again with determination. Slowly and shakily, he takes one step after another toward the door Oxaril usually enters through. It's also the only door—or opening—leading in or out of the room.
"Shit…"
he mutters when the door doesn't open.
His arm provides enough light to look around, but he can't find a switch or anything else to open the door.
"FUCK!"
He shouts again, slamming his forehead hard against the door, followed by his right arm. A loud clanging echoes through the room. Slowly, he turns his head and looks at his glowing arm again.
Determined, he lifts his head and stares at the obstacle in his way. He quickly takes a shaky step back and slowly winds up.
Ren exhales one last time and strikes with all his strength.
The moment his arm collides with the door, a small crater forms in the thick metal, which immediately begins to glow faintly from the heat. The dull impact sounds like two massive metal pipes crashing together, echoing through the room.
Ren quickly draws back and delivers another blow to the door. Again and again, he strikes it—until it finally gives way and bursts from its frame.
With a loud crash, it flies down the hallway behind Ren's room and slams into the wall. Immediately after, a blaring alarm goes off, accompanied by red lights flashing rhythmically from ceiling to floor. It sounds like the sirens of a prison break.
With determination, Ren looks into the red-lit corridor and runs forward, even though his steps are still unsteady and clumsy.
"This is my chance!"
he thinks, preparing himself to finally escape from Oxaril's grasp.