Slam.
Splat.
Slam. Splat. Scream.
Kerium was moving with a frantic, rhythmic speed that defied the physical limits of a human neck. He killed himself faster and faster, his body jerking in the lake of blood like a puppet with its strings being yanked by a madman.
He couldn't bear the weight of existence for even a single, agonizing second.
Every time his forehead met the stone, a small part of his sanity crumbled away, turning into the same fine dust that coated the cage floor.
Slam.
The timing was precise. The exact moment his heart began to pulse—forcing oxygenated blood into a brain that didn't want it—was the exact moment he drove his skull back into the unyielding rock.
He was revived, he screamed, he slammed. His heart beat, and the cycle began anew.
His face was no longer a face. It had been flattened into a raw, unrecognizable landscape of purple and red. His nose was a shattered ruin, driven deep into his sinus cavity. His lips had been ground away until only white, bared teeth remained.
Even the bone shard that had been lodged in his frontal lobe was gone, ground into powder by the sheer repetition of the impacts. His whole face was a flat, wet mess of meat. But he kept going.
The pain of his brain being compressed and flattened—like a heavy boot stepping on a grape—was overwhelming, but it was the only thing he could control.
He was drunk on the freedom he felt when he died. In those few seconds of darkness between the Slam and the Scream, he was finally, truly alone. No mother, no guards, no "Starlet" expectations. Just the void.
But the void was a liar.
Every time he thought he had finally slipped through the cracks of reality, he would wake up. He would wake up to a level of pain that would make the gods cower in their heavens.
How long will I have to do this—
Slam.
I can't keep doing this. It's a never-ending cycle. My heart... it will never stop beating.
Slam.
The sound was starting to change. It was no longer a wet splat; it was a hollow, echoing thud as the floor beneath him began to crack under the weight of his continuous suicide. It won't stop beating.
I can hear it in my mind. It's the first thing I hear when I wake up, and that's what hurts the most. Through all my struggles to find death over and over, it refuses to accept me. Death was supposed to be the only thing that was equal for everyone—the final mercy for the beggar and the king alike. But once again... I am alone in my immortality.
Slam.
"It hurts so much... why does it hurt so bad? Let me rest. Please... just let me rest."
His voice was a wet gurgle, the words coming out as bubbles of blood.
Just make it stop. Beep. Make it stop. Beep. He began to plead with his own organs as if they were sentient captors. His heart was a metronome of torture, a steady, mechanical beep in the silence of his mind, reminding him with every throb that he had failed to stay dead.
I need to stop, he thought, his spirit finally sagging. I can't even win against my own pulse.
As he stopped the slamming, the true horror began. Unimaginable pain hit his head like a speeding truck.
"Ackkk... ahhh... stop!"
He wanted to drive his head into the ground again just to find that split-second of relief, but he couldn't move. He was paralyzed by a neurological fire that radiated from the tips of his toes to the crown of his skull.
His mind tumbled over and over in a feverish haze as his heart beat faster and faster, mocking his weakness. The sensation of his skull and brain matter reforming from the "mesh" on the floor was like drowning in lava while trying to catch a breath.
He could do nothing but whimper, his body convulsing as it rebuilt itself into a human shape. He suffered for hours, his consciousness melting and refreezing in a cycle of biological agony.
"Hah... hahaha... in the end, I couldn't even beat my own heartbeat," Kerium whispered into the dark.
His voice was a jagged rasp. "This body is a curse. It's a curse! Curse, curse, curse, curse!"
He pulled his knees to his chest and buried his head in the small space of safety. "How can I lose to my own body? I've lost literally everything... even the one thing I thought was mine alone."
The darkness in the room seemed to press closer as his despair turned into a cold, sharp-edged fury.
He began to scratch at his skin, his nails digging deep furrows into his forearms. His teeth clenched so hard that the roots groaned, his mouth filling with the metallic tang of blood from the pressure.
"It felt like my head was put into a shredder... then it healed... then it repeated. It was like a stampede of bulls. I tried to claw at the ground, but they were too quick. They trampled my feet, then my arms, then my head... over and over and over."
He wasn't just suffering from physical pain anymore; it was the mental rot of knowing he was a prisoner of his own cells. He wanted to punch something. He wanted to kill something. The logic was simple: if he couldn't die, he would send as many people as possible to the afterlife to fill the space he was denied.
"How dare you take something from me?" Kerium hissed, his eyes snapping open. They were no longer the eyes of a boy; they were twin voids of concentrated malice. "How dare you?! It was mine! Death was MINE! Something mine alone!"
He stood up, his body clicking and snapping as the last of his bones knitted together. The smell of his own scorched meat and copper filled the air, a scent he now associated with his own resurrection.
"Whoever did this to me... you will die. I will fucking kill you! You hear me? You're dead! I will fucking kill you!"
Kerium shrieked his vow to the heavens, his voice echoing through the dark tunnels of the mine. At that moment, the sun began to rise, its first rays peeking through the iron bars to illuminate the ruined, blood-stained mask of his face.
The boy was gone. Something else was waking up