Unleashed
(The Short Chapters)
Chapter TWO: Click
Click.
Sometimes it helped to visualise the capture in my mind, as if it were a movie playing in my head. “Click”, such a simple sound, yet in it such a strong suggestion that an objective had suddenly been completed.
Click.
A puzzle piece falling into place.
Click.
A sudden idea instantly followed by the strike of the thumb against the index-finger.
Click.
Two inconsequential metal parts slamming into each other to snap close the lock of a dog leash.
The lion was chained. I could feel it pacing at the back of my mind; striding back and forth, back and forth, testing its prison walls by raking its vicious claws into my mental barriers.
I grimaced as I fortified the only thing keeping me sane, by imagining the walls as thick concrete filled with iron.
The faint echo of malice lingered in my thoughts, though they had begun receding after it had escaped my grasp. This was the after-effect I knew so well. That I hated so much. And yet needed so greatly.
I took a deep breath and opened my eyes slowly, carefully - afraid to even chance a look at my surroundings.
Red.
Red everywhere.
Dribbled on the floor in puddles. Spattered on the walls in jagged, messy lines. Flecked on the roof in tiny, little dots no smaller than a flea.
Yet, I could see it all; smell it all. I could almost taste the fear soaked into this room. My vision began to spin and I stepped forward to gain a solid stance, hoping I wouldn’t fall down. I closed my eyes and attempted to gain my bearings. This wasn’t anything I hadn’t seen before. I tried to think clearly, logically, but I found myself at a loss. Instead a question looped in my mind, What would Dad do if he was in this situation?
Facts. I needed facts. How many died, how many were alive still, who had seen me, what time did I do this, what time was it now, where was I and how would I get out of here? I need the answers to all of these questions. First, the easiest. What was the time now?
I glanced around for a clock, a watch or something of time-telling nature. No such luck, if there had once been an object like that it was far too deep under the red to see anymore. Swallowing nervously and beginning to panic, my breath sticking in my throat and my mouth bone dry, I noticed light flicker through a window in the corner of my eye, momentarily blinding me with a ray of warmth. Almost as if God-sent it shone upon something I hadn’t seen in the darkly lit room.
Children.
Dead.
No eyes.
No mouth.
No face.
Only black and red chasms of waste, melded together with what remained of their brains.
Oh God, it had never killed children before. Bile twisted its way up my throat and sloshed against the back of my tongue, playing with my gag-reflex. I felt so sick, that I doubled over holding my heaving stomach, afraid that it would fall out.
So very, very sick. What had it done?
My breath became short and jagged, like I had run a marathon, my hands began to shake uncontrollably and I found I became vertically challenged. The world blurred into a mess of red-tarnished splodges.
It took me a while to realise I was crying. My heart was tearing itself apart; my stomach felt like it was reaching up there to help it in its dirty work. Tears flowed down my face freely. And they didn’t stop. Not for a long time.
This was the worst thing I had ever done. And I knew it wasn’t even its fault. It was me! The sane one, the morally justified one, the one who knew where right crossed over the line to wrong.
Why had I been so selfish?
Why did I need to release it nearly every week?
When I finally stopped crying, still twitching from the guilty tremors which struck me, I realised I had fallen to the floor and I was lying in red. Covered in red, soaked in it, drowning in red, dying in it, living in red.
Red.
So much simpler to refer to it as red.
Red had no meaning, no source, and no reason.
But, I knew so much better. It had so much meaning. It was never simple to see it scattered about and I would never grow use it, no matter how many times it happened. Never. It would never be easy.
Red was just blood.
But blood would never just be red.
Blood was life.
And I was rolling in someone else’s life. That I had stolen. I felt sick again, my stomach was doing chin ups in my body, and I resisted the urge to retch knowing full well it could be used as evidence to find me.
The sun completely shone into the mansion now. It covered me in its non-judgemental gaze and for a second I felt healed, almost better. Sweat trickled down my body, rehydrating the caked blood which was practically a second skin. The moment of sanity from the sun was all I needed to break out of my deranged lapse of logic.
I needed to leave. Escape. Be gone. Free.
I was still shaking as I staggered towards the nearest door, hoping it was the exit of this mansion. Clenching my eyes closed, I raised my hands blindly grabbing at the air, hoping it would land on the handle. As my pointing finger hit something hard I couldn’t resist the urge to look.
The handle, thank god.
Click.
The sound of a door opening.
