Chapter 17: Alone (3)
My breath catches as my gaze locks onto an open mouth. The corpse’s eyes are gone. Hollowed out, nothing but black voids remain. A red tongue protrudes grotesquely from the cavity where a nose should be. My stomach lurches. I retch. Nothing comes. I gag again. My hands press against the corpse. Against its insides. My fingers sink into flesh, into organs, into warm, viscous blood.
I breathe rapidly. My heart pounds. My hands tremble.
His hair is like mine. Blonde. The only thing left of him.
He is mutilated. His legs—gone. His torso—slit open, his innards scooped out, strewn across his chest like a grotesque display.
It’s Ren.
No matter how disfigured, I recognize him.
His full red lips, once like mine, are now pale, dry, cracked.
It is my little brother. And he lies here exactly as I had imagined—dismembered, tortured, violated.
581 screams.
Each one carved into these wounds.
No tears leave my eyes—only blood. I stare down at him, motionless, as the weight of the world bears down on my shoulders.