Ch 22: Go f*ck yourself.

No…no….no…it can’t be.

“Hello, Ace.” The voice from the man in front of him and the phone blurred together.

“W-What do you want from me? Spare me, please.” Ace whimpered as he crawled backwards, his leg leaving a trail of blood in the dirt. “D-didn’t you need me a-alive?”

An abhorrent smile—morbid and haunting, the way it unnaturally stretched from ear to ear.

“I just LOVE IT! When they're so smart and understanding.” Hemlok threw his arms in the air, his voice carrying unbridled glee.

Crouching down, he studied Ace’s eyes. Enthralled by the fear, he leaned closer. So close that their irises almost touched.

“Don’t worry, my sweet child,” Hemlok’s voice faded to a whisper as he caressed Ace’s pale face with his claw-like fingers. “You won’t be dying anytime soon. I won’t let you.”

                                                                           ***

GONG. GONG. GONG.

A haunting chime echoed through the clock tower once again. Ace had lost count of how many times the clock tower rang, its eerie sound permeating through the hollow walls.

The only way he could keep count of how long he’d been here was by using his fingers.

In this room, there was no other way to tell.

A room with a foul odour, a canvas painted in blood stains. Metal cages, chains, and shackles. Scalpels, blades, and cleavers. Insects crawled over the clumps of brown needles covering the floor, sprawling. In the centre of the room was an ominous chair with chains and shackles. From it, Ace was howling—the writhing agony of unheard screams. The desperate cries of tormented souls lingered in the air.

In this room, death was mercy.

So to pass the time, Ace had made two friends. Two very different friends.

Glass bottles and utility shears.

The glass had a sharp tongue. It was like an enemy-to-friend situation; they got off to a bad start, but now they were making up for it.

The shears were more like a childhood friend he’d reunited with. They were just like the ones he’d once used to trim the hedges in the garden, but they weren’t sharp and shiny like he remembered. They’d grown up now. They were rusted and covered in brown gunk—the consequence of repeated use without cleaning or maintenance. And, most importantly, they were blunt. Painfully so.

“Why were you following me? You knew something, didn’t you? You were going to tell the others, weren’t you?”

Hemlok’s haunting reflection shivered in Ace’s eyes. “I keep telling you, I don’t know,” Ace said, his voice hoarse from overuse.

“I wanted to keep the spearhead alive as long as possible; it’s a shame they can't keep their hands to themselves.” Hemlok picked up the dull silver shears. “Where is he?”

“I don’t know. Please not again. Don’t do it. DON’T-“

The blunt shears surrounded his middle finger, biting down slowly. Ace writhed, his blood-soaked metal bindings clattering. By now, the rusted shackles on his wrists and shins had dug through several layers of skin, unearthing warm, pink flesh.

Thud.

The finger fell to the floor, and like moths to a flame, the maggots crawled towards it.

Nine fingers— that’s how long Ace had been stuck in this room.

“How’d you get it?” The smile on Hemlok’s face reversed into a frown as he held up the glowing artifact. “You killed him for it, didn’t you? There's no way he would be so careless with his life.”

“He dropped it, so I picked it up to return it when-“

“LIES!” Hemlok’s smile returned as he pierced Ace’s leg with the jagged edges of a glass bottle. It was the look of a mad scientist, but there was something inhuman, almost supernatural, about the way his face distorted.

Ace gritted his teeth, the final remnants of his tears bleeding out of his dry eyes.

“I know EXACTLY what to do with you,” Hemlok whispered, his voice slithering through Ace’s ear.

SMASH!

The glass bottle burst into thousands of glass shards, painting the crimson floor with beads of light, and sending the bugs scurrying away.

Hemlok reached down and picked up a single shard. It was shaped like a triangle, covered with some of the brown gunk from the floor.

“Swallow it.”

Ace craved death. He desperately yearned for it because to him, it would be the greatest blessing—the end to his greatest torment. While mere days ago, he would cower at the thought of death, now, he crawled forward, reaching for it.

As Ace looked up to Hemlok’s harrowing grin, he too had a smile on his face.

Spitting the sticky, warm blood from his mouth right into Hemlok’s face. He had the widest smile he’d ever had since coming to this world—a smile of pure insanity.
“Go f*ck yourself.”

Hemlok's skin bubbled, his muscles contorting and convulsing uncontrollably, as if creatures were scrambling to burst out of his flesh.

“YoU WoRtHlEsS HuMaN.”

His voice was like a chorus, a blend of a thousand stolen voices. With his hands still contorting out of shape, he pointed the shears right in front of Ace’s eyes.

“You’re a failure. Utterly useless. You don’t know anything. NOTHING AT ALL. What use did he have for summoning such a weak and worthless being into this world? First, I’ll take the rest of your fingers and then your toes, and then your eyes. Once we've gouged out your eyes, we’ll move to your limbs. I’ll turn you into a puppet, just like that little boy.”

Ace watched as Hemlok morphed into a scrambling mass of limbs, the shears an inch from piercing his eyes.

Hemlok refused to let him die, prolonging his endless torture. He was looking for his way out. And finally, he could see it.

“And here I thought the one pulling the strings would be smart.” Ace stared right into the face of eldritch horror with a smile. “Yeah, I might be a failure, I might be weak, I might not know everything, but I’m not gonna sit here and be your b*tch.”

In one quick motion, Ace swung his head forward straight into the dull shears, the blades piercing his face from the front, exiting his skull from the back.