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“You are an offering.”
That is what they told him, and it was what he had adored. He did not know when or how it started, he just knew that it did. He knew that his days were filled with gentle hands and smooth words, catering to him and whispering praises of his glorious future as their dutiful sacrifice. All of it for the Higher Powers. Beings that he himself could not fully comprehend despite the many flowery descriptions the elders told him.
They taught that his sacrifice was joy, that true happiness only comes when it is his time to offer himself as tribute. He had been elated, because of course he was. No other moment was worth his time other than his eventual and unstoppable expiration.
When the day came, the elders said nothing of potential rejection. They said nothing of the pain of it would cause, and the slow creeping realization that perhaps true happiness was not meant for him. For the years he had devoted himself, his thoughts, and his actions...
The Higher Powers could not even give him the grace of accepting his tribute.
Instead they had left him abandoned. A shambling body left to rot and sneer at. A broken thing that they could not even be bothered to look twice over. They took what was not meant to be taken.
The first thing he had felt as soon as the rejection was over, standing there with a look of overwhelming confusion and shock, was a violent kick to his side. It had knocked him over, tripping over candles and the bodies they had prepped for the occasion. The elders were furious, blaming him for his supposed inadequacy. That perhaps in his moments of strict worship, he had wavered. Because of course, the elders could not see themselves doing no wrong in this.
Yet, no physical beating or piercing yell could compare to the pain the Higher Powers’ indifference had caused within him.
He had laid there for a moment, staring off into nothing and drowning in his own lifeless state. The yells and screams all turned muffled. The Higher Powers refused his one and only tribute, that much was true.
But they most assuredly took everything else. They took his feelings. They took his chance of true happiness. They took his thoughts. They took his patience. They took—
In the middle of the confusion, the anger, and the chaos; he spots a sharp piece of wood off to the side. It seemed to be a part of the broken staircase in this house they had been using to do their many rituals. With a slow reach of his hand and a heavy tug of his sluggish body, he grabs hold of it, fingers tightening despite the splinters digging into his skin.
Everyone else was too distracted to notice him, all too busy discussing amongst themselves on what they should do with their so-called ‘perfect offering.’ Some whisper that they should kill him, throw him away like the Higher Powers have done. After all, if their gods didn’t deem him worthy, they shouldn't have to poison themselves with his presence.
“He has failed his only task.” They argued, almost as if he was like the bodies they had scattered around their altars.
But even those bodies had served their purpose. Done to grab the attention of the Higher Powers.
So what was he? If he were not good enough to be an offering, if the elders didn’t see him as a means to show their everlasting loyalty towards the Higher Powers, what was he actually here for?
They do not see his rising figure, nor do they see the heavy piece of wood held above his head; ready to swing down at any moment.
He does not know who he kills first, all he knows is the feeling of blood splattering against his face; warm and slowly dripping down his chin. There is suddenly a body by his feet, head cracked open and pooling a dark red ichor on the dusty floors, the silence after the violent act is deafening, broken only by soft gasps.
Then, it was all insanity.
Some had screamed, pointed their fingers at him. Others all ran towards him, calling him a heretic and raising their own weapons at him. Again, he bashes another head in, his movements automatic and rigid, like his actions were not his own, instead pulled along by strings he cannot see.
Perhaps even choice had been taken away from him. Maybe what he was doing now was another byproduct of the Higher Powers’ cruelty towards him.
Even so. Even so—
There was a strange sense of catharsis to it all. As if this was his true purpose. To hurt, to make others bleed, and to cause as much unending fear.
Everything feels strangely numb, like his body was simply going through some strange dream. Every wet crunch, every loud scream, and every fresh splatter of blood against his fingers felt dampened, as if his nerves were slowly dying away and leaving him an unfeeling husk. The thought should have terrified him, and perhaps it did, but whatever the Higher Powers took left him unable to express it in any other way except the tempting call of violence.
He suddenly gets the thought that this might be what dying feels like.
The slow loss of feeling. The numbness. The strange sense that he wasn’t in control most of the time. The urge and the need to do something.
It is the killing that reassures him. The way he feels another head give in to the heavy swing of his makeshift weapon, the way screams of both terror and anger echo in his ears, and the way blood hits his strangely hardening skin, handing him a moment of warmth. Seeking as much sensation before it’s all gone, taking just how the Higher Powers had done to him. He kills as if he was trying to prove that he was still alive, as if it would give him the allowance to survive this.
When he swings his weapon upon a member’s back, the wood splits into little broken pieces, but of course, it does not stop him. He throws it to the ground and grabs at the member without thought, fingers that were suddenly lined with stone digging into soft flesh.
It is surprisingly easy to tear it all apart, helped by the sharp edges of rock. Blood spills across his fingers, pooling into his palms. It douses him so much it reaches his elbows. His hands linger on the mass of bone and meat in his rough touch, feeling the weight and the way it gives in to grip of his hands.
He notices that there is a significant lack of warmth now. He truly was losing sensation.
So much that he could barely feel the pain that suddenly sprouts at the back of his neck. He slowly lifts a hand up, feeling the foreign object that had so suddenly stabbed into him. It was a sharp piece of metal, jagged and rusty. He could simply feel it stab into his neck, and even without the sensation of pain, it was unnerving to feel something so foreign.
When he turns around, he meets the fearful gaze of another member, staring at him with both horrible dread and shock. Even he was a little surprised to see he had not died. The Higher Powers made sure to take that as well, it seemed.
Blood seeps down his back as he jumps on the one that had harmed him, choking them out with his now stone-covered hands. The other members all pick up what they can to stop him, shoving blades and sharp debris into his sides, cutting skin open and leaving him to bleed. But even as it does slow him, the carnage does not stop until the floors were nothing but a deep red and the many mangled bodies of what he used to call his peers.
He stands in the middle of it all, his chest down to his waist soaked with gore. Some of it was his own.
Collapsing down onto the floors with a sickening and wet noise, it was only then he realizes how much his body had been torn apart in his slaughter. Riddled with deep cuts and broken bones that he suddenly could not feel, not anymore.
He laid there for what felt like hours. Every breath he took it felt like it should have been his last, but he would surprise himself over and over again when his lungs would fill in with another weak bound of air.
He should be dead.
He should be dead.
But even that was not allowed. All that was left for him was the horrible clarity before a death that would never come for him.
People always spoke about how terrifying it was to die, or to keep on living, but now he knows that the true horror was to be kept in between the two states. Functionally, he was dead, but his mind was clear, his thoughts were loud. He could feel every breath he took and every slow beat of his heart. It was a disgusting contrast to the lack of feeling on his skin, it was all sharp stone there now.
Whatever painful existence that came after death was, it could not compare to this.
He wonders what it was that he’d done to warrant something as cruel as this. It could have been otherworldly retribution, or maybe it was just because the Higher Powers simply thought it would be amusing to do.
But he knew the truth was that he’d never understand it. He was never going to find a reason.
And perhaps that was the most painful fact in this whole thing. He could not even begin to comprehend the reasons why he had lost everything so fast. Everyone that had once thought so highly of him are now dead because of his own hands. The Higher Powers have refused to accept his tribute but have everything else that was his taken.
When the red skies stop shining through the windows, that is when he begins to cry.
It is a strange sensation to feel his tears pass through his tear ducts, but then be unable to feel the way the liquid drips down his cheeks. All too sensitive and all too unfeeling at the same time.
It is when the blood starts to rot that he hears something else other than his beating heart. Footsteps echo and make the old house’s floorboards creak. Whoever walked in here didn’t really concern him, they would probably mistake him as a corpse, and seeing such violent acts in Nexus City wasn’t all that surprising anyway.
“What a mess.” A voice speaks up in the darkness, shining what seemed to a be a flashlight all around the room. “Be ready, someone might be here.”
They were not alone, it seemed. He could hear two pairs of feet on the floors now. A man’s figure steps through the doorways, the only thing highlighting him is probably the electric lights outside. Another man walks up to the stranger, taller and bulkier, but he stays behind him as if he is simply a follower.
Every step they took, wet noises bounced off the walls. Even now, some of the blood hadn’t dried up.
“That one isn’t dead.” The one says gruffly, grabbing their companion and making him turn towards the supposed corpse on the ground. The one holding the flashlight shines it on him, and now he could see what this stranger looks like; he wore a mask. It had red lenses that gave him a permanent look of judgment, a heavy coat set upon his shoulders.
The man walks up, lowering himself to get a closer look at the shambling mess beneath him. He shines the light on the festering wounds, cuts that were deep enough to show bone, and of course, the fact that this supposed corpse was still breathing. The stranger makes an interested hum at the back of his throat as he looks over this strange occurrence.
“Well, it seems like you were meant to be an offering, hm?” The man mutters, and of course, the other cannot reply to him. The stranger clicks his tongue and shakes his head as he takes in just how ruined the body was underneath him. “An offering to the wrong gods, more specifically.” He adds.
“Though, you not being dead despite the state you’re in makes me...curious.” He then mutters, fully intrigued. The stranger’s companion comes close too, looming over the both of them. He is even taller up close.
The companion stares for a bit, his eyes were hidden behind red lenses as well, but were wide and rounded instead of the stranger’s thin ones. It almost looked predatory. “Are you taking him?” He says, voice muffled by his own mask. When the stranger nodded, he slowly leaned down to pick the half-dead thing on the floor, only for the other to stop him with a hand to his shoulder.
“I’ll do it, Hank.” The stranger says. “You’re probably going to tear something in him if you pick him up.” His companion immediately relents with a huff, and he simply watches as the stranger carefully wedges his fingers beneath the body, slowly inching his arms around until he has a proper grip.
The offering does not know what to say, or really sure if he could say anything. Blood and gore spill from open wounds as the stranger lifts him, staining the man’s clothes, but it seemed like he didn’t quite mind it, in fact, he didn’t react at all. He must be used to this kind of thing. His hands had simply tightened around the body he held, in a way that kept all of the important bits inside and not on the filthy floor.
Even though there could be a possibility that the offering didn’t need his organs, the stranger had deemed him important enough that he wanted to make an effort not to test the limits of his strange immortality.
The stranger grunts a bit as he adjusts his grip. “You’re a lot heavier than you look.” He says, almost cradling the offering in his arms. There was something terribly vulnerable to having someone stare at the inner workings of your body. To look upon what made you you. To feel how your blood dripped or how warm your flesh was.
It was a reminder of how it felt to have the elders dote on him. Pathetically, he almost leaned into the familiar touch. For once, he felt as if that he were not a simple offering to be given and to be either refused or accepted. He had always wrapped his thoughts of self-sacrifice like a gift towards the ones who had believed in him, and to the Higher Powers. To offer himself and to be simply accepted to the point he could not understand that he could be cruelly refused.
But this stranger held him, kept all of the guts in. It was closer than the elder ever held him, and kinder than the Higher Powers had been. He was accepting him, including the blood soaking into his coat and the weak gasps that could have been thankful words.
“You’re alright.” The stranger says, mistaking his attempt at speaking as signs of fear. The offering does not question why that would be the first assumption the man would make. “If you’re in pain, I’ll make sure to take it away soon.”
The reassurance is like a shot through the heart. The offering despises the fact he could not muster a word, all he could do was let out another instance of tears. If the stranger noticed it, he didn’t say anything, or perhaps he just mistook the wetness as more blood. Either way, the offering is greatly thankful for it.
Nothing could replace what the Higher Powers had taken from him, and nothing could undo the fact that he was an offering that had been refused.
Perhaps this stranger was once again going to use him for those same purposes, but as he lowered the offering down into the soft cushions of a battered up jeep, not caring for the mess it makes and more concerned about how he had placed the other...
It almost doesn’t matter.
For being accepted like this, fragile bones and all, was better than anything the elders or what the Higher Powers could hand him.