Another One

Richard Bronsen was elated. The blood on his blade was still warm. The prostitute hadn’t a thing. He scoffed at that type of people, the ones he thought were too trusting. In truth, Richard was just that charming and unassuming. She was his ninth victim. They were all the same in his eyes, naïve and stupid. He thought he was doing humanity a service by severing its weaker links.

Richard strolled through his home town confidently, perhaps a little too confidently. Who could blame him, though? He was making his way home with the ultimate prize; a fresh child carrier. He had a fascination with that one specific organ – the womb. Perhaps his mother didn’t love him enough, and that was his way of avenging her, or maybe he was just jealous of what he couldn’t have. No one will be able to tell for sure.

Richard was already on his home street when the street lamps suddenly went dark. He stopped for a moment, caught by surprise. He dismissed the occurrence as nothing but an electrical failure and continued making his way towards his home.

A deep chuckle echoed through the darkness of the street behind Richard. It prompted him to turn around to find the source. However, there was no one in sight. Richard dismissed it as his imagination playing tricks on him. He has gone tired and was having dopamine withdrawals. He needed a good rest; he reasoned.

The sadistic killer had made his way to his porch when he heard that deep, cold, slow chuckle again. This time it sounded like it came directly behind him. Chills ran across his skin, and he turned around sharply, pulling out his blood-stained knife, yelling out into the darkness, "Don’t fuck with me!”

To his surprise, there was no one there.

Richard didn’t have any time to react as he felt something that made his heart sink; a cold, leathery hand made its way on his back, beneath his shirt. He froze in place and was overcome by fear once he’d realized there was no one behind him. The hand slowly made its way beneath his trousers, causing him to shiver in terror. The feeling slowly changed, it turned into something more internal; as if his someone was gripping at his gluteal muscles. His musculature started spasming, causing him to twitch and turn. He gripped at his lower back and groaned in discomfort.

A sharp and burning explosion of pain suddenly bombarded his left hip. It was so bad he fell to his knees, grasping at his hip.

*Crack.*

He screamed out in unimaginable agony as a pain akin to that of a strike of an ax washed all over his lower back and traveled down to his left leg.

The cold, slow, deep chuckle echoed again before everything turned black.

The ground shook as a thunderclap roared in Richard’s ears, jolting him into a conscious state. His groans turned to screams once the pain in his left side returned. He was in so much pain he didn’t even notice he was no longer in the safety of his neighborhood. He was partially shaken back into his senses when a bullet grazed his face. Barely missing his head.

He screamed profanities as he struggled against his bonds.

Another bullet silenced his violent protests. It tore through his cheek; rendering him incapable of speech. He skulked in pain, unable to do much else.

The scope of Richard’s troubles finally dawned upon him when he realized he was tied to a cross in a trench. Surrounded by the ungodly sight of a sea of corpses scattered all over. Some were still alive, screaming; begging for help, crying for the sweet release of death.

A vile cry shook the heavens above Richard, forcing him to turn his head upwards. A gigantic bird flew above him, skeletal and covered in eyes; with one massive red eye in the center of its belly. The eye stared through Richard as the bird seemed to regurgitate something.

Something huge.

A shell.

The thing made its way out of the bird’s throat and towards its toothy beak, making it produce awful sounds.

The explosive slowly soared through the sky, falling toward Richard; He was sure he would die as the bomb inched closer to him. Tears streamed down his face as his eyes were locked on the explosive shell that ended up colliding with the ground a few yards from Richard.

Shaking the ground beneath him violently with a sky shattering thunderclap. The explosion and shock wave threw up a cloud of soil, corpse bits and dust that covered Richard, making him flinch painfully as the contraption he was tied to vibrated violently, causing the sadist a great deal of discomfort.

The deep chuckling permeated Richard’s ears once more, as he was trying to recover from the shock wave.

Richard tried focusing his vision on the sight before him, but could not believe or even comprehend what he saw; a creature that seemed to resemble some old-time soldier. It wore a tattered, dirty gray uniform one would expect to see in the German imperial army from a century ago. The most striking feature of the creature was its face; pale, horribly scarred and emaciated, with yellow rotten teeth and eyes as black as the darkest of nights. As the creature chuckled, its face twisted into an impossibly wide smile, stretching the skin to a painful degree.

A shudder ran across Richard’s body, causing him to groan in pain as the muscles around his wounds contracted. The creature tilted its head and something started bubbling out of its form. Richard could only watch as the masses started sprouting from the creature. The beast just stood there, staring daggers through its victim. Soon enough, the masses gained a form of their own; identical to that of their progenitor.

Clones.

Four identical creatures stood in front of the sadist, measuring him like a piece of meat. They all chuckled that same deep, hoarse, cold chuckle in unison. Sending further shivers down Richard’s spine; fueling his already exhausted system with additional waves of adrenaline.

In an instant, all four monsters pulled out something from within their sleeves, a bayonet. Each of the clones had a bayonet grasped in their gray, claw-like hands. The creatures raced in perfect sync towards Richard, clutching at their bayonets firmly, with their smiling faces never changing.

Richard understood what was coming and attempted protesting. He tried crying and begging for help. His mouth was as useless as the rest of his body. No coherent words escaped his maw, merely pitiful cries muddled with the splattering of blood and spit.

The beasts came upon their prey, stabbing it over and over with pure malice.

Richard’s body exploded with pain from its various parts as his body was being repeatedly punctured again and again. He was forced to screaming and wail forcefully, his body needed that outlet. His screaming only made matters worse, as the wounds on his face caused a great deal of his agony. In response to the screams, the creatures proceeded to stab deeper and faster, quite literally turning Richard’s body into something akin to a honey comb.

At one point, the pain became all Richard could feel; it ate at his psyche - he became lost in it. Then, everything started becoming dull and numb, a wave of relief washed over Richard, the burning sensation went away, replaced by the icy embrace of a welcome chill. Richard could finally drift off.

He welcomed the end like it was a dear friend, and everything turned black.

Only for a moment…

The serial murder was shaken back into the world of existence by the feeling of something crawling all over his body. Something was moving all over his body, something metallic. It wasn’t crawling all over him; it was wrapping itself all around him.

What started as a mildly unpleasant sensation swiftly turned into throbbing pain.

Shock waves of pain pulsated from various points in Richard’s body, shaking him back to his senses. The realization he was still trapped in this damp, cold, awful hell hurt even more than the barbed wire wrapping itself around his broken body. He tried to scream once more, but a thread of wire crawled into his mouth. It tore further into his cheeks, forcing his face into a permanent smile as his screams became muffled.

The creatures stood in front of him, still mocking him with their never-changing smirks. One of the creatures pointed an arm at Richard, and it started twisting and turning like a robotic mechanism. The process produced awful sounds of bones cracking and flesh being torn and twisted, at the end of it; the creature had a small-scale machine gun attached to its limb.

Richard couldn’t help but find the notion amusing. Surely such a weapon would tear him to smithereens; leaving not enough of him for the monsters to abuse. He let his mutilated face express his feelings, a macabre bloody smile. The creatures seemed unfazed, and the one with the firearm released a round into Richard’s body.

The bullets tore through his right leg, causing him to howl like a rabid animal while a torrent of blood and gore sprayed the ground below him. Another round went through his left arm, the third one through his right arm and the fourth one through his left leg. As Richard howled and moan in pain, the creatures stood there for a moment before crumbling in the wind.

The only thing that kept Richard alive was the pain, so much pain he screamed his vocal cords until they tore, and he kept on contorting his face in inconceivable suffering. After what felt like hours, the pain started dissipating, growing dimmer and dimmer by the moment, along with the rest of the world around him. Everything grew colorless and distant.

The last thing Richard could feel before everything turned void was the sound of a liquid dripping below him.

The sound of children reciting John McCrae’s In Flanders Fields awoke Richard once more. The pleasant sound of the singing must’ve felt like a dream to the vicious criminal. In his head, he thought he was just having a nightmare. The singing was definitely out of place, but it felt entirely normal compared to everything else. He felt elated, but for a moment only. The elation was gone quickly enough once the singing had turned twisted as the poem progressed, by the final stanza the singing sounded nothing like children. It was hoarse, deep, and almost demonic.

The voice called out, “We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields.” Before chuckling a familiar chuckle.

Richard’s eyes shot wide open, and what felt like a lightning bolt hit him all over the remnants of his now decimated body.

Hell was still upon him.

Richard tried to scream but could not. He tried to move, but each movement forced the barbed wire deeper into his flesh and aggravated his wounds, causing him to wince and tremble, thus fueling his cycle of suffering even further.

The laughter of the demonic soldier grew louder by the moment, but no matter how hard Richard tried, he couldn’t find the entity. It was just out of his line of sight.

An awful cry echoed in the sky; the monster bird flew close by.

Another explosion, the seismic tremors caused by another explosive tormented Richard’s husk even more.

The laughing died down, then a loud bang.

The sadist saw his own lower jaw shatter in the air before his eyes; a sharp pain at the bottom of his head followed as a concussive force violently turned his head sideways. Everything below his head was gone. He felt nothing but the awful pain in his mouth and face. Everything else was gone, none existing anymore.

The sensation of his tongue swaying in the wind was the last thing Richard felt before he saw the skeletal bird covered in eyes hover above with something coming out of its mouth as the eye on its belly was locked onto him.

One last surge of pain tore through him and then;

Nothing.

The remains of Richard were found the next morning, his remains still tightly wrapped in barbed wire. A note attached to his mutilated carcass said;

“In bloody fields, where countless once had to die, another one - was allowed to lie.”