I don’t understand why people see the need to downvote a story as soon as it’s up. This is the EIGHTH CHAPTER, the only people reading it are fans who like it and assholes who like making life difficult for others.



Chapter Eight



Jason sat on a bench in the rehab facility courtyard, staring down at the shed leaves that smothered the yard. Above him, the barren fingers of the trees swayed ever so gently in the breeze, having lost their sails to the inevitable chill. It was halfway through November and the temperature was just above freezing, yet Jason sat in only a t-shirt. The expression on his face was like that of a self-loathing drug addict sitting in a damp alley. The only emotion on his face was one of despair, and it was that expression alone that projected his presence in the world of the living.

Wearing a dense blue coat from LL Bean, Christi approached and sat down beside him, looking across the fenced-in yard and up at the gray sky. “Aren’t you cold?”

“This is nothing. I know how it feels to freeze to death, and compared to that, this is nothing more than looking into a refrigerator.”

“Jason, you didn’t freeze to death. You’re still here, that proves that everything that you saw wasn’t real.”

“It was real. The monsters I saw, the horrors I encountered, and the hallucinations I suffered may have been fake… but the pain I experienced was all too real. I lost track of the number of times I had my eyes gouged out, my muscles ripped from my bones, my flesh sawed to pulp, and my skeleton crushed into powder. What I went through was truly Hell.”

Christi leaned over and clutched his hand. “Jason…”

His bloodshot eyes swiveled to her. “I watched you die so many times… You were butchered, eaten, set on fire, skinned alive, and even raped to death. I heard your dying screams, I stared into your eyes as you died, and I was showered in your blood… Even now, I’m expecting you to spontaneously combust and for my hallucination to continue. It may not have been real, but the pain of watching someone you love die in the most horrific ways is still as haunting as if they happened in this world.”

Christi bit her lip, having gained a sudden chill from Jason’s description. She imagined herself experiencing those deaths, tried to imagine what it would feel like to endure them and to endure watching someone she cared about suffer as well. If she had gone through the same pain as Jason had, watched him die the same way he had watched her… wouldn’t she be in the same state?

Christi slowly got up and walked over to the entrance to the courtyard, where Nelson was waiting. “I thought you said that you made him better! He’s a wreck!”

“I never said I made him better, I said I freed him of the Black Stigmata’s influence. Now he won’t enter the psychotic stage and go on rampages, and unless he comes within close proximity to a nail, the chances of him ever suffering a hallucination are zero. Believe it or not, he is actually inoculated now against the Black Stigmata. Not only has his brain learned to recognize it, but the damage inflicted to his psyche by the drugs have turned him into an unsuitable Host.”

Christi looked back at Jason, her face lined with worry and her eyes trembling as if she were about to cry. “I just can’t believe this happened to him. I can’t believe something like actually could happen to him. I never thought these things were possible. Is there anything I can do to help him?”

“Just stay with him. Try and cheer him up. He’ll recover before too long, he just needs time to let his mind rest and pull itself together. We’ve been relatively lucky so far, hopefully he’ll return to his old self. Just remember that even though everything he experienced was in his mind, it was no less painful. For all we know, his perception of time may have been warped while he was under. The 48 hours he experienced while he was unconscious could have been 48 years for him, in which he was tortured and killed over and over again without reprieve.”



During the next few weeks, Jason and Colleen both began to slowly recover from their traumas. She had not suffered as horribly as her brother, so Colleen’s mental health came back faster, but not by much. Ever since she had that strange dream where Jason raped her, her masochistic dementia had waned, and she no longer spoke of deserving to be brutalized. No longer numb, she was now feeling terror towards everything, every noise and movement around her, as if the girls who violated her were hiding like ninjas. She screamed at nurses and doctors and would even wince when her parents tried to hug her. While she would eventually regain the ability to walk, her legs remained unusable. The interior and exterior damage would take more time to heal, and there was always the issue of possible psychological obstacles holding her back.

Back in the rehab facility, held under a fake name, Jason was a zombie. He would sit or stand, staring for hours out the window or some random point. He would remain dead silent during BSC-sponsored therapy. When he slept, he had nightmares, not caused by the Black Stigmata but instead mere shadows of the drug treatment. Compared to what he had already endured, these nightmares were nothing. He seemed oblivious to everything around him, though he would at least acknowledge people who called out to him. His parents came every day to see him, told that he was being held in the rehab facility as a suspect in the prison riot and still “under investigation” for the death of the cop. His despondent behavior was blamed on severe PTSD from what he had seen and experienced during the riot. Christi spent all of her free time with him, trying to coax him back to his old self. For the first week, he was little more than a statue, eyes mournful and voice nonexistent, but as time went by, he began to change, speaking a little more with each passing day.



Jason and Christi were sitting by one of the large windows in the facility rec room. As expected, the window was fenced so that people wouldn’t smash their way out in an attempt to escape.

“You know, I saw Colleen before I came today,” said Christi, trying to get a reaction out of him.

“You say that every day,” he whispered, unable to look at her.

“That’s because I care about you two. She’s doing better, no longer freaking out when people come near her. She’s moved on from being bedridden to rolling around in a wheelchair. That’s definitely progress, and she’ll be released soon.”

Several silent moments passed by.

“Does she smile?” Jason finally asked.

A curl of joy on her lips, Christi reached out and clutched his hand. “Yeah, she does, especially when she talks about how much she wants to see you again.”

“She… does?”

“Of course! She misses her brother, your parents miss their son, and I miss my boyfriend.”

“After all the things I’ve done, why would anyone miss me?”

“Jason, you haven’t done anything at all. Those goddamn nails are responsible for everything. You’re nothing more than a victim.”

“But when I was dreaming… I was with her at one point. I… did things to her, things I can never forgive myself for.”

Christi moved her hands to his cheeks and forced him to look at her. “No matter how real it may have felt or how intense the pain may have been, that was only a dream. You don’t need to apologize for anything and you don’t need to be forgiven. The only thing you need to do is get better so that you can come home.”

For the first time, the mask of despair on Jason’s face shifted. “Get better?”

“Just try smiling. If Colleen can do it after what she went through, then so can you.”

Then, before Jason could even try, she leaned forward and kissed him. They held that embrace for several moments, Christi trying to pull out all of Jason’s misery. Finally, when they separated, she could see life in his eyes.



Standing behind the cash register at LL Bean, Christi spared a moment to turn away from the line of customers in front of her and watch multiple police cars scream by through the windows at her back. It seemed like every day, the police were being called out to answer someone going berserk or recover a grotesque body found in a public place. Professor Nelson had told her that this would happen, that the Black Stigmata was increasing its activity and spreading its influence with unusual force. It was happening worldwide. There had already been three public shootings in crowded locations with multiple victims and corpses were being littered throughout the state like the professor’s cigarette butts.

“Excuse me,” said the woman at the front of the line, putting her shopping bag up on the counter and shaking Christi from her thoughts.

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

Christi hurriedly began scanning the woman’s items, trying to move the line along and make up for her daydreaming.

The sounds of gunfire rang out through the store without warning, sending everyone tumbling to the ground in paralyzing fear. Screams of pain echoed and the smell of blood filled the air. Christi could see him, the man with the gun. He was standing by the entrance with a crazed look in his eye but an expression of hatred for what he was doing. There was nothing in particular about his appearance; he fit the definition of generic. He was just a regular guy, made an unwilling puppet of the Black Stigmata. Bodies lay strewn about, a few people twitching but most of them still, completely unmoving in the growing pools of gore. At the edges of the field of death, loved ones of the dead and wounded screamed in fear, desperately wanting to rush over to the people they cared about.

Ejecting his empty magazine, the man reloaded and immediately began firing again, killing everyone who had not yet fled and soaking the racks of clothes and camping gear with blood. Men, women, and children; all were cut down without hesitation or mercy. Crouched behind the counter, Christi rocked back and forth on her heels, praying for this to be a bad dream and to survive this horrible ordeal.

“Die, you son of a bitch!” Christi heard, recognizing the voice.

Daring a look, she saw the manager of the gun store, Ted, appear from the hunting section with a shotgun in hand, still tagged from the rack. An old man with thinning white hair, Christi knew him as a very kind person, loved by everyone. Now he was foaming at the mouth, blinded by rage. Chambering a round, Ted squeezed the trigger and sent the deer slug flying across the store and into the gunman’s shoulder, delivering enough destructive power to cleave off his arm with an eruption of blood.

Paying no attention to the severed limb lying at his feet, the gunman raised his pistol and delivered a bullet straight to Ted’s forehead, blowing a stream of gore and brains out of the back of his skull. Grabbing the shotgun, a young man of about Christi’s age stood up and ejected the empty shell casing. Relying on experience from watching action movies, the untrained customer fired and blew a fist-sized hole straight into the gunman’s stomach. Several inches to the right of the spine, the lead thumb left only shreds in place of the gunman’s kidney.

Once again, the man showed no hesitation in ending the novice hero’s life with a single bullet, even with blood pouring from his body by the liter. To everyone’s relief, the sounds of police sirens screeched from outside as a line of cop cars was formed in front of the store. Wasting no time, they charged towards the entrance with their guns raised.

Looking over to them, the half-dead murder raised his pistol to his temple. “We will all achieve death!” he screamed before pulling the trigger.



Running across the rec room of the rehab facility, Jason was nearly brought to the ground by Christi’s tackle and the tight hold of her arms around his neck. Lifting her off her feet, he embraced her with all of his strength, breathing in the sweet aroma of her hair.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry I wasn’t there for you.”

“It’s ok. Even if you were in the store, there was no way you could have known what would happen. It’s not your fault, don’t blame yourself.”

“Are you sure you’re ok? Were you hurt anywhere?” Jason asked, separating from Christi and giving her a brief look from head to toe.

“No, I’m fine, I was hiding behind the counter. Don’t worry, I’m not hurt. But it was the scariest thing that ever happened to me, and I doubt I’ll be sleeping well since then.”

“Well I’m ready to come out. I’m sick of this place. I want to get out and make a difference now.”



It was early in the afternoon when Jason stepped out of the front door of the rehab facility, with Christi clinging to his arm and checking to make sure he was ok at every second that passed. Walking past rows of trees and the manicured lawn, the frigid breeze that kicked up the leaves around his feet was incapable of drawing so much as a shiver from him. Parked in front of the large, white, Victorian-style building, his parents’ car rested. Both with wet eyes, his mother and father rushed over and embraced him, glad to finally have their son returned to them. After everything that had happened since the start of autumn, for Jason to return home safe and sound was nothing short of a miracle.

Seated in a wheelchair, her auburn bangs trembling in the breeze, Colleen looked at him with a warm smile on her face. His visitation with her before his institutionalization had been made a secret, so to keep their parents from suspecting anything, they both had to act like this was the first time they were seeing each other since she was attacked. But in a way, it was. Colleen had regained her mental stability, having come full circle since the power of the Black Stigmata allowed Jason’s hallucinations to brush up against her own dreams. Neither of them knew it, but what they had experienced and done to each other was in a sense real. Neither one of them would ever fully return to what they once were, but they both had just enough mental health to enjoy the reunion.

Moving past his parents, Jason got down on one knee in front of Colleen and clutched her hands, warming them against the chilly air. They were both silent, Colleen with her smile but Jason with a look of guilty despair. Christi and their parents watched as Jason leaned forward and hugged her his sister, holding her tightly with his head in her lap. While she stroked his hair, he silently cried in guilt and self-loathing. Being with her again after causing so much harm to her and countless others… he did not know if he even deserved to look upon her.

“It’s ok, everything will be fine,” she hummed.



“I can’t believe how long it’s been since I ate a real meal,” Jason grunted, stuffing his face with chicken and buttered noodles as if he had just been rescued from a concentration camp.

“So what are you going to do now that you’re out?” Colleen asked, sitting across the dinner table.

“Well it’s far too late for me to simply go back to class, the semester is almost over. I guess there is nothing I can do but try and find a job until the spring semester.”

“I’m in a same boat. LL Bean has been closed due to the shooting, probably permanently. I’m out of the job,” said Christi, sitting to Jason’s left.

“Well Christi, I believe the pharmacy downtown is hiring, but Jason, honey, I think you should take some time off. After everything you’ve been through, you need time to recover,” his mom sighed as she passed the salad bowl over to Colleen.

‘You have no idea,’ Jason thought to himself.

The conversation continued on throughout the family, but Jason remained silent. It was clear that his parents were trying to make everything seem as normal as could be, as if Jason’s incarceration and Colleen’s attack had never happened. It was hard for any feeling of lightheartedness to sustain itself. Even Colleen’s normally sunny disposition had yet to fully return. With Jason, Colleen, and Christi all recovering from their traumas and the world around them essentially burning, it was hard for normality to take hold.



It was close to midnight and Jason and Christi were both sitting in the living room, enjoying a crackling fire in the fireplace. Christi was sitting on the couch and Jason was sitting in a nearby rocking chair. A coffee table stood between them with the warmth of the fire seeping away through the cold glass of the numerous windows. There were two doors on either side of the fireplace, both closed. There weren’t any bedrooms above the living room, so they might as well have had their own personal little cabin.

“And I just sat there thinking ‘is this really what Jason had to endure’? I couldn’t believe what was happening; I thought that man was going to kill everyone in the store one at a time. I saw him take two shotgun blasts and it did nothing to him,” Christi whispered with her lips barely moving, recounting the events in the LL Bean store.

“I know how it felt for you, I really do. I know how that terror strangles you and makes you sick, how you keep expecting everything to end and for you to wake up like it’s just a nightmare.”

“I just felt so helpless. There was nothing I could do to save myself or anyone else. If he had slowly walked over to the counter, I doubt I would have even been able to run. I was completely paralyzed. How did you do it? How did you get out of that prison? You never told me exactly how you escaped.”

Jason opened his mouth several times and closed it, unsure of how to begin. He hadn’t told anyone about what happened in the prison, not even Nelson. Rubbing his sweating palms on his jeans, he finally began to speak. “Not gracefully, I can tell you that. I was simply acting on instinct and trying to do what the heroes in action movies did. I did a lot more running and hiding than actual fighting. I woke up in the visitation room, the guy who had brought in the nail was dead beside me. All but one of the guards had been murdered in some huge brawl that occurred when I blacked out. He came at me with a broken baton, so I tripped him and strangled him with my chains.

After I managed to unlock my restraints, I gathered what weapons I could find and began making my way through the prison. Christi, it was a true hell in there. Men were killing, raping, and eating each other. There were corpses strung up from the catwalks, burning like torches. The floors were slick with blood and littered with strips of flesh and entrails. Convicts and guards alike were laughing as the tortured each other.

The smell… my god, I never smelled so much blood in my entire life. I felt like I was snorting a line of pennies crushed into dust. And they weren’t all crazy; there were some people who were in control of themselves.