Severing Sanguine: A Companion Book to The Fallocaust Series Book 2 (28 page)

Nero’s nose wrinkled as soon as he stepped inside the disgusting house, it smelled like putrid meat and garbage. His eyes scanned the first floor of the house, hearing the man’s yelling and swearing coming from one of the back rooms.

Then they both saw the stairs, cautiously and with their guns out, they walked down the concrete stairs, leading to a white door with a thick metal padlock on it. But the padlock was without its lock so they pushed the door open and peeked inside.

The smell seemed to sodomize Nero’s nostrils, it smelled of rotting blood, human waste, and it looked like something out of a horror movie. The walls were covered in paintings of birds that, from the looks of it, were painted with blood, and the floors were covered in trash and even more blood stains.

There a dirty mattress in the corner too, also stained with blood with barely any white showing and behind it a short but thick chain anchored to the concrete wall.

But where was Sanguine?

“Boy?” Silas suddenly said. Nero looked to the corner of the room and was surprised to see a little blond boy, completely naked, sitting beside a long wooden box with a bear in his lap.

“That’s Sanguine’s fucking bear!” Nero’s voice caught in his throat. He walked over to the boy who had already started backing himself up into the corner of the room.

“We’re here to rescue you… Levi?” Silas’s tone shifted to the same one he used when he was talking to one of the chimera children. The delicate and almost encouraging tones that seemed to resonate with the younger ones.

The boy’s eyes widened with a look of disbelief; he shifted back further and clutched the bear to his chest. “No one rescues us… I’m just… just a slave.” His face crumpled and he looked past Nero and Silas. They looked behind them too and saw the decomposing remains of who Nero knew must be his little brother.

“Where’s Sanguine?” Nero asked him, getting down on one knee and clipping his cape off of his back.

Levi pointed to the long box and let Nero put the cape around him. “I played him the song a lot, he’s in the box… Jasper says he’s to die in there but I fed him a little.”

Nero looked at the wooden box that resembled more of a coffin and grabbed onto the edge of it. He got a good hold and wrenched it up.

The sounds of nails scraping against wood could be heard, mixed in with the shouting and screaming upstairs, but when Nero saw Sanguine in the box all the noises that were around him disappeared.

Sanguine wasn’t Sanguine anymore.

The critically malnourished man was crumpled up in himself, staring blankly at the side of the box. He was so skinny his scarred arms looked like broomstick handles, and his face gaunt and hollow to such an unbelievable level he looked like the photos the media took when the Second Cold War was at its worst, right before Silas ended the world. The sunken faces of skeletons that still held breath, but were alive in an organic sense only. And it looked like this little boy, once so full of life, was in a similar state.

And his injuries… Sanguine was covered in bruises of all colours, and the chafe marks around his neck were so worn in he looked like a stray dog with an embedded collar, his neck was nothing but a strip of scabbed brown skin that moved from the insects feeding on it.

He was bad, Sanguine was really bad.

“I hope you’re proud of yourself,” Nero whispered, his grip on the side of the wooden coffin tightening. “You fucking monster.”

Nero saw Silas’s lower lip tighten for just a moment, before he reached down and tried to put a hand on Sanguine’s boney grey shoulder.

“Sanguine?” Silas whispered. “Get up, Sanguine.”

Sanguine

Age 19

“Get up, Sanguine.”

I was floating in water; I was surrounded by bright lights that flashed and waved around me like someone was twirling around a bluelamp. They stayed with me even when I opened my eyes, as did the voices of the men I saw in my delirium.

Though when I felt a hand on my shoulder my senses attempted to reach the parts of my brain not yet suspended in time-freezing madness. I found myself blinking and trying to move my head.

“I don’t think he can move… can you pick him up?” one of them said.

Who were these… these people? Why are there people here?

I looked at them, my eyes feeling like two pieces of brittle paper, I attempted to blink again but there was no moisture to soothe them. Everything was dry and tight, and everything hurt.

Hands grabbed my shoulder and tried to tuck themselves under my body, inside of me Crow demanded that I thrash and bite, to stop Jasper from fucking me again but I was too weak – I had nothing left.

They talked in hushed voices… but no, this was nothing but another daydream and soon I would be flying again, swimming in waterless oceans and chasing the lights that came and went with each passing delusion.

That was my life, the end of my life as I waited for the Grim Reaper to remember that I was still alive. That he had failed at killing me those other times – but perhaps, perhaps… he would finally succeed.

I was in someone’s arms. I saw clothing on him so much different than Jasper’s greasy jacket and jeans.

“Who is he?” I asked Crow.

“I don’t know, but I don’t like it,” Crow responded. “They’re carrying you up the stairs; they’re carrying you to the surface.”

“Why? I am a celldweller…”

“I know.”

“He’s mumbling to himself.”

“He has friends in his head.”

Levi?

The door frame passed and the garbage-strewn main level was around me. My awareness was starting to trickle back but my mind was slow, like I was walking through oil it took a long time for my brain to process what was happening to me.

Then I saw him.

Jasper.

Jasper was on his knees, blood streaming down his nose and mouth. He was staring at me with such awed-hatred, I was surprised at the energy behind his look. Jasper had always seen me as nothing more than his sex slave, why was he angry at me? I didn’t… I didn’t…

Where are they taking me?

Where are they taking me?

I want to go back to my basement… I want to go…

“Let me down…” I rasped. “We need to go back, we need to go… basement?”

“No, you’re never going there again,” a voice said firmly. “Ceph, stay with him and we’ll order the Falconer back around. I don’t want that piece of shit travelling in the same plane as us.”

Plane?

“NO!” I suddenly yelled. I started to try and thrash my body around but the person holding me locked his grip. “LET US GO!”

“Us?” a voice said curiously. “He said us…”

Desperation flooded my damaged brain, drowning out all the senses that told me to stay still and let them bring me out of this prison. The thought of having to go outside, out of my basement, filled me with such an anxiety it trumped all of my reasoning.

I started struggling and hard, and in that struggling I felt my only friend start to back my movements. Like Crow was breathing life into a dead corpse he filled me with energy and poured fuel on the rage this situation brought with it.

“Holy shit.” The man holding me dropped me as I whirled around and sunk my teeth into his shoulder. I landed on the floor and snarled at these men who were trying to take me away from my basement, my oasis, my only safe place. I took a step back, looking in all directions but as I looked around my mind became so confused and overwhelmed. I didn’t know what direction I was supposed to go in.

“He’s… what’s going on with him?” a blond-haired one dressed in combat armour yelled at Jasper. When Jasper didn’t answer a big man behind him kicked him in the back.

“He goes into these trances,” Jasper coughed, blood sprinkled onto the garbage on the floor. I backed away and tried to find the stairs to the basement but I just saw old couches, the kitchen, half-eaten body parts…

“He flips out. He’s mental… he has people inside his head he talks to. He’s fucking crazy, I’ve been protecting the greywastes from him. I haven’t done anything wrong,” Jasper snapped.

In my anger I roughly shoved a pile of boxes down to the floor and bared my teeth at all of them. “Let me go!” I snarled. “I will eat every single fucking one of you, let me go back to my home!”

They were staring at me, closing in on me… I took another step back and felt my back hit one of Jasper’s broken stoves. A low growl resonated from my throat and I continued to bare my teeth at them.

“Sanguine… Sami? Sami?” a man, muscular and thick with short black hair and odd purple-blue eyes, said to me. I looked at him and tried to glare him down but he wouldn’t look away.

“Sami is dead!” I snapped at him.

“Sanguine… do you recognize me?” The man took a step closer to me and reached into his pocket. He pulled out a sheet of paper and started unfolding it.

“Remember Nero? Ellis and I set you up in a house… we battled celldwellers… I’ve come to get you, buddy.” Nero’s tone was kind, reassuring. It didn’t fit the situation, I didn’t understand it.

But what was he saying? My brain was a whirlpool of confusion, a toxic brown soup that bubbled and swirled so I couldn’t focus my thoughts.

I had to focus… we have to listen, Crow.

‘I trust no one,’
Crow growled inside of my head.
‘Rip out his fucking throat, Sanguine. They want to take you outside, they want to take you away from your home.’

My head lowered in a challenge, but as it lowered I saw the piece of paper the man was holding out to me.

I remember that…

The entire room fell into a deafening but heavy silence as I reached out and took the piece of paper. I looked down and saw a crayon drawing, of two people and a human monster with long legs and arms.

I stared at it, and with my eyes going over every detail, I remembered when I sat down by a coffee table and drew it. I remember choosing carefully the colour combination for Nero’s unique eyes.

Drawing my adventures with me and Nero. Adventures I would create and make up inside of my head when Jasper was on top of me. Memories I would replay again and again until it became too painful for me to remember the brief moments when I had friends.

“Nero?” my voice came out dead but it was my voice. As the realization came to me, the truth came to me.

“Yeah, buddy… it’s Nero. I know you don’t understand but… we’re… we’re your family and we’ve come to take you home,” Nero said slowly. “You’re one of us.”

I looked at him, then behind him to the blond-haired man, and then to the other muscular person who had Jasper.

Jasper was staring at Nero in horror.

Nero took a step closer to me but I still flinched away. He took the paper out of my hand gently and turned to Silas.

“Let’s get him out of here, now, this shithole will just make him worse.”

I shook my head and wrapped my arms around my chest. “Basement…” I murmured.

“No, bro, you’re not going to that pit. Come on, we’re going to take you to Skyfall.”

Skyfall?

I looked at Nero… Crow was behind him smiling at me. He shook his head no, and I knew…

“We’re not going anywhere with you.”

In a flash I grabbed onto Nero’s combat armour and tried to bite him, but the man was quick. He stepped back with a startled yell and grabbed my tangled hair before jerking my head back. I snapped at the air and tried to claw him with my hands but before I knew it the other muscular one was there holding me back.

I screamed from rage as the two of them started dragging me towards the door. I kicked and thrashed, twisting my body and trying desperately to grab anything that I could draw blood from.

No, no, I don’t want to go outside. I want to go back into my basement.

“Let go of me!” I screamed. I tripped, unable to keep up with their quick steps, but they kept dragging me towards something loud and noisy. Horror washed through me when I realized it was some sort of vehicle. “Let me go!” I demanded.

When I saw the plane my breath started getting short, the ball of anxiety already growing inside of my chest reached critical and I felt myself completely losing my mind.

‘Fight! Fight! Fight!’
Crow taunted, his raspy voice scraping against my mind.
‘FIGHT!’

There was nothing I remember after that but people restraining me, the two strong ones, and the sounds of the little boys’ crying. I thrashed with every ounce of me and made as much noise as I possibly could. I was desperate, desperate to go back to my basement where it was safe.

But it wouldn’t even be the basement it would be the fucking box.

Do you want to go back into the box?

NO!
I screamed inside of my head.
I want to sit on the mattress, I don’t care if I’m chained just BRING ME BACK!

“Silas, he’s going to kill himself spending this much energy, you gotta do something!” one of them yelled. I felt metal underneath my feet and a door slam but I was too inside of my head to realize they had brought me onto the plane.