Page 2 of Like Grim Death: Part One
You bite down on your back teeth, anxiety crawling and snaking and shifting and growing inside of you.
What is this? What the fuckis this?
The person panics. They are yanking at the chains, twisting their head this way and that, trying to get air, their body seeming tovibrate.They could stand, hypothetically, but they do not try to move their lower limbs. Perhaps theycannot.
Your stomach hurts. Dread fills your body, and it is hard for you to breathe. There is a sour taste on the back of your tongue as the struggle only increases and you want it to be over. The bag forming a smooth hole over their mouth, the jerky movements of their limbs, the cruelness of the clanking chains…
You realize with a vicious sharpness,you want them to be dead.
But before they are, before it ends, a figure appears on screen.
A long, lean shadow of a person. They are dressed all in black and they step in front of the camera, then squat down before the prisoner.
They lift their fingers and slash them across the bag, the portion sucked to the person’s mouth.
Relief unfurls inside of you as you try to catch your breath like the prisoner does, sucking down air in noisy gulps, a sound you have never heard before in this way.
Their body goes still save for their chest and shoulders, heaving beneath the gown.
You are very still yourself.
And on screen,youturn to stare at the camera.
A gasp leaves your lips, your own unsettling eyes gazing straight into the lens. You are still squatting before the prisoner, and there is no expression on your face.
You touch your own cheek, unsure which you is…you.
The victim is still swallowing air, the soundtrack is playing on repeat.
“The evil is in you too. The evil is in your mother, and your brother, and your sister, and certainly your children.”
Record scratch.
It starts again.
You do not blink. In your seat, or on screen.
You drop your hand in reality.(Or is it?)
A shadow falls across your skin on the film, and slowly, you stand to your feet. Then you reach out one arm, the sleeves of your hoodie pushed up to your elbows, you can see the familiar scar on your hand the moment before you accept a thick wooden pole.
No.
A hammer.
You start to tremble, thinking of it as a weapon.
The metal of the hammer’s head glints under the dim lights wherever they, you, are. You spin it in your hand, glancing at it like you have never seen a tool like that before.
You cannot look away from the screen.
Slowly, the shadow seems to slither back as it disappears and you turn to face the victim, still catching their breath, although the sounds are quieter now.
They have not spoken.
You cock your head, the hammer hanging by your side, almost limply, like you could drop it at any moment.
Seconds pass.
