Chapter 8

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 with only a button-down shirt as an secondary layer for his chest. 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 grey 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 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 stick 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 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. They were sane enough to feel pure fear and agony. I can't help but wonder if the Black Stigmata left them alone just so that they would suffer more, or so that the rest of the prison could hunt them down like wolves after sheep.

I remember ducking into an empty cell when some SWAT guys showed up. They gunned down a line of prisoners and then turned their weapons on each other, laughing as they did so. At least from their corpses I was able to retrieve some pistols and few magazines. From the cellblocks, I moved on to the cafeteria. It was filled with people eating each other. Prisoners and guards were just tearing into their victims like the zombies from World War Z. You told me the gunman said something like "we will all achieve death", right? One of the cooks from the kitchen turned to me and said that, then used a knife to cut open his torso.

After that, all of the guards and prisoners became aware of me. I killed as many as I could and made my escape. I managed to reach the yard by crawling through a hole blown into the wall by a crashed helicopter, but just as I felt the grass against my skin, those monsters found me. I sprinted across the yard as fast as my legs would carry me, being chased by a tidal wave of screaming mouths and grabbing hands. I fired what bullets I had into the horde, never even slowed them down. It was like trying to put out a forest fire with a squirt pistol. I think I was so scared that I even started sobbing while I ran. Tch, pathetic.

I found an overturned fence and ran towards it. Sprinting as fast as I could across the yard, I heard the plane. I could see it falling out of the sky like a beacon of despair. It was like watching the White House go up in flames or the dropping of an atom bomb. I realized just how powerful the Black Stigmata is and how it could not be defied. It was a force of nature, stronger than anyone who had ever lived or ever would live.

At last I managed to climb over the fence and hit the ground, just soon enough to watch the fireworks. It's funny, but in that second before the plane crashed, I was suddenly overwhelmed with curiosity as to what was happening in the prison. I thought about the other people like me, the ones who weren't driven mad by the Black Stigmata and were cursed with fear and dread. I imagined that handful of guards and prisoners and pictured them trying to think up a survival plan, I imagined a small group fighting off the horde as they looked for a place to hide, I imagined prisoners like me running desperately for an escape route, I imagined guards cowering in cells or offices, clutching pictures of loved ones while the raving swarm yanked at the doors, and I even imagined what other strange scenes of brutality were taking place throughout the prison. How people were dying in the laundry room, in the basement, in the guard towers, and just about every place that I had not already witnessed.

Realizing what was about to happen, I couldn't help but wonder about the stories coming to a close, with nobody to read the final chapters. No one would ever know of their last minutes of desperation, of their fight for survival, of their flight from the pawns of the Black Stigmata. Their deaths would go unrecorded in a hellish pit of blood, concrete, and fire, and I shivered at the thought of dying as they did. To die ... in a way where your body would never be found and the cause of death never known, and the memories people had of you would forever be incomplete, like a book without a final chapter.

The plane struck the prison and it was like the Black Stigmata itself had pierced the earth and was bleeding its fiery heart dry. It was a few moments, but it felt like several minutes, in which a wave of death reached out in all directions and cut down all in its way like a colossal lawnmower with flaming blades. The burning shockwave hit my pursuers with such force that they exploded into clouds of ash, due to their jettisoned blood instantly being incinerated.

The shockwave washed over me and I survived unscathed. After that ... the Black Stigmata took over my mind."

The longer he had spoken, the dryer his voice became. When he had started, he was animated in his movements, be they swings of his hand or just the slightest shrug. But as the story went on, he became more and more still, his mouth forming the words with less movement and his lips becoming like that of a ventriloquist. He was facing Christi but looking past her like she wasn't even there. His expression told her that he was back at the prison yard, watching that plane strike like the hammer of a wrathful god. To him, his living room was gone, and he was instead watching a hundred prisoners and inmates spontaneously combust in the burning pulse of the plane crash, their heads bursting like confetti party poppers.

Sitting there, Christi was forced to accept the change that had taken place in the heart of the man she loved. His trials had not broken him, at least not beyond repair, but she knew that these memories would haunt him until the day he died. She could do nothing but stay by his side, but after everything that had happened, she had come to realize how happy it made her to have that privilege.

Smiling she reached out and clasped his hands.

"Come take a seat over here."

"Why?" he asked, still caught in the flashback.

"Because you need the consolation that only a woman can give."

Shaken back to reality, Jason smiled and moved over to the couch, only for Christi to stand up. Slowly moving her hips to the rhythm of soft hum, she licked her lips and began unfastening her blouse one button at a time. Thinking back to the last time they had had sex, Jason smiled and felt his manhood become engorged with blood from anticipation. Slipping out of the blouse, Christi grasped the hems of the white tank top underneath and slowly pulled it up. The cotton fabric slowly rose, revealing her navel in the center of her smooth, flat belly, lightly framed by the muscles earned at the college gym.

Pulling it up above her head, she revealed the tan lingerie keeping her breasts in place, the two cups struggling to hold in her bountiful breasts. Running her hands down her chest, she slipped her fingers into the waist of her jeans, unfastening the button and zipper and slowly pushing it down her curvaceous rear. A pale red thong greeted Jason's eyes, clearly a choice made in anticipation of this evening. The thin fabric betrayed her, broadcasting the shape of the vertical lips between her legs. Continuing to hum, Christi turned around while gyrating her hips. Letting Jason gaze upon her voluptuous rear end, she grasped the sides of her thong and pulled them up tight, sinking the narrow stretch of fabric between her smooth ass cheeks.

'Goddamn, I wish I was her thong right now, ' Jason thought as Christi bent over and spread her legs, teasing Jason with the barely-covered front and rear entrances of her delicious body.

"Would you like to have the honors?" Christi purred, standing up and pulling her long blonde hair forward.

Hands shaking in eagerness, Jason reached out and released the clasp of her bra, watching and licking his lips as Christi removed the article of lingerie. Again, she leaned over and spread her legs, letting Jason slowly pull her thong down between her soft cushions. As the skimpy fabric moved across her smooth skin like a windshield wiper in the rain, Jason kissed her taut rear end over and over again, savoring taste of her sweet skin. Once her underwear sat down around her ankles, Christi helped Jason spread her ass cheeks and he immediately sodomized her with his tongue like he was sucking on a whisk covered in batter. Just like the first time he had gone down on her asshole, there was absolutely no taste other the latent hints of soap. Christi rarely showed any initiative or effort in her life, but when it came to maintaining the front and back doors of the sex temple that was her body, she was like a germaphobe with OCD.

Christi giggled as she felt his tongue penetrate the tight ring of her anus over and over again. Her giggles were mixed with soft coos of pleasure as he reached up and began stirring his thumb up and down against the entrance to her gates of paradise. She added her fingers into the midst, stroking the lips of her pussy with his thumb shaking between them a vibrator.

After a minute or so to let Jason indulge himself, Christi turned around and began to straddle his lap. Grinding herself against his denim-sealed erection, she joined her lips with his and used her tongue the way Jason had used his. Moving his hand, Jason cupped her voluptuous ass cheeks and squeezed them lovingly, even daring a few playful smacks. As her grinding increased in aggression, Jason felt no hesitation in inserting his middle finger in Christi's ass. The sudden penetration drew a sudden yelp, but Christi showed absolutely no contempt to his finger inside her. In fact, she only kissed him with more aggression.

Her leaning back told Jason that Christi was ready to move to the next stage. He pulled his finger from her ass and was about to lick it clean, but she grasped his wrist and stopped him. Giggling, she lowered her head and sucked on his finger like the bottom of a birthday candle after pulled out of a cake. Right then and there, Jason came, right then and there. Technically it was pre-cum, but it still felt like a wet dog had just slobbered on his underwear.

Removing his finger from her mouth with a pop, Christi stood up and Jason quickly pulled off his sweatshirt and t-shirt. About to pull off his pants and underwear, he raised an eyebrow at the puddle in the crotch of his jeans. That wasn't his pre-cum, that was Christi's "anticipation". Pulling his pants and underwear down to his ankles, Jason revealed his sprawled-out cock, glistening with pre-cum. Grasping the shaft, Christi stood it up and spared a few seconds to lick off every succulent molecule. Returning to his lap, she settled herself down onto it, purring as it entered her slippery pussy.

Once Jason's manhood was fully submerged in her wet interior, Christi began to heave her erotic frame up into the air without ever letting Jason's cock leave her body. Her mouth was open, whimpering gasps passing her red lips, Christi churned herself on Jason's cock, skewering her body with his muscular phallus. Watching her glorious tits jump with each thrust of her body, Jason couldn't stop himself from scrubbing her nipples with his tongue like they were covered in chocolate syrup.

"Oh god, your cock feels so good!" Christi whined.

"I could say the same about your pussy. It's like it's sucking me in! I can't get over how amazing it is!"

"How about a taste then?"

As if communicating telepathically, Christi stood up and Jason lied back across the couch. Returning, Christi supported herself on all fours on top of Jason, taking his cock into her mouth and succulently licking off her pussy juice. At the same time, Jason had his face buried in her sweet slit, sending his tongue as deep into her velvet sleeve as possible. Having already loosened her up with his cock, Christi's pussy easily gave up its addicting flavor. Her smooth thighs on the sides of his face nearly made him climax, but it was the sounds that triggered it. Beyond the sound of Christi's hums of pleasure from the movements of his tongue, it was the sound of her mouth slurping on his cock and then releasing over and over like she was drinking the syrup of a rapidly-melting popsicle.