The Storyteller of Pain

by Loren Molloy

  Suddenly the gate to the women’s ward clacked shut loudly signaling the arrival of someone. Soo-Jin’s eyes widened in fear. She looked like she was going to be sick, and also as if someone had froze her moments before she could do so. A sickened statue, hardly even breathing, was now before him.

  John heard two pairs of heels clicking towards him. The sound of whimpers flooded the hall. John swallowed the huge lump of bile and fear back down into his stomach once more. He slowly turned his head and there they were, walking toward him. Just as Soo-Jin described them. Very tall. Both of them were at least 6 feet tall. They did indeed look like pall bears preceding a funeral casket wagon. They were pristine, not a scrap of fabric or hair out of place. They looked regal, somehow, too.

  They were almost upon him and the level of fear that was rising within him was sickening. Ice felt as if it was blasting through his veins. He was frozen in fear just like Soo-Jin was. The couple stood before John smiling the most evil and cruel smile he had probably ever seen since... ‘No’ he was not allowing his thoughts to go there, not right now,’ he thought and swallowed hard again.

  “Naughty, naughty Soo-Jin,” the man said in a vile tone, like one would with a child, when you’re talking down to them and mocking them at the same time. His voice sounded like many male voices which had all been put through a meat grinder at the same time. He had pitch black hair and a black goatee that came down to a point. His eyes flashed with irises of gold, as Soo-Jin had told him.

  “Yes Soo-Jin. Who told you that you could tell him anything about us at all?” the woman demanded. Her voice sounded completely different than the man’s. It was like silk and velvet, alluring and sensual all at once. Her eyes indeed flashed with gold irises when she said Soo-Jin’s name in contempt. She looked so young and beautiful, sexy and tantalizing. Her face was like porcelain and just as smooth and fine. She looked strict but there seemed to be a look of mischief underneath as well.

  John was suddenly having a problem looking away from her and seemed to be getting more attracted to her with every second that went by. The woman had locked eyes with him and never looked away. The energy was getting more and more uncomfortable for him. The size of his arousal kept increasing as did his physical reaction to her. He didn’t like it. He wanted to look away. He didn’t wanted to have any attraction to this demonic creature standing before him. He was beginning to sweat. His heart was racing.

  She began to give the slightest hint of a smirk with her ruby red lips when the man said, “You’re going to have to be punished for this.”

  John’s head twitched violently to look at the man’s face. He didn’t know who the man was talking to but it caused the connection between the woman and himself to be broken. He could feel himself calming down. His breath was slowing as was his physical reaction. The overwhelming feeling of lust wasn’t pounding through his veins like a jackhammer any longer. He gasped, and then sighed. Never had he been so happy to no longer be aroused before.

  The man just stared at John for several seconds before speaking again. “What do you say dear? There’s one for me and one for you.” The man looked over at his wife with an evil grin.

  “Mmmmh. It has been hours since I last sucked a man’s...” The woman sultry voice spoke to her husband while looking at John’s manhood for several seconds, just smiling before locking eyes with John again, and finally said, “...Soul.” She chuckled evilly at him. Her irises flashed that eerie glowing gold at him. A wave of heat hit him with that flash. He began to feel that horrible reaction to her growing again.

  John’s mind was suddenly filled with an array of sexual perversion that would possibly make even the Marquis De Sade blush. Each image was more violent and sexual than the last. The final one was too much to bear. She had him in Lilian’s office, on her desk, riding him while ripping chunks of flesh from his body. Lily! The thought of her overwhelmed him. He suddenly saw her sweet face smiling at him. It was too much.

  John screamed, “NO!” and it broke the evil woman’s hold over him.

  He began to back away from her in horror. She wasn’t attractive at all. Her fingers were like razor sharp talons. Her face wasn’t porcelain and beautiful. It was old, hideous, and disfigured. He could see small, black horns hiding in the mess of black hair on her head. Her illusion wasn’t working any longer.

  Stunned, she stomped her foot down and glowing gold light blasted at him. Her sexual energy hit him and dissolved. It wasn’t working. He held tightly to the image of Lily’s face, smiling up at him from bed. The look on her face right after he kissed her for the first time. The very first time she reacted to him in the doorway of her office. ’She loves me’, he thought powerfully. He felt his heart slam hard in his chest. The sensation felt like a sonic boom radiating from him.

  The woman yelled, “That’s not possible!”

  John couldn’t help it. He chuckled slightly, out loud. The thought hit him again. ’She loves me!’ Lily’s face was suddenly like a beacon in his mind. He couldn’t help it. He was smiling. In front of two demonic creatures. The thought of Lily was what broke the woman’s hold over him. He wasn’t letting go of that weapon that he had accidentally just discovered.

  “How?!” The man’s voice boomed in rage. The man turned on his wife. “You’re doing this on purpose aren’t you? You know I can’t procreate until you’re done with your victim and give me his seed. You just don’t want me to have any fun. You surround me with women then don’t do your side of the deal. You do it just to torture me!” The man’s voices were deafening.

  “I’m not doing anything-” She began

  “Exactly! You’re not doing anything!” The man threw an arm out in John’s direction for emphasis.

  The woman’s hideous face twisted in rage making it somehow even more venomous and vile. “HOW DARE YOU!” The woman’s voice boomed with unbridled rage. “Don’t you forget who made you! If I were torturing you, you would know it. I didn’t do it. He broke the connection with me!”

  “Human men don’t break the hold from a succubus!” the man yelled back at her.

  “Well, obviously this one did somehow!” she screamed back at him.

  That was the last thing John heard. He was able to use their fight as his opportunity to get away. As long as no other men went in there, the women should be safe from that man-definitely not a human. What was a succubus’ counterpart called, he wondered. Lily would know he bet. Lily! He had no idea if she was okay or even... no he wasn’t going to allow his thoughts to go any further on that. He knew that kind of thinking wasn’t going to help him.

  John found himself in the farthest part of the female wing. ‘Ward A’ was for the most extreme female psychotics. He definitely wasn’t happy to be in this area normally. Now that demons are loose that made the feeling triple fold. John looked down the hall and at the end, he saw Nurse Chimera. She was flailing. He could see arms were strangling her with a white bed sheet. John ran as fast as he could. He kept yelling hold on, fight; I’m coming at the massive woman. The “extremes” were screaming and wailing. Many were mimicking him.

  One woman was screaming the word “fight” like a tiny terrier barks.

  “Fight!Fight!Fight!Fight!Fight! ...

  Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!... Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!”

  John skid to a stop in front of Nurse Chimera and began desperately trying to pull the hands away from the sheet, and the sheet away from the nurse. It wasn’t until he heard the laughter and felt the woman stop flailing that he look down at the nurse, and really looked at her. She was dead. Long dead. She had already been killed by that same sheet at least 6 hours ago. She was now hanging from it. The sick bitch had tied the sheet to the bars in the door. The laugh continued from within. John was gasping for breath but the air suddenly smelled rotten. Poor Nurse Chimera’s rotting corpse made it hard to breathe.

  The laugh suddenly changed. It sounded different. It sounded like one he hadn’t thought of in a very, very long
time. The sheet suddenly began to unravel itself from the bars causing Nurse Chimera to land on the ground with a sickening thud. John looked down at the body in shock. That laugh. It couldn’t be.’ It’s not possible,’ John thought.

  “My boy... is that you?” John’s mother’s voice floated out of the cell.

  ‘Her voice. It was. It was her voice,’ John thought panicky. “It can’t be! Mother?” John said incredulously.

  “How could you let me be locked up all this time and not come to see your own mother, John my boy? How could you do this to your poor, old mother?” Her face appeared at the bars just as he remembered it. It was just like the day she was taken away.

  “Mom? It can’t be you!” John was so overwhelmed and wrapped up in the shock of seeing his mother after all the long years, he had walked right to her. He needed to see every tiny detail of his mother’s face. Her face was just as it was that fateful day. She hadn’t aged at all. That thought jarred him back to his senses.

  “It can’t be you. My mother’s dead,” John whispered, realizing what had just happened to him. He was tricked.

  His mother wrapped her hands around his throat without any problem and began squeezing the life out of him, while she screamed repeatedly, “One left to kill!”

  “No!” John tried to yell but she was squeezing his throat too hard to get air in or much sound out. Luckily for him, he remembered a technique he was taught. If he was ever being choked, he was to turn his head to one side. He remembered his instructor saying, ‘You get air in, allowing your mind to function and to think of a plan of attack.’ He tightened his throat as much as possible and forced his head to turn. The creature pretending to be his mom was still screaming, ‘One left to kill’ but she wasn’t killing him. Not yet anyway. After a few seconds, he had regained enough oxygen to be able to think. The only thought he had was, ’Sorry mom’ before he swung his massive arm above and behind his head connecting his fist with the creatures face.

  It howled in pain. The sound was many high pitched voices, all mashed together, howling at once. It gave John time to kick away from the door and sit in the middle of the hallway, gathering himself. He had to get out of there. Using his mother like that against him was too heart wrenching to bear. He propelled himself back to his feet and began running out of Ward A.

  As he ran, all he could hear was his mother’s voice screaming, “One left to kill!”

  He had to find Lily. He couldn’t bare this any longer. He had to know where she was and if she was ok. He started praying for her safety. He wasn’t sure who he was praying to exactly but as long as they were “good guys” as he put it, he would be happy for their help. “Please help her. Please protect her from harm.” It became his mantra. He had to go back through the area where he saw that demonic couple. He had no choice. There wasn’t any other way out of there.

  John kept a continuous stream of images of Lily in his mind. Every smile he could think of, every image of her that had melted his heart, he played in his mind like a movie with only one subject. The movie had only one bit of dialogue. “Please help her. Please keep her from harm. Please let her be ok.” His heart always whispered the last line.

  The couple wasn’t there this time. The place was silent but he wasn’t sticking around. He had to find his Lily. His Lily. The thought helped him somehow. It propelled him forward. This asylum is huge. How was he ever supposed to find her though.

  Lilian ran to the room with the intercom. She had to know if John was alive. She had to let him know she was alive. They needed to find a way to meet back up without blurting the details out over the loudspeaker. Doesn’t help if all the bad guys know where you’ll be meeting. Kinda defeats the point. Lilian looked around the room. How could she let him know without giving it away to anyone else? Her eyes connected with the record player and a pile of records next to it. They had been trying to use classical music over the loudspeakers to help soothe the patients. Charles had put an end to that. She looked through them. Whispering, ‘Please’ like a prayer. ‘Be here’ she thought.

  She knew which one she was looking for. ’There! It’s always the last one in a pile. Ain’t it,’ she thought but thanked the heavens for it being there. She moved the record player next to the microphone. Lily placed the record onto the record player and pushed down the intercom button and the microphone as they used to do, so the record could continue to play without having to stand there, holding down the button the whole time.

  The intercom system made a sudden screeching noise, as it always does, alerting the asylum a message was about to be played. Lily moved the needle to the very edge of the record and switch the toggle on the record player. The record began to spin. You could hear the scratching sound over the speakers. As the first notes of music blasted, Lily was already running out and away from the room. Toccata and Fugue in D Minor began playing loudly over the loudspeakers for all to hear.

  John’s head lifted towards the sound of the music. He stopped in his tracks smiling. His silent prayer had been heard and answered. ‘Only Lily would play music at a time like this’, John thought hearing the organ music. Tears were welling up in his eyes. She’s alive and there’s only one thing that song meant. They were to meet where they were originally planning to go ...the chapel.

  John wished Lily would have picked a friendly, lighter piece of music. The asylum was creepy enough before there were demons. With proof of their existence, and this music playing loudly throughout the whole place, John felt as if he was racing towards Satan’s lair not a chapel.

  Somehow this time nothing stopped him from getting to the chapel. John stood just inside the doorway of the chapel and looked around. He didn’t see her or anyone else for that matter. John walked up the aisle toward the altar.

  He was never a religious man but he had always found solace and a sense of tranquility from churches. Something about this one suddenly didn’t feel right. Usually he got a peaceful, loving feeling from this little chapel. This time, with the music playing through the intercom, there was something very ominous about it.

  “John!” Lily’s voice exclaimed with joy

  “Lily!” John cried out in relief at the sight of her.

  John held her at arms length for a second.

  “How old was I when I got put into the foster system?” John asked.

  “What?” Lily looked confused

  “Answer me! How old was I?” John demanded in worried voice. After what he had just experienced, he had to make sure.

  “You were 6! Why?” Lily asked incredulously

  “It really is you. Thank Goodness! After what I have just seen, I just had to make sure,” John said with a chuckle.

  He scooped her up in a fierce bear hug before putting her down and kissing her passionately. John didn’t care that they were standing in front of the altar. Hasn’t many a man kissed the love of his life in front of an altar, just like this one. They weren’t punished for it. He realized if they survived this, he was marrying her.

  John just kept alternating between stroking her hair and face, and kissing her forehead. Finally, he looked down at her and really looked. It was the first time he had noticed the dried blood that was covering one foot and shin. He just looked at her in horror.

  “Oh baby... please tell me you’re okay.” John looked so worried

  “I’m ok. It’s not my blood.” Lily said emotionless

  “Who’s is it?” John asked very concerned

  “Page. I’m not sure if my last kick killed him or just destroyed all of his teeth but he wasn’t moving when I ran away.” Lilian sounded hollow. The light was gone from her eyes.

  “Oh Kitten!” John exclaimed and hugged her fiercely. He wasn’t going to ask anymore questions. All that mattered was that she was alive. He told her so several times between kissing her temple and forehead. He hugged her tightly to him.

  “I love you!” He whispered into her temple with all the feeling he could muster. He imagined his love filling her compl
etely. Whatever Page did to cause the light to leave her eyes, would disintegrate now.

  Lily began to cry hysterically. He scooped his woman up into his arms and held her tightly while she cried. He didn’t shush her or tell her don’t cry. He just kept whispering, “You have every right to feel how you feel. You let it out, Kitten. I got ya baby. I love you.”

  “I thought he was going to-” Lily broke off not being able to finish the sentence and began to cry even harder.

  John’s first thought was, ’Thank goodness he didn’t.’ His second thought was, ‘If he ain’t dead, he sure as shit going to be.’ He said none of it. He knew better. You never show any hostility or anger while a woman is upset. In his opinion, it would be too much for her after such evil, and seriously selfish of the man to think of how he’s feeling in that moment, instead of her.

  “He didn’t and I am so proud of you baby! You got away! That’s all that matters. You’re here in my arms and that’s what matters. I’m so proud of you,” he whispered gently.

  Lily had calmed down and finally looked up at his face. Her bottom lip was still quivering.

  John kissed her for several moments, never letting her go nor putting her down this time. Her arms were wrapped around his neck. Her legs were wrapped around his waist as best as her legs could. John held her with one arm under her bottom and the other around her upper back. She was so tiny and delicate against his massive form, she almost disappeared from view when he hugged her tightly. She had to be no taller than 5’4” if that, while he was 6’4” barefoot.