A Hunter's Blood: The Crimson Contracts

Waking up to your own screaming lets your mind know the nightmare wasn’t finished. Drakx was hoping it was. As he slowly regained clarity, he desperately fought off insanity. He had died six times. He felt every one. Insanity was a hideous monstrosity to fight.

His eyes began to focus. He slowly sat up, and saw all of the DNAccidents he had Eradded staring at him. His memory came crashing back as he realized what happened.

They’re back in this world. That’s bullshit! I did my job! They’re all dead! He thought as they stared at him.

They weren’t dead, not anymore.

There they were. Chelys, Kaynehl, Elreich, Dhjaarc, Yherdas, and last but not at all least, Zannon.

They were staring at him with strange looks on their faces. It wasn’t anger like he expected. After all, he did kill them all once. Blood lust should have been stamped on their faces in neon. It wasn’t. They were smiling.

Why were they smiling?

He thought, I hate them, they hate me. I never smiled at them. Oh... wait. I did smile at all of them at one time in their lives. Their deaths.

As he regained his memory of Sensus, she stepped from behind them. He remembered her, and what she was about to finish.

“Aw shit.”

She walked towards him.

“I can’t imagine how much that hurt, but my satisfaction is indescribable,” she said with contentment drenching her words.

Drakx said nothing. He just closed his eyes. He realized that there was no fighting for life anymore. He became eerily comfortable with his fate. He laid back, and felt the light of the moon on his face.

Sensus leaned over him. She placed her hand on his forehead.

Sensus looked at her brothers. She knew this would be the balanced, satisfactory end.

“Goodbye Hunter,” she said quietly. Survival was the last request from their father, and she was determined to carry it out. Her brothers were back, and now it was time to end the life of the one that once ended theirs.

Her hand began to heat up. Drakx’ skin didn’t feel the heat. His blood became warm.

He wanted to move away from this hellish end. Sensus had somehow paralyzed him. He lay still as his blood became warmer.

Everything was frozen, including his vocal cords. He couldn’t scream. He lay in agony as his blood became hotter.

Sensus saw blood begin to trickle from his nose. It was very hot. Like morning tea hot.

Zannon was curious about what was happening. He knew Drakx was dying. He just didn’t know how, or how painful it was.

“What method of death are you giving him?” Zannon asked the question that everyone wanted to know.

“I am super heating his circulatory system, slow cooking him. Boiling his blood,” she said without breaking her gaze on Drakx. “The next question is how painful this is. You all want to know if this is what he deserves. Is this form of death enough to pay for what he has done to all of us?”

At that point, she released his vocal cords from penalization. The scream he let out was blood curdling. It was so loud, he momentarily muted all the machines working in the sector. Everyone jumped back startled. Sensus froze his cords once more.

“I would have to say yes,” Sensus said, smiling.

His blood began to drip from his eyes. It splashed on the night air’s cooled concrete. The puddles had a thick, white plume of smoke rise from them.

His skin began to distort, and bubble. His blood was reaching the boiling point. It would be over soon.

He was imprisoned inside his own body. She deprived him of his final release.

“As much as you want to scream, and wretch in pain, you deserve to just die quietly,” she said, as if she was reading his mind. “I will slowly destroy you physically and mentally.”

The hot blood began to sting his eyes. She wouldn’t let him blink, so he felt his eyes sting, and eventually collapse from the burning.

He finally began to slip into the silence. His essence began to separate from the physicality of this world. The release was blissful. The imprisonment of mortality had ceased. He was, once again, on the next level.

Sensus felt Drakx slip into nothingness. She felt a tinge of sadness. That was the curse of her heightened gift of empathy. Her mind quickly snapped her feelings back into control. She became happy once more from his demise.

“It is finished. He is no more,” she told her pensive brothers.

They began to cheer. They all ran to their sister to hug her. She began to smile. Her brothers were back. The Hunter was dead. She fulfilled her father’s wish for them to survive. She was happy. That covered her slight hint of sadness she felt for his death. She only felt that for a second. She began to, subconsciously, wonder why she felt it at all. As much as she dismissed it, that feeling was there.

“Let’s go and live!” she yelled. She and her brothers began to walk away from Drakx’s abandoned car, and corpse. They began speaking amongst themselves about the freedom they had. They knew that no one was chasing them anymore, and they would soon find that Hunter’s destroyed body.

Just as Sensus was enjoying listening to her brothers talking about the future, a sound stopped her in her tracks. This sound was powerful enough to change the future. It was also presently frightening her. She wasn’t comfortable with her bewilderment. The sound was a moan from the already dead Drakx.