The Madness in Healing: Chapter 1 – Amid Madness

Chapter 1 – Amid Madness

The first criminal’s body turns into a mess of bloody confetti. Next, another is shot to pieces by guns in the dark. One is beaten to death by the spirits of those he has beaten, and another is drowned in alcohol by his demons until he pukes himself to death. Yet another is torn apart by hands in the shadows, another is chopped into pieces, and needles stab another, and he dies by bleeding out through his skin. These are the wretched deaths of the pitiful criminals I face in another day of crime fighting as L’Obscurité.

Some can escape and heal from their punishments due to their genuine repentance and my prayers for them, while most die and suffer further in the afterlife. Such a pity, but it’s just the nature of the job. There are better days when most repent, and I don’t find the dead bodies of their victims in the buildings where they hide, and worse days when everyone dies and no one repents. I say a silent prayer for my present and future enemies before calling the cops to have the criminals at this location arrested. As I leave for the next location, I get a call from the Chief of Police, Raymond.

“Chief, how are you doing tonight?” I ask.

“I’m not going to be doing so well if you don’t come to the Dymphna Asylum, and neither will your friends or parents if you don’t head over there quickly,” a dark voice says on the phone before hanging up.

What was that about? I become one with the shadows and travel between the light and dark of Meridian as I rush to the Dymphna Asylum. Arriving there within seconds, despite its location on the outskirts of the city, I find that the place is locked down and completely inaccessible from the outside because of the shutters closed over the windows and doors. Thankfully, my powers allow me to slip inside without touching anything or causing any noise. At the entrance, I discover six hanging bodies- three males and three females- all dressed in patient attire and wearing sacks over their heads.

There doesn’t seem to be anyone here until a shadowy figure who looks much like me with a hood and cloak on appears out of nowhere on the balcony above me. The figure is white and grey and has stretched out grey eyes and a smile that reaches both sides of his hood. He laughs at me in a voice that I recognize as being the same one on the phone. Not wanting to waste any time, I lunge at the figure and appear next to him in the blink of an eye, but he gets away from me just as fast.

“Haha! It’s not going to be that easy for you, Timeo Severe,” he says.

He knows my real name?! I continue trying to use my powers on him and get to where he is, but he keeps evading my grasp, and my powers don’t do anything to him.

“Who are you?!” I ask.

“You may simply know me as Bianco, for now.”

This new villain of mine is back on the balcony, and I’m on the ground floor as I stop my fruitless chase of him.

“What do you want? Where are my family and friends? What have you done here?”

“To answer all three questions at once, I’m here to make you suffer, and I’m doing that by keeping your loved ones hostage and releasing all the patients here, especially the criminals you help arrest.”

My friends and family appear from the ground around Bianco with ropes around their necks, except for Darcy, who has a living snake coiled around her neck that serves as a rope. All of them, except my parents who have cloth in their mouths, call out to me for help, urging me not to let Bianco get the better of me. Before I can attempt anything, Bianco and his hostages vanish in a flash of light.

“Your parents know your secret,” Bianco says as he chuckles. “Oh, how they said I was lying and trying to deceive them until I showed them indisputable proof, such as pictures and videos of you transforming. Then, they cried in despair over how their favorite son turned into a sadistic, dark hero.”

“Shut up! You’re lying!” I say.

“Like mother and father, like son.”

“Face me and let’s get this over with!”

“I won’t yet. The night is young, and I have many painful challenges ahead of you, such as this one.”

Everything around me shifts and swirls into a white void before spitting out the scene of a cell block filled with hundreds of superhuman inmates trying to break out. My appearance catches their attention, and it seems like they were expecting me because of the people staring at the spot I was teleported to.

“The weird man was right! He did bring us the man we all have a bone to pick with,” a man with vines and thorns sticking out of his skin says.

“You have a lot to answer for,” a woman with steel skin says as she cracks her knuckles, which sounds like the bending of metal.

“You may have taken us down individually, but together, you don’t stand a chance,” an ex-hero says as he lights half his body on fire and the other half turns to stone.

Many other villains and criminals surround me and say their piece, flaunting their powers, and the guns they took from the armory and dead guards. They think I’m intimidated by their numbers, but they’re mistaken.

I laugh and say, “I find it all quite humorous, actually. This pathetic display of your confidence in your abilities means less than nothing to me.”

“Oh, yeah? Let’s show him who the pathetic one is,” one villain says as they pounce on me with their powers and gunfire.

In the chaos, the criminals kill each other more than they hurt me as they throw everything they have at me, while the smart ones stand back, waiting to see what happens after the dust settles, but all are hungry for the honor of saying that they killed me, an honor none of them will have. All the criminals who attacked me are swept up in a whirlwind that combines them all into a mangled human centipede. Each of them has their head up each other’s rectum or attached to one another in some painfully unnatural way that makes it surprising to everyone that they’re still alive and writhing around. Those who didn’t get caught up in the whirlwind look at the sight in shock and horror, some even dropping their weapons and returning to their cells.

Speaking to those who still want to fight, I say, “I spared your life in our first encounters so you could be reformed and helped by this penitentiary, its doctors, and psychiatrists, but since you spurn my mercy, all that’s left for you is justice.”

I laugh as I dispense justice upon the criminals around me, either executing them according to their sins or making them a part of the monstrosity that lies in the center of the cell block. Once that’s done and over with, I hear clapping and laughing from Bianco.

“Bravo! It’s about time you did something other than rip people to pieces, make them get eaten by vermin, or die by whatever crime they were guilty of. That human centipede is simply inspired,” he says.

“Stop these games and give me back my family and friends or else you’ll end up like the scum in this room,” I say.

The scene shifts back to the entrance of the asylum, where the hanging bodies are.

Bianco appears beside them and says, “Oh, but I’ve already given you a few of your family members. Observe!”

He takes off the sacks from one of the men and one of the women to reveal the faces of one of my brothers and sisters. Despite not being fond of them, I can’t help but wince at the sight of their strangled faces, devoid of color and full of horror at their final moments.

“What’s the matter, Timeo? I thought you didn’t like these people? You did beat them within an inch of their life during the first night you made yourself known to Meridian,” Bianco says. “Do you want to see the faces of the rest of your siblings?”

“I want you dead!” I say.

“You’ll have your chance of doing that soon enough, but the show must go on for now.”

The scene around me changes to a hallway of the asylum. I guess I have no choice but to play along with Bianco’s game and try to find an opening to get to him. He knows my real identity and told my parents it. I’ll have a lot of explaining to do after this. They’re healers, so knowing that I’m a dark hero may worry them, to say the least. I can only hope and pray to God that this sadistic new villain will be swiftly brought to justice and that my parents will understand why I fight crime in the way I do.