Ignoring his statement, the nurse silently rummaged through her medical kit and extracted a series of items. One of them was a metal stethoscope, a small syringe, and other supplies I'd usually see at the doctor's office. She laid them out on the wooden table and turned to the cabinet. Then, she stood up and opened it, taking out one final item—it looked like a small glass case.
"This examination should be simple, does that sound good?"
Looking towards the syringe, my face turned so pale the average passerby would assume I lacked a drop of blood in my body. The edges of my vision began to darken, twisting and contorting as a wave of nausea washed over me like a tidal wave.
"Heh, is he sick or something?" Damien seemed to take note of my change in appearance, his smirk widening.
"I'll retrieve the depressants," the nurse said hurriedly, turning back to the medicine cabinet and scurrying through the items. In my ears, her voice quickly turned illusory, reverberating as it sounded like she was talking through a large tunnel. The walls around me began to twist and ripple as if they were made of a liquidish substance.
"God...damn...it," the edges of my eyes crept in, and my entire vision turned black.
The doctor watched as I slumped forward in my chair, my body almost hitting the floor if it weren't for her quick movements. Turning back to Damien and the other nurse, she nodded her head.
"I can still do the medical analysis while he's unconscious, take Damien back to his room."
...
When I awoke, the first thing catching my attention were the much harsher lights above my head. They emanated from lanterns that had been suspended above the medical table. When I regained a sustainable amount of equilibrium, I leaned up, the back of my neck cracking as I surveyed the room around me.
I caught sight of the nurse in the corner. From what I could see in my still slightly blurry vision, she had extracted the blood from my body.
"Luckily the venesection wasn't too much of an issue," she said with a smile as she turned to me.
I looked down at my right wrist, noting the bandages wrapped around a spot where one of my veins were the most prominent. Without the invention of anesthetics or pain-numbing prescription on this period, I surely felt everything as I gained a feeling of my surroundings.
The buzzing of the lamps, alongside the tiny pitter-patter of the moths attracted to the light—the tiny slams against the glass casing, seemed to be amplified, as if tiny microphones had been embedded in my ears.
"Your blood is...different from what I can see," her voice lowered to a whisper as she leaned in closer to look at the blood in the small jar.
The liquid was a dark red color that bordered on black. It sloshed around in the glass case as she moved it around to capture it from all possible angles the light would supply. Shortly after, she put the glass case down on the counter and approached the medical bed once again.
"Are you hungry?" Her tone was almost motherly as she asked the question.
Now that I had thought about it, the last time I had eaten something was back at Madame Fitzgarold's place. With the injury I had sustained to my head, alongside how poorly I already felt, a meal would be a rapture.
"That would be nice, thank you," the ends of my lips curled into a fragile, trembling smile. I tried my best to appear and come off as polite to the nurses, but the muscular effort of smiling like I was doing right now would surely rip my face apart from underneath.
Hearing my response, the nurse smiled softly as she stepped back from the bed. Without saying a word, she opened the door and left the room. After I verified I was alone for the most part, I slumped back on the bed and tried to roll over onto my back, but my entire body seemed unable to move. I had fainted when I saw blood in the past, but this time made me feel entirely like shit. Damien's rude remarks didn't help much either.
"Stayin' true to your name, dumpster boy?" An instantly familiar voice called out from the corner of the room.
I shot up, the unusual burst of energy quickly fading as the nausea washed back over me. I slumped back in my bed, my head crashing against the pillows. In the lantern's light, I made out a figure standing in the corner of the room. His skin was a ghastly gray color, and a pair of large horns protruded from his messy black hair. The demon's tongue was forked at the end, and his body was abnormally muscular.
The demon pretending to be my father approached the bed, before extending his arm and grabbing a tight hold of my hair. His grip only tightened as he lifted me up off the bed, glaring into me with his fiery crimson pupils.
"First your little Umbridge leaves you to rot, and you pass out again and make a fuckin' fool of yourself?" His voice came off as a bitter sneer, his acidic spit stinging my skin. The room around me faded away, replacing itself with the barren landscape of before.
Just then, the demonic figure dropped me to the ground. I let out a low grunt as my back was slammed against something sharp. When I looked below my body, I saw that the ground was littered with countless skeletons and skulls, which stretched as far as the eye could see.
The clouds above me were dark and dreary, churning down crimson lighting which clashed with the ground and caused torrents of dust to explode upwards like a dry and hazy battlefield of elements. The air smelled like rotting flesh, dry soil and death. At this moment, the demonic tyrant sat down on his throne, perching his elbow onto the armrest.
Beside the throne was his sword, which dazzled with a maloviolent crimson energy that seemed to amplify my sense of fear and dread. My heart remained pounding in my chest as this deadly scene spread in all directions, ebbing with desolation and decay.
"Like what you see?" He asked, his lips curling upwards into a thorny, bitter grin that bore the entirety of his ink-black gums and rotten, gold-hued teeth, which were laced with cavities. A pair of ink-black, devilish wings spread from his back, extruding in both directions beside his body. Each of them were about six feet from end to end.
"T-this isn't real," I grabbed the ends of my hair, closing my eyes tightly as I began to mumble to myself.
"But it is, this is what you're meant to become," the demonic tyrant sneered, his tone acidic and degenerative like the landscape around us.
Suddenly, iron-black pillars shot up from the ground below, casting the bones and dust into the air like a macabre tornado. The howling of the putrid wind gradually faded as the entirety of my surroundings went dark. The carpeted floor beneath my feet took shape as I collapsed forward. When I opened my eyes, I found myself back in the throne room.
"Shut up..." I mumbled, looking in the direction of where the demon was once perched on his throne. How it was like he had never existed, my mindscape having banished him away.
I caught sight of a small object in the center of the throne room. It was the Night Vanilla candle I had failed to divine. It was that object that caused The Umbridge to leave me, it was this object that caused all these events to happen to begin with.
Feeling a surge of anger, I stood up and approached the candle, the nausea and achiness of my limbs now having disappeared. My blood was boiling, threatening to spill through my eyes and nose. Without any hesitation, I extended my foot and kicked the candle as hard as I could. But the candle quickly changed texture.
The sound of the basket flying across the yard echoed throughout the star-laden night. I felt the plush grass beneath my feet, the sensation of dew clinging to my shoes and socks bitterly familiar. My gaze fell to the basket I had received from Garry.
The convenience items were scattered across the yard.
"You're just a pity-party everyone's supposed to feel sorry for," my fathers voice echoed in my mind.
My body snapped around as I closed my eyes, and I swung my fist as hard as I could. The sound of my fist colliding with skin and bone quietly sounded as a low grunt was heard, followed by pain-stricken cries and whimpers. My eyes shot open, widening with terror as I saw Ayumi on the ground, holding her cheek as fresh tears peppered her face.
Her glasses were on the grass beside her, shattered around the rims, with the lenses cracked as well. Just then, my mouth opened without me wanting it to, and I couldn't believe the words I would speak.
"Quirkless loser!"
My foot moved like a puppet, slamming down onto Ayumi's chest over and over. I watched helplessly as the girl cried and sobbed, begging me to stop this action through a breathless voice. Soon enough, she spat up a copious amount of blood that splattered onto her shirt and around her lips like messily applied lipstick.
Her eyes rolled back into her skull as I saw her face turn a dark gray color, alongside the rest of her body. Black cracks seeped into her veins, and fungi quickly sprouted from her body like the molecular process had been amplified hundreds of times over. My body ran cold, and my hands trembled violently as her body disappeared, turning into ash that was carried away by the wind.
"Maybe you'll rot in this building like I'm rotting in jail."
At that moment, a pair of ice-cold hands touched my shoulders. My head moved without action, gazing up at the figure. He had a stubble on his face, a sharp jawline, and a mop of short black hair on his head. It was my father. He was clad in a Japanese prison uniform, which had been slightly torn and abused. His hands were covered in fresh blood, blood that also crept down from his lower lip.
My father smiled as his grip on my shoulders tightened, bordering on an intensity that would shatter them like glass. I tried my best to escape his grasp, but his grip on my body was unwavering, as if he was a force of nature.
I instinctively swung my hand back, aiming for his groin, but the butcher knife I was holding impaled him in his lower stomach. The light-green fabric of his prison uniform quickly darkened as the dark-colored liquid quickly seeped out from his clothing, pooling onto the grass below and staining it a dark color.
Even amidst the intolerable pain, he continued to smile. His maloviolent gaze never left my form even as he slumped to the ground with the knife still embedded in him.
"What are you doing, kid?" He snarled, his grin never leaving his face.
"Finish the job."
My father extended a blood-soaked hand and removed the blade from his lower abdomen, the sharp end painted in the foul liquid. The ends of his smile twitched slightly as he insisted I took the weapon, forcing it into my hands.
"If you want me dead so much, then I recommend you finish me off, dumpster boy."
My hands continued to tremble as I looked at the knife in my hands. The handle was like ice against my skin, causing me to quiver even more. The salty sensation of tears coursing down my face was an instinct I didn't bother to suppress. Without a word, I lowered my arm again, digging even deeper into his flesh. My arms twisted the blade to ensure he would feel as much pain as he could as possible.
"There, there," my father placed a blood-soaked hand on my cheek, mockingly patting it a little too hard.
Just then, my surroundings dissipated as I opened my eyes again, the harsh lantern light of the medical room filtering out any other sensations. I instinctively raised my hand to my cheek, feeling for blood. But I only felt my warm skin.
There wasn't a drop of blood to be felt or seen.
The door to the room opened, and the nurse entered the room with a smile. "I have some food for you."
I looked at the nurse, sighing softly. "I'm not hungry."