Him (Rated R - language, violence)

[Oli]

What does it take for a man to kill some one? What does it take for a man to inhumanly rip apart a soul in such away it..it..? Questions I have asked myself many times before, and what they ask on the outside. So many times now the images role through my head again and again. It even haunts my dreams. The horrible and horrific nightmares from which I awaken, shaking hysterically. I would have thought by now that the shock would have passed, but I was wrong. I have been wrong too many times now. Too many mistakes have occurred. Would explain why I am here. Rotting.


Nobody cares, not any more anyways. I am already dead in their eyes. The people who cared have long moved on. I am but a memory to them, but this memory is very much alive. I have not died. I still feel pain and suffering. Not that they would know. They fake empathy. They fake emotion. None of them know where I am, and none of them care. I have been gone far too long for them too still care. Too much has happened.


The search may still be out there but its not for me. Not any more anyways. Locked up here for god knows how long, and still no one has found me. No one knows I am here. No one. Well other than him. The one who started all this. The one who I am looking at now, and is always in my gaze. He knew I was here. He knew what he did. He knew why I am here rotting. He still knows I am here, but he knows in Hell where a soul like his would be after taking a gun to his head to escape what he had done. I hope he is suffering down there like I am right here.


I have resigned myself to my fate. To be honest I did that along time ago. Stuck inside this cell, which makes a medieval dungeon look like the Ritz. The stench of his disease ridden flesh and the blood on the walls is enough to make you go insane. Hell it has almost driven me to insanity, but after everything I am surprised I'm not insane already.


It lies in the corner, calling him a he now seems pointless and in some ways he always was an it, never 'human', with nowhere else to go. It has been days since it took the gun to his head. Why I haven't done the same thing I don't know. Perhaps the fact that some one out there may care and find me, a fate that seems too unreal right now.


They're not coming. If they were truly searching they would have found this cell by now. Maybe I should just take the same fate as It, but maybe that is what It wasn't me to do. This could be Its plan all along. Wouldn't put it past It. The things I saw It do to people. Destroy their souls to the point where they would want to end their own lives instead of It having to. Then again this seems to go too far for that. It looked scared when It pulled the trigger.


Why the fuck am I still here?! Why the fuck am I alone?! I don't deserve this! Why me?! What did I do to deserve this?! You did this to me! You locked me in here with you! You tied me to the chair and made me watch you take your own life! Why? WHY?!


Shouting doesn't work, especially shouting at a corpse. There is that gun again. In a way it torments me more than it did. Do I, don't I. What if? I could end all this suffering. End all the nightmares about its previous victims. There would be peace at last. All I would have to do is pick it up and pull the trigger. No more.


Once again I wake up from those nightmares. This time though they were more vivid. More ruthless. More horrific. Seeing that corpse rising up off the floor and doing to me what it did to its other victims. Have what it did to that little girl to me was just terrifying. At least it was only a nightmare for me. That poor girl. She didn't deserve it, none of them did.


Thats it. I am going to end this. There it is that thing I can do to end it. All I need to do is pick it up, pull the trigger and I am out of here. The metal feels so cool in my hands. The tool to end it all gives off that sense of empowerment. I am in control at last. I can do this. I can escape this. I can do this. The gun against my head now. The gun cocked and ready. One pull of the trigger and no more. Gently squeeze the trigger.


All of a sudden a bright light hit that cell. A light at the end of a tunnel. It was over, just I wasn't in control. The wall behind had collapsed, and when I turned round I could swear I sore and angel standing before me. For that brief moment I felt peace. But that peace wasn't coming from the angel. The peace I felt was a bullet straight through my heart. The bullet fired from a Glock 23 in the hands of that so called angel. They had found me, but it wasn't the justice I was hoping for. As I fell to the floor I fell in slow motion. Realizing but one thing; they had found me and all this hurt was finally over, but they had thought I was it, they had thought I was Him.

[Chris]

The following review is based upon the facts and assumptions that (a) this story how a captured person is haunted by thoughts of the assailant who killed himself in front of his prey, (b) this story is meant to entertain through drama, horror and shock value, and (c) this story's audience is your fellow guildians.

Oli's dark piece about a prisoner who is driven to the limit by the mind game his captor, who has killed himself right there in the room where his prisoner is trapped, has left him with, while it has its non-sequitors, is an almost-there hit that does well in depicting the hopelessness and reckless despair of a captured person at wits end, and ends with a surprisingly well-done twist.

Our nameless main character is stewing "inside this cell, which makes a medieval dungeon look like the Ritz.", with nothing but the foul odor of his equally nameless capturer's dead body, the realization that he is never going to be found settling in and the pre-occupation with his captor's motives to pass the time. It's apparently been there for a while, as he has already started to accept that he's not going to be found, and the emotional wear-and-tear of co-habitating with a corpse is already becoming too much. And this isn't just any ordinary corpse: while living, this man has done some pretty vile things (although it is left up to our imagination what they actually were), so vile that our main character is plagued by nightmares reliving them, so vile that our main character prefers to refer to him as an It, something soulless and inhuman. Knowing that there can be no escape and the consuming wonder of just why he/she was chosen to go through his hellish experience is definitely having an effect. Trying to understand the captor's motives has unhinged him/her severely, and all this pent up misery and frustration steers our protagonist towards the gun his captor used to end his own life, planning to use it for the same purposes.

However, before he can, a wall collapses, and for a moment he believes he sees an angel, and feels peace. But only for a moment, as his 'angel' puts one right in his chest, and as he falls to his death his dying thought is the painful realization that 'they had thought I was Him."

Now that's a bummer!

Oli does a great job of capitalizing on his concept. Making both captor and prisoner nameless makes them somehow more grandiose, and the shifts the protagonist makes in mood from resignation to anger to desperation are quite smooth. And the plot twist whereby our hero is killed by people who believe him to be the monster he has been scarred by is an inspired choice. There are a few parts that drift off focus and don't quite make sense, such as when the main character declares that "I have been wrong too many times now. Too many mistakes have occurred. Would explain why I am here.", which illicits a big 'WTH are you talking about?', and I'm not sure that the less-than-definitive references to the things our dead antagonist has done really help in his portrayal as a monster as much as something we could really pin on him would have. Also, referring to Him as It got old real quick. But otherwise, everything was well done.

Overall, I'd say that although there were some rough patches, Oli has a really good story on his hands. Two-thumbs up; I'd definitely read it again.