Punishment Halls

Staying inside the room was already challenging enough, and even more than that to keep his gaze focused on them. Navigating such a situation with a sound mind was something far beyond the reach of his capabilities. Narguile had once prided himself on his emotional fortitude, yet now, that self-proclaimed resilience was crumbling right beneath the encroaching maws of ruination.

His mind became a desperate scavenger, seeking for any agonizing kindle of hope left to grasp onto. Perhaps it wasn’t too late yet. If indeed, as all his encounters with the spectral being seemed to indicate, Cruel had latched solely to him —then maybe getting as far away as possible could set things right in his absence.

But Lieta's soft-spoken words perforated his spiraling thoughts like a needle through silk, before he even managed to turn away from them.

“Please…” She implored with a weakened tone. “Don’t leave.”

Once more, she showed him just how easy it was for her to piece together the tangled web of turmoil and worries inside his head based on nothing more than the subtle shifts in his expression alone.

“Just… Stay with us.”

It made it all that much more difficult to prevent himself from fracturing at the mere sound of Lieta’s voice. Narguile could tell she was in excruciating pain, both her body and her heart… Yet, she was pushing herself to keep them both from utter devastation.

Shielding the two from harm was supposed to be his duty, one he willingly shouldered. It never mattered how many sacrifices he had to make, even his life was a collateral he would gladly give if it meant keeping their smiles untarnished.

It shouldn’t be different now. For Lieta’s sake, he needed to stay strong and find a way forward…

So… Why then?

Why couldn’t he suppress those tears that betrayed him?

Why was it impossible for him to stop his knees from surrendering into helplessness by their side?

Why... Why had he failed at keeping them alive?

His overprotective nature had made him the target of taunts and mockery many times in the past, yet now those same comments felt like a ruthless joke at his expense. After every vow he had allegedly etched inside his heart, in the one moment that it mattered the most, his foolishness had...

“Is she really…” Narguile’s voice was a whisper barely above audible. Even pushing those words out of his lips made his hands tremble wildly, as they vehemently refused to follow his instructions —he was too terrified of the icy grip of mortality his fingers might encounter should they dare touch Aria.

Seeking to alleviate the torture of speaking any further, Lieta softly nodded. It was such a simple gesture, yet it felt like a brutal stab wound being torn open in his chest. His neck tilted upwards as he closed his eyes, fists clenching over the sheets enveloping them both.

His daughter had already gone somewhere he couldn’t protect her anymore.

“Both of you… You are my everything…” His words were like a plea for mercy, bare of any vestiges of strength. Each passing second was full of a morbid finality. These were the last moments, and he’d never be able to hear her voice again. “I can’t… I can’t go on without you.”

The once warm home they had built together was now choked by an unrelenting misery… Yet Lieta didn’t give in to the biting coldness of grief, choosing to deliver a gentle caress over his disheveled hair instead. Under the veil of tears blurring his vision, he stole one more longing gaze at her haunting beauty. Her face was not tainted by the stains of weeping like his own, but she was unnaturally pale. It made his heart ache even more, but he could see the faint traces of wiped blood under her nose.

Her lips curved into an apologetic smile, soft and tender beneath her ghostly complexion. She wasn’t struggling against the fate that loomed ominously over them anymore; she had already made her choice once their beloved little girl had exhaled her final breath.

“Narguile.” She whispered in a brittle voice that echoed with a solemnity mirrored in the subdued brightness of her golden eyes. “I want to thank you, for everything.” Watching her slender fingers trail up towards her hairline, he was left drenched in speechlessness, forced to receive a gratitude he hadn’t asked for. “You’ve made me… Really happy.”

>> “So please… Promise me that you won’t blame yourself.”

Every fiber within him longed to protest, to curse against the unjust destiny they were handed… But Narguile found himself entrapped within silence, unable to voice a single protest, left only to mechanically accept the red ribbon that once donned her hair, now resting inside his mistreated hands.

There was a clear message written in it, the black ink remained strong and defiant against the passage of time.

<>

Every stroke of harsh and uneven handwriting bore testimony of the days in which they were nothing but children, withstanding the throes of adversity.

A flash of memories engulfed Narguile. Her radiant expression when he first asked her to be his girlfriend, the fright that took over her face when she told him she was pregnant… And the ethereal beauty and grace she embodied in her wedding gown, scant months after Aria graced their lives.

“Always...” Lieta whispered with a fading voice. “I will always love you.”

From within Narguile surged a tidal wave of intense yearning to enfold them both in a desperate embrace. His trembling arms held their bodies close against his chest, unable to find solace even in their lingering warmth. His soul sought any way in which to manifest the anguish taking hold of him —yet he lacked the power to even scream, only managing pained, choked gasps.

Though he felt the will to resist abandoning Lieta’s arms as they fell listlessly to her sides, all Narguile could do was to hug them tighter, mired in an agonizing awareness of the moment that air abandoned her lips; a helpless witness of death’s merciless vice extinguishing the gentle blaze of her life.

Time ceased to have meaning for him as he remained frozen in that position for what felt like an eternity. The very thought of releasing his grip on them was unbearable; a sin he couldn’t bring himself to commit. For he knew that once he allowed them to slip away from his grasp… All that would remain would be the brutality of his wife and daughter’s unmoving corpses; their bodies reduced to nothing more than a torturous elegy for the happiness that had once been bestowed upon him.

As the hours that he remained in that suspension spell stretched like a bottomless abyss, he could sense him lurking around the periphery of his vision. Cruel, the only fitting descriptor for the vile being that continued to revel in his profound misery.

The fact that it now revealed itself under broad daylight hours, unconcerned by luminosity as he made no attempt to seek solace within the penumbra of the darkened room, signaled that he held no dependence on the night's protective shroud to present his horrid radiance. It was likely that he had only restrained his appearances to weave a false sense of security and normalcy —just enough for Narguile to maintain his anonymity in his life. A sinister strategy that allowed him free reign to destroy everything he treasured.

But now… Even such a revelation barely mattered to Narguile anymore. If anything, he found himself questioning what held him back from delivering the final blow; after all, he was already a dead man masquerading as a living one. With nothing left to live for, even the notion of his heart still breathing life onto him while Lieta and Aria’s were forever stilled was nothing short of a torture.

“It’s that how it is?” He murmured softly amidst the encroaching decay surrounding him. “You have no intention to kill me, do you?”

>> “You only want me to keep enduring this nightmare."

>> "Is my suffering that entertaining?”

No response from his very own personal tormentor, as expected.

Lashing out at the ugly bastard held no purpose. Not only had it proved to be an exercise in futility in a physical sense, but his spirit too, was ravaged and drained of any will to resist. He was beyond devastation, a mere husk of a man devoid of defiance.

It was only when he completely gave up that he noticed a subtle shift in Cruel’s demeanor —a fissure in his perennial delighted grin. So he desired resistance? A fight? Well… Should’ve thought better before robbing him of everything he had.

Suicide loomed at large inside his head.

In his family’s freezing embrace… He could hear the siren song of death calling, tempting him with an offer of oblivion. It promised an easier route; a swift end to this unbearable agony that relentlessly gnawed his very being.

But he wasn’t allowed to do that, was he?

The crimson ribbon hanging from his hand anchored him like a reminder of Lieta’s wishes. He understood what it symbolized, since it had been him who had once written the words in it.

Telling him now not to cry. To continue forward.

In light of her own surrender… It was certainly a selfish request.

Nevertheless… He figured he owed her that much.

After all, he couldn’t pin the blame entirely on Cruel. His negligence and stupidity were just as responsible —contributing to Lieta and Aria’s slow demise, harboring a pain he was only able to imagine.

His penance shouldn’t involve an easy way out. Peace and swiftness were largely undeserved, but so be it. How he would accomplish this self-imposed punishment remained unclear… But Narguile decided there and then that a death filled with pain awaited him on the end of that god-forsaken path.

Perhaps in that way he could begin atoning for all the sins, even if reunion with them had already become impossible.

How long did he stay in that bed was a question not even Narguile could answer. Hours bled into days, and while he had resolved to traverse toward an uncertain future, he found himself bereft of the necessary strength to part from the decaying corpses of his wife and child.

Labeling this moment of his life as his darkest hours might seem fitting… However, he knew that this was nothing but the beginning of his spiraling descent into a suffocating pit brimming with grief and guilt. He’d only continue to get worse.

Cruel’s spectral afterimage intermittently ghosted into his line of sight, imposing his unwelcome company upon him. Despite how he never failed to return Narguile’s vacant gaze with a wide smile, there were moments that he sensed a flicker of restlessness within the unexplained creature —Or was it simple boredom? He had long since crossed the point of caring about him.

This stagnant quietude was eventually brought to a halt by the heavy slam of a door being violently forced open… This time not by his hand, but rather those of several uniform-clad figures forcing through his home.

Dehydration and hunger had left him severely weakened, and as such, despite how much he would have preferred to stay that way, Narguile could offer no meaningful resistance when they eventually separated him from his family’s remains.

The aftermath of his heartrending ordeal transpired mostly like a hazy daze, blurring in the edges of Narguile’s consciousness. His hospital stay was a brief one, spent mostly unconscious as he was passively administered intravenous sustenance, replenishing the broken man just enough for him to be transferred into police custody.

It was at this stage that the scope of Cruel’s destructive influence was fully unveiled to him. He had undoubtedly done much more than simply underestimate Cruel’s reach. Not only had he taken the lives of Lieta, Aria and Toast; but an entire community residing in their apartment complex became his collateral victims.

Unbeknownst to him, in those rueful days since Cruel’s first manifestation, he had silently stretched his aura of decay beyond the confines of his home. Seeping through walls and floor, it extended over an area encompassing two full stories both above and below Narguile’s residence; and every single individual dwelling within this expansive radius were met with an untimely demise —including Phillip and Virginia.

… Yet even more deaths to feel responsible for.

As the only survivor of the whole incident, he was given quite a polarizing treatment. For once, many cops were frightful of even approaching, fearing that whatever had produced such a large tragedy could still be passed over to them under a prolonged exposure to him.

Narguile initially didn't understand himself why this wasn't happening. It only took Cruel around the span of a day to murder dozens of people, and by the time he was taken into custody his apartment was full of degradation signs.

Yet now the specter’s corroding presence seemed to have slowed down drastically. He was still around, showing himself whenever he was subjected to tense questioning sessions, but even as he was kept for days in a temporary prison cell while the investigation went on —not even the food he left hidden in experimentation appeared to spoil.

His only deduction was that once Cruel finished destroying his spirit, he relented in his torment. Either that, or he needed time to recover his energy before striking once more.

Another piece of information he gathered was that no one else was remotely aware of his presence. Everyone perfectly ignored Cruel, despite him being even bold at the times he inspected any particularly intense interrogator.

Narguile’s lack of cooperation didn’t exactly garner him much favor. Paired with his heavily bruised body and the disastrous state his home was left in, he was certainly the only natural culprit behind the deaths.

From mass poisoning to radiation exposure. He was questioned about many sorts of conjectures while the media picked up the news like ravenous vultures; but ultimately, his response was the same for every single inquiry they could come up with.

<>

Not necessarily a lie, even when he was withholding Cruel’s existence. Would they believe it anyway? That a venomous grim reaper had emerged from the nether targeting solely him, and left perfectly immune to his influence despite that?

With enough time, and despite their frustration, the authorities had no choice but to release him. Not only he lacked motive or any potential background that gave him the equipment to orchestrate the mass murders, but he was also devoid of any prior criminal record.

Narguile was just a run-of-the-mill paraprofessional teacher after all. How could someone like him conceive and execute such a heinous act? His stony silence coupled with a diagnosis of mental instability ultimately painted him as another unfortunate victim of the nightmarish tragedy. His identity was shielded from public scrutiny as the whole incident served as another tantalizing fodder for paranormal enthusiasts and conspiracy theorists alike.

As for him? Everything was mostly inconsequential. The only relief he derived from his dismissal stemmed solely from the fact that he could now proceed with the arrangements of his family and the Harmines’ burial.

Comforting words extended by colleagues fell on deaf ears, offering no solace. They were faces he no longer had any intention of ever seeing again in his lifetime.

But what should Narguile do instead? His world was already frozen solid from the moment Lieta and Aria had left it. His life had no remaining pieces left to make it whole again. No amount of time could ever heal the wounds inflicted upon his spirit. The warm memories that filled his home, painted with radiant smiles and shared laughter, were now irrevocably tainted by loss.

Somewhere among those tumultuous days of sorrow, he picked up smoking. No matter the initial aversion to the numbing effect tobacco imposed on his brain, or the times in which he pushed his mouth beyond the limits of dry disgust, he consumed cigarette after cigarette as if they were vital sustenance.

To poison himself slowly seemed fitting —a poetic justice to the suffering he forced his wife and child to go through. While he eventually developed his own craving for nicotine, it was cancer in its lethality that he relentlessly courted; a hope to gradually drown his lungs in smoke until they eventually surrendered.

But as he drifted like a mindless ghost through the barren remnants of his past life without clear direction, and despite the fact that they never quite managed to fully ignite any significant will, Narguile still couldn’t fully let go of all the questions left unanswered.

What exactly was Cruel? The malevolent entity had turned into a vile companion haunting his every step, looming ominously over his shoulders entertained by his ruin —a presence that remained an unsolved enigma.

What caused those strange compulsions Lieta and him experienced on that cursed night? Who relocated Michael Johnson’s corpse from its original location?

Narguile knew that these quests were all futile in the end —no revelation would ever bring back what had already been lost; but he craved the closure, the understanding... Even if they were nothing more than meaningless answers he’d then proceed to take to the grave.

Was it vengeance he wanted? No, he never really thought about it like that. Narguile recognized that regardless of any unidentified puppeteer pulling the strings, blood stained his hands indelibly.

Had he deciphered Cruel’s abilities sooner or confessed to his crime immediately, thus sealing him behind prison bars and away from Lieta and Aria... Perhaps the grim conclusion that consumed his family could have been avoided.

He conceded that he alone bore the weight of their deaths, but… If there indeed lurked a hidden conspirator manipulating events from behind the shadows, then…

Not even hell itself would be able to replicate the wrath he’d unleash upon them.