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The heartless woman’s nails dig deep into David’s arm, crimson pearling where her blood-stained fingertips make contact with the clammy meat of his arm. David submits to her grasp; it is futile to struggle. He apprehensively allows his lover to drag him through the dimly lit halls of the hotel, nearing ever closer to his fate. David will be stripped of his humanity, whatever that may look like.
He knows even in the most fortunate outcome; he will know suffering unlike anything he’s ever experienced. If he is lucky, he will become something primeval. Lacking sentience. David chokes on his spit.
“What’s the punishment for this?”
The woman stares ahead, her icy gaze unfaltering.
“They turn you into the animal no one wants to be.”
David feels his stomach turn at the mere possibility. He feels sick.
My fault.
My fault.
My fault.
All my fucking fault.
Every turn the pair make through the winding halls brings him ever closer to his demise. David wishes the woman had slaughtered him back in their room, like she had done his brother. He knows that would be too merciful of a fate. The heartless woman stops dead in her tracks.
They have arrived.
David stares distantly at the room ahead of them. The putrid stench of dread hangs thick in the air. The woman releases his arm and David's feet carry him toward the room, as if by choice. He wraps his plump fingers around the handle and yanks it open. It’s cold inside. The darkness swallows him, welcomed as a guest within the confines of inky black.
David’s last thought was of his brother.
How he loved his brother.