Again, darkness, only this time with searing pain. I could feel it, but I couldn't see or hear. I knew my eyes were open, yet I still could not see! I began to hear a voice...
"Le Pain Perdu... Le Pain Perdu..."
I try to comprehend this voice. "French... Toast...?" My vision soon returns to me, blurry at first, but then begins to clear up as I bat my eyelids nervously.
The voice speaks again, "You do not understand... Le PAIN Perdu!!!"
I am fully conscious now, again in a room of some sort. The room has a completely black floor and partially white walls, but at a midpoint it seems that nothing but blackness drips down from the abysmal ceiling.
There is a single child in the center of the farthest wall, mutilated and quivering with fear and what I'd expect to be pain.
Le Pain Perdu.
I sat down in front of the child a good distance away and just examined him. He had a large head, a huge butcher knife that looked like it was forcefully lodged through his head as well as an overly large meat cleaver cleaved all the way to the midpoint of his cranium. His eye sockets were filled with dripping blood, but no eyes, and dark circles were around his sockets... hell, damn well engulfed his sockets. He had a terrified and eternally pained expression on his face, his mouth leaking blood just as his eye sockets were, but never opening. I could barely see his torso behind his nubbed hands and pointed feet that held him in his fetal position, but I could tell that there was a large wound going down from the beginning of his chest to the tip of what I presumed was his groin. It was loosely stitched, making it easy for blood to spill out of this grotesquely large wound, which it did, only adding to the pool of his own blood from his various wounds that he sat in. It looked very painful indeed.
Le Pain Perdu.
I held the gaping chasm of my chest that my heart used to reside in, only to feel the pains of lingering heartbreak.
Le Pain Perdu.
I noticed things that I didn't notice before, things around him, mutilated corpses and body parts. There was a head with sharpened forks of various sized stabbed into and through it. There was an eye that had also fallen out of it, the optic nerve was still connected. It swirled around one of the fork handles before finally coming to the actual eye, which was in a spoon ready to be eaten. By what? Beats me. Perhaps maybe the child himself in a desperate attempt to get his eyes back.
Le Pain Perdu.
On the opposing side of him there was a beheaded body that lacked arms from the shoulder on. There were many spoons jabbed deep into the flesh of the body, some that had scoops of flesh n them that were matches to the scoops missing from the body. The legs of this limbless body had also seemed to be cut off by the spoon; one at the knew and one at the joint of the leg and the pelvis. The legs were nowhere in sight.
Le Pain Perdu.
On the wall, there was nothing but 2 arms that still leaked fresh blood. They brought some color to these monochromatic walls. The 2 arms were pinned to the wall with a butcher knife and a meat cleaver respective to their sides if looking from left to right. On the left was a right hand and on the right was a left hand, most likely belonging to the corpse with the spoons in it. At his front was the oddest of all, just because of the fashion in which this one died. A corpse lay flat, no arms, no head with a huge open wound extending from the chest to the groin, much like the child. An eggbeater had the large and small intestines of this body wrapped and tangled in its blades, which is what I assume blew out the motor. It was in front of the child, making him look like the culprit. I peered inside of the body and noticed that parts of bones, especially the rib cage, and all of the other internal organs had been harvested and were nowhere to be seen.
Le Pain Perdu.
I looked back to the trembling kid and finally said to him "What is this whole place about?"
"Le Pain Perdu."
I had enough of this 'Pain Perdu' shit. "What does that even mean?"
The kid promptly responded, "Figure it out. There's nothing more to say about it."
I was still puzzled. "Le Pain Perdu? French Toast!"
The child was silent.
I assume that this one had a deeper meaning in the title... But for right now, questions. "Did you... Eat these people?"
He gave a fast answer, once again, "Yes... and no. Le Pain Perdu."
I was getting pissed. "Did you KILL these people?"
He said, "Yes, but no. Le Pain Perdu"
That drew the line. "Look, I don't care if you kill me and fuck my body meats while devouring my insides, stop with the damn Pain Perdu!! French Toast has nothing to do with this!!" I didn't know it, but I had just given a partial answer to my question. The title does have deeper meaning... Perdu also means lost and Pain means Bread. Lost Bread? No, no... that couldn't be it... But I know I'm getting closer. "What... No, who are you, might I ask?" I asked the child. He continued trembling, rocking back and forth.
"I am... Le PAIN Perdu!!!"
I couldn't take the last one "SHUT UP with that Le Pain Perdu shit!! DAMN!!!" I held my head out of both frustration of being here and frustration of the repetition. Why was it that they kept putting emphasis on the 'Pain'? What's special about bread...? Unless it isn't bread all, but Pain!
Le Pain Perdu.
A large chainsaw motor was heard in the distance, floating downward to just above the child's head. It was labeled, 'Le Pain Perdu.' The chainsaw was about 20 feet long and 20 inches high from handle to blade. It began to rev. I tried to pay it no mind by trying to figure out what Le Pain Perdu is! The only thing that REALLY came to mind was 'The Lost Pain.' That was what it was from the start, the Lost Pain, Le Pain Perdu. (It's actually 'The Lost Bread') I was starting to feel quite lethargic for some reason... Drowsy. Dizzy. Sleepy...
Le Pain Perdu? The faint whirring of the chainsaw was all I could hear, and my drownsiness hindering my vision. The child had become an evanescent enigma to my perception now. Hard to move... Hard to think... Hard to feel anything... except pain.
Le Pain Perdu.
Was I reaching a catatonic state? Catastrophe.
Le Pain Perdu.
I had been like this far a few moment, but it felt like centuries. I could sense that atrophy was kicking in... or was it...
Le Pain Perdu?
Is this what this child was feeling? Is this what he has to endure for eternity? A Lost Pain? The Chainsaw revved up. I knew it was coming closer to me, though I could not see it. The pain of death would come to me soon...
"Although..." I started to think out loud, "With pain, there always comes relief. All pain goes away after a while. A lost pain becomes a known pain which becomes no pain. Le Pain Perdu." I was healed. I revelation of sorts came unto me through those words. My heart rejuvenated itself and again sealed the hole in my chest.
"Whether it be pains of love, life or of the mind..." the child said, standing up, "There will be relief to come in time." He grabbed the chainsaw and pulled it away from me, "Even if it must come in death..." He proceeded to hack and shred his own body up until he was nothing more than a pool of blood, guts and sharp objects. Maybe he truly knew pain, and his only escape was the cold, relentless hands of death. A sad, yet deep tale of wonder to behold.
I touched my heart and felt no pain about me. My body was at peace for the time being. I remained pretty stoic about this, but I could not help but think about how such a callous feeling could exist in beings such as myself. I sighed, for that thought was just one of the ephemeral thoughts that passed through my head during my time... wherever I am. The walls of this random room began to run and drop again, almost like there was a leakage...
I soon figured out that the dripping blackness was blood, but I could not tell from where. The black blood was closing in on me and it seemed to have a sort of murderous intent to it. In a panic, I could not help but look to what I thought was the ceiling and there it was, glaring down at me. One giant, unnatural, cycloptic eye that cried out tears of blood that somehow ran along the length of the ceiling and walls instead of dripping straight down.
Was it immune to gravity? Or was there no gravity? I couldn't tell, but at the moment, I didn't care. I didn't know whether the bloody tears would kill me, drown me or help me out of here, but it was surely something I did not want to find out. The eye spoke to me, "Crying tears of blood is not an abnormality... Even if the tears are... black." It was suddenly a few inches from my face. It was still connected to the ceiling, yet it was so close to me, hovering above my head. A large teardrop of black blood fell from the eye and onto me and the instant after, the eye had devoured me, or blinked on me, if you will.
Where was Lolita? Why was she not by my side? Where did she keep going and why was I continuously taken from her? There was still a lot that was unclear to me, But I did understand this: I would not be let out of here until I fully understood everything. Maybe the Reaper will take my life once I do.