THREE DAYS LATER, INSIDE A HOSPITAL
The noise made by the heart monitor could be heard by Mack, but he was still laying on the bed with closed eyes and was finally regaining his consciousness.
"wher m?" he asked in a weak voice that no one could have heard.
He felt his head pulsating with pain. It was probably the worst headache he had in life. At each pulse, it was like something was squeezing his brain and the excruciating acute white noise he heard felt so good and so bad at the same time that Mack himself could not believe it.
~sssssssssssssshalllbeliveonliveonformeon....aaaaaaaaaaandssssss...….comeeeeeeee...ssswaaaeee~
But for his misfortune, his hallucinations started again, not caring if he had a headache or was having a drink in a bar, or like now, in a bed of a hospital.
Mack almost forgot about those voices when he woke up, but here were them again, and those voices were only in his mind.
"ahhhhhhh! no, no, stop it!" he urged, but his voice sounded more like a febrile cat.
A few days after doing the tattoos, the voices came. At the start was only one time a day, but then, each day it intensified, and now, Mack was hearing those damned voices all day long, for months.
He could only sleep if he passed out from exhaustion, or got drunk enough. Those voices interfered with his thoughts, even when he was hearing music at the highest volume possible, not giving him a single moment of peace.
~sssssssssssssshalllbeliveonliveonformeon....aaaaaaaaaaandssssss...….comeeeeeeee...ssswaaaaaaaakeeeeeeeeeeeeeee….meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesssssssssssssssyyyyyyyyyyyooooooooouuuuuuuuuuuu~
"Arghhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!! someone just kill me, please! i can't, can't! just kill me! Kill me!" Mack screamed while regaining his normal voice.
"He woke up from the coma, call the doctor." said a nurse in the hallway that heard the commotion made by Mack.
"I can't take it anymore. I can't!"
Mack punched himself in the face to pass out again, but he was so weak that any effort was futile.
Those voices seemed to want to break his will to live.
Wanted them to surrender to a simple death, and Mack succumbed to it. He did not care about his life anymore. He doesn't have any family, no one who cared about him, nor he had any grant goal in life.
To make everything worst he was hunted by almost all the countries in the world.
Who in this world would care about a life of running, not sleeping, not being welcomed? It was not a life anymore, it was a full-time torture.
~sssssssssssssshalllbeliveonliveonformeon....aaaaaaaaaaandssssss...….comeeeeeeee...ssswaaaaaaaakeeeeeeeeeeeeeee….meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesssssssssssssssyyyyyyyyyyyooooooooouuuuuuuuuuuu~
"Pleaseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!! STOP!!!!!!!!"
Mack was still extremely weak, but even so, raised himself from the bed to stay on foot.
~stumble~
Only to fall on the floor.
His naked body, which was only covered by a patient gown, was dragged along the floor by his own bare hands and arms in the wall's direction. He moved his body as the soldiers would do in war movies, dragging his almost naked body with his arms.
"I will make you stop! I don't care anymore!" he screamed, furious and helpless at the same time.
When dragging his body, the vial that held his IV saline fell to the ground, and the machine that monitored his heartbeat went off. Making a scene that looked like someone was fighting ghosts while at the same time running from them.
With the commotion, the few nurses from the hallway or other rooms that were on the same floor of the hospital all went to his room, but the nurse that first came to Mack room was still there looking shocked not knowing what to do, planted by the door like an ornamental cactus.
"Kill me! Kill me! Kill me! I can't take anymore! Please kill me!" he pleaded, looking at the nurse.
Seeing that, the nurses thought he went crazy during the coma, but a few of them that came later saw him on the floor while screaming and ran to help him, but before they could restrain him or help him calm down, Mack approached the wall and put his two hands on the wall, and with crazed bloodshot eyes….
~BANG~
~BANG~
~BANG~
Mack hit the wall with his own head three times, and on the third time, his head slipped along the wall, leaving a trail of blood and silencing the voices in his head.
Mack was finally free from the voices and could sleep again.
...
A few hours later,
"Ohhh it seems you are awake"
"hmmm" Mack replied to the voice, not bothering to even open his eyes.
"We had to put those cuffs on you for your own safety."
Mack already knew he was cuffed. The cold metal around his pulses was something no one would get confused about what it was.
"I asked the nurse, and she said you had a scissor in your neck when they found you. Do you know what that means, right?"
'Means I don't care about shit anymore,' Mack thought but refrained himself from saying aloud. He could not care less what this man thought about him.
"I also see you are not having a crisis now. Do you have someone to who you can talk?"
'No, but I hear a lot, hahaha.' Mack laughed from himself.
'if I told him I hear voices, even right now, he would probably send me to some mental Institute,' Mack concluded, still with his eyes closed.
"We also didn't find any documents with you. So I asked the local sheriff to take your fingerprints and check the system. I hope you don't mind."
'Shit, now those bastards will find me and lock me up in some hidden government building... '
'Doesn't matter anymore, anyway. At least I know they are after me because of my father's book. At least that's the only explanation I can think of. '
"We were not sure if you would wake up soon, nor in what mental state."
Seeing no response from Mack, the doctor continued, "The sheriff will come back in a few minutes. I will need to keep you cuffed. It's the procedure in case of self-harm in a hospital. I hope you understand."
Still seeing no reaction from Mack, the doctor changed the subject, "How do you feel now? I know you can speak."
'Ohhhh that's a rare question. When was the last time someone asked me that?'
'How do I feel?'
'How do I feel?'
"Tired" Mack said, releasing all the air in his lungs for this single word.
After a few seconds of silence, the doctor lowered his voice a bit and said, "You know... Everyone has problems. Some are bigger than others, sure... but you can only resolve your problems when you accept them or you confront them. There is no running from them... Even if you leave, they will still catch you in the next life. That's what my father used to say."
Mack's curiosity was picked with this. He wondered why a father would say that to a son.
"Why did your father used to say this to you?"
"See for yourself," said the doctor.
Unable to resist his curiosity, Mack opened his eyes and slowly turned his head in the direction the voice came.
And there he saw a man, blond, healthy, muscular, using a mask and with a doctor gown, in a wheelchair.
"I was born this way." the doctor said, opening both his arms above his legs, "but this..." he said while hitting his wheelchair, "...did not stop me from pursuing my dreams....."
"And never will," he said, looking straight into Mack's eyes. The man was not proud of himself but more as if he could somehow relate to Mack's issues.
'...and never will..' Mack repeated in his mind while feeling rage for being forced to run his entire life, feeling rage for not having a single parent alive, not being able to have a girl to call his, not being able to have a true friend, always hiding, escaping, getting hurt, stealing, killing. All for the sake of live another day. He was pissed, he was tired of this bullshit, he wanted to make whatever was responsible for this to feel the same and even worst, he wanted them begging to be killed just like he did the last days.
And just as all these thoughts passed in Mack's head, to his surprise, the acute voice that was always in his head talking bullshit after bullshit stopped.
The mind can be a cage or a forge, only a single spark of will is needed to change that, and Mack just lit an entire pyre of repressed will.
Will to live a genuine life with all that comes, no matter if good or bad, he will live both in his full.
No matter the odds.
After a few minutes of absolute silence, Mack finally expressed himself to the doctor with a simple but very sincere word.
"Thanks"
Just as he said that, he heard a clear voice in his head, but this time it was different from the noises he used to hear the last months, because this voice was crystal clear.
[Congratulations human, you passed the first trial, the trial of the heart.]
'Trial? What trial? Who is talking? Is this some hallucination? Am I finally going crazy?'
[Those voices you heard for the last months were your trial. To test your will to live, stimulating you to confront your own will to live. You almost failed several times, but every single time that you almost killed yourself, you unconsciously left a path to live, you could have killed yourself in several more effective ways but every time you choose to do so, you choose one that left you with a drop of hope to live]
'Who are you? Is it all because of that book?'
[Yes, the moment you engraved the runes on your body, your trial started. Now, you must do the Oath, and I will allow you to enter the Tower of Chaos.]
'What Oath? oh right, the one on the first page of the book?'
[....]
'Hey answer me, bastard!'
[....]
'Fuck'
Mack could see that the damned voice would not answer him anymore, so the only choice left was to do the Oath. At least this way, he would find some answers.
"My will shall be the Law. The Law is me, and I'm the law."
"The law of Chaos"
[ARE YOU SURE?]
"I AM!"
The doctor, seeing Mack shout some nonsense, thought all went wrong and the man finally went insane.
'I should never ever try to advise someone again.' it was the only thing passing in the doctor's head, now looking with pity at the man in front of him, but just as he thought that, like magic, the man vanished in front of him. Only leaving the handcuffs making noises while hitting the metal bars from the patient's bed.
A few seconds later, the sheriff came, and seeing the guy was not there, he asked.
"Where is the guy?"
The doctor, hearing the voice of his old friend, woke up from the stupor, and with a pale face, looked back and said, "Would you believe me if I say that he just vanished?"
"Stop with the jokes. This is serious. That guy, Arthur McKenzie Draper, is on Interpol's Red List. They flagged him as a terrorist!!! A fucking terrorist!"
The doctor could not believe what he was hearing, but he also could not believe what just happened. That guy, 'Arthur', just vanished in front of him.
'How is that even possible? I did not remove my eyes from him. I'm must be hallucinating, must be the new medication for pain, that's the only explanation.' the doctor thought, but refrained himself from saying aloud.
"I don't know, I came back, and he was not here anymore"
"Did you leave? I told you to monitor him and warn me if anything happened. Now we have a terrorist running free on the Island. Dammit, what am I supposed to do? This city doesn't even have any robbery last year, let alone murder crimes, and now we have a fucking terrorist. Dear God." The sherriff said, while cleaning the usual sweat on his forehead.
"What should we do now?" the doctor asked, still a bit shocked by all the events.
"You will do nothing. They will send a team from the capital, and I..."
~sigh~
"...I will be making coffee for them," the sheriff said, lowering his head, already thinking of the bad days ahead.
The doctor looked back at the handcuffs still hanging on the bed and moved closer. He touched the handcuffs, and to his surprise, they were still locked with not a scratch on them.
'What the hell is happening? How can he just vanish in the air?' the doctor asked himself, because for a man of science, any unrealistic event like the one that just happened was hard to digest.
What neither the sheriff nor the doctor knew was that they just brought the hell upon this small and paradisiac island.