[Four days pre-arrival - The past.]
My father used to look at me with such hatred, as if I were borne from anything but his own flesh and blood.
He still stared at me now, even as his green eyes glossing over while he lay on the cold ground before me, dead.
Dark blood leaked from his mangled throat, oozing outwards from the multiple vicious stab wounds in the side of his neck. His lifeblood pooled down onto the dusty ceramic tiles beneath him.
My mother sat next to his body, shaking uncontrollably as the handmade shank she had just thrusted into my father's neck clattered to the ground beside her.
She had been stabbed too, my hateful father refusing to go down without a fight, ripping the makeshift weapon from her hands after the initial stab into his neck and plunging it into her heart.
Only then after her skin had been sufficiently punctured did his sudden burst of strength dissipate, and he slumped to the ground where my mother proceeded to stab him two more times despite the steadily blossoming redness of her own wound.
I had listened to him spit out venomous insults at her, sluggishly choking on his own blood as he died.
I stood stock-still the doorway, so terrified by what was happening in front of me that I was rendered completely immobile. All I could do was watch as my parents fought to the death before my very own eyes.
My mother hissed in pain, leaning forwards as she clutched at the life-threatening injury on her chest. Her teeth gritted, face contorting into an awful expression of despair and satisfaction that burned itself onto my disturbed mind.
She finally noticed my frozen figure standing in the doorway, her face insane as she rasped in my direction. "Orion? Come here."
I didn't answer her, still staring directly at my father's unseeing eyes, unable to look away.
"Come here. COME HERE, COME HERE!" She screamed out, her voice getting louder and more unstable with every shrieking repetition.
I jumped out of fright, tearing my gaze away from my father as I stumbled towards her clumsily.
I collapsed on the ground in front of her, searching and hoping for a comforting embrace coupled with hushed whispers that everything would be ok. "Mom?"
I didn't find any.
She coughed up blood, reaching forwards and grabbing me by the shoulders before pushing me backwards onto the ground. She was crushing me under her; the violent motion fuelled by a combination of stressful desperation and murderous rage.
"You, why you?" She hacked up some more of that stringy blood which dribbled down her chin and onto my shoulder. "Why do you get to live? After everything I gave up for you. It's not fair."
She began crying angrily.
I cried too, knowing I was and had always been a massive burden on the two of them.
I didn't deserve them at all.
My mother stared down at me obsessively, her gaze full of a heartbreaking regret and jealous rage at my own survival and not hers.
She choked out what would be her last words, every single one of them laced with a poisonous and twisted love. "O-ri, I die-d for y-ou. L-ive or it wa-s fo-r nothing."
Her shirt was soaked a dark red, and I watched as her eyes lulled into the back of her head, her wretched life finally leaving her behind.
My mother's arms finally gave way and her heavy, lifeless corpse toppled onto my front.
I screamed.
This couldn't be real.
[11 Years post-arrival - the present]
My consciousness returned, thoughts slow and disjointed.
I groaned impulsively, the steadily increasing pain dulled by what was likely some sort of brain damage.
My sense of touch was being deafened by my mutations in order to combat the pain due to the feeling of my body slowly stitching itself back together. That endurance was slowly falling apart as I woke up though.
After a few minutes of laying face first in the ground my perception had returned enough for me to feel and hear where I was.
I tried to get up, failing to progress even an inch away from my starting point as my muscles cramped up in protest at the attempted movement.
I separated my face from the ground, tearing apart the newly created skin that was attaching itself to the greyish dirt beneath me.
I cracked both eyes open, barely taking in a glimpse at my darkened surroundings before slamming them shut again after a searing pain shot through my right eye.
Black blood dripped down my face, mixing with the salty tears which were trickling from my ravaged but slowly regenerating eyeball. The unruly combination dribbled down into my mouth, the taste reminiscent of overly rusted iron.
I coughed wetly, my body convulsing from the instinctual action which lead to every part of me starting to hurt even more than it already was.
"Orion?" An agitated voice cut through my audible discomfort, and a set of hurried footsteps approached my location. I felt a small hand drop onto my shoulder, shaking me vigorously.
"Uhnnn." I groaned in reply, throat burning as I felt the muscle fibres in my shoulder tear apart as she pulled at me.
"Thank fuck you're awake." Natalie's tone trembled with relief as she shuffled over to my head, reaching downwards and cupping my mutilated face with both hands.
It hurt a lot.
I could see a dim pink glow through my right eyelid, and I realised that as long I kept my right eye closed, I probably wouldn't incur anymore damage.
I was dead wrong; and thankfully I didn't have the chance to find this out the hard way as Natalie had stopped me before it happened
The muscles around my eyes twitched as I tried to open my eyelids again, Natalie placing a thumb directly over my eyelid, preventing it from being opened.
She murmured softly, "Don't open it, the eyes are always in sync so you'll just worsen the other one's condition if it moves." Her voice was stern but carrying a fair bit more than a hint of worry.
Natalie's mental dam then burst, unable to hold back her inane habit of rambling when she got stressed out.
"I- I didn't know whether to move you or not; I mean shit, your front half was practically fused with the ground when I woke up, and I could see your spine sticking out through your back… Then right after that I had to fight off two of those massive spiders to protect your body."
I grunted in uncaring comprehension, this time not indulging or answering her with anything of great length or substance. My still recouping muscles stung as my chest shuddered painfully.
"Sh-should I turn you over or what? Would that help at all?"
I grunted again, in what I hoped was an easily understandable code for yes - yes you should turn me over right now before my regeneration continues fusing me to the fucking floor.
Natalie staggered back around to my right before grabbing my left shoulder and arm with both hands. "Okay, if that noise meant a no then say something now." She paused, giving me ample time to reply with a groan or two in protest.
I kept quiet.
"Here goes nothing then; three… two…" She counted down, and I braced myself just before she rolled me over at 'two'.
My tolerance for her devious antics was already at an all time low due to the incredible amount of pain I was in, and then she went and pulled something like this.
'That fucking-' I thought furiously, before a wave of agony exploded outwards from my chest, abs, thighs and calves; radiating in a painful wave that felt like I was being doused in white-hot flames.
Delayed pain was always the worst.
My eyes watered, the left socket left burning as the trace amount of salt located in my tear ducts leaked into my reforming eyeball.
I barely even noticed that though.
I screamed in pain as the skin and flesh that had merged with the stone and dirt below frayed and cracked as it was slowly ripped apart by Natalie's meagre physical strength.
She struggled to complete the motion, her lack of force evident as the dreadfully slow separation took place.
I rolled over suddenly, shoulderblade jamming into Natalie's bent knees as she huffed from exertion.
My screams had shaken her more than she already was, I could hear the borderline hyperventilative panting as she knelt down next to me.
My voice was hoarse, and I whispered a request to her. "Seal them." My arm flopped around uselessly, barely managing to indicate what I wanted despite that being my entire front half.
"What?" She said in disbelief, and I cracked an eye open to glare at her which quickly wilted away as I stared at her tear stained face.
Our surroundings were being illuminated by a tiny purple butterfly that flitted around in the air next to her head. There were deep red nail-marks stretching down from the tip of her hairline to her eyebrows, and her lower lip was bleeding heavily from a set of teeth sized indents pierced into them.
She looked mad with worry.
"You want me to burn them shut? Are you crazy? This isn't a small cut like earlier."
The pale scarring that covered my entire palms was anything but small, however when in comparison with the raw muscle and flesh that was currently exposed to the open air; it did indeed look tiny.
But I had almost run out of blood to bleed, and I was definitely going to die if I lost too much more of it.
My eyes rolled backwards into my head as my anger returned and I lost all semblance of the usually exorbitant amount of patience I reserved for Natalie.
"FUCKING DO IT!" I yelled at her, equal parts blood and spit flying forwards onto my exposed front as I coughed violently; the recoil of my shout hitting me like a truck.
"Okay, okay." She startled guiltily, the skin on her palms transforming into a glowing white which caused the sticky, combination of my own black blood and hers that was covering them to hiss and evaporate into an acrid steam.
Her voice cracked. "I'm sorry, this is going to hurt - a lot."
I closed my eyes.
She placed a hand on my forehead.
It did hurt, a far bit more than she had described.
'A lot' didn't come close covering what I was feeling now.
My teeth cracked as I clenched my jaw tightly, hissing in pain as my wounds were slowly melted together, one-by-one.