Unleashed

Last night, I went to sleep.

When I awoke, I was standing in Sal's office. I was holding him. Restraining him. There was a gun on the ground, and Sal's arm hung at an angle that it really shouldn't have been.

I held him tight so that he couldn't move. Couldn't break away. I had a hand over his mouth so he couldn't cry out. "The way I see it, you have two choices," a voice that wasn't mine told him. "Let me into that safe, or Let. Me. In." From behind my hand, Sal grunted and his head moved. A nod.

Judas let one of his arms go, and Sal reached out, and opened the safe. Then Judas threw him against the wall. Sal banged his head, then went silent. It was at this point that, somewhere in the back of my mind, I realized that my arm was no longer in a cast.

Judas reached into the safe with my arms, and with my hands he pulled the box out. The box containing the Dying Man fragment. The box that kept this hostel safe.

I screamed against him. I tried to pry my hands away from it. I tried to escape. And for one brief, glorious instant, Judas wavered.

And then I felt as if I had been pinned to the ground, and I could only watch as my hands placed the box on Sal's desk. Judas examined it carefully.

"Matthias?" a voice asked.

My head turned, and my eyes beheld Maggie. One of the few guests left. One of the only ones willing to put her faith in Sal. She stared at me with a look of terror on her face, and I felt my lips curl into a smile.

"No!" I screamed. But my cry never left my throat. It went unheeded, and unheard.

Judas bounded at her, grabbed her, pulled her to the desk. She screamed, she struggled, and I heard the sound of my own laughter. I shouted and I tried to break free. Tried to stop my own hands from pushing her against the desk, from slamming the box into her. Again and again and again. Until her screams died, and both she and the lock lay broken and bloodied on the wooden surface. Two beauties dead

I dimly heard another voice behind me. It sounded like James, that other tenant. Judas ignored them. He reached into the now open box and pulled out a second, smaller box.

"Thin enough."

And then the deluge started.

I couldn't breathe. I couldn't move. All I could feel was the drowning as that other shard filled my body. I felt the thrashing torrent of stormwater as Judas and the shard struggled for supremacy, and when it finally subsided, I felt... numb. I still feel numb. Like I'm distant. Away from my body somehow.

Judas turned and left. James tried to stop him. I saw my fist lash out, right against his face, heard a cracking, saw him slump against the wall.

Someone else was there too. I think he was one of the hostel's employees. He didn't try to stop me, he just stared, in terrified, wide-eyed silence.

I barely felt the cold sting of the night air as I stepped outside. It wasn't even morning yet. I don't how long we walked down the road, I suddenly felt something against my back. Something small. Sharp.

Dizziness filled us, and I saw shapes moving around us, heard voices shouting. Lights. A whirring thunder.

I awoke in what appears to be an elegantly furbished hotel room.

I'm sorry, Sal, Ivory... everyone else. I couldn't stop him. Now Maggie is dead, your protection is gone... and... it's all my fault.

Blood on my hands.

It never washes off.

I await my judgment. I await my punishment. Retribution for all those I have harmed. Bless me Father for I have sinned.

I accept my sentence. Whether it comes from God, or the eyes in my walls, or the people who now hold me.

Any punishment given, I deserve.