Fern's world had shrunk to pain and shadows. Two days in (or was it three?). Time blurred in the dim room, the bulb his only sun. His body was a ruin: fingerless hands like charred clubs, leg stumps throbbing with phantom itches, carved face drooping in perpetual agony. The empty eye socket wept pus, infected despite crude bandaging. His genitals, burned yesterday with the torch, were a blackened, blistered mess (skin cracked, oozing fluid that stung like acid). He convulsed sporadically, body rejecting the trauma.
The soldiers entered, reeking of cigarettes and boredom. "Last day, bitch," Soldier A said, though they knew he was innocent. It was the thrill (the power over a life). Fern's remaining golden eye, now dulled to mud, fixed on them with eerie calm. "I will kill you," he murmured, voice a rasp.
Laughter. "How? You're nothing." But the calm unnerved them.
They started with electrocution. Wires from a car battery clipped to his stumps (hands and legs). Current surged, muscles seizing rigid. His body arced, teeth clattering. Burns bloomed where clips bit, flesh smoking. Urine leaked again, mixing with blood from reopened wounds. Screams echoed, but weakened.
Whipping resumed (back flayed raw, lashes curling around to chest). Skin peeled in flaps, exposing ribs in places. Blood sheeted down, pooling with older gore. He thrashed feebly, ropes cutting deep.
Then, the water. A bucket sloshed, syringe thick as a thumb. "Hydrate him," Soldier B joked. Needle plunged into glutes (cold water injected deep). Flesh swelled, skin stretching taut like a balloon. Pain bloomed, pressure building. Again (twice, thrice) until buttocks bulged grotesquely, purple veins spidering.
Pelvis next. Needle into hip joints, water forcing bones apart subtly. Fern screamed, hips grinding. Belly injections (abdomen distending, organs shifting under pressure). He retched, but nothing came. Chest (lungs compressed, breathing labored). Each prick was fire, water bloating him like a corpse in a river.
Skin split in places from the swelling, thin bloodied water leaking. Tumors of fluid pulsed under flesh.
Finally, petrol. They pried his carved mouth (slits tearing wider, fresh blood flowing). Poured it down, burning throat and stomach. Coughs sprayed mist, igniting raw wounds.
Lighter beneath chin. Flame caught, racing inside. Mouth erupted in fire, tongue blistering black. Esophagus charred, lungs filling with smoke. Body rigid, skin bubbling, remaining eye bursting in heat (vitreous boiling out).
Screams died to hisses. By lungs' ignition, he was gone (charred, swollen husk dripping in the chair)
***
Fern opened his eye, somehow both eyes again, and saw nothing. No pain, no soldiers, no chair. Only perfect blackness and, floating before him, a pale holographic rectangle glowing softly.
[Choose your wishes]
[You have 3 wishes]
The words burned worse than petrol. Memory slammed into him: pliers, torch, hacksaw, fire. His brain exploded with every severed finger, every crushed testicle, every breath of burning lung. He collapsed, clutching fistfuls of his own hair, hair that was suddenly whole again, and screamed without sound. The abyss swallowed the noise.
He thrashed on the non-ground, slamming his head against nothing. Skin split, blood flowed, then the wounds sealed in microseconds before pain could register. He punched his own face; bones cracked and re-knit instantly. He bit through his tongue; blood gushed and was sucked back, flesh knitting seamless. He tore at his throat with fingernails that refused to bleed for more than an instant.
Again. Again. Again.
Hours, days, centuries, he had no way to measure. Every suicide attempt healed before it could hurt. Every scream ruptured vocal cords that reformed instantly. He was trapped in perfect, indestructible flesh and a mind that could never escape what it remembered.
There was no day, no night, only the white screen hanging in the void and Fern alone with it.
He would wake screaming, claw at his eyes until they bled and healed, bash his skull against the non-floor until it shattered and re-formed. He learned to tear his own abdomen open with his hands, pulling out warm ropes of intestine just to watch them slither back inside, wounds sealing with obscene neatness. He strangled himself until his face turned purple and veins burst, then air returned, color returned, life returned.
Sometimes he simply lay curled, rocking, whispering the soldiers' laughter in perfect recollection. Sometimes he ran in circles until exhaustion should have killed him, but exhaustion never came; only the memories did, looping forever.
He begged the screen. No words formed, just animal howls, but the screen floated, silent, patient, waiting for three wishes he could not form because language had drowned in pain.
He was alone. Utterly, perfectly alone. And the abyss was beginning to watch.
At first it was only curiosity, a pressure, like being observed by something vast and starless.
Fern did not notice. He was busy driving his fist through his own sternum, feeling his heart stop for a delicious half-second before it kicked again, whole and strong. He did not notice the darkness thickening, condensing, developing the faint texture of attention.
Days or millennia later the attention became interest. The void leaned closer. It saw the boy who could not die trying harder to die than anything it had ever observed. It saw the endless cycle of self-destruction and perfect restoration. It saw a creature that hated its own indestructibility more than any external torment.
Interest ripened into pity, an emotion the abyss had never felt before and did not fully understand. Pity tasted strange, soft, almost painful itself.
One cycle, Fern collapsed after tearing his own face off for the ten-thousandth time, and did not immediately rise to do it again. He lay trembling, golden eyes empty, mouth moving soundlessly. And the abyss, for the first time, reached out.
Peace, gentle, dreamless, absolute, poured over him like cool water. Fern's wrecked mind folded into it and sank. For the first time since death, he slept.
He floated in warmth without thought, without memory, cradled by something older than stars.
The abyss watched him sleep. It discovered, to its own surprise, that it did not want to let go. It had observed galaxies die of loneliness; it had never felt attachment. Now it did.
When Fern finally surfaced from the endless slumber, the white screen had changed.
[You have been granted infinite appeal by the abyss]
Note: You have been loved by the abyss. Why not be loved by others too.
[You have been granted blessing of the Adonis by the abyss]
[You have been granted strength of ten men by the abyss]
[You have been granted calmness of mind by the abyss]
He stared at the words. No rage came. No screaming. Only a vast, cool stillness inside his chest where agony used to live.
He looked down at himself. Skin flawless, golden-honey eyes bright and perfect in a face so beautiful it seemed carved from light itself. Long hair drifted around him like black silk. His body hummed with quiet, impossible strength. And his mind was like an untouched lake.
The abyss brushed against him, wordless, fond, almost shy.
---
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