Chapter Three

The headboard to Christi’s bed was slamming against her wall with so much force that paint was chipping off the cracking plaster.

“Oh yes! Oh YES!” she screamed, lying on her back and clinging to the corners of the mattress.

Sitting on the soles of his feet with his hands on her thighs, Jason was thrusting into her with all the strength in his body. Christi’s parents had gone out to dinner with friends and her brother was out on a date, so they had the house to themselves and Christi was not holding her voice back. Trying desperately to keep up with her sexual hunger, Jason was gasping for air but also hypnotized by the sight of her glorious tits bouncing back and forth in countering circles. No question, makeup sex is the best.

With each thrust into Christi’s velvet sleeve, a deep pulse rattled through Jason’s cock, reverberating it and pushing aside even the slightest hint of softness. Goddamn, her pussy felt as soft as Vaseline-slathered latex crafted by angels. It felt so good to be inside her, Jason almost didn’t want to pull out, but the feeling wouldn’t be nearly as good without movement. To solve this, he was moving as fast as his body would allow, while using her bouncing breasts and the rocking of the bed as a gauge for his speed.

“Oh yes! Harder! Faster!” Christi screamed.

To satisfy her wish, Jason leaned over on all fours and began thrusting into her with his whole body, sacrificing speed for penetration. However, to keep up with her demand, he worked his muscles to the limit, especially the muscles in his stomach. By tomorrow morning, his celiac plexus would be completely unusable, and just sitting up in bed would probably kill him. Now bent over her, he ended her screams by sealing her mouth with his and letting her stick her tongue down his throat.

Barely a minute after getting used to this new position, Christi surprised Jason with a sudden shift. Like a ravenous animal, she grabbed him and completely flipped the two of them over so that she was now on top. With a coy smile on her face, Christi pushed Jason down onto his back and began grinding on his manhood.

“So is it safe to say you’ve forgiven me?” he asked.

In reply, Christi raised herself so that the shaft of his cock was exposed. Reaching down, she gabbed it with brutal strength. Against her grip, Jason tensed up like a cat with its tail stepped on and tried not to yelp in pain.

Christi now had an evil grin. “Not quite yet. You have to pay for what you did. So tonight, if you cum without me saying you can, I will make your life a living hell.”

Oh shit, the classic self-restraint punishment. Christi had done this before and it didn’t end well. He just had to give her a month of daily pedicures back then, but with the mood she was in… it might be better to cut his losses and run. As the thought of his escape crossed his mind, Christi let go of his cock and then slammed down onto it, driving it as deep into her womanhood as possible. Leaving him with no time to recover and grab a hold of his mental bearings, Christi began bouncing up and down on Jason like his dick was a pogo stick. Using the springs in her bed to launch herself higher into the air, Christi was pulling out all the stops to try and make Jason cum. Her tits were bouncing and rolling with such power that they looked like they would fly off at any second, while the cascading fusion of gasps and moans was like music to Jason’ ears.

Feeling her full body weight slam down onto his crotch over and over again while her soft, wet pussy tried to coax an orgasm out of him like it was siphoning gas, Jason was barely able to maintain any sense of control. Christi had never been this wild in bed. Sure, she was normally a real firecracker, but now she was truly ruthless. To try and fight the eruption building in the shaft of his semen volcano, Jason was drumming up the most soul-crushing thoughts in his archives. Parents in bathing suits, locker room full of old people, DMV, genocide, c-span, fat people on rascal scooters, Nicki Minaj, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, season two of the Walking Dead! SEASON TWO OF THE WALKING DEAD!

Of course it worked, but as usual, not in the way he imagined. With Christi riding him like a succubus on meth, there was no fucking way any thought in his mind could try and diffuse the bomb, but since he had these thoughts in his mind while he was rock-hard, he was so filled with self-loathing and shame that his manhood was feeling too embarrassed to maintain an erection. It was a cycle of both erection and deflation. With Christi’s efforts, the two forces cancelled each other out and he stayed hard as steel but without any chance of an orgasm.

With her thunderous bouncing not achieving the results she desired, Christi changed her tactics. Turning around to give Jason a perfect view of her ass, she leaned over on all fours and began vibrating her whole lower body like she had a martini mixer taped to her tailbone and was trying to shake up a drink that would leave James Bond breathless. Twerking on his manhood with the skill of a goddess, Christi left Jason barely able to think straight. Not only was her whole pussy massaging his cock like a fleshlight lined with vibrating rotors, but the sight of Christi’s perfect ass cheeks bouncing and clapping over and over again could not be topped.

The tightening of all the muscles in his pelvic region signaled his doom.
‘Oh shit, I’m cumming! Hold it! HOLD IT!’

As the building eruption within him churned, he couldn’t help but begin to squirm. Keeping a close watch on him, Christi saw the signs and doubled her effort. Shaking her ass like a wild plasma atom, she finally broke his will and summoned a pulsing white geyser from Jason.

Christi clicked her tongue disappointingly. “Shameful.”

“Listen (pant) Christi… (pant) If you (pant) could see it (pant) in your heart (pant) to just forgive me (pant)… I’ll EEEEEEEEIA!”

Jason gagged just as Christi reached down and jammed her middle and index finger into his asshole. At that moment, every fiber of his masculinity was torn like a severed Achilles tendon.

“Yeah, not so enjoyable is it?! Now imagine feeling this while your sitting in a car in a stuffed parking lot with your ass completely exposed! Now you know why I’m so pissed off!”

“Hey, I didIIIINT go that fOOOAr! You’re overreacting!” Jason yelped while trying to keep her out.

“One rule! I had one rule! If you break the rule, I’ll break the rule and break you!”

“Well then if you’re breaking the rule, I’ll break the rule!” he shot back, ramming his thumb up her ass and watching as every muscle in her body tensed up and the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. Turning back with a scowl, she pulled her fingers out to the first joint and rammed them back in, making Jason dry-heave and nearly jump out of his flesh. His pride on the line, he forced his other thumb into Christi’s asshole and spread them, letting him stare down into her back corridor.

At that moment, Jason forgot that Christi had her fingers in his ass and realized that he had his fingers in her ass… Goddamn, this was even sexier than that quickie in the car. With that realization running through his mind, his manhood regained its former glory with such power that Christi nearly jumped off his lap. Just like in the car, Jason began bucking his hips with all of his strength, bouncing Christi as if he were trying to buck her off.

“Stop it, you bastard! If you keep that up, I’ll—”

“And stay out!” Christi yelled as Jason ran naked out into her front yard, looking for his clothes, which she had thrown out the window.

So he had gotten sodomized, so his girlfriend had thrown him out; it was still a victory. He had great sex and Christi couldn’t deny that ass-play really worked for her. She came so hard that she actually squirted. Now there was nothing left to do but go home a champion and wait for Christi to call and say it was water under the bridge. After putting on his clothes with a confident smile, he got in his car and drove off… but not before setting himself down in the seat VERY carefully.

Jason banged his head against the back of his seat over and over, cursing at the sound of police sirens and sight of the red and blue lights flashing in his rearview mirror. Way to end a great night. Pulling over beneath a street light on a forest road, he quickly turned on the overhead light and rolled down the window, waiting with his hands clearly in view on the wheel. Supposedly, keeping your hands in view of the officer while they approached calmed any fears they might have had about an aggressive response and lowered the chance of them giving a ticket.

Reaching the car, the officer shined his flashlight straight in Jason’s eyes. “License and registration.”

Jason quickly did what he was told, trying to avoid doing anything that might make the officer think he was hostile and give him a ticket.

“Have you been drinking tonight sir?” the cop asked, skimming Jason’s license and the car registration.

“Uh… no. I haven’t done any drinking officer.”

This could go either way now: he really hadn’t done any drinking, so passing a breathalyzer test would be easy, but that thereby made him more responsible for any mistakes he might have made, and those mistakes could cost him.

“Well you were swerving across the road pretty erratically tonight, care to explain?”

“Sorry about that, officer. I fell down the stairs this morning and now I can’t sit down without wincing.”

That would have to be his lie; it was better than telling the truth and admitting he just received a brutal three-finger prostate exam from a wrathful girlfriend wanting vengeance.

“Sir, step out of the car.”

Shit.

In his condition, he doubted he could walk a straight line, and he couldn’t imagine how anyone reciting the alphabet backwards, sober or not. He would just have to hope that the officer would skip right to the breathalyzer. The officer stepped back and Jason climbed out of his car, wondering what would happen next. At least now he could see what the cop looked like. Early fifties, portly, and with a thin goatee.

“Now turn around and put your hands on the roof of the vehicle. I have to search you for weapons.”

‘Search me for weapons? Bullshit. This is turning into a bad porno. Never in my life did I think I would be praying to only be sodomized once in one night.’

The officer gave him a brief pat-down, checking all of his pockets and even sweeping him with a metal detector. Nothing was found, but then the cop shined his light on the backpack in the passenger seat of Jason’s car. The nail was inside.

“Take out that bag.”

“Hey, you need probable clause to search my car or anything inside it and I’m clean!”

“Take out the bag or I’ll arrest you for DUI right now!”

Feeling the situation spiraling out of control, Jason retrieved his backpack and handed it to the officer. There was nothing incriminating inside it, but with the way this stop was going, he wouldn’t put it past the cop to plant something. As he moved his wand over it, the alarm let out a screech right over the pouch that held the nail. Jason’s blood turned to glacial melt as the officer reached into the pouch and snatched the thick iron spike.

“Well now, what do we have here?”

“It’s just a piece of metal, a good luck charm. Unless that now counts as a drug or open container, you got nothing on me.”

“That’s it, you’re coming with¬—”

A sudden growl of static from the officer’s radio cut him off, hissing so loudly that it nearly made Jason jump. In the squad car nearby, the dash-mounted camera shut off and the small red and green diodes on the metal detector popped like bubble wrap. All of the hair on Jason’s neck stood on end as several whispers emanated from the radio on the officer’s shoulder, incomprehensible to both men.

“Who is this? Identify yourself!” the cop growled, speaking into the radio.

The whispers only continued, but the focus of officer and Jason were drawn away as the pool of light they were standing in from the lamp post above began to change in hue and turn red. They looked up, watching as the bulb filled with a crimson liquid, as if it were leaking in from the socket. Blood, the bulb was filling with blood, now bathing the two men in an ominous light. It was exactly like the light from Jason’s dreams, the blood-red sun.

“Oh my god…” the cop gasped, looking up at the crimson light and dropping the nail onto the ground.

High as whistles and as low as dying moans, a choir of blood-curdling screams exploded from the officer’s radio, each terrifying cry as loud as an air horn. The screams were mixed, portraying agonizing pain, traumatizing fear, a desperation to escape or be given death, and evil and wickedness that the human mind just could not comprehend. The screams pierced Jason’s skull like a dozen power drills, making him feel like he had just been hit in the forehead by a load of buckshot. Screaming in agony like the voices on the radio, he crumpled to the ground and fell on his back, staring up at the red light above, burning, almost angrily.

From the light, a symbol flashed in Jason’s eyes, almost as if it had fallen from the street lamp and landed on his face with the weight of a cinderblock. The symbol was simple in its design, a mere diagonal slash with one dot on the upper left side and two dots on the lower left. However, the symbol stamped itself on every memory in Jason’s mind, imprinting itself so that whenever he thought back to a scene from his past, that symbol occupied his full view like a fly on the contact lens of his mind’s eye. The symbol disappeared but a new one took its place, slamming Jason’s mind with the same physical force. A circle with a vertical line joined to the right side. Like the first symbol, it imprinted itself on every memory Jason had. Every time he drew up a mental image, the two symbols stood, the first resized to accommodate the second.

Over and over again, new symbols were branded into his consciousness, forcing so much information into his mind that he felt like his head would explode like an egg in a microwave. A few feet away, the police officer had ripped off his coat and was trying to silence his radio so that he wouldn’t have to suffer the screaming in his ear. Finally throwing it aside, he was about to help Jason when he felt a sharp pain on his right hand. Looking down, he spotted a large spider on the back of his wrist, same body shape as a black widow, but without the red markings.

Feeling his hand beginning to cramp up, he squashed the spider and wiped the remains off on his pants. A second sting on his left elbow signaled the beginning of a panic attack, and as he swatted the spider under his sleeve, he felt three more suddenly appear in his pants and sink their teeth into his flesh. Now yelling in terror and pain, he looked down to kill the arachnids and felt his heart nearly stop at the sight of thousands of spiders skittering across the pavement towards his feet. With their black bodies camouflaged with the road, it almost looked like a river of liquid shadows was running across the ground towards him.

Taking out his can of mace, he sprayed the acrid mist wildly at the ground around him, trying to create a moat that the spiders would not cross. His efforts failed and the spiders swarmed across his shoes and charged up his legs, ducking out of sight under his pants. Scrambling over each other in desperation, they sunk their fangs into his flesh and injected their poison. Feeling his body tighten up from the toxins taking effect, the cop gagged in pain and fell to his hands and knees. He was no longer able to swat at the spiders and they were free to swarm up his arms and cover his entire body.

More terrified than ever in his life, the seasoned officer watched as the abdomens of every spider seemed to melt into a thin dark liquid, only for him to realize that each spider was carrying its young on its back. As hungry as their parents, the black specks poured out across any exposed skin and immediately began tearing into him. Like piranhas stripping a cow, the spiders and their young peeled away layer after layer of flesh. The cop was able to give one last scream of agony before the ravenous arachnids forced their way down his throat and began feasting on his eyes.

The officer fell dead to the ground, killed from both the spiders’ poison and the shear amount of blood loss when they dug down deep enough through his flesh to rupture almost every surface vein on his body. Nearby, Jason had passed out, unable to withstand the mental force-feeding. With the nail having achieved its goal, the spiders lost their black shade and immediately abandoned their meal and fled, having regained control of themselves and now forming an expanding puddle in their exodus. Not a single spider or their young even approached Jason or the nail.

Once the spiders were gone, the nail slowly rolled away.

The sound of a beeping heart monitor was the first thing Jason could sense, the next was the feel of bed sheets and the pillow beneath his head, and the last thing he sensed was the cold bite of the metal handcuffs around his right wrist. Opening his eyes, he looked around while trying to figure out the last thing he remembered. He was alone in a hospital room with his wrist handcuffed to the side of the bed and a heart monitor clip on his finger. The air smelled like gauze and cleaning chemicals and the lights were blisteringly bright.

He rubbed his eyes repeatedly, believing his vision to be blurred. Everything he looked at seemed red, but as his eyesight sharpened, other colors came back into view. Instead of being red, every surface in the hospital room was covered in blood-red symbols, the same symbols that had been drilled into his head back on the street. It was as if his eyes were two projectors casting the image of all the symbols onto everything within his view.

“What the fuck happened to me?!”

“What the fuck happened to him?” the police commissioner asked, speaking to the mortician and standing over the carcass of Officer Michaels in the police station morgue.

The body was horribly swollen with the flesh looking like it had been decomposing for a month instead of twelve hours. The officer looked like an effigy of himself made of road-kill by a blind artist. The coroner was pulling off his gloves with shaky hands, trying over and over again to straighten the glasses on his lined face. The commissioner had the same build as the cop, but with gray hair and a clean-shaven face. At the head of the table stood Professor Nelson, taking a drag from a crooked cigarette. Due to the current situation, no one had bothered to tell him that smoking was not allowed in the building, especially in the morgue.

“It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before. I found enough spider venom in his veins to wipe out a quarter of Portland. I don’t know how he managed to survive as long as he did. Look at all the damage to the outer layers of his skin; it’s the result of countless pairs of tiny fangs tearing into him like starving hyenas. Beneath it, the muscles have almost completely melted from the venom of the spiders. It appears to be some sort of neurotoxin,” the coroner said.

“Jesus, I thought we didn’t have any spiders of that caliber in Maine!”

“We don’t, and as far as the records show, no other place has them. I had the venom analyzed, and while many of the key proteins are found in every spider’s arsenal and only in the arsenal of spiders, no spider on Earth has this exact form of toxin. To be honest, I can’t rule it a murder because I just can’t for the life of me imagine how a human being could orchestrate this death. Unless the guy you found had just robbed a genetics laboratory and was trying to become Spiderman, he didn’t kill your man. If I had to guess, I’d say your man fainted out horror when he saw… whatever the hell did this.”

The commissioner turned to Nelson with his face contorted into a snarl. “This man had a wife and two kids! I knew him for fifteen years! Would you like to explain to me why you sent one of my best cops to his death?!”

Nelson took another drag from his cigarette and released the smoke in a cloud that shrouded his face. “Commissioner, if you value your life, your sanity, and your future, you’ll cremate this man before anyone outside of this room can see him, come up with a good lie, and tell it for the rest of your life. The feds have deputized me with full authority for this and even they don’t know what they’re dealing with, except for a very closed-circuit division. Trust me, what caused this man’s death is something that you want to steer clear from. I know you’re feeling like you would give anything to know the truth, but hear me and believe me: the answer will destroy you just like it did me.

Now I need to talk to everyone who came into close proximity with Officer Michaels and Mr. Stevens: the civilian who called 911, the EMTs, the ambulance drivers, the staff at the hospital, and anyone who was on that road tonight. But first, I need to know of Jason Stevens’ condition.”

“He’s awake but he doesn’t remember anything. He keeps saying he can barely see, his vision is messed up,” the commissioner sighed.

“All right, well if you have him here, I’ll try talking to him. He’s one of my students, so I might be able to pull something from his psyche. But I strongly advise that you cremate that body now.” About to exit the morgue, he turned back to the commissioner and mortician. “Was he wearing gloves?”

“What?” both men asked.

“Michaels, did he have gloves on when we set him up to pull over Jason Stevens? Did you do as I told you?”

“No gloves were found on his hands or at the scene,” the coroner shrugged.

“It’s a shame, this whole catastrophe could have possibly been avoided,” Nelson muttered as he walked out of the room.

Jason sat in the interrogation room, surrounded on all sides by cinderblock walls with a table bolted to the floor in front of him. The lights above flickered and buzzed repeatedly, and he had a feeling that the airflow to the room had been cut off. Just like in every movie and TV show, a wide two-way mirror occupied the wall in front of him. Was someone watching him? Jason was resting his forehead on the table, trying to remember what had happened the night before and figure out how he had come to this. There was no way he could have killed a police officer, no way! And these symbols, the symbols that covered everything like wrapping paper, it was because of them that his life was spiraling out of control. He even saw them when he closed his eyes, glowing like neon and making sleep almost impossible.

He perked his head up as he heard the flicking of lights nearby. Someone had turned the lights on in the observation room, making the two-way mirror a simple window. At the same time, the only door opened, and of all the people in the world to enter, it was Professor Nelson.

“Professor Nelson? What… what are you doing here?” Jason stammered, having felt his confusion now expand to new limits that he thought otherwise impossible.

Before speaking, Nelson put out his cigarette on the ground and sat down on the other side of the table. Reaching under the table, he checked to make sure the built in tape recorder was deactivated. This conversation had to be kept top secret, and with the lights on in the other room, he would know if someone was outside watching. The professor drew a folded sheet of paper from his coat and laid it out in front of Jason, with dozens of the symbols Jason now saw scribbled on in pen.

“I imagine at this point, you’re now seeing these symbols wherever you look, as if you have a big projector on top of your head that is shining them on every surface. Every time you try to draw up a memory, one of those symbols obscures the mental image. Am I correct?”

Jason didn’t know what to say, the professor had listed his predicament exactly. But of all people, why was HE here?

“How did you know that?”

“Because I’m the world’s foremost expert on the Black Stigmata,” the professor said while he held the paper over his cigarette lighter and let the flames destroy the evil written on it.

“The Black… what?”

Nelson took a moment to light up another cigarette. “Stigmata, they are the wounds one receives when they are crucified. As everyone knows, Jesus, the most famous case of crucifixion in history, had nails driven through his wrists and ankles. The nails of the Black Stigmata have nothing to do with Christ or with crucifixion for that matter, but it’s a fitting name. A Black Stigmata, that’s the cursed relic you found in the home of Tim Jones, the relic that has been haunting you for the past few days.”

Jason was left breathless, unable to believe that this simple teacher from Portland knew exactly what was plaguing him, when he could barely comprehend it. It also didn’t help that Nelson was now releasing thick clouds of smoke into the room.

“You knew?”

“I had a strong feeling, especially when I saw you writing frantically in your notebook when you were clearly asleep. I hold nothing against you for lying to me, no one in the possession of a Black Stigmata has the willpower to do anything that may result in them losing it.”

“You mean you knew before that?”

“Like I said, I had a strong feeling. Plus, as I mentioned before, I’m an expert. Every time one of those nails surfaces, the government contacts me and sends me information on the file for my consultation.”

“Wait, the GOVERNMENT knows about this?”

“How many times am I going to have to repeat myself? Yes, the government knows about the Black Stigmata, and so too does the UN and Interpol. There is a worldwide division, similar to the CIA, that focuses solely on the finding of these nails. BSC: Black Stigmata Containment. They have a branch in the FBI and every government organization around the globe, but they are kept secret to the public and even the leaders of their respective countries. The American branch keeps me on speed-dial. Now don’t jump to conclusions, this isn’t like the Avengers movie where we fly around in a giant hovering aircraft carrier.

What was I talking about…? Oh yeah, the BSC has me on speed-dial, and every time a Black Stigmata surfaces in America or there is a case in the world that is similar to a Black Stigmata surfacing but different in nature, I’m asked for a consultation. When the police investigated the Jones’ residence, their report was flagged, sent to BSC, and they in turn sent it back to me. Seeing as how this is happening in my own backyard and to one of my own students, I decided to play a larger role.”

“So if you’re an expert on these nails, do you know what they are?”

“I know what they do, but not what they are or where they came from. There are stories and written records about them dating as far back as the Sumerians and throughout every culture. However, in the cave paintings of Europe, Africa, and the Americas, we have found hints of their existence going all the way back to the Stone Age. We have thousands of reported cases before the birth of the modern world.”

“If you have so many cases, then why aren’t they more well-known? Why aren’t they ranked up their with the boogey man in urban legends?”

“Don’t be a smartass. There are three reasons: records are lost over time like every other piece of history, the BSC works to keep all knowledge of them out of the public eye, and the Black Stigmata are skilled at hiding their presence and destroying evidence.”

“Wait, they know how to destroy evidence? You mean they are alive?”

“If anything, they are anti-life, but each nail does have a consciousness of its own and they do seem to share a hive mind. They are incredibly cunning, knowing just when to activate, what psychological buttons to push, how to hide themselves, and how to get what they want. When it comes to their Hosts, they are like puppet masters.”

“What do they want?”

“To spread, to spread themselves and to spread death. There is no fixed number of Black Stigmata in the world because they are able to multiply like cancer cells and they can go dormant for years at a time. The nail you found could have been just a week old.

There is an ancient story from the Middle East, told by a monk who bore witness to the event. Several thousand years ago, a man stumbled out of the desert and into a small village. The desert was considered by many to be impossible to cross, due to its sheer size and lack of any oasis or landmarks, yet he somehow came out of its heart on foot. In his hand, he held a Black Stigmata. The man died as soon as the villagers reached him, and immediately, they were drawn to the nail in his grip.

Sensing death, the monk left the town and hid himself in his home in the outskirts, watching from his rocky crag. Speaking to them, the nail made the villagers believe that it was God, or one of his sacred relics at least. It showed them great and terrible things, twisting their minds until they served it fanatically. In the course of one night, it brought the deaths of everyone in the village. By the time the sun rose, the soil was red with blood, bodies were strung up in grotesque forms and ripped to pieces, signs of cannibalistic orgies were prevalent, and countless nails had been born.

The monk abandoned his home and fled to the nearby village to tell everyone what he had seen. When people tried to find the village, the desert had swallowed it up.”

“What do you mean the nails were born?” Jason asked, feeling the story fly right over his head.

“Capture a sacrifice. Destroy the humanity. Teach them despair. Inscribe the horror. Pierce their soul. Spread the chaos. Sound familiar?” Jason’s face became pale. “Capture a sacrifice is simple to understand: you find a living person and you kidnap them.

Destroy the humanity: if it’s a woman, you rape her repeatedly. If it’s a man, you sever the genitals and force-feed them to him. After that, regardless of gender, you cut off their breasts/pectorals, cauterize the pelvic region to destroy all traces of the genitalia or what genitals HAD been there, and then you slit the throat as if to destroy the Adam’s apple. The slitting of the throat is actually done later. When those steps are performed, you are left with a genderless Homunculus that represents all of humanity and yet has no humanity.

Teach them despair: torture them while trying to leave as much flesh intact as possible. Most often this is the breaking of the digits, the use of water or electricity, sodomy, or damage inflicted to the mouth. Inscribe the horror: shave the victim of all hair and then begin carving the symbols you see onto their body, fully removing the flesh and then cauterizing the wound so that they don’t bleed to death.

Pierce their soul: after you’ve done all that, you then slit the throat as I mentioned before, as if destroying the Adam’s apple, even if your victim is a woman. Then before they can bleed to death, you drive two objects into their eyes. It doesn’t matter what objects you choose, as long as they are remotely pointed and somewhat like a nail. Anything can be used; toothpicks, crayons, knives, pencils, sticks, broken glass, markers, carrots, or anything of the sort. I’ve actually seen one victim with their thumbs severed and shoved into their eye sockets.

Once you do it, watch and be amazed as the objects you chose transform into new nails, just like the one that haunted you and taught you how to do this. You see, in torturing your victim and inscribing the symbols into their body, you are essentially making them into a battery of agony and negative energy. Their souls become so twisted that even those who have been rescued and received medical attention before the ritual has been completed go insane and die.”

“But why the eyes?” Jason asked, having thrown up in his mouth twice already as the ritual was listed off.

Nelson flicked aside his cigarette and leaned forward with his clasped in front of his face. “Two reasons: The first reason is that the existence of two eye sockets allows for more effective multiplication of the nails. The second reason is that the eyes are the windows to the soul. When the objects you choose are jammed into the eyes after the ritual is performed, the toxic mix of suffering and malice bubbling within the victim’s soul pours into those objects. The symbols you carved into their flesh are the encryption for a nail’s mind, like the binary code of a piece of software. The information of those symbols and the horror bubbling within the victim’s soul is imprinted onto the objects, turning them into Black Stigmata. Those nails are then able to cause the same madness and death as the one that forced you to perform the ritual. Once the nails are created, the victim is thus considered a Homunculus, as I mentioned before.

Spread the chaos: the body has to be taken to a place where it will be found or where it can poison the land. Homunculi don’t burn and don’t rot, and any place that bears them becomes completely lifeless. Put a body in the middle of the forest and in less than a year, a crater of lifeless trees will be formed, up to a kilometer in diameter. The body has to be left where someone will find it, so that they will be drawn to take one of the nails.

Once a nail picks a host, that host is unable to give up the nail. It doesn’t matter if they had to scrape the pulverized eyeball off the sides of the nail, they’ll take it and leave without ever telling anyone about the body. Then a second person will eventually come and take the other nail. Afterwards, the body is discovered and taken away by the authorities. While the Homunculus itself is still toxic and causes death, sickness, and dementia to whatever approaches, the removal of the nails takes away its ability to force people to perform the ritual. To date, we have never found a single corpse with the nails remaining in the eyes.

The Host who created the Homunculus must then either continue to create more incubators and nails or leave the original nail for someone else to find so that the madness starts all over again.”

Jason was struggling to breathe, feeling like his brain was melting and dripping out of his ears. How could this possibly be true? How could it be real? How could something like this possibly exist?! “Am I going to do that to someone?”

“Hopefully not. You’ve been separated from your nail, so unless you are within the range of it or another nail, the progression of your mental decay will slowly be reversed and its hold over you will wane. You will never be fully free of its influence, but you’ll be able to live a mostly normal life. However… if your dementia should continue its growth, you will enter a psychotic stage in which you will black out and end up committing horrible crimes with the Black Stigmata fully controlling you and your actions, preparing you for the ritual. You may wake up in an alley you don’t recognize, finding yourself with a stomach full of the flesh of the woman you just brutally raped and cannibalized only an hour ago without any memory of it.

Either way, you will have to be kept in isolation until the effects can wear off. Only when you no longer see the symbols wherever you look can I allow you to be released. You didn’t kill that police officer, but you’re close to entering that psychotic stage.”

“You’re going to hold me prisoner for something I didn’t do?! You can’t do that!”

“What part of “raping and eating a woman” did you not understand? You can’t be allowed to roam free. If you come within MILES of that nail, you could enter the psychotic state. Once the progression is complete, you won’t even need the nail in your immediate possession to perform the ritual, you’ll have the knowledge to do it on your own without the willpower to deny the nail’s orders.

Relax, you should be fine in about a month. At which point a mock trial will be held to cover everything up and you’ll be found innocent in that cop’s death. Until then, I’ll do you a favor and try to get you your schoolwork so that you don’t fail the semester. You’ll need something to distract you if you want to be free of the nail’s influence.”

“So there really is no way out of this?” Jason asked regrettably.

“Consider yourself lucky, we found you before you could advance any further. We would either have had to kill you or the ritual would be complete before we could stop you, at which point the nail would release you. What worries me is that these nails don’t usually progress so fast after being found. Normally it would be at least a month before you saw the symbols. However, there is something I must ask you before anything can be done.” Professor Nelson then reached across the table with frightful speed and grabbed Jason’s collar. “Where is the nail?!”

Colleen sat in Jason’s car, having been asked by their parents to pick it up from the impound lot and drive it home while they visited him at the police station. She was covering her eyes with her hands and crying in terror for her brother. There was no way Jason would kill a cop, he didn’t have it in him to do something so horrible! As long as she had known him, Jason had been a kind older brother. Sure, there were times when he could be an asshole, but he was never mean and it was not like he would ever hit her. But what if he did do it? What if he wasn’t the kind brother she thought she knew? No, he didn’t do it; she had to believe that no matter what. But what if he was innocent but the jury found him guilty? No, she couldn’t think about that either, it wouldn’t accomplish anything.

After taking several deep breaths to calm herself down, she climbed out of the car and into her driveway. She slammed the door behind her, but the sound of metal on metal told her something was in the way. With a quizzical look on her face, she opened the door to see what was jamming it. There was something sticking out of the base of the car seat. It was a piece of metal, about the size of a magic marker, but with four sides that slanted down to sharp tip.

Pulling it out of the car, she stared at it intently. ‘What is this, a nail?’

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