… 

Eyes bloodshot, eyelids and the skin around them painfully itchy, lips cracked and voice broken from endless crying and weeping… body parts: not obeying… it’s only possible to move one single left hand which he tremblingly lifted to wipe away the tears that keep leaving burning trails on his skin. Even that was only for the sake of their convenience, his left hand was kept mobile just so that he could somehow feed himself. 

‘What a sorry state of a living supply sack you are…Silvano, you dumb retard… just die, will you? I can’t take this anymore! Ugh, it’s unbearable, just die already…’ Silvano kept speaking to himself in his mind and forsaking the lack of will to end this miserable life. Confined in the darkness, having zero control over anything, even his own body serving other people’s needs and lust, at a complete disposal of their wishes and mood. He could only wait for the next torment, the next wicked-perverted act of violence: this endless cycle of rape, abuse and torture. 

His childhood was not a particularly happy one and he was by no means pampered or loved. The Bilon family he grew up with had set clear boundaries for him to know his place: “do what you’re told, don’t cause trouble.” But with all that he had the freedom to see the sky and beautiful landscapes, to run around freely, play with lovely animals, and make friends. At least he could live like a human being. Maybe this hope of someday breathing fully again and seeing a horizon ahead of him was what kept him from a final collapse day after day. Deep down he both cherished and hated this hope… if he didn’t have these memories and fantasies he could just let go. 

Both beautiful and terrible thoughts keep coming and going randomly and Silvano had a hard time tracking the passage of time, strangely now more than ever before. 

While usually it’s the case as this room where he’s locked in has no windows to help him track time, he still would usually have some sense of chronology, whereas now when he tries to think about the latest events or interactions there is a blank feeling, a sensation of void. And this void is filled with fear, an unnerving anticipation of pain and humiliation: overwhelming him wholly.

And then suddenly.

‘!!!!!!’

There were loud bangs.

Silvano panicked, tried to focus and see anything in the darkness, then made futile efforts to curl his paralysed body…  getting rapidly overpowered by terror and helplessness.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

Then he got confused by a realisation that it was not a real darkness but rather he was unable to see anything at all. 

‘Blind?! Am I blind now? When did I get blind? No, please… I need my eyes, I need to see! How am I going to run if I can’t see, and the skies I need to see the skies…!’ Silvano’s mind was a complete mess. He felt neither the ground underneath him, nor could he feel anything tactilely, and couldn’t even grasp any sense of his own presence. 

From desperation he tried to make a sound. Not to call for anyone as he knew too well who was outside those doors and he’d rather they forget about his existence altogether. But he needed to somehow confirm his own presence, it would help if he could hear his own voice!

“… …”

‘I can’t make a sound! Nnnngh…!’???’

From panic and despair he tried to cover his mouth with his left hand. And was horrified to realise not just moving, he couldn’t even feel any part of his own body.

‘For the sake of…! What is this? Just what is happening?! What…?’

The final blow was when Silvano tried as a last hope to breathe in and felt neither the air flowing in nor his own nose or lungs to exist. This brought a new agony different from when Jerome was strangling him for kinks. This was like drowning in a complete sense of it, as if all his essence was in a void with no air or gravity or movement. 

There was no sense of time here either, so it felt like an eternity. Until.

BANG! Ba-bang! Bang!

The bangs resumed. It’s strange though, at first those bangs had terrified Silvano but this time he was partly reassured to hear them, as it was at least something he could feel. 

‘Wait, feel? Not hear?’

He concentrated and indeed those were not sounds he could hear but sensory feelings. And not really loud bangs but more like taps? Gentle irregular taps. 

As Silvano focused on feeling those touches more and more sensations returned to him, a feeling of reality started to form. He made an effort to reach out his right hand which had been paralyzed for years and to his surprise he could move and feel something with touch. A surface, a smooth, warm surface and the tapping is behind it. He could clearly feel a nudge right underneath his palm. ‘What is this? For some strange reason I don’t feel any danger from it. It just feels comforting and peaceful’. 

He tried reaching out his other hand as well, he could feel it but it felt strangely far, like there are several metres between his two hands, taking some time to bring them close together. Then placed his left hand on the surface beside the right one to feel the nudges. But when his hands touched each other there was a tactile confusion in his perception. It was too similar, either his hands felt like they belonged to two different people or the touch of the surface in front of him felt like his own body. Really bizarre, but at this point there was an out of space feeling and everything seemed possible. 

It’s kind of unreasonable but Silvano was no longer afraid, he started carefully examining what he could feel with curiosity. The reason must be because he came to a conclusion that he should have died at some point and this is the so-called afterlife. He recalled all those cheesy sounding stories about the afterlife, gods and angels that everyone called made up and ridiculed those people who believed in those, calling them lunatics. 

‘Didn’t they say that the soul perishes after death and that’s the end. Seems like those funny stories everyone would mock weren’t so made up after all.’ 

‘And it seems like I was hesitating for nothing. It’s much better this way!’ 

He thought to himself and chuckled lightly. Then realised that he actually did chuckle therefore tried sensing his own face with his left hand’s fingers. Again, there was this sense of a very long journey until his hand touched his own chin, and now having one hand on the mysterious surface and the other on his lips he felt that strange similarity of touch once more… 

Then a major dimensional shift happened in his perception of body and space, indescribable in just words. What felt in front, above and below shifted, shuffled. 

Gradually a heavy sense of having a physical presence started to creep into his skin and deeper. 

‘No, no, no… was I just unconscious? Was this light feeling just a momentary illusion from passing out?’

Silvano felt like falling from the sky and crashing hard on a rocky ground. He had finally found some peace, a place out of reality and now is forced to be back to feeling and hurting. He was resisting with all his essence but futilely, the process that had started did not stop. He gritted his teeth and groaned, mourning over still being alive. He had sincerely loved the idea of floating without gravity in the nothingness, it gave him joy and a sense of freedom. 

At some point Silvano resigned himself to the reality again as he is used to by now. He tried opening his heavy eyes which took a huge effort. His vision was blurred and his overall body felt, as if after anaesthesia, dull and tingling. His lips and the fingers that touched his face felt heavy and like needles pricking through them, the air he breathed felt like a sticky heavy liquid. 

With his blurry vision he could only see an approximate location of a source of light and it was unfamiliar. The light in that damned underground room was just a lightbulb that could be tuned on and off only from the outside. If it was on, there should have been a dot on the ceiling, if it was off, there should have been just a very thin line of pale light under the door seeping from the corridor. 

What he sees now is a rectangular light source, like a large window, and it seems to be in some distance which means the room itself is much bigger. 

‘This is definitely another place. But where?’

Still immersed in his thoughts Silvano felt the tap-tap again. Now with more accurate physical perception he finally realised where the taps were coming from. His own body! Well, his belly, where his other hand is placed. It’s so strange before he thought the surface he’s touching was in front of him

‘What?! It’s round and big? When did my belly grow this much? If it’s moving then it’s a baby, right?’ Silvano thought to himself.

His emotional state rapidly shifted between surprise-joy-despair. ‘What happened really? They wouldn’t let the baby grow so big… they’d kill the child as they did to the ones before… Where am I really? What do I…? Oh no, there’s someone coming!!?’

There was a sound of someone activating an electric doorknob. Silvano closed his eyes from panic, pretending unconscious. 

“What? That lousy moran! We’ve been told so many times, he should be lying on his left side, hands comfortable. Look what mess of a job he did. This is what you get from temporary workers, tsk”. 

He could hear an unfamiliar young woman’s voice and felt two skilful hands changing the position he was lying in. Really, this position was much more comfortable than the twisted posture he unknowingly got himself into, even the rebeling guy in his belly settled down a little. ‘Honestly, are all the embryos so active or this one is just the rioting type… ?’ What Silvano didn’t know was that the little guy could feel and was agitated by the waves of spiritual changes that were surrounding him and all of Silvano’s emotional fluctuations. While his thoughts trailed off Silvano felt how the clothes covering his abdomen were being raised and then he got startled to feel something being rubbed on his belly. 

‘What the!?’

He couldn’t control himself as an unexplainable sense of protectiveness emerged in him. He opened his eyes as wide as he could and moved his hands to cover his round belly. It may have been the most of his efforts but in reality his shaky weak hands just slowly moved and his eyes were somewhat half opened. 

Thesa, who was applying an anti stretch mark cream on her patient’s pregnant belly was immersed in her own thoughts. During these months she’s already gotten attached to this unconscious, silent patient, and performs these procedures with quite a lot of affection. There was still a mild smile on her face when she noticed the slight movements of Silvano’s hands. At first she thought that it was some muscle cramping and tried to put the hand back into the advised position but to her great surprise she felt resistance and intent. The patient’s trembling hand slipped through her fingers and reached his belly. With questioning, doubtful eyes she turned to look at the patient’s face only to find two dark purple hazy eyes trying to focus and look at her. 

“Aah!” She exclaimed in shock, even  dropping the lotion tube on the floor.

“Oh my goodness! Doctor! Colonel Gillian!” She sounded shocked and somewhat overjoyed. Silvano was definitely more confused by her exclamations. Thankfully his vision has started to improve a little, not to the point of seeing facial features but enough to see a figure in light green clothes running out, then a person in dark blue clothes rushing back in with her. 

“Mr. Silvano”.

A deep, steady male voice called out his name with a little anxiousness. It was a completely unfamiliar voice to him but sounded quite friendly. Unfortunately Silvano has met too much malice and evil to be able to trust anyone. 

His head was filled with a overlapping thoughts about whether they knew that the child is a taboo child conceived between cousins, whether they are sinister people planning anything evil, will they take the child away, will they hurt or sell him and the kid in his belly? Should he tell them that the kid might be genetically defective so not good for them to use for anything or should he just play along for now and keep quiet? 

“Can you see me, Mr Silvano? Can you hear me?” Seeing his face full of panic and terror, and feeling the unstable state of the soul, the Colonel started to worry and wanted to reassure the young pregnant person. “I’m Colonel Gillian, it’s nice to finally talk to you, I just want you to make sure that everything is fine”. 

Of course Silvano was not convinced with just these words.