I don’t understand why people see the need to downvote a story as soon as it’s up. This is the EIGHTH CHAPTER, the only people reading it are fans who like it and assholes who like making life difficult for others.

Chapter Eight

Jason sat on a bench in the rehab facility courtyard, staring down at the shed leaves that smothered the yard. Above him, the barren fingers of the trees swayed ever so gently in the breeze, having lost their sails to the inevitable chill. It was halfway through November and the temperature was just above freezing, yet Jason sat in only a t-shirt. The expression on his face was like that of a self-loathing drug addict sitting in a damp alley. The only emotion on his face was one of despair, and it was that expression alone that projected his presence in the world of the living.

Wearing a dense blue coat from LL Bean, Christi approached and sat down beside him, looking across the fenced-in yard and up at the gray sky. “Aren’t you cold?”

“This is nothing. I know how it feels to freeze to death, and compared to that, this is nothing more than looking into a refrigerator.”

“Jason, you didn’t freeze to death. You’re still here, that proves that everything that you saw wasn’t real.”

“It was real. The monsters I saw, the horrors I encountered, and the hallucinations I suffered may have been fake… but the pain I experienced was all too real. I lost track of the number of times I had my eyes gouged out, my muscles ripped from my bones, my flesh sawed to pulp, and my skeleton crushed into powder. What I went through was truly Hell.”

Christi leaned over and clutched his hand. “Jason…”

His bloodshot eyes swiveled to her. “I watched you die so many times… You were butchered, eaten, set on fire, skinned alive, and even raped to death. I heard your dying screams, I stared into your eyes as you died, and I was showered in your blood… Even now, I’m expecting you to spontaneously combust and for my hallucination to continue. It may not have been real, but the pain of watching someone you love die in the most horrific ways is still as haunting as if they happened in this world.”

Christi bit her lip, having gained a sudden chill from Jason’s description. She imagined herself experiencing those deaths, tried to imagine what it would feel like to endure them and to endure watching someone she cared about suffer as well. If she had gone through the same pain as Jason had, watched him die the same way he had watched her… wouldn’t she be in the same state?

Christi slowly got up and walked over to the entrance to the courtyard, where Nelson was waiting. “I thought you said that you made him better! He’s a wreck!”

“I never said I made him better, I said I freed him of the Black Stigmata’s influence. Now he won’t enter the psychotic stage and go on rampages, and unless he comes within close proximity to a nail, the chances of him ever suffering a hallucination are zero. Believe it or not, he is actually inoculated now against the Black Stigmata. Not only has his brain learned to recognize it, but the damage inflicted to his psyche by the drugs have turned him into an unsuitable Host.”

Christi looked back at Jason, her face lined with worry and her eyes trembling as if she were about to cry. “I just can’t believe this happened to him. I can’t believe something like actually could happen to him. I never thought these things were possible. Is there anything I can do to help him?”

“Just stay with him. Try and cheer him up. He’ll recover before too long, he just needs time to let his mind rest and pull itself together. We’ve been relatively lucky so far, hopefully he’ll return to his old self. Just remember that even though everything he experienced was in his mind, it was no less painful. For all we know, his perception of time may have been warped while he was under. The 48 hours he experienced while he was unconscious could have been 48 years for him, in which he was tortured and killed over and over again without reprieve.”

During the next few weeks, Jason and Colleen both began to slowly recover from their traumas. She had not suffered as horribly as her brother, so Colleen’s mental health came back faster, but not by much. Ever since she had that strange dream where Jason raped her, her masochistic dementia had waned, and she no longer spoke of deserving to be brutalized. No longer numb, she was now feeling terror towards everything, every noise and movement around her, as if the girls who violated her were hiding like ninjas. She screamed at nurses and doctors and would even wince when her parents tried to hug her. While she would eventually regain the ability to walk, her legs remained unusable. The interior and exterior damage would take more time to heal, and there was always the issue of possible psychological obstacles holding her back.

Back in the rehab facility, held under a fake name, Jason was a zombie. He would sit or stand, staring for hours out the window or some random point. He would remain dead silent during BSC-sponsored therapy. When he slept, he had nightmares, not caused by the Black Stigmata but instead mere shadows of the drug treatment. Compared to what he had already endured, these nightmares were nothing. He seemed oblivious to everything around him, though he would at least acknowledge people who called out to him. His parents came every day to see him, told that he was being held in the rehab facility as a suspect in the prison riot and still “under investigation” for the death of the cop. His despondent behavior was blamed on severe PTSD from what he had seen and experienced during the riot. Christi spent all of her free time with him, trying to coax him back to his old self. For the first week, he was little more than a statue, eyes mournful and voice nonexistent, but as time went by, he began to change, speaking a little more with each passing day.

Jason and Christi were sitting by one of the large windows in the facility rec room. As expected, the window was fenced so that people wouldn’t smash their way out in an attempt to escape.

“You know, I saw Colleen before I came today,” said Christi, trying to get a reaction out of him.

“You say that every day,” he whispered, unable to look at her.

“That’s because I care about you two. She’s doing better, no longer freaking out when people come near her. She’s moved on from being bedridden to rolling around in a wheelchair. That’s definitely progress, and she’ll be released soon.”

Several silent moments passed by.

“Does she smile?” Jason finally asked.

A curl of joy on her lips, Christi reached out and clutched his hand. “Yeah, she does, especially when she talks about how much she wants to see you again.”

“She… does?”

“Of course! She misses her brother, your parents miss their son, and I miss my boyfriend.”

“After all the things I’ve done, why would anyone miss me?”

“Jason, you haven’t done anything at all. Those goddamn nails are responsible for everything. You’re nothing more than a victim.”

“But when I was dreaming… I was with her at one point. I… did things to her, things I can never forgive myself for.”

Christi moved her hands to his cheeks and forced him to look at her. “No matter how real it may have felt or how intense the pain may have been, that was only a dream. You don’t need to apologize for anything and you don’t need to be forgiven. The only thing you need to do is get better so that you can come home.”

For the first time, the mask of despair on Jason’s face shifted. “Get better?”

“Just try smiling. If Colleen can do it after what she went through, then so can you.”

Then, before Jason could even try, she leaned forward and kissed him. They held that embrace for several moments, Christi trying to pull out all of Jason’s misery. Finally, when they separated, she could see life in his eyes.

Standing behind the cash register at LL Bean, Christi spared a moment to turn away from the line of customers in front of her and watch multiple police cars scream by through the windows at her back. It seemed like every day, the police were being called out to answer someone going berserk or recover a grotesque body found in a public place. Professor Nelson had told her that this would happen, that the Black Stigmata was increasing its activity and spreading its influence with unusual force. It was happening worldwide. There had already been three public shootings in crowded locations with multiple victims and corpses were being littered throughout the state like the professor’s cigarette butts.

“Excuse me,” said the woman at the front of the line, putting her shopping bag up on the counter and shaking Christi from her thoughts.

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

Christi hurriedly began scanning the woman’s items, trying to move the line along and make up for her daydreaming.

The sounds of gunfire rang out through the store without warning, sending everyone tumbling to the ground in paralyzing fear. Screams of pain echoed and the smell of blood filled the air. Christi could see him, the man with the gun. He was standing by the entrance with a crazed look in his eye but an expression of hatred for what he was doing. There was nothing in particular about his appearance; he fit the definition of generic. He was just a regular guy, made an unwilling puppet of the Black Stigmata. Bodies lay strewn about, a few people twitching but most of them still, completely unmoving in the growing pools of gore. At the edges of the field of death, loved ones of the dead and wounded screamed in fear, desperately wanting to rush over to the people they cared about.

Ejecting his empty magazine, the man reloaded and immediately began firing again, killing everyone who had not yet fled and soaking the racks of clothes and camping gear with blood. Men, women, and children; all were cut down without hesitation or mercy. Crouched behind the counter, Christi rocked back and forth on her heels, praying for this to be a bad dream and to survive this horrible ordeal.

“Die, you son of a bitch!” Christi heard, recognizing the voice.

Daring a look, she saw the manager of the gun store, Ted, appear from the hunting section with a shotgun in hand, still tagged from the rack. An old man with thinning white hair, Christi knew him as a very kind person, loved by everyone. Now he was foaming at the mouth, blinded by rage. Chambering a round, Ted squeezed the trigger and sent the deer slug flying across the store and into the gunman’s shoulder, delivering enough destructive power to cleave off his arm with an eruption of blood.

Paying no attention to the severed limb lying at his feet, the gunman raised his pistol and delivered a bullet straight to Ted’s forehead, blowing a stream of gore and brains out of the back of his skull. Grabbing the shotgun, a young man of about Christi’s age stood up and ejected the empty shell casing. Relying on experience from watching action movies, the untrained customer fired and blew a fist-sized hole straight into the gunman’s stomach. Several inches to the right of the spine, the lead thumb left only shreds in place of the gunman’s kidney.

Once again, the man showed no hesitation in ending the novice hero’s life with a single bullet, even with blood pouring from his body by the liter. To everyone’s relief, the sounds of police sirens screeched from outside as a line of cop cars was formed in front of the store. Wasting no time, they charged towards the entrance with their guns raised.

Looking over to them, the half-dead murder raised his pistol to his temple. “We will all achieve death!” he screamed before pulling the trigger.

Running across the rec room of the rehab facility, Jason was nearly brought to the ground by Christi’s tackle and the tight hold of her arms around his neck. Lifting her off her feet, he embraced her with all of his strength, breathing in the sweet aroma of her hair.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry I wasn’t there for you.”

“It’s ok. Even if you were in the store, there was no way you could have known what would happen. It’s not your fault, don’t blame yourself.”

“Are you sure you’re ok? Were you hurt anywhere?” Jason asked, separating from Christi and giving her a brief look from head to toe.

“No, I’m fine, I was hiding behind the counter. Don’t worry, I’m not hurt. But it was the scariest thing that ever happened to me, and I doubt I’ll be sleeping well since then.”

“Well I’m ready to come out. I’m sick of this place. I want to get out and make a difference now.”

It was early in the afternoon when Jason stepped out of the front door of the rehab facility, with Christi clinging to his arm and checking to make sure he was ok at every second that passed. Walking past rows of trees and the manicured lawn, the frigid breeze that kicked up the leaves around his feet was incapable of drawing so much as a shiver from him. Parked in front of the large, white, Victorian-style building, his parents’ car rested. Both with wet eyes, his mother and father rushed over and embraced him, glad to finally have their son returned to them. After everything that had happened since the start of autumn, for Jason to return home safe and sound was nothing short of a miracle.

Seated in a wheelchair, her auburn bangs trembling in the breeze, Colleen looked at him with a warm smile on her face. His visitation with her before his institutionalization had been made a secret, so to keep their parents from suspecting anything, they both had to act like this was the first time they were seeing each other since she was attacked. But in a way, it was. Colleen had regained her mental stability, having come full circle since the power of the Black Stigmata allowed Jason’s hallucinations to brush up against her own dreams. Neither of them knew it, but what they had experienced and done to each other was in a sense real. Neither one of them would ever fully return to what they once were, but they both had just enough mental health to enjoy the reunion.

Moving past his parents, Jason got down on one knee in front of Colleen and clutched her hands, warming them against the chilly air. They were both silent, Colleen with her smile but Jason with a look of guilty despair. Christi and their parents watched as Jason leaned forward and hugged her his sister, holding her tightly with his head in her lap. While she stroked his hair, he silently cried in guilt and self-loathing. Being with her again after causing so much harm to her and countless others… he did not know if he even deserved to look upon her.

“It’s ok, everything will be fine,” she hummed.

“I can’t believe how long it’s been since I ate a real meal,” Jason grunted, stuffing his face with chicken and buttered noodles as if he had just been rescued from a concentration camp.

“So what are you going to do now that you’re out?” Colleen asked, sitting across the dinner table.

“Well it’s far too late for me to simply go back to class, the semester is almost over. I guess there is nothing I can do but try and find a job until the spring semester.”

“I’m in a same boat. LL Bean has been closed due to the shooting, probably permanently. I’m out of the job,” said Christi, sitting to Jason’s left.

“Well Christi, I believe the pharmacy downtown is hiring, but Jason, honey, I think you should take some time off. After everything you’ve been through, you need time to recover,” his mom sighed as she passed the salad bowl over to Colleen.

‘You have no idea,’ Jason thought to himself.

The conversation continued on throughout the family, but Jason remained silent. It was clear that his parents were trying to make everything seem as normal as could be, as if Jason’s incarceration and Colleen’s attack had never happened. It was hard for any feeling of lightheartedness to sustain itself. Even Colleen’s normally sunny disposition had yet to fully return. With Jason, Colleen, and Christi all recovering from their traumas and the world around them essentially burning, it was hard for normality to take hold.

It was close to midnight and Jason and Christi were both sitting in the living room, enjoying a crackling fire in the fireplace. Christi was sitting on the couch and Jason was sitting in a nearby rocking chair. A coffee table stood between them with the warmth of the fire seeping away through the cold glass of the numerous windows. There were two doors on either side of the fireplace, both closed. There weren’t any bedrooms above the living room, so they might as well have had their own personal little cabin.

“And I just sat there thinking ‘is this really what Jason had to endure’? I couldn’t believe what was happening; I thought that man was going to kill everyone in the store one at a time. I saw him take two shotgun blasts and it did nothing to him,” Christi whispered with her lips barely moving, recounting the events in the LL Bean store.

“I know how it felt for you, I really do. I know how that terror strangles you and makes you sick, how you keep expecting everything to end and for you to wake up like it’s just a nightmare.”

“I just felt so helpless. There was nothing I could do to save myself or anyone else. If he had slowly walked over to the counter, I doubt I would have even been able to run. I was completely paralyzed. How did you do it? How did you get out of that prison? You never told me exactly how you escaped.”

Jason opened his mouth several times and closed it, unsure of how to begin. He hadn’t told anyone about what happened in the prison, not even Nelson. Rubbing his sweating palms on his jeans, he finally began to speak. “Not gracefully, I can tell you that. I was simply acting on instinct and trying to do what the heroes in action movies did. I did a lot more running and hiding than actual fighting. I woke up in the visitation room, the guy who had brought in the nail was dead beside me. All but one of the guards had been murdered in some huge brawl that occurred when I blacked out. He came at me with a broken baton, so I tripped him and strangled him with my chains.

After I managed to unlock my restraints, I gathered what weapons I could find and began making my way through the prison. Christi, it was a true hell in there. Men were killing, raping, and eating each other. There were corpses strung up from the catwalks, burning like torches. The floors were slick with blood and littered with strips of flesh and entrails. Convicts and guards alike were laughing as the tortured each other.

The smell… my god, I never smelled so much blood in my entire life. I felt like I was snorting a line of pennies crushed into dust. And they weren’t all crazy; there were some people who were in control of themselves. They were sane enough to feel pure fear and agony. I can’t help but wonder if the Black Stigmata left them alone just so that they would suffer more, or so that the rest of the prison could hunt them down like wolves after sheep.

I remember ducking into an empty cell when some SWAT guys showed up. They gunned down a line of prisoners and then turned their weapons on each other, laughing as they did so. At least from their corpses I was able to retrieve some pistols and few magazines. From the cellblocks, I moved on to the cafeteria. It was filled with people eating each other. Prisoners and guards were just tearing into their victims like the zombies from World War Z. You told me the gunman said something like “we will all achieve death”, right? One of the cooks from the kitchen turned to me and said that, then used a knife to cut open his torso.

After that, all of the guards and prisoners became aware of me. I killed as many as I could and made my escape. I managed to reach the yard by crawling through a hole blown into the wall by a crashed helicopter, but just as I felt the grass against my skin, those monsters found me. I sprinted across the yard as fast as my legs would carry me, being chased by a tidal wave of screaming mouths and grabbing hands. I fired what bullets I had into the horde, never even slowed them down. It was like trying to put out a forest fire with a squirt pistol. I think I was so scared that I even started sobbing while I ran. Tch, pathetic.

I found an overturned fence and ran towards it. Sprinting as fast as I could across the yard, I heard the plane. I could see it falling out of the sky like a beacon of despair. It was like watching the White House go up in flames or the dropping of an atom bomb. I realized just how powerful the Black Stigmata is and how it could not be defied. It was a force of nature, stronger than anyone who had ever lived or ever would live.

At last I managed to climb over the fence and hit the ground, just soon enough to watch the fireworks. It’s funny, but in that second before the plane crashed, I was suddenly overwhelmed with curiosity as to what was happening in the prison. I thought about the other people like me, the ones who weren’t driven mad by the Black Stigmata and were cursed with fear and dread. I imagined that handful of guards and prisoners and pictured them trying to think up a survival plan, I imagined a small group fighting off the horde as they looked for a place to hide, I imagined prisoners like me running desperately for an escape route, I imagined guards cowering in cells or offices, clutching pictures of loved ones while the raving swarm yanked at the doors, and I even imagined what other strange scenes of brutality were taking place throughout the prison. How people were dying in the laundry room, in the basement, in the guard towers, and just about every place that I had not already witnessed.

Realizing what was about to happen, I couldn’t help but wonder about the stories coming to a close, with nobody to read the final chapters. No one would ever know of their last minutes of desperation, of their fight for survival, of their flight from the pawns of the Black Stigmata. Their deaths would go unrecorded in a hellish pit of blood, concrete, and fire, and I shivered at the thought of dying as they did. To die… in a way where your body would never be found and the cause of death never known, and the memories people had of you would forever be incomplete, like a book without a final chapter.

The plane struck the prison and it was like the Black Stigmata itself had pierced the earth and was bleeding its fiery heart dry. It was a few moments, but it felt like several minutes, in which a wave of death reached out in all directions and cut down all in its way like a colossal lawnmower with flaming blades. The burning shockwave hit my pursuers with such force that they exploded into clouds of ash, due to their jettisoned blood instantly being incinerated.

The shockwave washed over me and I survived unscathed. After that… the Black Stigmata took over my mind.”

The longer he had spoken, the dryer his voice became. When he had started, he was animated in his movements, be they swings of his hand or just the slightest shrug, but as the story went on, he became more and more still, his mouth forming the words with less movement and his lips becoming like that of a ventriloquist. He was facing Christi but looking past her like she wasn’t even there. His expression told her that he was back at the prison yard, watching that plane strike like the hammer of a wrathful god. To him, his living room was gone, and he was instead watching a hundred prisoners and inmates spontaneously combust in the burning pulse of the plane crash, their heads bursting like confetti party poppers.

Sitting there, Christi was forced to accept the change that had taken place in the heart of the man she loved. His trials had not broken him, at least not beyond repair, but she knew that these memories would haunt him until the day he died. She could do nothing but stay by his side, but after everything that had happened, she had come to realize how happy it made her to have that privilege.

Smiling, she reached out and clasped his hands. “Come take a seat over here.”

“Why?” he asked, still caught in the flashback.

“Because you need the consolation that only a woman can give.”

Shaken back to reality, Jason smiled and moved over to the couch, only for Christi to stand up. Slowly moving her hips to the rhythm of soft hum, she licked her lips and began unfastening her blouse one button at a time. Thinking back to the last time they had had sex, Jason smiled and felt his manhood become engorged with blood from anticipation. Slipping out of the blouse, Christi grasped the hems of the white tank top underneath and slowly pulled it up. The cotton fabric slowly rose, revealing her navel in the center of her smooth, flat belly, lightly framed by the muscles earned at the college gym.

Pulling it up above her head, she revealed the tan lingerie keeping her breasts in place, the two cups struggling to hold in the bountiful mountains. Running her hands down her chest, she slipped her fingers into the waist of her jeans, unfastening the button and zipper and slowly pushing it down her curvaceous rear. A pale red thong greeted Jason’s eyes, clearly a choice made in anticipation of this evening. The thin fabric betrayed her, broadcasting the shape of the vertical lips between her legs. Continuing to hum, Christi turned around while gyrating her hips. Letting Jason gaze upon her voluptuous rear end, she grasped the sides of her thong and pulled them up tight, sinking the narrow stretch of fabric between her smooth ass cheeks.

‘Goddamn, I wish I was her thong right now,’ Jason thought as Christi bent over and spread her legs, teasing Jason with the barely-covered front and rear entrances of her delicious body.

“Would you like to have the honors?” Christi purred, standing up and pulling her long blonde hair forward.

Hands shaking in eagerness, Jason reached out and released the clasp of her bra, watching and licking his lips as Christi removed the article of lingerie. Again, she leaned over and spread her legs, letting Jason slowly pull her thong down between her soft cushions. As the skimpy fabric moved across her smooth skin like a windshield wiper in the rain, Jason kissed her taut rear end over and over again, savoring taste of her sweet skin. Once her underwear sat down around her ankles, Christi helped Jason spread her ass cheeks and he immediately sodomized her with his tongue like he was sucking on a whisk covered in batter. Just like the first time he had gone down on her asshole, there was absolutely no taste other the latent hints of soap. Christi rarely showed any initiative or effort in her life, but when it came to maintaining the front and back doors of the sex temple that was her body, she was like a germaphobe with OCD.

Christi giggled as she felt his tongue penetrate the tight ring of her anus over and over again. Her giggles were mixed with soft coos of pleasure as he reached up and began stirring his thumb up and down against the entrance to her gates of paradise. She added her fingers into the midst, stroking the lips of her pussy with his thumb shaking between them a vibrator.

After a minute or so to let Jason indulge himself, Christi turned around and began to straddle his lap. Grinding herself against his denim-sealed erection, she joined her lips with his and used her tongue the way Jason had used his. Moving his hand, Jason cupped her voluptuous ass cheeks and squeezed them lovingly, even daring a few playful smacks. As her grinding increased in aggression, Jason felt no hesitation in inserting his middle finger in Christi’s ass. The sudden penetration drew a sudden yelp, but Christi showed absolutely no contempt to his finger inside her. In fact, she only kissed him with more aggression.

Her leaning back told Jason that Christi was ready to move to the next stage. He pulled his finger from her ass and was about to lick it clean, but she grasped his wrist and stopped him. Giggling, she lowered her head and sucked on his finger like the bottom of a birthday candle after pulled out of a cake. Right then and there, Jason came, right then and there. Technically it was pre-cum, but it still felt like a wet dog had just slobbered on his underwear.

Removing his finger from her mouth with a pop, Christi stood up and Jason quickly pulled off his sweatshirt and t-shirt. About to pull off his pants and underwear, he raised an eyebrow at the puddle in the crotch of his jeans. That wasn’t his pre-cum, that was Christi’s “anticipation”. Pulling his pants and underwear down to his ankles, Jason revealed his sprawled-out cock, glistening with pre-cum. Grasping the shaft, Christi stood it up and spared a few seconds to lick off every succulent molecule. Returning to his lap, she settled herself down onto it, purring as it entered her slippery pussy.

Once Jason’s manhood was fully submerged in her wet interior, Christi began to heave her erotic frame up into the air without ever letting Jason’s cock leave her body. Her mouth was open, whimpering gasps passing her red lips, Christi churned herself on Jason’s cock, skewering her body with his muscular phallus. Watching her glorious tits jump with each thrust of her body, Jason couldn’t stop himself from scrubbing her nipples with his tongue like they were covered in chocolate syrup.

“Oh god, your cock feels so good!” Christi whined.

“I could say the same about your pussy. It’s like it’s sucking me in! I can’t get over how amazing it is!”

“How about a taste then?”

As if communicating telepathically, Christi stood up and Jason lied back across the couch. Returning, Christi supported herself on all fours on top of Jason, taking his cock into her mouth and succulently licking off her pussy juice. At the same time, Jason had his face buried in her sweet slit, sending his tongue as deep into her velvet sleeve as possible. Having already loosened her up with his cock, Christi’s pussy easily gave up its addicting flavor. Her smooth thighs on the sides of his face nearly made him climax, but it was the sounds that triggered it. Beyond the sound of Christi’s hums of pleasure from the movements of his tongue, it was the sound of her mouth slurping on his cock and then releasing over and over like she was drinking the syrup of a rapidly-melting popsicle.

That sound, like gum being chewed, it was almost as perfect as the feeling of her tongue and lips massaging his dick with splash after splash of saliva. The perfect taste of her cunt, the sound of Christi’s euphoria and her effort to gargle on his cock, and the wet softness of her mouth broke Jason’s threshold of control, leaving him with just enough time to warn Christi.

Instead of pulling her head back, Christi lowered it until the head of his cock was against the back of her throat. With the inch of exposed shaft at the base of his penis, she stroked him into a full frothy eruption, shooting two weeks of pent up semen into her throat. Sucking up every drop like the antidote to a poison, she left him with nothing but a sparse reserve load. Immediately he began to deflate, but she continued to blow him, playing around with his flaccid cock in her mouth as if for some kind of childish amusement.

After a few minutes, he returned to full-mast, much to Christi’s delight. Moving forward, she sat down on his lap and began grinding her pussy against the shaft of his cock. Reaching back, she spread her ass cheeks, letting Jason stare straight at her brown eye.

“You want this?”

“You know I do.”

Jason placed his hand on his cock and pushed it forward, bending it towards Christi. Licking her lips, she pushed her ass back and let it penetrate her, entering her body seamlessly and producing a breathtaking view. Holding herself up on her hands and knees, Christi slid back and forth on Jason’s cock, moaning from the huge mass in her anus and the friction she had to overcome. Deciding to help her, Jason grabbed her hips and pulled her back, making her yelp from the sudden rough penetration. Taking the lead, he began thrusting into her from his laid-down position, ignoring the friction gripping him and instead just driving into her hot body as hard and fast as he could. His aggression heightened Christi’s moans of euphoria, and she even leaned back in a crab walk.

“Oh god, your cock feels so good in my ass! I’m cumming! I’m cumming so hard!” she cried, thrusting her body up and then slamming herself down on Jason’s dick, trying to violate the deepest recesses of her body.

Jason began thrusting his body upwards to match her thrusts, having finally gotten lubed up enough to move freely inside her. To try and control Christi’s rhythm, he sat up and groped her breasts, barely able to hold them in his grip. Christi certainly fit the definition of the perfect body. With big tits and a tight ass, it made her easy-going personality even more lovable.

In the minutes that passed, Jason’s back began to ache from the awkward angle he was holding himself up at. He needed to change position. Putting his hands under her knees, he lifted her up and shifted sideways, sitting against back of the couch like he had originally been. Without dropping Christi’s legs, he resumed thrusting up into her like a madman, while she lied across his chest with her legs in the air, moaning in ecstasy while rubbing the swollen lips of her cunt like she was trying to put out a fire.

‘We should do this position again but record it. I really want to see how we look from the font,’ Jason thought as he felt all the muscles in his pelvic region begin tighten up.

His core muscles already burning from the strain, Jason put all of his strength into ten more thrusts and gave one final grunt as every last milliliter of seed was fired into Christi’s rectum. Jason dropped Christi’s legs, having lost all of his strength and once again flaccid. Giggling, Christi got down on the floor and began slurping up any last little sperm and her body’s lubrication, wrapping her tongue around the boneless thumb that his manhood had become.

“I love you, Christi, you know I love you, right?” he asked, suddenly feeling sentimental.

A tender smile on her face, Christi climbed up onto his lap. “I know you do, and I love you as well.”

The sun shined brightly on the rocky crag, warming the pale sandstone that sustained the form of Australia. Ducking and weaving through the bushes and trees, two children chased after each other in an ever-changing game of tag. The older sister, nine, easily caught her younger brother, seven, each and every time she was “it”. Being in the global south, Australia was on the verge of entering summer, and the temperate spine of southern Australia was experiencing a growing warmth. Just a stone’s throw away, Antarctica was beginning to sweat like a tranny in prison.

“Wait up, Jess!” the boy shouted, wishing his legs were as long as his sister’s.

At his height, trying to catch up to Jess was like trying to beat her in a bike race with him on a tiny tricycle and she on an old fashion British bicycle with the towering front wheel. Black hair swinging behind her with each step, Jess laughed as she watched her brother scramble after her. “Better hurry up, Isaac! Babies that fall behind never last long in the wild!” she cackled as she ran up the side of the mountain.

“That’s not funny!” he cried out, watching as the shallow stone slope brought her high above the trees.

The face of the mountain was solid stone and had resisted weathering and erosion for over a billion of years, never allowing anything larger than shrubbery to gain a foothold. Sitting down on the warm rock surface, Jess watched her brother sprint out of the forest with fear in his eyes, as if being chased by imaginary animals. He scurried up the mountainside and settled down beside her.

“Mom said you’re not supposed to leave me alone.”

“You were alone for thirty seconds. If something bad could happen to you in the thirty seconds I turn my back, then you DESERVE to have it happen to you.”

“Well you don’t have to be mean.”

“Oh grow up,” his sister scoffed before getting up and walking higher along the side of the mountain.

“Jess, wait!” he whined, stumbling after her as she ducked behind a protruding stone jetty, reaching out of the mountainside like the cliff from the Lion King.
He found his sister on the other side of the protrusion, crouched over what appeared to be a manhole of hard-packed soil set into the stone at an angle. It almost looked like a pit carved into the mountain, about the size of a car door but only a few inches deep.

“What is it, Jess?”

“That big storm last night washed this out and caused a lot of the dirt to melt away. Look at the sides of this pit, it’s chiseled.”

“So?”

Jess turned to him with a grin. “Someone carved this out, which means it may go deeper. In fact, someone may have buried something in here.”

“You mean like pirates?!” her brother exclaimed with his face lighting up like a Christmas tree.

“Maybe! Let’s see how deep it goes!”

“Mr. Stevens, you are pronounced innocent on all charges. Members of the jury, the state of Maine thanks you for your service.”

The banging of the gavel signaled several held breaths being released by Jason and his family. Jason already knew that this was simply a mock trial to cover up the presence of the Black Stigmata, but it still felt good to hear those words. To have someone who didn’t know him say he had done nothing wrong was a huge relief, though the guilt would never fully fade away.

Leaving the courtroom, Jason spotted Professor Nelson down the hall. “Oh, that’s my history teacher. I think I’ll go say hello,” he said.

Jason excused himself and left his parents and sister behind, but Christi came with him.

“So this is it? I’m in the clear?” he asked.

“Legally, yes. There won’t even be a mark on record. Now that that’s all taken care of, are you sure you want to join the BSC?”

Before Jason could answer, Christi grabbed his arm. “The BSC? Jason, being around those nails is the last thing you need!”

“Christi, I can’t just sit around and do nothing, not after the things I saw and the pain I felt. Professor, what do I need to do to work for the BSC?”

“There is a training program set to start in a few months. I’ll get you signed up. Considering your condition, it would be best to make sure you get all the time to recover that you need. However—” The ringing of Professor Nelson’s phone broke the conversation. “Excuse me.”

Turning his back to Jason and Christi, he answered his phone, with the teens’ attention being drawn to the one-sided dialogue.

“Hello. This is. Mr. Chairman? I certainly haven’t heard from you for a while. What’s the occasion? Wait, WHAT?” Several silent moments passed by, with the tension of Nelson’s phone call practically radiating from him like body heat. “Have they dated it? You can’t be serious! There is no way, that is just not possible!”

Jason and Christi stepped back, surprised by this sudden burst of shock in the professor. Even people in the courthouse halls were staring at him.

“Ok, when is the next flight? Perfect.”

Nelson then hung up his phone and leaned against the wall with his hand over one side of his face.

“Professor? What’s wrong?”

“They just found something in Australia… buried in a mountain. If… if this is authentic, then everything we known about the development of mankind could be wrong. Everything we thought we knew about prehistory could be a lie!”

“Professor, what did they find?!” Jason demanded, grabbing Nelson by the shoulders. Nelson stared him with blank eyes.

“The oldest mentioning of the Black Stigmata, written by humans 65 million years ago.”

“But humans weren’t around 65 millions years ago. 65 thousand maybe,” Jason argued.

“It seems we were wrong. Oh god, we were so wrong. Jason, you said you wanted to help me, well now’s your chance. You’re coming with me to Australia.”

“This is the last thing you need right now! You should be at home resting!” Christi nagged, chasing after Jason through the airport terminal.

Slung over his shoulder was a duffle bag containing a few extra pairs of clothes and other essentials that could all be found in the airport gift shops. After seeing the condition his Black Stigmata-LSD Blitzkrieg had left him in, she wanted him to be at home and in bed, yet it seemed like hearing about this cave in Australia had accelerated his recovery. No longer could he just be placed somewhere to stand or sit motionlessly for hours on end like a display mannequin; he was once again active. In fact, he was downright dedicated and stubborn.

“After what I went through, I’ll go stir crazy if I don’t do something.”

Christi reached out and grasped his hand, forcing him to stop and face her. “Please Jason, don’t let this take over your life. I don’t want you to become a chain-smoking shell of your former self like Nelson. You just got out of that facility. Just stay home for a few days. Hug your parents, talk to your sister, watch some porn for all I care! Just please do something that will actually make you smile! Don’t let this consume you!”

Jason stepped closer to Christi and surprised her by lifting her chin and softly kissing her. “I won’t, I promise.” He then pulled away from her and resumed walking towards the loading gate, but then stopped and turned to her. “Oh, and I didn’t really tell my parents about this, so do me a favor and try to come up with a good lie for them.”

Considering latitude and longitude, it was not an exaggeration to say that Jason and Professor Nelson were traveling to the opposite side of the globe. More than forty hours were spent in uncomfortable chairs with little legroom and poor air circulation. The vast majority of that time was spent with dead silence between the two men, both because neither of them were the talkative types and anything pertaining to the Black Stigmata was taboo when in public. Luckily Jason had notebooks and records of the BSC on hand for him to read through, to let him familiarize himself with the organization he was trying to get into.

“You must be Professor Chris Nelson, I’ve heard a lot about you.”

With a beard and gut that made him look like Santa Claus, the archeologist shook Nelson’s hand as soon as the former teacher stepped out of his rented jeep. He and Jason had reached the dig site, and both men were eager to see the cave.

“Professor James Titus, the BSC’s chief archeologist. I’m glad we finally meet.” The oversized dwarf then turned to Jason. “And you are…?”

“Jason Stevens, consider him a new intern,” Nelson interrupted while stomping out the butt of his cigarette. “So tell me, is it true?”

“Without a doubt. We’ve been able to carbon-date the remains of animal fat used for lanterns, and they support the initial findings. We’ve had teams of geologists in there putting their degrees to work, and they all attest to its age! 65 million years old, it’s astounding!”

Looking up at the small sandstone mountain, Nelson felt his heart rate rise.

“And you say you can read it?” Jason asked, following the two professors up the side of the mountain towards the excavation site.

“Not yet, but we believe we can decode it. There are symbols of half a dozen different ancient languages, and we can hopefully use those to figure out the message. What’s really shocking is that most of the symbols are used by the Black Stigmata.”

It took a while for the trio to make the short hike up the mountainside. For a field man, Titus was anything but fit, and Nelson’s chain smoking was coming back to bite him. Jason constantly had to stop and wait for them, praying that he would age more gracefully than they had.

“Have you ever heard of the Cambodian Stegosaurus?” Nelson asked, trying to pass the time.

“I do recall that name, but nothing else.”

“In an ancient Cambodian temple, there is a depiction of what many people consider to be a stegosaurus in the wild. Even I’ll admit it looks genuine. It’s one of the most popular arguments for the Young Earth Creationists. They claim it to be proof that humans and dinosaurs coexisted like something out of the Flintstones.”

“And to think, men like us would laugh at them!”

“Meh, we can still laugh. Even if this site is truly authentic, they’re still wrong about the age of the planet. If we’re right, humans and dinosaurs may have coexisted, but they did so tens of millions of years ago.”

Upon finally reaching the narrow cavern, Titus offered the first entrance to Nelson. Lantern in hand, he slowly lowered himself down the 35º shaft, moving in an awkward crab walk with Jason following him and then Titus. The sides of the shaft were still lined with dirt, but much of it had been cleaned away to reveal the chiseled sandstone. No cracks or seams could be found in the rock. The mountain was a single unbroken bump of the earth.

Thirty feet down into the mountain, the passage finally opened up into a chamber the size of a stream-line trailer, with lights already set up to shine on the cavern walls. The walls themselves had been meticulously cleaned, with the dirt removed without damaging the stone. With the soil removed, black symbols stood out on the wall as if written in ink, due to the lights on the ground shining up onto the engravings. Vast lines of ancient text had been written into the stone with perfect skill and precise detail. At the far end of the chamber was a depiction of a Black Stigmata nail as large as Nelson’s arm, with a human eye beneath it like the dot of an exclamation point.

“Looking at this, I can’t help but wonder if these goddamn nails are as old as the earth itself…” said Titus as Nelson and Jason stared at the walls, completely awestruck.

“My god…” Nelson muttered, crouching down and holding his glasses out like a magnifier to increase the size of the symbols on the wall.

“Professor?”
“Symbols of the Black Stigmata are incorporated into these lines. And look; there’s some Latin, Egyptian, Archaic Chinese, Sumerian, and symbols from countless other ancient languages, just like we were told.”

“So… this could be the world’s oldest language, couldn’t it?” asked Jason.

“Precisely. Whether he had decoded it himself or already knew it, the man who made this tunnel understood the language of the Black Stigmata. Or perhaps the symbols of the Black Stigmata were once used for a language, after being adopted by early humans. These lines are an intermediary stage of the evolution of the Black Stigmata language turning into human languages, like the birth of Spanglish in North America. After 65 million years, so much of this must be obsolete, but if we can find meaning and a link between them, then we may be able to find the same meaning in the symbols as they originally had. For all we know, the Black Stigmata may be manmade, with the symbols being an actual human language, perhaps the first language in the history of the world.”

“We have a camp set up nearby with detailed scans of every surface of this cave. We’ll have everything you need to decode it,” Titus said excitedly.

“We have no time to lose. Let’s get going.”

About the follow Jason and Titus back up the tunnel, Nelson stopped and shined his light down at the ground. Under the end of his shoe was a stone the size of his hand, gleaming from the illumination of his light. His brow furrowed in curious agitation, he reached down and examined the rock.

“Professor?” Titus called out, watching as Nelson turned his attention to the walls and ceiling of the cave.

“This rock doesn’t belong here. It’s not sandstone and there aren’t any mineral veins in here that it could have broken off from. Plus it’s too weathered to have not come from outside. It’s not hard enough for sharpening and not sharp enough for carving. I doubt it fell down here, considering the composition of the mountain… This was placed here. But why?”

The three men were locked in silent contemplation.

“Göbekli Tepe.”

Both professors turned to Jason.

“Excuse me?” asked Titus.

“What, I figured you two of all people would know about Göbekli Tepe. Don’t you watch Ancient Aliens?”

“First of all, of course we know about Göbekli Tepe. We’re not talking about some indi-rock band. Second, I sure as hell don’t watch that drivel and I hope for the sake of the entire field of archeology that Professor Titus doesn’t either. We’re historians, not schizophrenic scientologists.”

“Hey, Ancient Aliens can be a very informative show and you know it! You just have to look past the personal opinions and theories!” Jason shot back.

“It’s nothing BUT opinions. It’s the FOX News of lunatics who believe that Big Foot was a genetic experiment and the Loch Ness Monster is telepathic. It’s hard to listen to show when the spokesman has the hair of a gigolo from the 70’s.”

“You’re just jealous that your hair isn’t that good.”

“Can we PLEASE get back to the matter at hand?!” Titus interrupted.

Jason looked back at Nelson. “This isn’t over.”

“Oh shut up and get on with it.”

“All right. On Ancient Aliens, they said that only way a temple complex as old as Göbekli Tepe could remain in such good condition is if it was buried intentionally after its creation. Think about it: even in this cave, these carvings are not safe from the elements. Water, wind, temperature changes, animals, and vegetation could all reduce these engravings to nothing more than rugged stone if left alone for 65 millions years. This cave is man-made right? It’s chiseled?”

“Yes, that is correct,” Titus answered.

“Why would someone spend all that time and energy carving out a tunnel when there were probably thousands of other caves within walking distance that nature had already formed? It’s because that tunnel would be far more stable and solid than any opening naturally created through fissures or running water. The maker carved a tunnel into the very center of a solid mountain and then filled it with dirt and rocks to prevent the carvings from being damaged. This mountain wasn’t simply a canvas for him to write on, the mountain itself is being used to protect the engravings like bubble wrap. He wanted these engravings to stand the test of time and be rediscovered.”

“If that’s true, then whoever formed this tunnel would have a strong knowledge of geology and would understand the changes that occur in the earth over the course of millions of years. He picked this solid mountain specifically because it was guaranteed to survive earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, shifting of plate tectonics, changing coastlines, and everything else that would destroy historical records. It’s like America burying radioactive waste deep in salt mines where it can do no harm, except the maker wanted this chamber to be rediscovered long after his death. He wanted people to find it and learn the truth and was planning millions or even billions of years ahead.”

“But what could this information be that is so important to deserve such protection?” Titus inquired.

“The maker of this cave wanted this information to be found… He wanted it to remain intact at all costs. He wanted it to exist long after his death, to be here… when mankind could finally use it. He knew that someone from his period could not stop the Black Stigmata in time, so he left this knowledge as a time capsule, waiting for it to be rediscovered by people who could put it to good use. This information has a beneficial purpose, it has a meaning, a use… This cave may tell us how to stop the Black Stigmata once and for all.”

The BSC camp was a town of tents and trailers, filled with people from the organization brought together to help investigate the scene. The job was split up into two divisions: translating the text on the walls from their numerous languages and figuring out the meaning in the Black Stigmata symbols depending on their placement in the words seen. Because of the age of the engravings, it would be a miracle if the message could be deciphered. 65 million years, the very idea of human society being around that long made people’s heads spin. If even half of the languages used in the engravings still existed after so long, there was still the issue of syntax and vocabulary. Symbols could have easily changed their meaning or even ceased to exist just a thousand years ago. Ancient Hindi was already considered a lost language, incapable of translation, so the decipher team was truly blessed to have as much leeway as they did.

Having originally hoped to be on the front lines in deciphering this message from the past, Jason found himself instead as everyone’s errand boy. Coffee, books, scans, x-rays, and notes were always in his hands, about to be delivered to someone much more important than him. Oh well, Nelson had said that he was essentially just an intern; he should have expected this. Besides, considering how badly he failed Latin class in high school and Spanish in middle school, he couldn’t imagine being anything but a nuisance if he actually tried to work alongside these skilled linguists and historians. He was just some dopey college student from Maine who didn’t even know what he was majoring in. He was happy for the work though, as he finally felt like he was being at least slightly useful.

After the first few days of work, when all possible information could be gleaned from the cavern, the investigation was moved into the nearby town and an office building was rented for BSC use.

Jason tossed and turned on his small cot, stuck in a half-asleep state. Memories from his coma were continuing to return, very specific memories. What he had endured while comatose was not like when he entered the psychotic stage of the Black Stigmata; his memories of what happened to him were all too clear. As soon as he had woken up, he had been assailed with memories of all the ways he had suffered and died, but there were times when what he saw and experienced overwhelmed him and left him unable to remember. Every time he slept, his mind managed to uncover a few of these memories, lying at the very bottom of the toxic stew of pain and suffering from his coma. Almost every night, the same memory played after a montage of new memories were revealed: the scene in the hospital.

“Colleen!” he exclaimed, waking up and falling off his cot in the process.

He lay there for several seconds on the rough carpet, feeling the woven threads rub against his skin like hair stubbles. He was drenched in sweat, his mind playing the memory over and over again. He remembered what he had done to her, his own sister. Unbeknownst to Jason, what he thought had been a simple dream of raping his sister was actually the power of the Black Stigmata allowing his hallucinations to reach out and brush against Colleen’s dreams, for their minds to join and let them fulfill the twisted act of incest.

Mentally twisted beyond repair, his sister had asked him to rape her, and as a broken man under the influence of drugs and abominable evil that would put the devil to shame, he had taken advantage of her and brutalized her. He remembered her screams and blood as he took advantage of a heavily wounded and mentally unstable girl. It was not like when the Black Stigmata used him as a puppet to rape that woman, he had simply had his inhibitions stripped away to the point where he acted on some form of malicious instinct and raw sexual drive. But whether his sister had been just a figment of his imagination or was really there, it didn’t matter. To him, what he did was real. Some part of his soul had wanted to use and abuse his little sister, it existed somewhere deep inside him, as real as the blood in his veins.

Overwhelmed with guilt and disgust, he pushed himself to his feet and started walking down the halls of the office building. He wasn’t the only person sleeping on a tiny cot in this building; many of the staff had to camp out here for the brief times they were allowed to sleep. Most of the crew had been put up in nearby hotels, but the BSC budget left much to be desired. Due to him being an unofficial intern, Jason was at the bottom of the barrel in terms of amenities. But he had a bed in an empty office, access to bathrooms with showers, and got to eat the food that the BSC ordered in. It was certainly far from glamorous, but it kept him busy, and he needed that now more than ever.

Staggering like a zombie, he soon found himself in the office that Professor Nelson was working in. It was a quarter to 3, but the professor was working tirelessly at his desk. The floor was covered in food wrappers and half-eaten meals, stacks of books weighed down on his desk, the trashcan was half-full of cigarette butts and empty cartons, and the professor’s face was finally starting to show his age. Jason honestly didn’t know if the professor had slept for a single hour since arriving in Australia.

“Can’t sleep?” Nelson asked, not taking his eyes off his work.

“I don’t know if I want to.”

“It’ll get better, just wait.”

Jason looked up at the ceiling, chuckling to himself as he saw the greasy smoke stains worn into the white tiles by all of Nelson’s cigarettes. Truth be told, the room reeked unbearably of cigarettes, and would probably never smell nice ever again.

“You were a Host, weren’t you?” Jason finally asked.

Once again, Nelson spoke without looking up from his work. “I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you’ve been waiting for a long time to ask me that, instead of JUST NOW figuring it out.”

“I kind of knew it when you showed up in that interrogation room back in Maine. You always talk about Hosts, not as an observer or “expert” on them, but as a first-hand experiencer. How did it happen? Were you exposed to a nail while working for the BSC? Were you a Host first and then devoted yourself to studying the nails?”

“The second one.”

“How far did you get through the steps?”

Nelson finally leaned back in his chair and looked at Jason, taking a moment to light up a fresh cigarette. “I had just finished creating two more nails when I was arrested and put in BSC custody.”

Jason’s eyes widened as he imagined the professor performing the ritual. “You mean you actually went through all the steps?”

“Not all of them. I didn’t have time to place the body in a location where it would be found and the nails would find new Hosts. But it doesn’t matter; the damage was already done. Every time I close my eyes, I see her face.”

“The Homunculus?” Jason hesitantly asked.

Nelson had never been this open. Had sleep-deprivation broken through the silent shell he normally kept around himself?

The professor sighed. “She was my neighbor’s daughter, eight years old. I knew her well and she looked up to me like I was a member of her family. I believe I told you how a host must destroy the humanity of a female victim. The whole time the Black Stigmata was forcing me to rape her, to torture her, and make her a suitable incubator for new nails, she wouldn’t stop crying. She begged me to stop, asked me why I was doing it, why I was hurting her. She apologized over and over again, thinking she had done something to make me angry with her. I wanted to stop more than you could possibly imagine, but to defy the Black Stigmata when its hold over you is that strong is like standing in a suit of red-hot armor; just the slightest movement burns you.”
Pulling away his glasses, Nelson revealed two tear streaks running from his bloodshot eyes. “A pen and pencil, I drove them into her eyes to end her life and create more nails. By that time, I had been sobbing for so hard and so long that I could barely see and my eyes were bloody. I had thrown up so many times that my stomach was shriveled up. I was so glad to have finally killed her, twisted as that may sound. When you perform the ritual, every moment is spent thinking on how long it would take her to recover if something interrupted you. If cops stormed in, if the Black Stigmata suddenly lost its hold, if the ceiling above your head spontaneously caved in and ended your life. You think about the time it would take for her wounds to heal, for doctors to repair the damage to her genital region, for therapists to bring her back from the brink, for her to be able to get better and live a normal life.

But there comes a time in the ritual when you realize that there is no recovery from this. What you’re doing to her will never be something as simple as a painful memory. You’ve broken her, you’ve destroyed her innocence, you’ve made it so that life can be nothing but a hellish nightmare, even if she did somehow escape and survive. You realize that she would be better off dead. But you can’t grant her that mercy; the Black Stigmata won’t allow you to stop the ritual. It forces you to continue torturing her, carving out bits of her flesh for each symbol. Soon you’re begging to be allowed to kill her, to end her young life and spare her more pain.

After the BSC captured me, I underwent the LSD treatment and started working for them. After all the damage I had done, I decided I would do everything I could to prevent the creation of more hosts and victims. I studied accounts of the Black Stigmata long into the nights and hardened my heart so that those damned nails would never make me their puppet again.”

“What happened to the girl’s family?” Jason asked after several silent moments passed.

“They were told that the girl had been kidnapped and murdered, they never knew it was me and they weren’t allowed to see the body. The last thing I heard about them was their suicides.”

“You know, I can’t get over how much this changes human history. I mean… I thought humans originated in Africa and migrated eastward, but if we were really around back during the time of Pangaea, then that whole theory goes right out the window. How were we so wrong?” Jason muttered, spinning in a chair in the office that Nelson was using.

This was one of the few times that he was able to actually stop and rest. The BSC had him working like a dog almost nonstop. Goddamn, he knew he was doing this so that he could be of use, but these people had better be paying him or at least giving him something for all this work. He certainly couldn’t put this on a resume.

“Unfortunately, history is not an exact science. Contrary to what people think when it comes to dinosaur bones, skeletons do not last forever. There is a cave in Belize called Actun Tunichil Muknal, where Mayan children were ritualistically sacrificed. They’ve been there for so long that their skeletons have actually fused with the cave and become one with the stone. Considering their conditions, it’s no surprise that we rarely find a human skeleton older than a few tens of thousands of years. The reason why you never hear about any ancient Indian burial grounds being found back home is because Maine’s soil is more acidic than normal, deteriorating the bones.”

Nelson was leaned back in his own chair with a wet rag over his eyes. He had been working nonstop since arriving to Australia, but he had barely made any headway. His eyesight had degenerated to the point where he could barely navigate the office building.

“But when you consider the fact that archeologists have found skeletons of Neanderthals and early humanoids that are maybe one or two hundred-thousand years old, you can’t help but wonder what the hell the person who made this cave was like. Was he some kind of lizard man? Was he an alien? Could he have been some kind of time traveler?”

“You’ve been watching Ancient Aliens again, haven’t you? Well it is very possible that there was a humanoid species long before humanity’s supposed migration out of Africa. Humans are merely one evolutionary path, so that path could have been repeated.

By the way, have you finished reading those BSC manuals I gave you?”

“Front to back, three times. I reread the main handbook whenever I can.”

“Well that should be enough for you to get your intern ID. We’ll photograph you and mail you your credentials, as well as a containment canister.”

“So I’ll be ready to start working for the BSC, looking for nails?”

“Oh hell no. Reading a few books and being able to handle a Host are two completely different things. There is training you need to go through, a lot of training, and like I said, you still need to recover. Listen, Jason, I want you to go back home,” said the professor, taking the rag off his eyes.

“What?! I can’t leave this!” Jason exclaimed as he jumped from his seat.

“We’ve barely made any progress on figuring out that text, and at the rate we’re going, you’ll be delivering coffee until Groundhog’s Day. Go home, spend some time with your family. You’ve certainly been away from them for too long.”

“But what about when you do manage to decode it?”

“Then we’ll fly you back here if you’re that desperate. Your plane leaves tomorrow, no arguing. Go home.”

Stopping his car at the end of his driveway, Jason got out and checked the mailbox. Inside, he found a heavy cardboard cylinder and a manila envelope. Returning to his car at the end of the long dirt lane, he opened up the packages. Having finally returned home, he was doing everything he could to buy himself time before he would have to confront his family. He had been gone for over a week and he didn’t really leave a good reason or excuse. He had just written a note that said that there was something he had to do and he would be gone for a while. He hadn’t answered any of his parents’ calls or told them where he was going.

Inside the manila envelope, he found a copy of the BSC handbook Nelson had lent him, containing information and protocols. There was also a smaller envelope containing his BSC credentials. Nineteen years old and he was an intern for a secret international organization with ties to every government. Damn. As much as he wished that the Black Stigmata had never found him, looking at the laminated ID and the training manual filled him with a strange sense of pride. Finally he could do something, he could help out and prevent tragedies from occurring.

Inside the cylinder, he found a large metal canister. Nelson had told him about these things before during the Australia trip and he had read about them in the books. Canisters like these were used to trap the Black Stigmata, and should he actually get his hands on a nail (and only while wearing gloves), he had to immediately seal the artifact in the canister and call up the BSC superiors in the area. They would take his canister and give him a new one, as well as take the Host into protective custody.

“This is real…”

He looked back at his house, past a row of trees in the curve of the unpaved driveway, about five hundred meters from the road. Maybe he could rent a motel room for the night until he figured out what he would tell his family… No, no, he had to do this. Damn, this was the real downside of being nineteen: it’s even more unbelievable to say you work for the government than anyone else. If he told his parents what he was doing, what he had done, and what he was going to do, they would think he was pulling a prank on them or had fallen for some spam mail joke and just wasted all of his money on a fake ID card and pimped out soup thermos.

‘Nothing left to do…’ he thought to himself, shifting hid car back into drive and moving up the dirt driveway.

It was late in the afternoon on the weekend, so of course his parents were home. Great. Coming to a stop in front of the house, he got out with his duffle bag over his shoulder and his BSC tools in his hands. Taking one deep breath after another, he moved up the cold stone steps, climbed onto the creaky paint-stripped porch, and pushed open the door.

“Mom, dad, I’m home!”

In a measure of time so small that he could not think up a word for it, his mom appeared before him a like a genie from its lamp and smacked him so hard that he was knocked to the ground.

“WHERE THE FUCK HAVE YOU BEEN, YOU INCONSIDERATE LITTLE SHIT?! TWO WEEKS WITHOUT A SINGLE PHONE CALL! I’VE BEEN WORRIED SICK ABOUT YOU!”

“I’m sorry! There was something I had to do and I couldn’t tell anyone! I didn’t even know how to explain it!” Jason exclaimed, shielding himself from his mother’s smacks.

Like a shark lunging out of the water to catch a seal, his dad’s hair-backed hand came into view and clamped around his collar. He was dragged to his feet and pulled through the house like a bag of garbage. He was then thrown at the kitchen table, banging the side of his stomach on the corner with enough force to leave an immediate bruise. By tomorrow morning, it would be jet-black and stretch up from his hip to his armpit. Head spinning, he looked around and saw his parents standing over him, while behind them, Colleen stood with a pair of crutches under her arms and a look of both concern and anger on her face.

“Start talking,” his dad ordered without his teeth ever separating.

Sighing, Jason placed the containment canister on the dinner table.

At the sight of the metal item, Colleen gasped with her face as white as the ground outside. “Is this about that nail? The one I found in your car?” she murmured, thinking back to when she met Professor Nelson in the hospital.

She had been under anesthesia with only one working eye, but she remembered that meeting clearly and what had happened. The canister was exactly like the one Nelson had used to lock up that strange nail. Both teens’ parents shifted their gaze back and forth between them, wondering what Colleen was talking about.

“Colleen, did you know about this?” her mom asked.

“I… uh… not really. When I was in the hospital, some guy named Nelson came into my room and asked me if I had found a nail since Jason was arrested. He said that it was a matter of life and death and that he was trying to help Jason. I told him the nail was in my bag and he took it and put it in a cylinder like that one.”

“I wish I could have gone without telling all of you, but it seems like that option flew out the window. The man you met was my history teacher, Professor Nelson. He’s also one of the chief consultants for an international organization that operates similar to the UN and Interpol. It’s called the BSC. Colleen, that nail…” Jason trailed off, unable to look at her. Shifting his gaze to the ground with his hands clenched into trembling fists, he resumed speaking. “It’s because you found that nail that you were attacked. That nail is called the Black Stigmata and there are millions or even billions more out there. They’re cursed, pure fucking evil. Anyone who gets close to one has their life ruined.”

“What is this bullshit?” his father asked impatiently while his mother went to console Colleen, who was beginning to hyperventilate as she thought back to the nail and her rape.

“It’s what drove Tim Jones mad!” Jason shouted, shocking everyone so deeply that Colleen’s panic attack was smothered with fear.

“It was in his house, I found it when I went inside. It twisted my mind as soon as I laid eyes on it and I was compelled to take it! Ever since then, it has tormented me with nightmares and hallucinations. It has been trying to make me commit the same crimes that Tim had; that’s what it does. It latches onto someone like a parasite and makes them suffer or forces them to make others suffer.

That night when I went to Christi’s place, when I was pulled over…. The nail killed that cop because he got in its way and tried to take it from me. Nelson came and helped me, he arranged for me to be kept in solitary confinement because it was the only way to cure me of the nail’s influence. Because I was gone, Colleen found the nail. In that locker room, it stripped those three girls of their inhibitions and their humanity and turned them into sadists.”

“You have got a lot of nerve if you think a story that bad will cover your ass,” his dad growled.

“It was a Black Stigmata nail that triggered the prison riot and brought down that plane, I saw the nail itself and spoke with the man who brought it in. This is why I never told anyone about how I escaped, because I wanted to keep it a secret. That nail drove everyone in the prison insane and caused them to commit the most brutal acts of torture on each other. I’m not talking about just prisoners; guards were going insane and butchering each other. I had to kill almost twenty people in order to escape, using guns I stole from some SWAT officers who slaughtered each other.
Dad… I saw people in the hallways eating each other. I saw guards peel away strips of flesh from corpses and chew on it like a raw steak. I saw men stabbed over and over again so that they could be raped in the stab wounds. I saw lynched bodies burning. I saw guards and prisoners alike holding makeshift spears with corpses skewered on the end, showering blood by the liter with every shake. I saw a man… bury a kitchen knife in his throat, carve open his chest down to his pelvis, pull open the sides, and let his organs spill out onto the floor before dying. I saw over a hundred people chase me like rabid dogs, screaming at the top of their lungs and covered in blood, knowing that they would kill me in the most brutal way possible. I saw a plane fall out of the sky and crash into the prison like salt being poured onto a wound in my very soul.”

The way Jason spoke, with that dry zombie-like tone and dead eyes that stared off into the distance, was unlike anything his parents or his sister had ever seen. Jason had always been a skilled liar, but this… this was real trauma.

“I told Christi all about it and she can back me up. After I escaped, I went to see Christi and Nelson found me, then he let me visit Colleen.”

Their parents’ eyes shifted to her.

“It’s true, he visited me and said he would be gone for a while.”

“I asked if I could become a member of the BSC and he said only after I managed to fully break free of the Black Stigmata’s control. I was sent to that rehabilitation clinic, not for PTSD or just to keep me locked up until my fake trial. I was there so that I could undergo a cold-turkey cleansing process to free myself. Using drugs to forever scar my mind, I endured the most brutal 48 hours anyone this side of Purgatory can imagine.

After that, Nelson and I went to Australia, where we found something that told us the whole story of the Black Stigmata. I was there for a week, helping the BSC any way I could. While I was there, I got my picture taken, filled out all the proper paperwork, and became an employee of the BSC. Actually, I’m just an intern…” As he spoke, he handed his laminated ID to his father. “You want to know why the state is going to Hell? It’s because the Black Stigmata are multiplying like rabbits and driving everyone insane. My job as a BSC employee is to help identify Hosts and acquire nails before they can do any harm, using this canister. Think of it as like a miniature nuclear flask. Now if you’ll excuse me, I am SEVERELY jetlagged and I am going to bed.”

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