Ethan's eyelids fluttered open, like shutters opening up to light. His pupils reacted sharply, causing him to squint.
Strangely, he lay in a dark room.
First, he recognized two different scents;
A familiar taste of iron blooming on his tongue and in the air. Followed by another… more pungent odour.
It wouldn't take a child any more than seconds to ascertain it.
His nose wrinkled instinctively in disgust.
"Where the hell am I?"
He tried to pull himself up using his hands but felt some world crunching pain in return.
"Ahhh?!"
It momentarily seared through him, dulling every other senses for a while.
He tried to use his right hand to ward off the pungent odour – as any other normal person would react – but instead of it moving, his arm didn't budge.
Instead, a new spasm of pain flooded through it, gaslighting his mind for a split moment.
His arm?
He tilted his head downwards in surprise, still gritting his teeth.
Almost immediately, the colour left in his face flooded out, leaving it pale and breathless.
He snapped his head upwards, as though to avoid the sight, almost spraining his neck.
His breath hitched, as he tried to contain the pain with a grimace. Horrified at what he would find, he glanced down again at his arm.
Sure enough, it was twisted at a strange angle.
He tore his eyes away a second time, disgusted, but returned them a moment later to examine the wounds.
He had to anyways. He would at some point.
How it came about, he had no inkling.
Hell, he couldn't even remember the last few hours.
For a seventeen year old teenager, that was no ordinary anemia.
Splinters of bone poked out of his arm stubbornly, initiating a wave of pain each time he moved that arm.
But Ethan didn't care. Oddly enough, the pain had settled, like he was familiar with it.
Better still, that verified a single thing.
He didn't break his arm by mistake or any unintended injury.
Someone had tried to smash it. Better to say, the person actually smashed it.
Someone had tried to kill him. And nearly succeeded.
Ethan reached a clear resolution in spite of his buzzing mind.
For starters, he had to get out of wherever he was.
'Right now, I've got to run or I will get burnt along with the trash. I only hope my leg isn't broken too.'
For the first time since he woke up, Ethan took a good look around himself.
He lay in a dimly lit dirty room, without windows.
'Some sort of dungeon?!'
But then, he noticed something bizarre.
Stacks of something with no definite shape lay on both sides of him, and from his peripheral vision, all around him too.
No definite shape…just a bundle of trash…
Trash?!
Now he knew where all that stink had been oozing from all this while.
He was in a refuse dump.
And he wasn't in any regular dump…he was in an incinerator!
'Really a good way to arise from the dead…about to be incinerated…' he chuckled to himself.
He tried twisting his body to look for a sort of hold to pull himself up, but it happened again.
That pain. It blazed to life, turning his blood to a churning furnace.
Every warm hum dribbling beneath his skin felt like lightning pulverizing his very soul.
Dreading what he would find, he shifted his gaze to his chest region.
How come he hadn't noticed it before?
On his left breast, a gory hole lay open. Not one that was cleanly carved.
Instead, it was gouged. Viciously. Bloody. Morbid. Drenched with the very scourge of death.
Around it, lay twisted pieces of flesh, remnant pieces of his ribcage and broken shards of metal.
Ethan's breath hitched horribly, he began to tremble uncontrollably, his hand hanging mere centimeters over that hole.
Yet again, he dreaded everything about him at the moment.
Without checking, he knew what was missing.
The emptiness he felt. No joy. No memories.
Only pain...and emptiness.
His heart was gone.
Ethan lay a hand over the hollow skinform, finding some sort of comfort in the blood still bubbling up.
He was...still alive.
His heart had been ripped out, but he was still alive!
How it came about, he didn't want to know.
But if this happened, it couldn't be due to normal circumstances.
Someone with a power over death had interfered and intervened.
Ethan didn't believe in most things. But he believed in gods.
'I've got to leave the thinking for later, I have to find a way out of here first!'
Using the wall next to him to drag himself up, without upsetting his useless right arm, he dragged his body upright.
The room seemed to have no exit…at least that was what he thought at first.
Until he saw the trapdoor.
Incinerators were regularly built underground, but they often had little irregular gashes crudely made to let the smoke out, little at a time.
But this one seemed perfectly sealed. Almost like it was a death chamber.
Ethan's head flushed with a lot of possibilities in the next second.
First, he had woken up with a mangled right arm and a missing heart, with no memory of how he ended up there.
Next, he found out that he was in an incinerator refashioned into a death trap.
A real convenient turnout of events. Unless…
Yeah, he wasn't wrong from the start…someone really wanted him dead.
But then, he recalled hopefully, someone divine, also wanted him to stay alive.
An attempt to take a step forward led him crashing into a tall stack of debris. As expected, it had no weight and gave way.
He fell violently on his left shoulder. He rolled over on his back and glanced at the ceiling with a grim smile.
"Here we go again."
His voice was hoarse, like he hadn't used it in ages.
Regardless, he had more pressing matters.
As he hit the ground, he'd have sworn he heard a little crack when his shoulder hit the ground.
And the pain he felt there too…he wasn't imagining it.
Great. Now, he had two broken arms.
He heaved a heavy sigh, settling comfortable into the debris.
The stench, combined with the acrid stink didn't bother him any longer.
"I'm sorry, Strange–god, but I've got no will to keep on living. Thanks for your second chance and all, but I think I'll pass..."
He lay there peacefully, a twisted grin plastered on his face, his head next to a half burnt pink piece of clothing.
Suddenly, a familiar but dying scent reached him…one almost overwhelmed by the acrid stench of smoke.
It had come from that pink piece of clothing.
He rolled away suddenly, inflicting more pain on his injured shoulder in the process.
It reminded him of sweaty nights, underneath warm blankets of a dark, musty room.
A brothel, to be precise…
He also remembered vague continuous quick thrusting movements, egged on by sensual moans.
...The rustles of rats scurrying around the corner of the threadbare room…
A shadowy outline rose, throwing a shirt on, while dropping a few notes for the exhausted slim woman wrapped in sheets.
'You're getting stronger …' she smiled, her voice echoing far too loud for a mere flashback.
Ethan shook his head violently, finally resorting to banging it on the cobblestone floor to clear it.
"Wait…I may have been a lot of things, but I was not a pervert!"
Stifling silence fell all around him.
As though all the debris had turned sentient and calmly chided him at his obviously fake claim.
He could especially almost feel the pink female underwear piece glaring at him angrily.
"Who exactly am I?"
When he woke up, he only had a single thing lodged in the vast chasms he called his mind.
Only a single word…his name, Ethan.
He remembered nothing more. Not even his surname nor anything close.
Yet from the memory he'd just seen (Well, he just knew he was the figure in that flashback), he was obviously someone.
Someone a little bit influential. A silver spoon guy.
Somehow, he knew that prostitutes were very expensive there at the capital. Yet, he could afford to visit them regularly.
He clapped his left hand to his forehead, ignoring the pain it cost him.
Whatever was going on, he had to find out sooner or later.
Ethan began to force himself up, using only his feet.
It took the best of the next five minutes, but he achieved it.
He tried to find a clue–anything worthwhile that could make him remember who he was.
Searching for something unidentifiable in a dark room full of debris didn't really give off hopeful vibes, so he abandoned the attempt halfway.
For sure, he was human. Maybe, he had died and came back, but he was still undoubtedly human.
Well, he might as well not be one, but he still acted and reasoned like one, so...
In the midst of all these random ruminations, a single thought rose to prominence.
The first useful one he'd had since he woke up.
Well, it was an old excerpt from a book he'd once read. Just a single sentence.
At the same time he remembered it, an inanimate projection of hell descended on him, in the form of pain.
He didn't scream, nor roll about like some mad fellow.
He just lay still, staring up at the low ceiling, unseeing.
But beneath his skin?
Heat hotter than melting iron blazed through his veins, igniting him from the inside.
His brain seemed to be melting under the heat, which also featured prominently in his head.
Raw, unbridled pain seared through every single circulatory tube of every sort, disorienting his nervous system in the process.
Somehow, the order from his brain to scream or wriggle in pain didn't reach his mouth.
But in the midst of all these, he could still think.
His body was handicapped, but his mind wasn't.
He then remembered what had caused all these in the first place.
He had recalled a random thought...one that may lead him to recover his memories.
May...
What would a statement do to help improve his predicament at the moment?!
Well, as it turned out in the next few minutes, a lot.
Infact, the next few minutes changed his perspective on who he was...
Human, or not.