The doctor observed Elias' body with a frown. His veins were filled with black liquid, his eyes covered with murky black water. She could see the monster looking at her through those eyes, mocking her, taunting her, knowing she couldn't do anything to stop it.
It had gotten worse. Elias' stump had begun to grow, but with black unhealthy flesh, writhing with veins.
Suck!
Suck!
The sucking sound filled the tent like a grotesque, unsettling noise.
Elias' eyes swiveled toward her, mocking her, taunting her to do something. The doctor did nothing; she wrote something on her tablet and took a sigh but reserved her thoughtful comment.
As he reached the alley's end, he smiled. He was 3 meters tall, robust, broad-shouldered, with a sharper jawline and powerful fists. He had speed that could reach five Mach, durability to survive a mountain falling on his head, and absolute immunity to all sickness and disease.
Also, he had a claw hand that could tear through space like glass.
He was at optimum power, but there was a seed of fear that had sprouted and now had grown branches.
To step back meant the fear would explode, killing him, and he would lose everything. To step forward, outside, he would keep everything but he would be...
Elias stepped forward. His elated emotions of power, of regaining his limb, vanished. A grinning head molded out of the trail of black smoke made by his hair floated above him like a puppeteer with Elias as the puppet.
Fear and terror filled Elias' whole body, his mind teetering on the brink of collapse. This power came with a price, and the price was eternal servitude. The servitude of the worst kind, as he was nothing but a food bank.
His robust, broad shoulders slumped, his eyes drooped down, and his head bent in surrender. The creature's grins widened.
Elias' chest blew away. His heart and ribs gone, and he looked up, a strange cruel smile plastered on his face.
"Is that all you can offer?" As Elias spoke in a mocking tone, a black hole appeared in his blown-out chest and sucked everything in.
The grinning black head panicked, trying to pull back, anchoring itself to the tall buildings of the alley, but they too crumbled and devoured by the insatiable singularity.
The vast expanse cracked and was devoured.
Elias' real body jerked, his back and waist convexed, black veins and the claw hand sucked toward Elias' chest.
His eyes snapped open and he breathed with difficulty as an oxygen mask was placed on his nose. His mind refreshed fast; his heart calmed down.
"Elias!" His name was called. A tall woman wearing a doctor's uniform stood by his side. "Can you relax your body!"
Elias then noticed his position—on the bed, his whole center pushed forward as if something anchored him up and he didn't have control over his body.
"Relax. This is just a reaction to the expulsion of something from your body!"
Elias stopped trying so hard and pulled his talent; immediately his body began to relax as he lay flat.
But he didn't feel the strain on his neck from doing that.
"Please sit."
Using his stump and weak left hand, he struggled up and sat, only short kept his chastity.
Oxygen masks were removed from his face as he calmed down. His senses confirmed he truly was back in the real world.
"Now. Try not to fall asleep for the next 24 hours."
Elias shook his head to stay awake.
"And... I want you to look up. I will remove something from you. It will be painful, and no one will hold you, and I don't want you moving away or using your hand."
As she said that, like a click, Elias felt something writhing on his chest and he screeched, "Remove that shit!"
An overwhelming violating and revolting feeling gripped him. He didn't heed her words as he went to grab it, but the woman was faster and yanked the thing out.
Elias welcomed the pain and held back the spine-breaking agony that assaulted him. He fell down below the bed, panting. "Thank you. Thank you!"
"It's alright!" she said as she stored the thing, which was a coagulation of writhing blood formed into a solid object.
Elias crawled back with difficulty, as his left hand was still weak, and sat down. He still felt violated beyond comparison.
It took him time before he looked at his chest. The revulsion was gone, but the sight of where that thing had been removed made him cringe before his stomach churned violently and he vomited nothing.
His stomach was empty.
The feeling was weird, and he preferred broken bones to that. If he could go too far, he would give his other hand to never encounter that thing again.
The doctor observed all his reactions, his reeling around, and his facial expressions. After about an hour, Elias began to calm down before settling on his back.
She looked at her tablet and wrote "SSS Rank."
She turned and left allowing other nurses to come in. His body was rubbed with some liquid before three different IVs were put on him before they left him alone.
He looked at his chest again. Around the location the skin was peeled away, and it stung a little while dull blood dripped out.
"Welcome back, Red!" The Buddhist Hand spoke. To Elias' left, the thin tent fabric that separated them showed a silhouette.
"I'm not the only one?"
"With all certainty. I wonder what your dream was?" Buddhist Hand asked.
"Ah. That. It's weird." Elias shook his head. The dream left him with a bad taste of servitude and the idea of being a food bank.
"From all indications, you have followed the creature's desire!" Buddhist Hand said with difficulty.
Elias frowned. He didn't say a thing. 'Is he interrogating me?'
The fabric separating them fell, and their tents became somewhat one.
"What the..." Elias was startled as he saw the condition of the hulking boy, now reduced to a bare skeleton.
Buddhist Hand forced a smile and said, "I refused its calling to the very end, and the price was my bodily fluids draining until I was just a husk. That's when I broke away from it, held and defeated its influence."
His voice was aged, trembling like pleading, with a cry underneath his tone.
"Congratulations. You survived," was all Elias could say.
"I don't know. Maybe my way was wrong. I resisted the temptation, but you seem to have followed it yet still broke away. What was your dream?"
Elias realized the boy just wanted to talk. Since they must not sleep for the next 24 hours, conversation was one way to keep him up until the IV fluid entering him recovered him to a degree.
"It was a vast white expanse. I was...at the end of an alley. What I seemed to understand in that location was that I should walk and leave the alley, and I just did that."
"Didn't you feel deep inside that doing its bidding would allow it to enter your mind, feed you fear, and then feast on it?"
Elias thought and sighed. That feeling was weighing on him. "I kinda knew."
"Why allow it?" Buddhist Hand's voice was low and strained.
Elias gave out a hollow laugh. "It thought it was baiting me, but I was the one fishing it out." His smile turned sinister, cruel even. "I desired to see what a lowly creature would do against the might of my terrifying talent."
Elias' voice became sharp and gazed at the Buddhist Hand. "It turned out, the creature was just another insignificant bug!"
'Pure arrogance!'
Buddhist Hand had no words to describe what he saw in Elias but that.