Total pages in book: 160
Estimated words: 161615 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 808(@200wpm)___ 646(@250wpm)___ 539(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 161615 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 808(@200wpm)___ 646(@250wpm)___ 539(@300wpm)
"No!" Arata’s words tore from his throat. "NO! NOT THEM! PLEASE!"
Because walking through that door were an elderly couple. Their parents. The father shuffled forward with the help of a cane, his weathered face confused and terrified. The mother clutched her husband's arm, her grey hair disheveled, still wearing a nightgown beneath a hastily thrown coat.
They had been pulled from their beds in the island’s villas.
In the middle of the night.
And brought here.
You spy on me, and when war begins. . .you bring your beloved to my island giving me full access of the people you love. Not so smart, serpents.
Itsuki was sobbing now—great, heaving sobs that shook his entire body. "Mama! Papa! I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!"
But the parade of broken hearts wasn't finished.
Sako made a sound I had never heard from him before. A keen one. Animal and raw. He tried to fall to his knees, his body folding in on itself, but the chains yanked him back up. His arms stretched above him at an agonizing angle as he fought against the restraints.
"Father," he gasped. "Yumi. No. No, no, no."
His elderly father stood frozen in the doorway, leaning heavily on a younger man who had his arm wrapped protectively around a pregnant woman.
Sako's sister. Her husband and Sako’s father.
Her hands cradled her swollen belly, her face pale with terror. Her husband tried to shield her from the sight of her brother hanging in chains with blood on the walls.
And finally.
Mami.
Her scream was silent—a mouth stretched wide, no sound emerging, as if the horror had stolen her voice entirely. Her frail mother shuffled forward, barely able to walk without assistance, her eyes milky with age and confusion.
Behind her came a young man—college-aged, wearing a university sweatshirt, looking around the chamber with the dawning realization that he had entered hell itself.
Mami’s younger brother. She’d come to me and asked if I could pay for his tuition. Of course I had done it. Now he was here, to witness her shame.
"No, Kenji. . .please," Mami finally whispered. “Take them back. T-they don’t know anything.”
I went back to the center of the room as the serpents slithered, sobbed, and begged.
Flick.
Flame.
Flick.
Nothing.
Desperation stank in the air. The kind of desperation that would make most tell everything. The kind that would make them betray everyone.
I walked slowly toward the cluster of family members, letting my footsteps echo through the symphony of sobs and screams.
The Scales forced them to their knees in a line—the elderly parents, Sako’s father, the pregnant sister and her husband, the frail mother, the college boy.
Seven people who had done nothing wrong.
Seven people who would suffer for the sins of those they loved.
I turned back to face the traitors. "If you don't talk, then I will talk to the ones you love."
Mami was hyperventilating. Sako's father had started to cry. The pregnant sister was praying under her breath, her hands pressed tight against her belly.
Flick.
Flame.
I shook my head. "And it will not be a conversation of words."
Flick.
Nothing.
"It will be one of flames."
The door opened again.
And this time, the sound that filled the chamber was not screaming. It was a low, mechanical hum. The whir of fuel pumps. The hiss of pressurized gas.
Totoro entered the room. Carried by four Scales who moved with the careful precision of men handling a bomb.
The modified flamethrower gleamed under the industrial lights—all black metal and chrome, with the newly filled fuel tanks strapped to either side and a nozzle that looked like the mouth of some hungry beast.
I had named it after that gentle forest spirit from my mother's favorite film because I liked the irony. However, there was nothing gentle about what Totoro did to human flesh.
The reaction in the room was instantaneous.
Mami's silent scream finally found its voice—a shriek that bounced off the ceramic tiles and seemed to go on forever.
Mami’s brother trembled in fear as he saw his bright future go up in a blaze.
Sako began to beg, words tumbling over each other in a desperate flood. "I'll tell you everything! Everything! Please! My sister is pregnant! Please, Kenji, I'm begging you—"
The elderly parents of my Eyes didn't understand what they were looking at.
But their sons did.
Arata had gone rigid. His body locked. His breathing stopped.
And Itsuki. . .well. . .Itsuki pissed himself.
The dark stain spread down his pants, urine splashing against the tile floor, pooling beneath his feet. He didn't seem to notice. He was staring at Totoro with the glassy eyes of a man whose mind had simply. . .left.
Gone somewhere far away.
Somewhere flames couldn't reach.
I walked toward the flamethrower and ran my hand along its barrel.
The metal was cold.
It wouldn't stay cold for long.
"Now," My voice went calm. Patient. The voice of a man who had all the time in the world. "Shall we begin?"
I turned to face them.
Flick.
Flame.
"Who wants to talk first?"