The colossal shadows receded, taking with them the suppression imposed on Tristessa's senses. She began to see again and she no longer saw wolves, but the glow of artificial light; she could hear again and she no longer heard her own screams or the sound of her arms and legs being torn off, or her bones breaking, or her organs and muscles tearing apart.
What she heard now was a musical composition consisting of a violin and piano interplay, distorted with static and echo, like an old gramophone. It was very familiar melody to her, she had no doubt that she had heard that song before…
But was that music she heard real? Was that light real?
Because she knew that what she saw was not through her real eyes, nor was what she heard through those ears. That body was not the one she remembered: it felt lighter than air and more… ethereal, if she could afford to use that word. Furthermore, that body could not even be defined as tangible; to say that it felt solid from nonexistence brought immediate contradictions, but that was how she felt at that moment. Absent, in an immaterial limbo, conscious…
And broken into pieces. Frightened and infinitely in pain.
"…Ah…It hurts…it hurts…ithurtsithurtsithurts…" she thought, her frantic mind deep in despair, since speaking was impossible because her throat had been torn to pieces. And therefore, her soul reflected that damage, mimicking and replicating the primary reaction to a physical injury that put life at risk. A natural mechanism that, brought to a plane beyond the material, was a catastrophic failure that only served to abhor that existence. "Whydidn't I die? Kill me now… Please, kill me! I want to die, right now, NOW!"
She couldn't shake off the indescribable pain of having been devoured alive. The hundreds of wolves' teeth went further by piercing her red flesh, destroying her organs and fragmenting her bones: now her soul lay in ruins, scattered and frying her non-existent brain with the worst of phantom pains.
In parallel with her agony, her senses also became more acute with each notion of time that advanced in that continuum that violated natural laws, allowing the girl to distinguish dozens of fluorescent lights as the sources of that illumination, distributed along a ceiling that let her know, consequently, that she was lying down. The cold metal of the table, or bed, was deep and yet it did not even serve to appease her suffering a little.
"KILL ME!"
She wanted to scream with her true voice, to reverberate everywhere and express the extreme fear that dominated every inert piece of her soul-body, but she could only complain of the pain in silence.
"Please…I…"
Suddenly, new sounds. Footsteps. Footsteps against a metal floor, given the echo that could be heard between the distorted notes of the music.
Tristessa tried to look in all directions but strangely her gaze was slightly fixed on a section of the ceiling, which showed more details as the fluorescent lights became more tolerable to the eye: the material of the ceiling was skin and strands of muscle, dripping black water as it twisted like a sponge, without ceasing thanks to the movement generated by hundreds of small pistons of polished black metal, which pierced the organic material and moved in periodic synchrony, like the movement of a wave that went from one end to the other.
"W-what…? For god's sake…"
In life, Tristessa would have screamed, kicked and cried at such a scene worthy of the most horrible of nightmares. But there, trapped in that limbo where death had been denied to her, she could only see, suffer and nothing more, like a victim of sleep paralysis.
She saw all those hundreds of thousands of dark water drops fall off the bloody ceiling in constant movement and evaporate almost instantly, leaving behind a trail; a dark, gaseous effluent that was distributed chaotically along the ceiling and that room, indestructible in the presence of artificial light.
It was miasma. The origin of the Discord between life and death; the evil air that abounded in that place.
The footsteps multiplied, and between the tongues of miasma, Tristessa saw eight silhouettes appear on her periphery, four on each side. Eight humanoid entities of undefined sex that surrounded her, wearing white robes almost entirely stained with rust; Their faces covered by black veils, preventing even a hint of what was hidden behind, attached to their hairless heads with barbed wire, driven deep into them and constantly expelling lines of fresh blood.
Simultaneously, the silent figures raised their arms, showing Tristessa that none of them had hands, but rather surgical instruments such as scissors, saws, scalpels and tweezers, all attached to bone and muscle crudely, with heat bonding the skin to the metal, and copper wires brutally inserted and bent to ensure rigidity.
"No… No! PLEASE, NO!"
The Surgeons of Death began to manipulate, violate and experiment with what remained of Tristessa's soul, ignoring her silent screams.
She was living a true, personal hell. The miasma covered everything, filling the surroundings of her own operating table with an intolerant and naturally malevolent smell. Even so, she saw the silhouettes of the surgeons cutting, sawing, opening, closing and holding; she felt the cold contact of metal between her ethereal limbs, in her entrails and on her back, as they manipulated her ribs and spine.
"What did I do to deserve this?! Tell me, damn it!"
She would have given everything to truly scream for even a few seconds. To release part of the deep agony that was devastating her nonstop, and to pray to the gods of all the worlds to free her from this torment.
But the surgeons cut, repaired and unified, replicating again and again the suffering of being torn into a thousand pieces but in reverse: her soul condemned to oblivion was simply not ready to return to its original form. No living being was. The damage done was that, done, and it had to stay that way; entropy was infallible in all planes of existence.
"W-why?" the girl lamented, staring at the surgeon who was manipulating the inside of her abdomen with a saw. "Tell me why you won't let me die!"
In silence, the Surgeons of Death continued, joining the broken pieces of her soul and going against the natural order of things. They were agents of someone or something with enough authority to supersede the rules that governed universal concepts such as life and death.
Those grim implements that replaced their hands and metal cords bathed in blood went to work on Tristessa's neck and face, while time cruelly flowed at its universally slow whim.
"…"
Until, after an eternity, the girl's torment receded.
"…Ah…"
A sigh, abstract in essence, escaped from her recomposed throat.
The surgeons had finished their dirty work, and they stood there like statues, motionless and surrounded by miasma, bordering the work table on which the girl slowly began to straighten. Her body was intact, as good as new, even protected by the same clothes she had come to the new world in.
"…Uh…?"
Surrounded by that thick miasma, Tristessa extended her arms and looked at her hands, the lines of skin constantly caressed by the shadows.
…Ahh…ahh…UGH...!" Her throat, now intact, could articulate sounds. Trembling, Tristessa could not look away, between layers of tears that accumulated in her eyes. There was no pain anymore. "NO, NO, NO, NO, NONONONONO!"
Yet the experience of her death was still there, etched in her spirit. Even as she stared at them, she could feel the absence of her hands, her arms. Further down, she could remember the unholy sensation of her breasts being torn apart, her ribcage split open, and all her organs being ripped out.
"WHY?!"
Her scream overcame the music, creating even more discord between the melodies. Tristessa locked herself in a hug that gave her little comfort, trying to resist the convulsions as her soul replayed over and over the pain of being devoured alive. She vomited bile against her operating table, the only thing inside her repaired stomach; she couldn't stop the spams, and she cried to her heart's content, finally being able to express the feeling of hopelessness and terror her soul retained from her death.
"WHY DIDN'T YOU LET ME DIE?! THIS IS NOT LIFE!" she spat out, her mouth and esophagus burning, and her eyes so saturated with tears that she could see nothing but the dance of the supernatural darkness in front of her face. "WHY?! TELL ME WHY!"
Just as her soul was reaching the edge of absolute collapse, like a house of cards facing hurricane winds, something touched the top of Tristessa's head, which suddenly froze her panic and tormented soul alike.
"Why…why?" she asked, feeling that contact calming her. She sensed that it was a hand; a firm grip and fingers that threatened to pierce her scalp. Strangely, that grip imposed her will, forcing her to accept this post-death reality. "What did I do wrong?"
There was no answer. Tempted to satisfy her curiosity, the girl forced herself to lift her head and stop staring at the surface of the operating table, metallic, corroded and stained with her own vomit.
She felt her head being freed, and the first thing she saw when she raised her gaze was a dark, foul hand.
An inhuman hand.