Mortuum (Chapter 1)

Chapter 1 Awaken the Dead

          I awoke to the taste of blood and metal. My entire body burned with pain, undescribably horrid as if my every bone was shattered, every muscle torn. My legs were so numb that I didn’t know if they were still beneath me. I pried my eyes open from the dried blood which encrusted them, revealing a bright florescent light above me, revealing a bright florescent light above me, the intensity tearing at the corneas of my eyes like a thousand needles. Up from my stomach, ripping at my throat, I turned my head to the cement ground below me and let the poison vomit flow. I was gasping for air as I fell out of the metal chair and onto the floor, catching myself with my hands. I wiped the blood, saliva, and the vomit from my lips and spat out what remained in my mouth.
          Groaning with pain and still blinded by the light, I felt around for something solid. I pressed my hands to the ground feeling my broken fingernails against the cool cement. I struggled once more in adjusting my eye sight to look around me. From what I could tell, I lay upon the floor of some kind of empty room with a sealed door on one side and the chair of metal in the middle. The walls were grimy, gross with spider webs and dripping water.
          I dredged through the fog in my head, desperate for any memory, any glipse of who or what I was. It was to no avail.
          I forced myself to stand, leaning on the chair. I noticed the steel tray on a cart beside the chair with an empty syringe leaking a dark blue liquid and another syringe with what look like blood. A scalpel was beside that; blood on its tip with latex gloves and gauze beside that.
          Suddenly, a sharp pain jolted my body, ripping and tearing at my stomach. I doubled over with pain. The pain was horrible, I wanted to die. I covered my mouth hoping to swallow down the rising vomit. However the attempt failed as it poured out my mouth, on my hands and the floor below.
          It was blood.
          Stumbling to the door, I tried to regain my memory. All I knew was that I did not want to be where I was.
          I pressed to the door and opened slowly, my muscles screaming in pain. Before me was a wall with a hall extending to both of my sides. Hanging on the wall was a strange portrait of a cloaked man, shadowed face, smiling under the hood. He wore a purple velvet robe and behind him was what seemed an eternity of fog. He held his hands out in the similar posture of Virgin Mary.
          I could hear footsteps progressing towards me from the left side. I was afraid and being in my current situation did not want to draw attention to myself. I peeked around the corner slowly, like an assassin. The footsteps stopped at that exact time. No one was there. As I turned around, a force knocked me down and tossed me across the room. There stood a robed man dressed in the same clothes as the man on the wall. Before I had time to examine the situation, the man jumped on me and grasped my neck with inhuman strength and slammed my head thrice upon the solid cement. I struggled for air and to escape but his sturdy hands would not release.
          As he lifted his fist in an attempt to hit me, I threw my weight upwards, tossing him to the cement in front of me. I then slowly crawled towards the tray in the center of the room. I could hear his breath behind me, like a hiss of a snake.
          He clasped my ankle and pulled me closer to him, digging his nails deep in to my heel, ripping the flesh away. He had nails like daggers.
          I grasped the tray, bringing it to a clash on the ground, spilling its contents everywhere. Before he could move, I took the scalpel into my hands and turned, slamming the point as far as I could behind his ear. I could feel the flesh tear away as he let out a gasp. I brought it down once more into his neck. He turned over in flee but I wouldn’t let him. I dug it in to his eye socket and ripped at the brain. He let out a short scream but it was cut as soon as the scalpel ripped past the skull.
          I pulled myself away from his corpse and stood once more, shaky, feeling my ankle tear the tendons. Hobbling back to the door, I grasped the scalpel still, it my only weapon in this unknown domain.
          I glanced both ways down the hallway and then stepped out in to the open. I then listened hard. An incessant chant came from the right. The words I could make out were:

          Adeo nos senior of viscus quod animus! Permissum silenti etc suscitatio quod victus cultus!

          I had no idea what the words meant but something in my mind sparked. I followed the voices.

          I came to the chamber door where the voices hid behind, still chanting those same words. I slowly opened the door and looked out. I was atop a balcony looking down on a grand opening with almost all halls of this place connecting to it. In the center of the room were a large number of cloaked men and women standing before an altar in which the man who was portrayed in the painting stood. Behind him was a huge statue of a demonic being with the body of a man, ripped wings and horns coming from his scalp.
          The man at the altar held his hands in silence, quieting the room. He then said these words.
          “Meus brethren , nos sto hic hodie in denique acts of a oraculum spanning thousands of annus quod tonight , is est ut exsisto presto. Nos have exspecto pro centuries quod iam vicis has adveho . . .” the words continued, creeping on the edge of understanding in a almost hypnotic way.
          I was deeply entranced by his words, trying to comprehend, that the scalpel fell from my hand, crashing to the ground. I looked up and stared directly into the eyes of the leader.
          “Addo him ut Ara!”
          The large group of worshipers fled from the room in to the halls beneath me chanting “Permissum cruor exsisto vitualamen pro nostrum Deus.”
          I was quick to act, running out of the room, practically throwing myself into the door behind me. I stumbled across the dark, marble floor and down the hall. I could hear the chants behind me but I paid no attention to it. I focused only on escape.