The Dawn of Destruction, Chapter 15

                            The Dawn of Destruction

Interitus 1 – Book One

            Chapter Fifteen

 

            As far as Naomi was concerned, her stranglehold over the people tightened with every passing hour. The citizens under her control had lined themselves up as pawns without realizing it. But even so, she still felt incomplete, like she still had not achieved the next step of her plan. This surprised her, since virtually nothing had gone wrong so far. The only recent problem was a memory disguised as a dream, reuniting her with the horror that destroyed her early childhood. But that dream had dealt more agony than simply making her relive the pain; it reminded her that she had only held herself together by suppressing that memory for years. Her resilience was nothing more than an illusion.

            After her right hand had healed enough to function, Naomi regenerated her burned skin with the power of Creation. Not long after, Naomi performed another miracle in front of a vast audience. By using her inexplicable power in public, more and more people came to believe that she truly was sent by God.

Up until Naomi had debuted her power, the city of San Diego did not seem remarkably religious. Nevertheless, it had only taken her weeks to transform the city into a theocracy under the rule of their revitalized god. But since their god was an unreachable being, they needed a medium more powerful than themselves, capable of contacting this god—a prophetess who could speak on God’s behalf, was to be treated like God, flourished by embracing the costume of God.

            But even though Naomi had pilfered the image of God, this still did not dissuade her of her hatred for humanity. If anything, this simply proved their inherent selfishness; the only reason that they cared was because they sought some divine reward. They were still mere pests that needed to be purged. The only difference was that they now supported Naomi, allowing themselves to become steppingstones in their own eradication, not realizing that they were working toward a culling which would go unquestioned and unopposed. They would support this because they were now concerned with a dream of eternity instead of day-to-day pleasure, but that did not make them any less self-obsessed.

            A gentle hum startled Naomi from her contemplation as she stood beside her bed in the underground chamber. The elevator commenced its descent again, but because of the late hour, she guessed that the person on the elevator was not seeking religious counsel. It was probably Priest Antonius, hoping for another chance to get close to her. Naomi sighed to herself, but she knew that she still needed his help if she wanted to extend her new empire. This meant that she still had to appease him even though he disgusted her. Therefore, she pressed herself against the bed and pretended to be sleeping. At last, the elevator came to a stop and parted its doors, allowing the priest to slowly exit. The rhythmic patting of shoes against concrete slowly decreased in pitch and rose in volume, until at last his waist was beside her head.

            “Naomi, I had a bad dream. Can you help me get my mind off of it?” Antonius said with an infuriating grin. Naomi narrowed her eyes and feigned a tranquil slumber, but even this invited another memory to assault her scattered mind.

***

            “From the moment you were born, I felt like I retrieved something I thought was lost; I thought at last I could have my Kohana back,” Naomi’s dying mother whispered to her in the basement of their home.

            “Mommy, why did he hurt you? Who is Kohana?” the young Naomi pleaded, overwhelmed with fear and sorrow.

            “Kohana was my first daughter. She was so beautiful. She had these perfect eyes, she was the most wonderful little girl… but she’s no longer here. Every time I cry, I cry for her; I cry for all my children. She was never meant to die; she had an inner peace that overpowered his bloodlust for years. But one day, his dark side broke free. There is no stopping it, and it will only grow. You and Harumi calmed his darkness for some time, but your father has lost all control again. Leave. Leave! Run through the forest and run free!” her mother pleaded.

            “What did dad do to her? What did he do to you? I don’t want to leave you,” Naomi cried with a hushed voice.

            “You have to; I’m already gone,” she replied, removing her hand from her stomach.

            Torn intestines and cartilage slowly descended from the incision in the second she let go. Blood poured from her entrails and splashed upon the floor, echoing through the basement. Naomi’s hand covered her mouth to silence her scream; tears burst forth and intertwined with the blood that fell on her bare feet.

***

            Naomi stirred in her false slumber, trying to ignore both the suppressed memory and Antonius’ imposition, though she knew that both forces could overpower her resistance. She glanced over at the growing bulge in the center of his pants. She faked a smile to placate him.

            “Why, hello there,” she whispered to him.

            “You look so damn good when you’re sleeping, but there are some things that work best when you’re awake,” Antonius whispered, trying to make his voice sound seductive.

            “Thank you,” Naomi said as she fought to suppress a cringe.

            Naomi pulled herself into a seated position on the mattress’s edge. With an excited huff, Antonius asked, “Do I have a chance tonight?”

            Naomi glanced up and saw an expectant glare beneath his smile. She slowly crawled off the bed and gazed at him, but her matted hair covered her sleepy eyes. With a tired sigh, Naomi weakly set her hand upon his shoulder, hoping he would have sympathy for her exhaustion.

            “I just don’t have the energy for that right now. It took a lot out of me to heal my wounds,” Naomi answered.        

            But in her attempt at a heartwarming dismissal, Naomi had inadvertently pressed her cleavage upon his body. She retreated slightly when she noticed this, but his eyes remained fixated upon her.

            “Let’s at least have a little bit of fun,” Antonius said.

            Naomi lifted her hands to stretch her aching back, but the priest saw this and mistook it for concurrence. Therefore, he set his hands under her arms and removed her shirt while taking a step closer. When he pressed his body against hers, her black bra became the only barrier between her skin and his robe. A flame of pleasure rekindled in the priest’s eyes; there was nothing he wanted more than to undress her completely.

Realizing his intention, Naomi quickly racked her brain to find a way out. Everything about the man completely repulsed her, but she still needed him to manage her supporters. For this reason, Naomi leaned back while weighing her options, separating her body from his but not recoiling entirely. Priest Antonius noticed her hesitation, so he sat beside her on the bed and gazed upon her. His eyes darted between her contemplative eyes and her partially-exposed chest.

            “Is something holding you back?” he asked.

            Naomi stopped in her tracks. She could not think about anything other than an onslaught of memories, forcing their way through her head once again. It was like she became disconnected from her body. Antonius asked another innocuous question, but her brain did not process his words even though her ears had heard them. She could not even remember why she was doing this to begin with, or anything having to do with her agenda for the future of humanity. It all slipped into nothing, and then the barrage of memories began again.

***

            The trees of the forest were tall and dense. It was the dead of night, but the moon and stars still managed to cast a faint light upon the woods. However, every shadow was completely black, and the lights of the distant city were powerless. Naomi hated the wind because it forced the dancing shadows to sway from tree to tree. She dashed through the woods as quickly as she could, but given her small size, she had only achieved a short distance from the dreaded house.

As Naomi ran in no particular direction, her foot became lodged under a root, so she tripped and fell onto the dusty earth. She scrambled about in the dirt, shivering from the cold and twisting from trepidation. When she stumbled to her knees, she noticed that the shadows danced upon every tree except one directly ahead of her. This tree looked as if no light had ever touched its surface. Naomi crawled across the clearing to the base of the tree, inspecting its roots and the earth underneath it.

            Something about the dirt here felt different. The rest of the forest was unspoiled, unscathed; the virgin soil had yet to feel the touch or glimpse of humankind in decades. It was too pure and natural to have ever come in contact with the outside world. This forest was its own realm—a separate world that had no affiliation with the affairs of the living. But in the heart of the woods, at the very core of the crisp wilderness in this compact perimeter, Naomi found a center more primordial than anything around it. She knew exactly what was buried in the impure earth beneath this tree. Her smooth hands dug swiftly through the sediment until she struck something large and wooden underground; something that radiated its artificial malevolence across the forest, poisoning the very ground in which it rested.

            Naomi gripped the handle precariously, heaving upwards with as much force as she could possibly exert. The door creaked open and unleashed a stench so intoxicating that it nearly made her vomit. There was no question about it; that was the stench of rotting human flesh. That was the intoxicating smell that would stain her mind forever—not only because it was the scent of decaying human matter, but because the stench seemed to whisper tiny clues for each cause of death. Naomi stayed completely motionless once her eyes crept across the contents of the box; she found seven small bodies decomposing inside. The oldest corpses were little more than old bones and black hair.

            After counting the dead corpses in the wooden box, Naomi realized that she was the ninth child of her parents. Her mother had lived in perpetual anguish because of her husband’s unforgivable crimes. It was clear to Naomi that she had only survived because her mother got in the way.

            Her father had gradually massacred the entire family, leaving her as the sole survivor. Given their wealth and seclusion, they could have lived peaceful lives beside the ocean and woodlands. They could have lived together in joy and gentle harmony; it would have been a perfect childhood. Perhaps the outside world would still have the same hopeless defects, but it would mean nothing to Naomi. If she had just lived the life she should have had, then she could have been happy despite the world’s failings.

            But even at her young age, Naomi knew it was pointless to try to reconfigure the past. Nothing ever went the way it was supposed to. And so, the little Naomi shook free from her motionlessness and crept slowly away from the tomb of her many siblings. She gently closed the lid and buried it again, deciding that some memories are better left buried. But in that moment, Naomi realized that her sister’s body was still in the house with her father, and thus the true horror of this night had only just begun.

***

            “I’m sorry, I can’t do this,” Naomi cried, backing away from Antonius and streaming tears upon the floor.

            Priest Antonius, although clearly frustrated with Naomi’s delays, did not show any signs of anger. Instead, he was strangely comforting. He offered her a consoling hand as he sat beside her on the mattress. Naomi trembled while sobbing lightly, following the pull of his hand until Antonius guided her onto his lap. Although she detested her present location, she could not stop herself from crying. Her gentle sobs felt like they banished the emotion from her soul.

            “Did I do something wrong?” asked the priest, gradually sliding his fingers onto her bare stomach.

            “No, it’s not you. I just had a really awful dream, and… I can’t stop thinking about it,” Naomi whispered.

            “I understand. Feel free to talk about it if you want,” he said, although Naomi knew without a doubt that he really had no interest in such a conversation.

            “No, I’m fine.”

            After a few minutes of quiet stillness, the priest slowly began lifting his hands along her body. Though she had no interest in the man who presently dragged his hands upon her back, Naomi admitted to herself that his fingers touched her skin in the perfect way to summon a slight hint of pleasure. As he noticed the response that she fought to conceal, Antonius decided that the best thing he could do was escalate; he gently detached her bra from behind and tossed it onto the floor beside the bed. His rough hands slowly crept around to the front, tugging pleasingly on her sensitive breasts.

            The priest slowly pushed his face forward, watching her body wriggle and comply with his movements. His chin rested upon her shoulder; he watched her lips separate and rejoin while suppressing blissful sighs. She kept her eyes forcefully clamped shut, but occasionally they opened to reveal an empty stare of hunger. Her chest shook and bounced with each of his fierce pulls and pinches, but she could feel his heartbeat grow faster by the second.

            “Naomi, sweetheart, I need to know what we do from here,” Antonius lasciviously whispered in her ear.

            But Naomi did not interpret the priest’s words as harmlessly as he meant them, for she had heard that exact phrase once before. It was the same permutation of words that her father had whispered, back when she stepped into the room of the recurring nightmare which had stained her memory. It was what her father had said when she entered the place where he boiled her sister. It was a string of words that would always torment her; it was the last thing she ever wanted to hear. It was the last thing Priest Antonius would ever hear.

            Naomi dismounted immediately and Created a sturdy knife in mere milliseconds. Antonius’ eyes widened with fear, but Naomi stayed intrepid as the fury overtook her; nothing else mattered to her crumbling mind. She forcefully sunk her knife into the upper-left portion of Antonius’ chest, ripping diagonally across his body. His body seized and his fingertips dug into her chest. Bubbles of blood burst forth from the incision, though they were meant to be released as screams from his throat. His body quickly convulsed from the onset of death, and his limp hands finally let go of her.

            The priest desperately gasped as he begged to ask why she had done this, but only bubbles of blood emerged from his throat. However, Naomi’s brutality was nowhere near its end; the texture of the blood only pushed her further. With all her strength, Naomi pushed the knife downward through the priest’s flesh, slashing through his chest cavity. His left lung dripped across the floor in scattered pieces; he released a gasping and wheezing roar in that moment. His slashed organs spewed blood; his body violently convulsed beneath her blade.

            “Why did you kill them?!” Naomi screamed, Creating another knife which she then sank into his shoulder.

            Antonius shook his head in protest, completely baffled by everything that was said and done. Naomi fastened her hands onto the handle of her new knife, and then she sawed it forward and backward to widen the gaping crevice. Blood raced out of the wound as Naomi Created more precious, and in a very short time, Naomi tore off his right arm.

            “Is it the flesh that makes you wild?! Is it the thrill of death beneath your very eyes?! This is the curse that you left me with! I tried to defy it, but I know that you gave me this morbid dysfunction, and I fucking hate you for it. Why couldn’t you just suppress it? You didn’t have to kill our family! We could have lived peacefully in our little home; we could have witnessed first frosts and flowers bloom. We could have watched branches dance in the breeze. This broken world could have meant nothing to us….”

            Antonius writhed in silent agony, and he could not make sense of the endless agony that tormented his fading existence; he knew that Naomi was beyond reasoning. She turned her head toward the ground as she knelt upon his body. Her black hair cascaded down her neck and shoulders, sticking to her exposed chest through the gentle adhesion of sweat and blood. Another sorrowful whimper escaped from her mouth, and she placed her right palm into the bloody wounds on his chest. Her other hand grabbed a knife. She slowly dragged it across his torso and created a small trail of blood. At last, she reached his belly button and sank the blade into his soft skin, piercing the entrails that were buried there. After carving another massive incision, she dug her fingers into his intestines and felt them writhe. She held her face over his corpse and shed several tears into his entrails.

            “Do you see what I’ve become? This is your fault,” Naomi sobbed, realizing that Antonius was already dead.

            It had a strangely calming effect on her. Although Naomi accepted that the priest was not the same as her father, her mind still needed this release. The flaw in her episode, however, was that she had no reliable way to dispose of the old man’s body. Then again, it probably would not be a major setback if someone found him. She could always make something up, and everyone would believe her. Nevertheless, she clothed herself and pushed the priest onto the bloody ground. It would be difficult for her to destroy the body, even with Creation.

            Naomi inspected the vast area of the underground chamber. Placing her hand against the earth, Naomi Created a series of ten-foot-high walls in a maze-like design. These walls created a labyrinth which would confound anyone who dared to enter. If someone ventured in without a lifeline for escape, they would probably never come out. It was the perfect hiding place and the perfect defense.