"Daddy~!"
A child's voice, impossibly sweet and familiar, echoed from the phone's speaker.
Following the innocent cry, a man emerged from the crowded subway steps. He was wearing a crisp, slightly rumpled business suit, his tie loosened. The worn leather handle of his heavy briefcase bit into the calluses of his right hand, a dull, familiar ache radiating all the way up into his stiff shoulder socket. The biting evening wind whipped past him, chilling his exposed knuckles, but his attention was entirely anchored to the warm glow of the smartphone in his left hand.
On the screen, a small girl, no older than six, looked up at him with bright, excited eyes alight with innocence.
"How long till you come home?" she asked, her voice bouncing with anticipation.
"Just a few more minutes and Daddy will be sitting right beside you, sweetie," the man replied. His voice was thick with the crushing fatigue of the workday, yet laced with absolute, unguarded affection.
'My daughter is so cute.' The thought of spending the evening with her brought a flutter of joy to his heart and acted as a soothing balm, melting the exhaustion right out of his bones.
She held a piece of paper up to the camera, blocking her face entirely. "Look! I drew this at school today!"
It was a rough, crayon portrait of three people holding hands. On the left was a man and on the right was a woman, between them was a figure comparatively smaller than the two, holding their hands with her small ones. A green landscape held them together with a small house behind them, a brightly smiling yellow sun looking at their happiness from above, accompanied by oddly shaped white clouds and birds making the space more soothing and lively—a family portrait captured in vibrant, childlike strokes.
"Oh, wow! Did my cutie pie draw this?" he asked, genuine pride swelling in his chest.
"Mm! Miss Betty also drew a star on my hand and said that I am a good girl!" She beamed, dropping the paper to proudly show off the blue ink stamped on her knuckles.
"My little girl is so talented."
"Hehehe." She giggled, ducking her head shyly.
'So Cute!! No therapy is better than seeing the cute little smile on my daughter's face.' The man's heart melted at the absolute cuteness of his daughter. "Well, if Miss Betty praised you, how can your father lag behind? Tell me, what do you want as a reward?"
"Chocolates!!" she replied instantly.
"Chocolates? How many?"
"This many!!" The little girl backed away from the screen and stretched her arms as wide as she physically could.
"Hmm... how about a small box?" He negotiated playfully.
"No!" The blunt, adorable rejection made him laugh out loud.
"Okay, fine. You win. Daddy will buy you the giant box," he conceded, surrendering entirely.
"Yay!!" The little girl shouted in excitement.
"Ben, don't buy her the big one," a gentle voice chided. His wife appeared in the frame, casually wiping her hands on a kitchen towel. "Or she won't sleep tonight."
"Mommy! I want the giant box!" the girl protested, her face rushing back to take up half the screen.
Ben laughed, the sound raspy but completely genuine. "Hey now, I already gave her my word. And I have to respect the blue star."
His wife rolled her eyes, though a warm, tired smile betrayed her. "Your uncontrolled spoiling is going to ruin her dinner. Where are you?"
"Just exited the subway. I'll be home in the next fifteen to twenty minutes." Ben assured her.
"Alright. I kept your plate warm on the stove. Don't dawdle for too long," she said sweetly.
"I am waiting for you, Daddy!" his daughter chimed in.
"On my way, my sweethearts," he said, ending the call with a lingering smile.
'Such a sweet family I have.' He picked up his pace, walking briskly toward his neighborhood, his mind already drifting to the warm dining table and his daughter's waiting embrace.
Then, his footsteps halted. 'Ah! The chocolates!'
He glanced at his watch. 21:45.
"Ah, shit! The shop is going to close." With a panicked curse, the tired father turned and dashed back toward the subway station, determined to fulfill his promise to his little girl.
As he ran, the seconds ticked away. Noticing a narrow, unlit alleyway branching off the main street, he made a split-second calculation. "Guess I'll have to take a quick shortcut."
He plunged into the dark alley, racing against the clock. The damp chill of the brick walls pressed in on him, the ambient noise of the city fading away as the heavy thumps of his boots took over.
Just as the streetlights of the exit came into view—
Baang—!
A sickening, heavy clang echoed through the brick walls.
Ben crumpled to the asphalt face first. A cold, paralyzing shock slammed into the back of his skull.
Beside him, his heavy leather briefcase hit the ground, its latch bursting open. Crisp, white financial reports spilled across the dirty pavement, the pristine paper instantly soaking up the filth and the warm, dark blood rapidly pooling beside him. His smartphone slipped from his grip, the glass cracking against the stone.
"Aarghh..." he groaned, his face heavy with small lacerations and bruises. The world violently tilted. He blindly clawed his way to his knees. His fingers slowly probed the tender, throbbing spot behind his head. Feeling something warm and gooey, he looked towards his hand that was stained with his own blood, his eyes dizzy, his fingers shaking.
Step—
Hearing footsteps closing, he forced his heavy head up. A cloaked figure approached him, their silhouette shaky and unfocused in his hazy vision. But one detail was horrifyingly vivid—the heavy iron pipe in the figure's grip, dripping with blood.
"Wh-who a-are you..?" Ben slurred, his balance completely failing him.
The figure hoisted the pipe high, their voice thundering with a fanatical, zealous madness. "For The Great Lord!"
Down came the iron, swift and merciless.
Baang—!
Thick droplets of hot crimson splattered directly across the cracked, glowing lock screen—staining the smiling faces of his wife and daughter as the man was plunged into absolute darkness.
Mur... Mur... Mur...
Incessant, rhythmic murmurs pulled him from the void. His eyelids drowsily fluttered open, but he was met with luminescent pitch black.
Instantly, a blinding, white-hot agony erupted at the base of his skull. The crushing memory of the iron pipe came rushing back as his brain swelled against the bruised bone.
"Uuggg—" he gagged in pain. Between the sickening concussion and the heavy stench of ancient rot and metallic copper assaulting his senses, bile rose sharply in his throat.
Controlling the urge to vomit, Ben realized a coarse, foul-smelling burlap sack had been forced over his head, blinding his sight and suffocating him. Panic spiking, he tried to reach for it, but his limbs jerked violently against tight, chafing restraints. His naked back pressed against something prickly cold, hard and sticky.
"Hey! Is anyone here?! Help!" His voice was muffled, thick with rising terror.
Mur... Mur...
The strange, cultish chanting resumed, harmonizing into a low-frequency drone that made his teeth ache. He thrashed wildly against his bonds. "W-who!? Who are you people?! What do you want from me?!!"
The murmuring ceased. Heavy boots approached on wet stone.
Swosh—!
The sack was violently ripped from his head. A sliver of jaundiced, flickering halogen light sliced through the darkness, forcing his eyes to squint against the blinding sting.
Ben cast a frantic glance around. He was strapped to a makeshift wooden frame, suspended just inches above a filthy stone floor in a massive, subterranean cavern. Dozens of black-cloaked zealots formed a wide, concentric ring around him.
At the front stood three figures. The hems of their light-swallowing cloaks were stiffened by layers of dried, iron-scented blood. They were nightmares rendered in monochrome; their faces were smeared with a ritualistic paste of bone ash and soot, highlighting the jagged, skeletal architecture of their skulls.
Two of them were faceless voids—one had their eye and the other their mouth sutured shut with black twine. A yellowish serous fluid leaked constantly from the rusted wire stitches, requiring them to wipe their smooth, leather-bound spheres with a rhythmic, obsessive motion, like a sweating man in a fever dream. When the one with stitched mouth attempted to chant or speak, the sound wasn't human; it was the sound of wet leather rubbing against raw meat.
The one in the center stepped forward. He was a jagged anomaly. The man was towering and completely bald, his cheeks hollowed out to the bone, leaving the raw, red-rimmed cavity of his nose exposed to the damp air. When he breathed, he didn't exhale; he whistled—a rhythmic, necrotic hiss that echoed off the vicious air.
"W-w-w-wh-who a-a-are y-you people? W-w-w—" Ben hyperventilated, staring up into the bald zealot's bilious yellow eyes. "W-w-what d-do y-y-you w-want?"
The mere presence of the anomaly incited a primordial fear, instantly parching his throat dry and making his voice husk.
The zealot reached out with a pale, skeletal hand, his long, filth-stained fingernail tracing the dried blood on the back of Ben's head with a creepily obsessive gaze—inspecting every nook and cranny around the injury, pressing it firmly, eliciting a painful whimper from Ben.
"Ecce, ad ostium stat Dominus et id comminuit. Frangatur testa mortalis, ut Dominus Magnus intus epuletur." His every breath a deep hiss piercing through Ben's eardrums. "Behold, the Lord stands at the door and shatters it. Let the mortal shell be broken, so the Great Lord may feast upon the home within."