Chapter 6: The Weeping Wound

Chapter 6: The Weeping Wound

The rage was a fire, and Leo had spent all day basking in its warmth. His tormentor's impotent fury was a constant, thrumming hum at the edge of his perception, a psychic static that fueled him through the droning hours of school and the bland ritual of family dinner. He had poked the beast and made it roar, and the sound was a symphony. But symphonies have finales, and he knew, with a cold and thrilling certainty, that tonight he would compose his masterpiece.

The fingers were just the prelude. An insult. An aggravation. To truly break it, he had to unmake it. He had to take more.

When sleep claimed him, the transition was seamless. The grey kitchen materialized around him, its sterile familiarity a comfort. This place was more real to him now than his own sunlit bedroom. It was the only place where he held any real power. He walked to the drawer, his steps sure and steady. The knife felt lighter tonight, or perhaps his hand had simply grown stronger, more accustomed to its weight and purpose.

He faced the butcher’s block. He placed his left hand upon its surface, a practiced, almost bored motion. The four empty spaces where his fingers should have been were a testament to his progress. But his eyes were not on them. His gaze was fixed on his wrist. On the place where the hand joined the arm.

The target was bigger. More significant. Severing a finger was maiming. Severing a hand was amputation. The thought sent a shiver of delicious, terrible power through him.

He positioned the blade. It rested awkwardly against the delicate bones of his wrist. He pressed down.

Nothing happened.

The phantom flesh and bone resisted. This was not like the clean, simple parting of a knuckle. This was thicker, stronger. A knot of sinew and bone that refused to yield to simple pressure. A flicker of frustration, hot and sharp, pierced his cold focus. The compulsion of the dream was a powerful current, but it seemed to require his own physical will to give it shape.

It took all of his strength.

He had to adjust his grip, placing his other hand over the back of the blade to double the force. It still wasn't enough. Grunting with a silent, dream-world effort, the seven-year-old boy clambered up onto the kitchen island itself, his small knees straddling his own outstretched arm. He was no longer a surgeon; he was a lumberjack trying to fell an ancient tree.

He repositioned the knife and leaned forward, putting the entire weight of his small, frail body into the cut. He pressed his sternum against the dull side of the blade, his world narrowing to the single point of contact on his wrist. He felt a deep, grinding separation. A phantom pop as a bone gave way, then another. It was a slow, grueling, monstrous act. He squeezed his eyes shut, not from fear, but from sheer concentration, pushing down, down, down until, with a final, sickening thwump, the blade bit deep into the wood.

Silence. The effort was over.

He opened his eyes and slid off the island, his bare feet landing noiselessly on the tile. He looked at his creation. His dream-arm now ended in a smooth, sealed stump at the wrist. Lying beside it, separate and inert, was his entire left hand. A complete and total victory. The ritual was finished.

He woke up with the phantom ache of the effort still lingering in his shoulders. A smug, triumphant smile touched his lips. He was ready to witness the fruits of his labor. He anticipated a new level of fury, perhaps a complete breakdown. He imagined the shadow tearing at itself, a being of pure, mindless rage, utterly broken by his will.

He turned his head to the corner. And his smile vanished.

The rage was gone. The electric, humming pressure that had filled the room for days had evaporated, leaving behind a silence so profound it felt like a physical weight. The Smiler was not pacing. It was not vibrating with fury.

It was on its knees.

Its silhouette was hunched over, its single remaining arm wrapped around its torso. Its head was bowed. Where its left arm should have been, there was only a ragged, dripping stump of pure void. Black, oily droplets of shadow fell from the wound, sizzling into nothingness just above the floorboards, each one a testament to the brutal finality of his dream-world act.

Leo stared, his sense of triumph curdling in his stomach. This wasn't the reaction he had engineered. This wasn't the despairing rage of a defeated foe. This was something else. Something quiet and terrible.

He felt it then. A psychic transmission so different from the anger he had grown accustomed to. It wasn't a roar; it was a whimper. A wave of sorrow, so pure and so bottomless it felt like drowning, washed over him. It was a grief that was not his own, yet it filled every empty space inside him.

The creature made no sound, but Leo could feel it sobbing. He could feel the silent, hiccupping rhythm of a child who had cried themselves past the point of tears, into a realm of raw, hopeless agony. It was the soundless weeping of a thing that had lost something essential, something it could never get back.

His victory suddenly felt grotesque. The cold, sharp feeling of power that had become his addiction was gone, replaced by a thick, cloying sickness. He had wanted to hurt the monster. He had wanted to break its will, to make it fear him. He had succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. He had inflicted a wound so deep and so grievous that its rage had collapsed into pure, unadulterated pain.

And now, staring at the pathetic, weeping shape in the corner, an emotion he had not felt in weeks rose unexpectedly within him. It was a deeply unsettling, utterly unwelcome pity.

He had tormented his tormentor. He had become the bully. He looked at the kneeling shadow, at the weeping wound where its arm used to be, and for the first time, he had to question who the real monster was in this dark, silent room. The power he had craved now tasted like ash in his mouth. He had won. He had definitively, crushingly won.

But as he listened to the silent, agonizing sobs that echoed in his soul, it felt like the most profound and terrible loss of his life.