Seth by Nero Seal

Seth’s knees hit the marble tiles, red water rippling around his tuxedo pants. Ignaz lay still, face bloodless. Even beneath the bloody water, his fingers looked pale as they wound around a straight razor.

“No...” Seth wanted to scream, rage, and crush things. He grasped the blade and, pouring all his impotence and frustration in a movement, threw it away. Metal clanged against stone.

His fingers shook as he fumbled over the pallid neck, searching for signs of life. Weak and fluttering, the pulse pushed against his finger pad, giving hope.

He plunged his arms in the water and lifted the boy. The white cuffs of his shirt, peeking from under the black tux, turned rusty pink. Water cascaded from the motionless body, flooding the floor when he carried Ignaz to the bed. With great care, he lowered his possession to the bedspread and checked Ignaz’s body.

A net of shallow cuts covered the wrists and forearms. Dark red blood steadily welled from the cuts, suggesting the veins were slashed. The inner sides of the lower eyelids were pale, and even Ignaz’s lips had lost their color.

Casting his jacket aside, Seth rushed to the bathroom and grabbed the first aid kit. His heart drummed in his throat when he knelt before the bed and fastened tourniquets above the cuts, then put pressure bandages on the wounds and texted David Haas.

“Suicide attempt. Bring universal blood. Come quick.”

* * *

David left with the sunriseslashing the darkness with a single bleeding stripe. Ignaz slept, heavily sedated, and the latest in a series of IVs infused glucose into his vein. For some time, Seth sat by his side surrounded by the bloody mess of his clothes and spilled water, with a single question exhausting his heart and mind.

Why?

Ignaz had been fine this morning. He’d laughed and smiled. He’d planned his future and looked forward to a new job. What on earth happened?

When it was time to remove the IV, Seth relocated the sleeping body into the master bedroom. Despite his body shutting down, he refused to sleep. In his head, he heard the raging desert storm and the low howling of the dying god. He knew the ulcers on the obsidian skin would reopen and bleed again as soon as he drifted.

At some point, he returned to the spare bedroom to clean the mess. He threw away his bloody clothes and the bedsheet and dragged the ruined mattress downstairs. He washed out every single drop of blood out of the bedroom and bathroom so nothing would remind him of last night.

When the brisk wind washed out the last traces of blood and detergent, Seth rested his back against the wall then slipped to the floor. His legs stretched out, palms resting on the wooden surface. Eyes closed, he listened to his house.

Behind his closed eyelids, the red sandstorm clouded and boiled on the horizon. It migrated, chaotically changing directions without any particular trajectory. The desert was as confused as its master. The worlds fused, and the first particles of sand sank under his skin and reopened a black ulcer. Set shifted on his hooves when someone called his name.

Seth opened his eyes.

Nothing had changed in his surroundings, yet something changed in the air. He got to his feet and slipped out of the room. He opened the master bedroom’s door only enough to slink through, then shut it without a sound.

The slight body lay on the bed, blank eyes staring at the ceiling. Seth expected to detect pain or for his darkness to resonate, but not a single emotion radiated from the boy as if he was dead.

Seth circled the bed and sat by Ignaz’s side.

“You shouldn’t have stopped me.” Listless, indifferent words came out quiet and calm.

“Why?” The desert whirled behind Seth’s eyeballs. The god from his dreams didn’t understand either.

“Because the only decent thing a whore like me can do in this life is die,” Ignaz said as if it was self-evident. His unblinking eyes brimmed, and two shimmering trails painted his temples. “My lover died trying to save me, and I keep living as if nothing happened. I didn’t even try to avenge him because I was too scared of the prosecution lawyers asking me uncomfortable questions. Whores like me don’t deserve to live, don’t deserve to be happy.”

“Who told you this?” Seth asked.

“He did. He was there too, two years ago, laughing. He didn’t touch me, but it was him who proposed using a bottle. I met him yesterday. God, I hate his laughter; it’s like nails against a chalkboard.” Ignaz shivered. “He asked things. I didn’t know what to say. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. God, I was terrified.” Ignaz cringed and pressed his hands to his ears. “I can still hear him in my head. It hurts. It hurts even more because he is right. I’m despicable. I broke my word, and he is my punishment. It’s no coincidence. I haven’t seen any of them since that night, but as soon as I selfishly think I can be happy, can be forgiven, I am plunged back into the nightmare. It’s my karma. I broke my word. I betrayed Natan. There’s no forgiveness for people like me. I should have done this long ago. Why didn’t you let me go?”

“Do you know his name?” Seth’s voice came out dull as he observed an expression he’d never seen on Ignaz’s face before—blood-chilling, paralyzing terror and resolve. Seth hated it.

“Why does it matter? There’s nothing you can do. No one can.” Ignaz’s eyes flew wide, white space surrounding his irises as his mouth extruded a feverish whisper. “And if you approach him, he will get under your skin too.”

“Do you know his name?” Ignaz tried to avert his face, but Seth grasped his chin and instilled eye contact. “Tell me.”

Ignaz shook his head and wrenched his chin out of Seth’s grip.

“What bar was it?” Seth whispered.

“It doesn’t matter. What can you do? Die because of me too? No.”

“I can do more than you think.” Seth exhaled words, and Ignaz settled his glossy eyes on him. Shining with tears, they looked like gems. So pretty... “I can make them pay. Every single one.”

“You can?”

“Tell me the bar and how to recognize him.”

* * *

Gustavo closed his laptop,propped his elbows against the desk, and rested his chin on his interlinked fingers. He had never seen Seth’s eyes widen in fear before, and he hated the reason for it.

Gustavo didn’t see what had happened in the ensuite, but when Seth emerged in the bedroom with a bleeding body in his arms, sharp realization pierced his mind. While Seth’s mind burned with thoughts about the boy, there would be no place for anyone else. A pang of sobering frost cooled his enthusiasm.

The initial thought to call Diego and ask if anyone had been following the boy today perished as he realized he didn’t care. Unlike Seth, he understood that it was only a matter of time before Ignaz did it again. Less than anything, the boy needed the pressure of Seth’s overbearing feelings as they only added to his guilt. What he needed was a therapist and time.

And just like that, Gustavo realized that if he’d ever had any chances of grabbing Seth’s attention, they were now void. He couldn’t offer anything to occupy Seth’s mind more than a group rape and slashed veins.

He turned to the empty place on the wall he refused to fill—the place that reminded him of Seth and how entertaining the game felt at first. Somehow, it wasn’t fun anymore. He had been living in the game for too long that now it became his reality, and he should start treating it like one, or he would never get what he wanted. It was time to stop denying it.

* * *

After Gustavo had shown up in the glass factory, Seth didn’t doubt that every road leading from the hill was monitored. He suspected that he could use the front door with an equal chance of attracting Gustavo’s attention. When evening fell, and Ignaz took another dose of sleeping pills, he sneaked out of his villa through the underground passage and used a spare car to drive to the fifth district. If Ignaz hadn’t told him the exact address, he never would have found the tiny bar hiding behind a plain wooden door.

For a moment, he stared at the simple lock before opening the door. His gaze traveled around the dim Irish pub. Dark wood boxed the space; flat screens on the walls transmitted a football match and provided scarce sources of illumination. Seven tables stood around the perimeter with the bar on the opposite wall to the entrance door.

He ordered a glass of non-alcoholic beer and, for the rest of the evening, did his best to look around while pretending to be into the game. Two cameras observed the room, both from the bar side. Whoever entered the bar yesterday should have left their faces on the footage. Seth left around ten p.m., waited in the car until two a.m., then broke in using a simple snap gun¹.

In the backroom, which served as a storage room and an office, he found a single laptop connected to a storage drive. The laptop didn’t have a password, suggesting the bar’s owner had never been robbed and didn’t consider it a possibility.

Seth clicked through the timeline. Ignaz and two of his friends occupied a corner table. Seth pressed play. Sipping his beer, Ignaz nodded far more than he spoke. It took him two glasses to relax, but once he started speaking, a small, shy smile overtook his face. It was an expression of happiness, and he wore it as if he couldn’t believe he deserved it. At that moment, Seth swore that he would not only kill, but also eradicate the soul of the one who dared to erase it from Ignaz’s face.

When alcohol colored Ignaz’s cheeks a pretty pink, he got up and strolled to the bathroom. When he exited, a gnarled man whose scalp reflected light caught Ignaz’s hand with his heavily tattooed one. The man’s eyes widened with recognition. He laughed, said something, laughed again. His unbuttoned black shirt under the light-gray suit revealed another tattoo covering his chest.

Ignaz paled, stumbled back, but failed to free his wrist from the handcuff of the man’s grip. The stranger spoke again, and Ignaz’s chin trembled. Seth replayed to lipread.

“Is that you, Little Whore? Wow, I can’t believe you are alive. I thought you crawled into some hole and died long ago, but look at you, all bright and shiny.By the way, I always wanted to ask you, how does it feel to know that your lover died trying to save you, and you didn’t lift a finger to avenge his death?” Seth’s jaw hardened. “Or, maybe you already got yourself someone else? Should I come and play? It was fun last time, wasn’t it?”

Ignaz stumbled away, tried to free his hand.

“Tears again. How cute. Your guy died screaming your name, and all you did was cry. You didn’t even come to his funeral. I was there, by the way. Such a touching event.”

The man shook with laughter, then added, “Do at least one decent thing in your life—go and die.”

Seth closed the file and copied it to the memory card before formatting the disk. With a soft cloth, he wiped every object he’d touched, then entered the common area and wiped the table he’d used a few hours ago, plus the doorknob and door.

When he left, the yellow eye of the full moon reflected in the windshield of his car.

He didn’t need to hire a detective to find this man. He’d already seen this face before, among the contacts of Walter Fischer.

* * *

It’d been two days since he started sedating Ignaz and became Ernst Sommer’s shadow—a man who seemingly felt at home wherever he went. Constantly surrounded by a group of skinheads, he was a person of motion and energy, as if a mere thought of idleness terrified him. Realizing that kidnapping such a person would be harder than he’d imagined, Seth snatched another barrel of sulfuric acid from the glass factory and drove to an abandoned cement factory. It took him hours of work to prepare a trap.

When Seth arrived home,the night melted into a radiant morning. He took a shower, descended into the basement, turned the furnace on, and grabbed Walter Fischer’s phone. While the glass heated, he scrolled through the chat history, picking up the mannerism and word usage.

He typed a message, erased it, then typed again when a thought invaded his mind. He went upstairs, took a picture of Ignaz’s sleeping face from Fischer’s phone, and attached it to a message to Ernst Sommer.

“Look who I found? JIT²as I was feeling nostalgic. Care to do a rerun?”

He thumbed the send icon, hoping that in the worst-case scenario, he would end up with a rejection.

“Thought you quit?”

The prompt reply made Seth smirk. He typed:

“Wife drives me crazy. Need to let some steam out, or I’ll kill the bitch.”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

“Today, at six. Bring the guys.”

Seth attached the coordinates of the abandoned concrete factory and hit “send”.

He returned to the basement and set the plan in motion.

* * *

“Seriously, why didwe come here if we aren’t going in?” Diego yawned; his tawny eyes followed a bumblebee crawling up the wing mirror. He rested his chin on his elbow stuck out of the lowered window that overlooked the abandoned industrial site. Behind the metal fence, the white silo towered above the scattering of smaller buildings. A long, narrow bridge connected the silo to the three-story factory with broken windows. Wild grapes and motley grass added to the desolate, post-apocalyptic look.

“Because we aren’t suicidal,” Gustavo droned and glanced at his watch. It’d been two hours since Seth disappeared inside. “He will kill tonight. If we go in there, he might cross us off his list.”

A vivid image of Seth’s determined, neurotic face, that always carried the afterglow of emotions, resurrected in his memory.

“Then what are we doing here?”

“Watching?” Gustavo shrugged, then elbowed Diego. “Look.”

A black Hummer pulled over in front of the metal fence guarding the abandoned factory. Right after it, an open Jeep screeched to a stop. Barking music poisoned the air.

The music died. Eight men stepped out. After a round of handshakes and loud greetings, they headed down the fence. They engaged in chit-chat, but only shards of their conversation reached Gustavo.

His gaze darted from one tall figure to another, assessing the danger. Some were packed in leather, the others in casual t-shirts and jeans, but all had clean-shaven heads. Gustavo’s hand reached to the door. “Why there’re so many of them? I thought he only hunted one.”

“Relax.” Diego’s palm covered his forearm. “He handled our security team without breaking a sweat, and it was on our territory. I don’t think he needs your help.”

Gustavo forced himself to let go of the handle, but his leg jittered as minutes ticked by. Time after time, he glanced at his watch just to realize that only a minute or two had passed.

“I’m going in.” He yanked the door handle.

“Wait, didn’t you say you weren’t going to meddle?” Diego reached after him and grabbed his jacket. “What are you trying to do? You aren’t welcome there.”

“I need to see.” But as soon as Gustavo shrugged his friend off, a dark shadow crossed the front of the factory to return rolling a wheelbarrow.

“See? He is fine. If they aren’t dead yet, they will be soon. Want to go and see?”

Gustavo tugged the door closed, his anxiety melting. “No…”

* * *

With surprising punctuality,eight men had filed through the factory, following the sounds of an early Nazi hymn. They reminded Seth of rats crawling into a trap packed with treats. And just like a mousetrap, Seth activated the mechanism as soon as the last man stepped over the threshold of the passageway he’d rigged so carefully. The spring engaged, the door slammed closed, lock latching. He would have smiled at his success if hatred didn’t erode his soul.

If the men looked up, they would have noticed hoses hanging from the air vent. The self-made diffuser, connected to the nitrous oxide cylinders, activated and started spraying Halothane in the air.

Seth barred the metal door and leaned against the wall next to it. A series of bangs thundered through the space as a gun fired. The door vibrated but held. Another series of gunshots came from afar as the men tried the other door. When several voices shouted and a boot connected with metal, Seth knew the other door held too. Twenty minutes stretched in eternity. The bumping turned into nails scratching metal, every clawing weaker than before. Wasting their breaths on shouting, the men didn’t seem to notice gas filling the passage.

Eight men, huh?Someone was extra, but that didn’t bother Seth. They all came for the same reason. They all deserved absolute death.

When the clawing stopped, he put a gas mask on, deactivated the locking mechanism, and opened the door. He drifted through the space, checking the faces of his hostages. His fists clenched; he kicked the nearest man in the stomach, then again and again.

“Fuck!” Ernst Sommer didn’t come.

Without Ernst, these people were useless. He could torture them all day long and not get anywhere. Two years had passed since the rape. None of them might have been there, and he had no idea how to prove otherwise. He sucked in a long breath. When he exhaled, the glass of his gas mask misted from his breath.

Oh well… I guess I’ll have to kill them all. He cocked his head and set his body in motion.

* * *

Windowless, round wallstowered above him, gradually slanting into a dome. Crusts of concrete layered the walls. A single light bulb swaying on a thick wire provided the only illumination. A tall metal ladder connected the ground and the access door cut in the dome. Three buckets of water, a canister of acid, his duffel bag, and a blue medical cloth nestled next to the ladder. A scattering of rocks and concrete dust littered the floor.

The wind howled, trapped within. It pushed the bulb into constant motion. Long shadows, cast by eight figures, flung from wall to wall.

Seth dragged his gaze over the slack faces. Sharp, predatory features, light eyebrows, chiseled chins, buff bodies—his captives looked like clones or members of the same family. Ropes swathed around their necks, chests, wrists, and ankles held them in identical positions. Naked and tied up, they looked like dolls in a creepy dollhouse.

Nine chairs bolted to the floor formed a ring; only seven were occupied. A pile of torn clothes heaped next to the entrance door. The corpse of the eighth man, who had been lucky enough to die quickly and painlessly from the gas, lay nearby.

Seth had already searched their clothes. Only two had driver licenses; the rest had no IDs or credit cards on them. He collected their weapons into the duffel bag and rewrote the settings of each phone to unlock with a simple pin code instead of a fingerprint scan.

Remembering the mention of DNA tests in the legal case and having a tiny hope of obtaining them one day, Seth took blood samples from all of his hostages. With a black felt-tip pen, he marked the foreheads of each person with a number, then scribbled the same numbers on the blood-filled syringes.

A violent cough, ricocheting against the walls, drew his attention to the man thrashing with seizures, saliva and bile dripping from his gagged mouth.

Ignoring his agony, Seth ghosted toward the ladder. He squatted next to it and tucked the blood samples and the phone of the dead man into his duffel bag.

When he got up and turned around, more muddy eyes settled on him. Seth’s lips stretched in a smile he didn’t feel.

“Good morning. I hope you rested well.” A wind, not a voice, swished through the room.

On his way to the man doubling over in a coughing fit, he scooped his cellphone from the floor. With a casual flick of his fingers, he released the knot of the gag at the back of the man’s head. Despite the thin latex gloves protecting his hands, the contact with the oily, bare scalp made him cringe.

The gag fell on the man’s lap, yellowish dribble and a half-digested dinner splashing on the floor. The thrashing of the tied body grew frantic as the man retched the last contents of his stomach. Despite the stench, Seth kept his face straight as he waited for his prisoner to clear his lungs.

“What the…” The hoarse voice came out in coughs. The man lifted his head, the number six written on his forehead. “Who are you? What do you want?” Receiving no answer, the man dragged his gaze around until his light-green eyes fixed on the corpse. “What’s with Sven?”

“Sven, huh?” Seth imprinted the name in his memory as he unlocked the man’s cellphone. “He’s dead. Can’t you tell?”

More and more glares settled on Seth, but his attention centered on the screen and the recent chat history. The atmosphere in the room thickened, and the sharp, sour smell of sweat and fear permeated the air.

“You are a dead man, you hear?” the man whispered, then screamed, “I’ll kill you! I’ll chop off your dick and feed it to dogs before I cut off your head and put it on the headlight of my bike. I’ll drive around until the wind rips out your tongue and eyes.”

Seth snorted, imagining the picture. Curiosity veered his gaze from the phone to the flashing whites of the man’s eyes.

“Be quiet, worm, or I’ll put the gag back and let you drown in your vomit.”

The color drained from the puke-covered face; the man whispered, “What do you want?”

“There’s nothing you can give me, worm. But let me introduce myself.” He looked each man in the eye. The realities clashed. Seth’s voice gained the power of the roaring desert as the dying god spoke through him. “I am Set—your god and your judge. This is your final sentencing.”

“You are insane… Help!”

Groaning and muffled screams attacked his ears, way too loud. Seth tuned them out as he found Ernst’s message with Ignaz's picture attached to it.

“Remember the cutie? I got a tip his hole is itchy again.”

Seth nodded. Black anger poisoned his blood. Loud hammering filled his ears, awaking the sleeping desert of his soul as the howl of wind substituted his voice. “You like raping boys, don’t you?”

The need to kill corroded his mind, but he thrust it aside because today it wouldn’t be enough. Ignaz’s words bounced against the inside of his skull as he shrunk back to the blue cloth and squatted next to it.

“What did you say?” The question drifted from behind, but Seth barely heard it, as Ignaz’s voice filled his head.

“They raped me one after another. They made him watch. And when they couldn’t get it up anymore, they used a broken bottle to ‘give me what I wanted.’”

The electric light glinted off the hollow glass tubes Seth took from the bag. The finest, thinnest glass clanged, producing a clear tune. Seth nodded, admiring the pristine quality. “I said I know what you want. Let me give it to you, worm.”

CLANG.Seth put several tubes in a stainless-steel kidney bowl. In breathless expectation, acute glares pierced his back. Almost palpable, the chaotic thoughts of his captives formed a single question that seemingly burned out all the air in the room. What would happen next?

Seth picked up the ceramic pestle and brought it down in the bowl.

CRUNCH. CRUNCH. CRUNCH. Tiny shards glittered and sparkled with rainbow lights. Methodically, carefully, he crushed big pieces into tiny fragments with sharp, uneven edges.

The man’s nerves gave in, and he squeaked, “What are you doing?”

Seth didn’t answer. He tapped the pestle against the edge of the kidney bowl to shake off the diamond dust, then grabbed the bottle of lube. Clear liquid squirted into the bowl, concealing the glass.

“I asked, what are you doing?” Panicking notes pitched the man’s baritone. “Answer me, motherfucker! Do you have any idea who you are dealing with?”

Setting the lube aside, Seth lifted a large pipette filler bulb. The liquid shimmered as the bulb sucked in the glittering fluid. Seth attached it to a flexible plastic tube, straightened, and walked back to the thrashing man.

“I’m in a bad mood, worm. You have one chance to die quickly.” Seth plucked out his phone and showed Ignaz’s picture to the man. “Remember him?”

Glinting eyes stood out against the bloodless face; lips lost the color. Number six didn’t need to reply.

“Of course, you do. You came here to soothe his itch. Point out those who raped him two years ago, and I won’t squirt this into your bladder. You’ll die quickly with dignity. If you lie or refuse, I’ll stuff your every hole with glass. I’ll make sure the shards are too tiny to kill, so it’s not glass that will finish you but infection. Day by day, you’ll watch your cock swell and blacken as you piss out blood and pus. You’ll rot from inside, and you’ll perceive every minute of it.”

“You are insane…”

“I hear it too often lately,” Seth smirked, squatted between the captive’s legs, wrapped his gloved hand around his dick, and secured the cockhead. The man howled when the tube entered his urethra and, with a push, slipped into his bladder.

“No-no-no-no-no…” The hips jerked under Seth’s forearms. The man hurled from side to side. The ropes tightened and sank into his throat. He coughed, hissed, and begged with his lips only, “Wait, I’ll tell you everything!”

“Names. I’ll know if you lie, and then you’ll be dying for weeks, or maybe even months. I’ll make your agony my life purpose.”

“Walter Fischer was there. And Fredrick… I don’t’ know his surname. Sven, Sven, over there, you killed him already.” The hatred flooding the air didn’t escape Seth’s attention. The man shrank, lifted his shoulders as if trying to hide in them, and mumbled, “There was no one else, I swear.”

“Wrong answer.” Seth squeezed the bulb.

A shriek ricocheted against the walls and pierced Seth’s mind, making him regret not gagging the man again.

When he pulled the tube out and got up, the captive wailed and sniffled, but his agony didn’t touch Seth’s heart. His desert demanded blood, pain, and lives. “Now, you must be thirsty. Let me help you.”

“No-no-no-no!” The man howled. Seth closed his eyes, feeling the realities clash and the sand vortexes swirl around his legs.