Chapter 8: Shattered Mind

"Hah… hah…" Finn panted heavily as he ran amidst the pouring rain.

His fist tightened as he sprinted as fast as he could in this race against time. He didn't care about splashing water everywhere. He didn't care about stepping straight into puddles and getting his shoes soaked.

At that moment, he simply did not give two shits about anything else.

His mind and heart were both set on one thing and one thing only: making sure his beloved family was safe. Safe… from whatever the hell that thing was.

But Finn's hopes were soon shattered.

As he desperately ran, trying to catch up with the mysterious and terrifying entity that had mutilated a human to such a gruesome state, he heard a scream. One that was just as high-pitched as the one he heard earlier, but with one major difference:

He recognized the voice.

"Mother…"

Voice quivering and body trembling, Finn shook his head and kept on running, clenching his fists tightly enough to draw blood.

'It can't be,' he thought.

'It must be just an illusion,' he lied to himself.

But as much as he wanted to deny it… as much as he wanted to live in his false fantasy forever… reality would soon leave its mark.

It always did.

- ??? (A Few Minutes Earlier) -

"Storm. Multiple Morpher-class Phantoms located in District A," a young male voice said quietly, drowned out by the sounds of all the holograms and technologies laid out around him.

"On it," a deeper male voice replied via radio. Then, after a short silence, he continued. "Rain's up, Fanatic. Heading out."

"Copy. Reaper, Octane, and Archon. You with him?"

"Way ahead of ya, little guy," a third voice, excited-sounding, chuckled.

[Present.] A robot chimed in, voice cold and emotionless.

"Sweet. Seems like everyone is in position," the voice of a thirty-year old man muttered. "Alright, boys, listen to me. Let's get this shit done quickly, in and out, while Storm's cover is up. Got that?"

"Understood."

"Hell yeah!"

[Instruction: Received.]

Archon — the thirty year old man and the leader of the four — chuckled.

"Good. Let's go show them real hell, my friends. Operation Deathbringer has begun."

- District A (Present) -

Finn slowed down as he reached his house at last, panting heavily and dripping with both rain and sweat. His home was quite isolated — despite being in the same neighborhood, the neighbors closest to him were still about a hundred meters away.

As he continued to walk closer, he could — despite the dense fog that made it incredibly hard to see — tell that the door to his house was shut tightly.

Letting out a sigh of relief, he quickly lumbered over closer to the door, forcing his legs to keep moving despite them feeling like they were on fire, weak and painful.

With one hand, he rang the doorbell, still holding his umbrella in the other as there was no overhead ledge to block the rain.

No one answered.

Anxiety building up in his heart, he decided to try again.

"C'mon…"

Once again, his hopes were neglected.

"Tch…" Gritting his teeth, he leaned in closer to the door, pressing his ear against it to listen for any sign of somebody being inside.

Unfortunately, he couldn't hear anything, but through the hazy stained glass windows on the door, he could see a blur of white of some kind, hovering over the ground.

Confused and scared, Finn was at a loss for what to do. Keep running away from reality, or face it like a man? He chose the latter.

Hesitantly, he placed his trembling hand on the doorknob and gave it a good clockwise twist.

It was unlocked.

Finn gulped in fear. He could hear the pounding of his own heart against his chest, threatening to leap straight out. He didn't dare budge an inch, anxious about what he was going to see the moment he pushed open this door.

The truth was, he already knew. He knew full well what that blur of white was. Back then, at the intersection, he had seen it rush past him too — he just didn't want to believe it. At the time, his mind, deceived by the concept known as 'common sense', convinced himself that it was nothing. Nothing at all.

But now, he was left no choice but to think outside the box and prepare to have his sanity — and perhaps his life as well — stripped away from him.

His hand was already on the knob. All it took was one final push.

Finn took a deep breath, bracing for the worst, and slowly opened the door.

In an instant, he inhaled sharply, dropping his umbrella. It clattered to the wet concrete floor as Finn stood, frozen in shock and terror. His eyes widened in fear, body seized of all movement.

Before him, a humanoid abomination sat beside a human body that had its face eaten straight out. There was blood all over the carpet and walls around it, still dripping down to the floor — it had not dried yet, signaling that this happened not long ago.

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The monster's body was pure white, with no descriptive features apart from eight long tentacles sticking out of its back. They squirmed in pleasure as the creature fed, chomping down at the corpse laying by it with bloodthirsty relish.

But then, the monster stopped, slowly twisting its petrifying head around at the sound of Finn's umbrella dropping to the ground.

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It was then that Finn knew true horror.

All the thriller movies he had seen in the past, all the creepypasta he had read before on the Internet, and all those scary games he had played back in the day… none of them compared to this.

The creature had two small, empty white eyes, depicted by black outlines. It had no nose, but instead a creepy wide Glasgow smile that reached all the way to where its ears should've been. Because of this, a permanent, terrifying smile was carved onto its face, plastered like glue.

"A-Ah… AHH!" Finn screamed, before turning tail and running away into the raging storm.

He should've been angry. Infuriated with the creature for killing his family members.

But alas, simple fear drowned all of those emotions out. As Finn stared into those empty sockets of the creature's eyes, he had felt nothing but utter horror and the inexplicable urge to flee.

Humans were born natural cowards; pathetically weak. The moment they sensed danger, the moment their own lives were on the line, they forgot about everything else. Finn, being an average university student with little more than a good head on his shoulders, was no different.

He ran away with every ounce of energy he had left, screaming and shaking his head wildly in the process.

"What the hell IS that thing?!"

Wanting to escape.

"N-No… NO!"

Wanting to deny the reality.

Finn heard the scraping sound of feet on the ground behind him, closing in at a rapid pace. He continued running, as fast as his legs would take him.

He wanted to look back. He wanted to see if that monster was really chasing him. But quite impressively, he resisted that urge and merely continued to sprint down the sidewalk amidst the pouring rain, having lost all sense of direction.

The scraping become louder and louder until finally-

"SSSSSSS!"

Finn heard a loud hiss, as if beckoning him to turn around and give in to his fear.

So he did.

And there, he stared straight into the ugly, nose-less face of the monster, right as its claws swiped down at his eyes.

"AHHHHHHHH!"

Everything went to black. And at that moment, all Finn could feel was pain.

Pain, pain, pain. Agony like Finn had never felt before. He stumbled backwards, falling onto the wet, dirty floor. He clawed at his own eyes, trying desperately to get them to open again, to be able to see again — but no matter how hard he tried, it did not work, and instead only served to amplify the torment.

"Skreee!" he could hear the creature shriek in delight as he continued rolling around on the ground in painstaking suffering.

But then, suddenly, amidst the torture and imminent death, a female voice spoke to him, quiet yet harsh

[Enough fleeing, Finn Thresher.]

It was as if time had stopped for Finn. The voice, although not ear-splittingly loud, drowned out all else. The pain, the panic, the fear — in that instant, all of it went away.

[Are you really such a coward to just run away in the face of the creature who murdered your family?]

Now, without the distraction of anything else, Finn was able to think clearly. No longer bothered by the utter terror implanted in his heart, he was finally able to calm down and discover the other emotion that had been drowned out by the fear:

Hatred.

Hatred for killing his family. The body that had been laying on the ground next to the creature in the house — that was his mother's. He recognized it from the hair, which had not been eaten unlike the rest of her head.

Undoubtedly, the creature had also mutilated the other members of Finn's household, saving his mother for last. He just didn't hear the screams because he was too far away.

'How dare it… how dare it kill my mother…?!'

Finn, within this alternate dimension of his where all time in the real world was stopped, began trembling once more — but not from fear.

No… this time, it was pure, raw anger. The longing to kill. The thirst for revenge.

[Do you see now? The cry for vengeance in your heart?] The voice asked once again, pleading for an answer. [Do you wish to erase the Ghosts from this savage, paracausal world?]

'Ghosts?' Finn thought darkly. 'Was that what these damn things were called?'

But... it didn't really matter, did it? No matter their name… all he had to do was get rid of them like pests. Keep on slaying them one by one until all of them were gone, never to walk the face of this earth again.

"… I do," Finn said quietly, in response to the mysterious voice's question. "I'll kill every single one of them until none are left."

[I see. In that case... I shall grant you a chance.]

Finn had no idea who this voice belonged to. He had no idea whether it really even existed or if it was just his false hope whispering to himself that everything was going to be okay.

But he was desperate. And in the face of desperation, humans tended to cling onto whatever hope they could find — even if said hope was false.

He was craving for power, for his own survival, and his journey of revenge. Even if it was false hope, even if it made no sense whatsoever according to the 'science' he has always believed in…

'Fuck all that,' Finn thought.

That's why… regarding the mysterious female voice whispering to him inside his head, one thing was for certain:

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He believed her words.

[Take this power, Finn Thresher... and embrace the darkness within.]

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