Route 4.3 – Sacrifice yourself to enable the girl to escape

In desperation, you take a few steps back until your back hits the wall. The closer the man in the wolf mask gets to you, the more you feel the need to expand the distance between you and him, but you can’t. Your gaze falls on the abused girl, who is now crouching at your feet to your right and emitting bloodcurdling screams. Again, she reminds you of your children and so you decide to do what any parent would probably do for one of their beloved children. You will protect this girl, even if it costs you your life. This man will never lay a hand on the girl again! Resolutely, you grip the axe tighter in your right hand and reach for the girl’s arm with the other. The only plan you can think of is very risky and will most likely cost you your own life. You will give yourself up to enable the young woman to escape. But whether she would be able to do that in her present condition, you don’t know. You can only hope. Your self-sacrificing decision, which brings about your certain death, causes an unexpected calm, but also a deep sadness and another, incomparable fear, such as you have never felt before, to creep up inside you. Tears come to your eyes, your whole body trembles and you are afraid. Afraid of dying. But even more afraid of the torture that probably awaits you first. And yet your mind is suddenly clear and you know exactly what you have to do. In this second, when you firmly grasp the girl’s arm, you have concluded with your life and now all that matters to you is to help the poor child to escape.

            The young woman flinches at your touch and tries desperately to resist as you pull her up to your left side. She lashes out at you, but when she turns around and your eyes meet, you can see in her teary eyes that she recognises it is you. The person who freed her before and who means her no harm. As soon as she realises this, she becomes quieter and does not resist your grip any further. You seem to have managed to bring her out of her traumatised state a little. Maybe she can now realise that you are helping her to escape and that she has to run away now!

            The man in the wolf mask is only a few metres away from you and you don’t let another second pass before you raise your hand with the axe, gain momentum and smash it in the direction of the murderer, aiming for his left shoulder. He looks unsurprised and manages to dodge the projectile, albeit only just. “Oh, not bad, but did the little sheep really think such a transparent trick would work? Haha!” Oh, but it did work! The man is now facing you on the right of the room and thus a gap has opened up to your left, leading straight to the wooden stairs and the exit of the basement room. And you would make sure that this terrible person would move even further away from the door and not get too close to the girl in her escape. You give her a strong push forward and then charge towards the murderer. Your shrill, shaky, but prompting voice echoes off the walls of the room. “The way is clear, run! Run!” Using all your body weight, you leap towards the man in wolf mask and crash to the ground with him. He probably didn’t quite expect that. Flailing wildly, you start a merciless scuffle, a fight to the death, when you see something pink scurrying up the stairs in the corner of your eye. The girl actually flees! Good girl… Seemingly distracted by what you have seen, you do not pay attention for a moment and cannot ward off the killer’s hand, which is now heading for the side of your neck. It hits you with full force, but in addition to the expected dull pain of a punch, you feel a sharp object pierce your skin. Disgusted and horrified by the unpleasant feeling, you manage to tear your opponent’s hand away from your neck. In the process, a small, elongated object slips out from between his fingers and lands on the ground a few feet away from you, shattering into many small shards on impact. You think you have recognised that it was a syringe. Wha-what? You are confused but cannot allow yourself any further distraction and focus on the murderer again. But after only a few seconds you realise that something is wrong. Your body seems increasingly weak and you find it difficult to move your legs. A short time later you lose control of your entire lower body and your arms can hardly be lifted. The man in the wolf mask laughs with amusement and you can’t stop him from pushing you away. No, I have to stall him! I have to buy the girl time to escape! The killer stands up and kicks you in the stomach. You groan in pain and also want to pick yourself up to bring him down again, but your body does not obey you. Even your attempt to grab his trouser leg no longer succeeds. You can’t move any more, not a bit. What… is happening to me?! The man in the wolf mask turns away from you, raises a hand and walks towards the small wooden staircase. “Oh, it’s always amazing to see how quickly this serum works… I hope my other little sheep hasn’t escaped in the meantime.” N-no! Stop… Stay…! But you only hear the words in your head, no sound comes out of your immobile mouth. Then, out of the blue, your vision blurs and you struggle with an overwhelming tiredness. Seconds later, you no longer manage to resist it. You only see the silhouette of the man in the mask pass through the door into the next room before everything around you goes black and you lose consciousness.

            Slowly you come to and open your eyes. You have to blink a few times to clear your vision. As you try in vain to lift your head, you realise that you are still paralysed. You cannot move a muscle. The serum that the killer has injected you with seems to be still strong. Whether it will ever wear off is uncertain. What if it was permanent and you could never walk again? Ha… never mind… I won’t survive the night anyway… You analyse your field of vision. Your head is resting on your chest and so you can only look down at yourself. You seem to be sitting, presumably on the same chair you managed to free yourself from earlier, see your arms hanging motionless from your body and, judging by the brightness of the room and the smell of blood, you are still in the basement room.

            Then you hear footsteps. Your ears tell you that the source of the sound is directly in front of you and coming closer. Dark red stained black shoes appear in your field of vision and come to a stop directly in front of you. No doubt they belong to the man in the wolf mask. “Good morning… Has the little sheep had a nice nap? Got a bit of energy? Very good! Because you’re going to need it… Because of you naughty little sheep, the other little sheep actually managed to escape. Now it can no longer take part in our fun games. You should be ashamed of yourself! Not allowing others to have fun and claiming everything for yourself… Tz tz tz… But I will drive these bad qualities out of you very quickly…” What a sick person! Sheep? Games?! I… would prefer a quick death… Damn…. Even though you have already said your goodbyes to your life, tears well up in your eyes again and panic creeps up inside you. It seems that you are really in for it. The torture you are so afraid of. What else would a psychopath who murders people and cuts them into pieces mean by ‘games’? But there is nothing you can do to escape the killer’s clutches. No matter how hard you try, you just can’t move. You are helpless against the man in the wolf mask and your fate is in his hands alone.

The man comes closer to you and bends down to you. You feel his warm breath close to your ear and hear his whispering words. “You know what’s great about this serum? It paralyses a lot of your muscles, but it doesn’t affect your body sensation at all. That means you can still feel everything that’s going on with your body. Hehe…” A cold shiver runs down your spine as your breathing speeds up drastically. The man gently reaches for your left hand, lifts it and begins to gently play with your fingers, in your field of vision of course. The tears in your eyes break away and roll down your cheeks, your heartbeat quickens and you break out in a cold sweat. For quite a while, the killer amusedly moves each of your fingers one by one and your tension rises to unbearable levels. Then suddenly and without warning he jerks your middle finger upwards until the nail of it touches the back of your hand. Your eyes widen under the enormous pain, but your body does not even manage to wince and instead of screaming you only produce a low moan. The murderer has told you the truth. Strangely, despite your paralysis, you can still feel pain. Why… Seemingly amused by your pain, the man in the mask begins to hum and takes your ring finger in his hands. N-no… Stop… Please… With another sudden movement, he bends the top half of your finger to the side until it touches the bottom of it. You feel in addition to the immense pain how your finger bone shifts and is no longer in its usual position. The killer laughs softly and then sets about the remaining fingers. One by one he breaks them. You want to scream, fight back, but you cannot. All that is left for you to do is to silently accept all the pain he inflicts on you. You have no choice.

When the killer has finished moving all five fingers of your left hand into unnatural positions, he drops your arm and disappears from your view. The olive-coloured rag you are dressed in is by now completely soaked at your chest by your many tears. After a few seconds of agonising tension, the man comes back into your field of vision and you see that he is holding a scalpel in his hand. What is he going to do with it now? In unimaginable fear of further pain, you follow with your eyes as he moves the threatening object past your face. Then you feel the cold, sharp blade against your right ear, which the killer now pulls away from your head. “There… surely you don’t need that anymore… Haha…” Your breath catches in your throat. Please don’t! As if it were the most normal thing in the world, the man in the wolf mask pushes the scalpel down and cuts off your entire ear from your body with a single incision. The burning, stinging pain this causes forces you to squint your eyes shut. You feel warm blood spreading from the fresh wound across your neck and shoulder. Oh, why can’t he just kill me quickly?! Why?! Why do I have to suffer like this, what evil have I done in my life to have to go through this?! Proudly presenting you with your severed ear as you open your eyes again, the killer then drops it to the ground, kneeling down in front of you. “Ah… yes, that’s right… eyes! I’m sure one will do for you, won’t it?” W-what?! For heaven’s sake, please, no! I… How… What… I… can’t stop him… S-stop… “Oh, lovely! What a docile and insightful little sheep you are to never contradict me! That’s nice…” Amused at your suffering, the man also makes fun of you as he puts the scalpel down on the floor and moves both of his hands towards your right eye. You squeeze your eyes shut, but a little later your eyelid is pulled up by his fingers. Then you feel pressure above and below your pupil, which becomes unbearably stronger the next moment. Your eye is painfully forced inwards, where it is grasped by the psychopath’s fingers and torn out of the eye socket with a quick, abrupt movement. A disturbing, horrible feeling spreads through you as you can see the back of your eye from the angle of other eye. No! N-no this… this… this is wrong, this… this is not right… It… it must… it… must not hang out… like this… It belongs… in my head… The unnatural, new body sensation almost makes you lose your mind.

Suddenly, a sharp pain and a complete blindness on one side make you aware that the eye has now also been separated from your body. Not a second later, you hear the scalpel that must have been used for the separation fall to the floor with a clang and your head is gripped tightly by the killer’s hands. He lifts it and comes very close to your face. You can now see his creepily painted wolf mask directly in front of you. “Ha, this is fun, isn’t it! You don’t experience something like this every day, do you? And how cooperative my little sheep is! Most of the time I have to force my sheep to be happy first… Hmm… What do you say you get to pick the next game? I’ll give you two choices. Blinking once means you choose the first answer option. Blink twice to choose the second. So… since it is Halloween… which would my little sheep prefer?”