The First Moment
Copyright© 2026 by TMax
Chapter 4: Choices
I tried to slam the door, but the piston mechanism slowed it and caused it to close with a soft puff. Fuck. Those fuckers hadn’t even let me slam the door. Even my blood didn’t stick to the smooth, clean metal door. I don’t know why that made it so much worse. Maybe because if I died, I would not have left a trace, no blood smudges, no death with a bang.
My heart hammered in my temples as my vision narrowed, turned red. The smell from the gross room, which still covered me, returned and almost caused me to dry heave again, but my anger, that monster that saved me from the foul room, burned inside my veins, kept my mind and body focused. During the long walk, I wondered why, but when I had to back up, I no longer cared about why, just what, what I would do to the person who did this to me. What pain and suffering I would inflict.
In the center of the room sat two chairs. A person sat tied up in one, while the other had a piece of paper on it. Two ordinary metal chairs, silver-tubed legs, and armrests that glinted in the distant lights. A solid flat silver seat with small holes in it. Both rested on a black platform, almost like a stage in the center of an auditorium, except with no seats and no spectators.
The room’s air felt cool and moist, almost too humid after the tunnel. I licked the blood off my fingers, happy for the moisture, grossed out by the texture, but instead of sating my hunger, it caused it to grow with each drop I licked off. I could barely taste the copper and iron. The blood did nothing to sedate my anger, my desire to torture, kill, maim someone, anyone. Like the person in the chair.
A captive like me, but I still hated them. The way they stared at me. The way they wheezed with each breath, which I could hear at a distance of over thirty feet. A dark floor between them and me. A short distance compared to the hallway. An easy distance to cross. Mere seconds to move to this person, this person that I hated, who made my mind boil with a desire to hurt them. Deep down, I knew that this person likely hadn’t done anything to me, but logic and rational thought did not get me through the hell I just went through. Anger, hate, and a desire to exact revenge had kept me alive. And those emotions deserved an outlet.
“Who are you?”
The room echoed, and it almost sounded like I asked myself that question.
“Show yourself!”
And I yelled, again and again, for someone, anyone, to show themselves. The echoes returned almost louder than they left and made it sound like I demanded that I show myself.
A massive room, with dark, unlit walls. So big that my voice took moments to echo back to me. A mathematical mind could have figured out the dimensions by the delay, but theory does not help in the real world.
I walked to the chairs. What else could I do? The person had a gray rope around their arms and legs, a gray cloth gag, and wide eyes, so wide they appeared white with red cracks, and tiny black dots surrounded by light brown. Greasy, black hair hung down to their shoulders. My right hand throbbed, and my whole body felt weak, such that I almost collapsed into the other chair. I stopped as my gaze saw the paper. My mind froze as I read and understood the words.
‘Beat this person to death, and you will go free.’
Death.
To death.
Beat to death.
The cold thing inside wanted me to do it. Easiest thing in the world. The angry thing screamed to destroy this person. And after it saved me, it deserved to get what it wanted. What I wanted. To Hurt. To maim. To Kill.
But the human, me, I didn’t know them. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t kill someone. Innocent or not.
I sat.
And twirled my wife’s engagement ring with my other hand. I often did this when I needed to think. What would she do? Likely, she would kill the person. My wife had a temper. A nasty thing that caused her to throw stuff. To break plates and glasses. The therapist helped her, especially in the baby years. But what therapist could stop the evil thing in our souls? The thing that wants to make the person across from me bleed. I stared at their brown eyes, at the cuts on their forehead, and at their broken nails. They had brown, muddy feet and a cauterized small stump where their right big toe used to exist. Younger than me, by maybe ten years. I wondered how they ended up in the chair across from me. Did they go through the torture rooms also?
An image of the person in front of me, ripped to pieces, like a doll. Like the doll that my daughter destroyed on Christmas. The wrong doll. My mother-in-law had purchased the wrong doll, and in a fit of rage, she ripped it apart. And worse, her grandmother bought her a new doll, the correct doll, because my daughter cried, but she didn’t learn. Their chest moved up and down, so not a mannequin. Hell, I hated the wheeze when they breathed. Hated it so much that I wanted to make it stop.
The chair squeaked as I shifted and leaned on my knees. My elbows hurt. My knees hurt. But I could only stare at the person. To gaze into their eyes. I hated the red veins. I hated their long eyelashes. So different than my wife. So different from my daughter.
Their tiny black pupils darted to my knees, my feet, my forehead, my shoulder, and stopped on my wife’s wedding ring. I almost screamed at them. How dare they invoke my wife? My dead wife. Did they want to die?
Maybe the psycho builders would let me go if I killed this lady. Walk out the front door. Back to my world of spreadsheets. To my sterile office, with only memories of the gross room, the death room, and the endless tunnel. I just had to stop her wheeze. To put her out of her misery. Could I go through with beating her to death and live with the memory of killing this lady? Could I live with both my wife’s death, my daughter’s death, and this lady’s death?
Worse. I would go to hell for it. No heaven. No future reunion with my wife and daughter.
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