Gordon’s eyes widened as the realization finally crawled into place.
’Co to think of it... I’ve never t any of her family.’
The thought hit harder than any blow. His mind scrambled backward, replaying years of mories. Vacations. Holidays. Quiet celebrations at ho. Not once had Valeria’s parents visited. No siblings. No distant relatives dropping by unannounced. Nothing. He had never questioned it.
’Why am I only noticing this now?’
The unease deepened as his thoughts pushed further back, past anniversaries and first argunts, past the wedding itself. And his brow furrowed again.
’How did I even et her?’
The mory blurred. One mont he was living alone, working late, eating cold als. Next, he was married. There was no first eting. No courtship. No beginning. Just... suddenly, Valeria was there.
His breath hitched.
Before he could grasp the terror blooming in his chest, his shoes were yanked off his feet. Valeria tossed one aside carelessly, like discarded trash. When Gordon looked down, his heart lurched.
She was holding a pair of pliers.
She crouched, gripping his leg with iron strength. Gordon thrashed, muscles screaming as he tried to pull away, but her hold did not budge an inch.
"Wait—Valeria, stop—" he choked.
The pliers slid beneath the nail of his smallest toe.
Snap.
A scream tore from his throat as the nail was clipped, then pulled free slowly and deliberately. He watched in horror as skin and blood followed it, his vision swimming from the pain.
She didn’t pause.
One by one, she repeated the process, each toe stealing another piece of his sanity. His voice broke into raw, animal screams that echoed through the classroom.
When she was finished, Valeria calmly sprinkled pepper over the exposed flesh.
The pain exploded.
Gordon scread again, louder than before, his body convulsing uselessly in the air.
Valeria smiled faintly.
After ripping out his nails and grinding pepper into the raw flesh, Valeria didn’t stop.
She broke him piece by piece.
Joints snapped and were reset wrong, then snapped again. A few teeth were torn from his mouth, making it bloody.
One eye was gouged out slowly, deliberately, her fingers steady as blood soaked her hands. Knife marks crisscrossed his body, shallow enough to keep him alive, deep enough to make every breath agony.
And then she took the last thing she could from him, castrating him without hesitation, without rcy.
Gordon no longer understood how he was still breathing.
He hung there, a ruined thing, blood pooling beneath him, every nerve screaming past the point of aning. Valeria stood before him drenched in red, watching her work with open, sadistic delight. Behind her, the creature continued to eat, jaws crunching through bone and flesh without pause. His parents, his children, still hung unconscious nearby, broken but alive. That knowledge hurt almost as much as the torture itself.
He wanted it to end. He wanted to die. He wanted to escape this place, this nightmare that refused to let him go.
And yet, even now, he couldn’t bring himself to hate her.
Tears stread down his face as he begged, his voice hoarse and wet, words dissolving into sobs. He begged until his throat tore raw, until sound itself failed him. None of it mattered.
Valeria only tilted her head, considering him, then said calmly,
"I think it’s ti to wake the rest up."
Sothing inside Gordon snapped.
His begging stopped instantly. Through a body that barely resembled a human anymore, he lifted his head and glared at her with what little strength he had left. His voice ca out broken but sharp.
"Bitch... don’t you dare."
Valeria smiled.
"Now you’re showing your true colors."
At that mont, the beast at the back of the classroom stopped eating.
Its massive fra went still. Slowly, it raised its skull-like head and turned its empty gaze toward Gordon.
Gordon’s blood ran cold.
For the first ti since this hell began, he understood one simple truth.
He had made a terrible mistake.
Gordon’s one remaining eye cracked open, barely able to focus, and found the massive creature at the back of the classroom. It had stopped feeding. Its dead, hollow gaze locked onto him, vast and empty, like a pit with no bottom.
His throat worked, torn raw, and when he spoke the words scraped their way out.
"Please... I’m sorry." He swallowed, pain ripping through his ruined body. "Please... don’t hurt my family. They’re your family too."
Valeria stared at him for a long mont. Then she spoke, as if he hadn’t said a word.
"Do you know who feels the most pain in this world?"
Gordon didn’t understand. His mind felt sluggish, drowned in agony. Valeria continued anyway, her voice calm, almost thoughtful.
"An evil man doesn’t feel much pain," she said. "For soone to do evil without restraint, they’ve already killed their emotions. Love, guilt, empathy. All gone. They don’t care if they exist, and they don’t care if others exist. Pain can’t take root in sothing that hollow."
She took a slow step closer.
"You can erase them, trap them between life and death, force them into endless cycles of suffering," she went on. "But that pain is shallow. It cos from confusion, from a soul that doesn’t understand its condition. It’s a constructed pain. A placebo."
Her expression hardened, the warmth draining from her face.
"But a good man," Valeria said softly, "a good man feels true pain."
She stopped directly in front of him.
"No matter how strong he is. No matter how brave. A good man lets others in. He loves. He trusts. And in doing so, he creates weaknesses." Her green eyes glinted, sothing dark moving behind them. "If those people are hurt, he suffers. If they betray him..." Her lips curved slightly. "The pain is far worse."
She leaned closer, her gaze burning into him.
"That’s why you’re a good man, Gordon."
Her eyes flared with pure malice as she whispered the final words.
"Because that’s the only way you could ever understand true pain."
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