#◟〈 ♠ 〉 purgatorio ━━ 🇪​🇽​🇨​🇭​🇦​🇳​🇬​🇪​﹒

[avcnturine]

FORGET REVENGE ; SUICIDE IS A DISH BEST SERVED COLD.　♤　penultimate images are hazy behind the eye, having seared themselves into the dead brain like palinopsia grafted in the aftermath of a flashbang. the outline of the doctor's stern face, the angle of that unmoving expression, permanently stuck in disapproval——perfectly etched.

"agh. . . !" he wakes up to pain, a dull and throbbing war drum centered in the left side of his chest, beating rhythmically down upon the ribcage like it's threatening to burst. it's the first indication that he couldn't be dead, or that if there was still any chance he was, anyone professing death to be an afterlife of painless peace would have to be reconsidering their tenets soon.

his bed is one near the middle, on the second row closest to the large observation window. as his knee bends and he fights to sit up, convinced that doing so would lessen the phantom second pulse threatening to burrow straight down through sinew and bone, two things happen. first, the pain does, thankfully, subside, receding to a sullen smarting like the kind a large bruise might leave after the sudden impact of something roughly baseball-shaped against his heart. second, he becomes vaguely aware of a different uncomfortable sensation elsewhere, and with an inconvenienced sigh, shifts the blankets draping his legs with his other hand to borrow their subtlety for the time being.

a party, a gun, a bullet to the heart. he takes in the new surroundings, white again to white, and thinks that he'd almost be led to believe he didn't accomplish anything except knocking himself out for a while if not for the comparatively much larger size of this room and the rows upon rows of identical, medical gurneys. at least a hundred people could fit in here. . .

. . . at least hundred people had been fit in here, he realizes as brain finally processes what the eyes take in ; squinting, he peers closer at the lumps, each of them sheathed like morgue statues under drawn pristine white sheets, undoubtedly in the shape of people. he looks down at his own set, identical to the rest. and then, finally distantly registering a soft exchange of voices not far away, looks to the only upright, moving things in the stadium-sized chamber. "heavens." it's like each of his senses are returning one at a time, taking their time plugging connections into the brain and getting everything gradually back online. whatever they'd been hit with to put them all into that——dream? simulation?——it wasn't just the usual stuff.

right, the people. one, two, three of them, two men and a young woman crowded by the observation window ; on the other side, a scientist. researcher? the name ' ernest cranebill ' comes back again by association, accompanied by a migraine radiating behind his left eye. "ugh. . . " heel of palm presses to temple and rubs in deep, circular motions against the socket, head spinning with disconnected thoughts about consent, clothing, and legal ramifications in that order, none of them finishing before unraveling off into loose thread out of reach.

⋆✦₊‧ — PURGATORIO.

Blade, Mr. Reca, & Kallen. — Revelation 2025 : Research.