Reborn to Devour: A Demonic LitRPG

I stood alone in a holding cell with my hands shackled together in front of me. Well, to say I was alone was not entirely the truth. Guard Jacobs stood next to the door, watching me with silent intensity and unhidden disdain. He sported his signature frown that sat nicely beneath his thick mustache.

To me, Guard Jacobs was no different than a houseplant that occasionally barked orders. And that was perfectly fine. Guards were not meant to interact much with the prisoners. Some did, preferring to be friends in the hopes that the prisoners would listen to them a bit better.

I didn’t like any of that shit. The guards weren’t like me; they got to go home, they got to eat well, they got to see their families. I hated when people pretend they are who they are not. It only created confusion when the façade dropped. I hated inconsistency more than anything. It was like finding a crunch in a soft meal and made me not trust a single thing about them afterwards.

The silent types suited me better. There were no pretenses, no difficult conversations when one had to punish the other. Guard Jacobs would yell when he had to, hit when he had to; a dynamic far easier to understand. A dynamic that I respected.

I looked down towards the gift that was recently given to me. Illuminated by a dim incandescent light bulb, a paper bag sat on the floor. Grease stains created splotches on the bottom. It had been sitting there for several minutes now. Guard Haltenberg placed it there for me before he left, sliding it through the doorway like a zookeeper would do with a flank steak in a tiger enclosure. But, he was right to do so. On a day like today, I may be interested in ripping off a bit of flesh.

I creased my forehead and frowned at the bag; the yellow ‘M’ branded into the paper being the chief offender.

“This is not what I requested,” I complained to my stoic watcher.

What I asked for was a burger and a beer. The burger had to have American cheese and no pickles. The beer had to have been sitting in an ice-filled cooler for at least an hour. More specifically, I wanted a burger grilled in the backyard at the house of someone’s retired uncle. The kind that had their own signature meat and spice blend that was mostly black pepper and garlic powder. The kind that looked sad when it rained in the summer because he couldn’t host a get-together by the poolside.

The sounds of cicadas chirping throughout the night reminded me of summer evenings around the pool. The scent of chlorine water and grilled meats created phantom sensations in my nose. If I could just recreate it once, I would have been so much more satisfied.

Instead, I was slid a cheap burger and a paper cup full of sink water; room temperature sink water at that.

It must have been since we were in mid-June. Two weeks after Memorial Day, two weeks until Fourth of July. There must not be any parties going on. I, at least, hoped for a birthday burger. At worst, I would have settled for a graduation party burger. But that was why they requested a retired uncle to cook it. Guys like that barely need an excuse to fire up their grills and pull out their best seasoning blends.

Maybe there was something going on and they just hadn’t told me. It wasn’t like I knew what day it actually was. There was little purpose other than knowing the number on my countdown.

A countdown that had finally reached zero.

“You know that we can’t offer you anything that isn’t made at a restaurant, Inmate 9198131512. And definitely no alcohol,” Guard Jacobs replied placidly. “What were you expecting?”

Guard Jacobs never called anyone by name. A mouthful that it might have been to the average person, Guard Jacobs rattled off the numbers on anyone’s tag like a damn calculator. Five hundred prisoners and he knew all our numbers so he didn’t have to call us by our human names. Today, I was Inmate 9198131512. Another day, another guard, I might have been given my birth name.

“But this shit? C’mon, you know that the voucher was for, like $40. There are five steakhouses around here and you guys pick this,” I argued. I could have listed them off for added effect if I thought that it would change anything. But, I was only arguing with a potted plant.

“Do you want it or not?” Guard Jacobs asked.

I knew that it wasn’t Guard Jacobs that ordered the burger, he had been standing at this cell for an hour now. I knew that it was likely a two-faced guard like Haltenberg. He smiled with big white teeth when taking my order before showing up with this pile of shit.

That didn’t change the fact that I wanted nothing more than to grab Guard Jacob’s neck. It would be a satisfying send-off to squeeze and shake and wrench until it popped and made the man’s body go limp.

I had finally broken my four-hundred-and-fifty pound bench press a few weeks back. Someone once told me that if I could bench four-fifty, then I could kill men with a punch. Couldn’t remember which meat head said that. Savage? Thatcher? It didn’t really matter. I never had the chance to test it out. If I was going to have any regrets, that might be the only one.

I knew that I painted the perfect stereotype for a violent criminal. I was the poster child for an irredeemable beast that gets shown on the news every once in a while to support harsher sentencing. I was the reason that people were skeptical of “released on good behavior”. Not that anyone ever bothered to understand what I was doing, to look a little deeper into my ideas.

I knew that the others weren’t like me. Everyone always had “reasons” to not feel bad, circumstances that justified what they had done. I didn’t need those. I knew my actions were wrong and I did them because I liked doing them.

I shook my head and banished the thoughts that pissed me off. I was told by Father Reynolds that most seek repentance in these moments, but I had found no inclination to do so. I never once felt guilt about anything that I did to another person. As far as I knew, I was born without remorse or empathy.

Others tried to offer the court explanations to my behavior. A doctor testified at the witness stand that both my parents drank heavily when I was in the womb. They did it to my brother, Kenny, too; the kid had a speech impediment and couldn’t be in crowded places without breaking down in tears. My lawyer had explained that my mother admitted that, when I was a boy, my father’s punishing hand had hit me into a banister just a little too hard. It had been severe enough that I don’t remember it and they tried to dress my wounds at home instead of letting a doctor see what had happened. She never showed up to testify on my behalf.

Not to mention the numerous head injuries I endured when I played line-backer for my high school football team. At least we won State.

Even if it was any of those reasons, it happened so long ago that I didn’t really know of a time where I wasn’t like this. Call it instinct, call it divination, but I think that I always would have been this way. Even a perfect environment would have produced someone like me.

With a heavy sigh, I reached into the wet bag and pulled out the cardboard container. At least they had ordered me fries, though they were already cool and soggy by now. I took a bite of the burger and frowned. An acidic flavor and slimy texture slid across my tongue like a slug dipped in vinegar. It wasn’t bad enough that this would be my final flavor, they hadn’t even removed the pickles.

I had only managed a couple more bites before Guard Haltenberg returned with two other guards.

“Inmate 9198131512, it is time to go,” Guard Jacobs barked at me, pointing his thumb over his shoulder to command me out.

I hadn’t finished my meal, but I dropped my burger without complaint. It wasn’t what I wanted anyway. Obediently, I stepped out and allowed myself to be surrounded by the guards. I was to be led on my final parade around the grounds. This walk upon the cold floors would terminate in the room where all men like me went.

A great howling and whooping came from the cells that I passed. Some shouted cliché lines about me being a “dead man walking” while others called out how they’d be happier now that I was gone. I couldn’t really begrudge it. Many of them had been on the receiving end of my violence and few had managed to oppose it. This was the vengeance that they were unable to claim themselves. In that way, I pitied this zoo of weak men and felt satisfaction that they could not get revenge with their own hands.

“Thor!” I heard Boss Raymond call out to me from his cell. His bald, tattooed head was pressed up to the iron bars. “You’re going to Valhalla, brother! Fucking Valhalla!”

Thor wasn’t my name, but it might well have been. The men in Boss Raymond’s gang were big into Norse mythology and Vikings. More accurately, it was some strange Norse-Christian fusion. Strong warriors that fought eternally to be God’s soldiers and defeat the demons of Hell in Ragnarok.

I looked down at the tattoos that covered my body. Jörmungandr swam around my chest and shoulders. Eagles, iron crosses, and numbers that never meant anything to me took up every inch of free skin like a walking billboard of bigotry. These brandings were the necessary initiation rite to be able to fight, and I was happy to pay. I would have joined anyone that would have taken me, but the color of my skin dictated that these nationalists were my only option. Solo fighters did not live long after all.

I’m violent, not stupid.

All that aside, Boss Raymond might be one of the few people I would miss. The man created endless opportunities for brawls and made things a bit less boring.

The tour was over and I entered a small room with a singular doctor’s chair inside. It was nothing like the movies. There was no audience. There would be no suspense for a last second pardon; a pardon that I neither deserved nor expected. The only viewers of my demise would be the guards, the doctor, and Father Reynolds.

Without being ordered to, I placed myself on the table. I freely offered my arm to the doctor. There was no point in dragging it out.

“Hello, son,” Father Reynolds greeted the inmate.

“Hello, Father.”

“Did anyone visit you today?” Father Reynolds asked. “Did your mother make the trip down from Kentucky?”

“No, I don’t think she would have handled it. Besides, her new husband never let her visit before.”

“What about your girlfriend?” Father Reynolds wondered hopefully.

“Ex.”

I felt the needle stick into my arm, that unpleasant pinch that I never got used to, despite all my ink. I thought about Miranda. She was probably in her double wide with a belt tightened around her arm and a needle dug in. In that way, we matched today.

“Your kid?”

“Never,” I answered sharply.

Carl and I agreed that I should have no part in his life. When he was old enough to handle it, then Carl would tell him about his evil father so I could be a detached story instead of a painful memory. There was, at least, enough compassion in me to decide that.

“Anyone?”

“My cousin, Trevor. Only because he said it was too sad for me to go out alone.”

It was mostly because the book he lent me would be confiscated if I died with it. The bastards here were notorious about “losing” people’s shit when they died. I remembered when I saw one of the guards pocketing an inmate’s prized cigar cutter. Fucker wasn’t even dead, just locked up for life. Wouldn't even let his son take it.

If there was any regret to have for my execution being today, it was that I didn’t manage to finish reading that book. Moby Dick. I figured I should go out on a classic. The way it was written made my eyelids heavy, but I found myself drawn toward Ahab’s self-destructive rage.

“That’s good,” Father Reynolds said with an absentminded nod, his thoughts occupied with the true nature of his visit. “Do you wish to repent and accept the Lord?”

“Father, if repenting was such an easy task, Heaven would be overrun by men like me,” I answered. I needed to be curt so that he would get the hint early. Playing this game benefitted neither of us.

After a nod of confirmation from the guard, the doctor pressed down on the syringe. The drug that would render me unconscious flowed through my veins. I swore that I felt it inside of me, blending in with my blood and causing it to feel light. But, maybe that was just my imagination.

“Inmate 9198131512, in thirty seconds, you will close your eyes and never wake up,” Guard Jacobs informed me impassively.

“If God intended to make me like this, He made me to be a trial in the lives of others,” I said definitively to Father Reynolds. “If He did not, then I was a mistake and my victims and their families suffered for nothing.”

A sinking feeling overtook me. Down, down, through the chair and into the floor. Blackness coated my eyes, rendering me blind. I could not feel the border between consciousness and unconsciousness. I no longer felt present. The smell of disinfectant disappeared. The feeling on my skin against the pleather armrest dissipated into nothing. While I still retained my thoughts, I knew that I would surely die soon.

But I kept falling, the sensation never ceasing. If anything, it continued to accelerate. It felt like there was air beneath me, rushing and whistling past my ears like I had been thrown from a plane.

Without any reference for the passage of time, I fell. It took a long time; far longer than thirty seconds. Falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling, falling.

Light.

Heat.

My eyes were blinded and my skin burned and bubbled from the boiling temperatures. I screamed, for I was no Tibetan Monk. I possessed no mastery over pain of this magnitude. The art of Stoicism that other men would talk about was meaningless when flesh seared incessantly.

Today, I am the burger.

Out of my peripherals, before my eyes burned shut, I could see craggy mountains made of black stone form an impenetrable ring that hemmed the world in from all sides. I could see massive creatures I’d never seen before roaming the lands.

Then, I hit the stone below me. But I did not stop. I burrowed deeper and deeper down into the earth until I finally stopped moving, my body completely numb. Inside that inky blackness, a red-bordered box sprung forth. It displayed a clear, unmistakable message.

Welcome to eternal damnation. Welcome to Hell.