Fallout 4 OneShot: Torture in Existence
Summary: “I lay dormant in body, but active in mind. I existed, but I also did not. Against the background of a rotting environment, I blended in. So please… Pity me then. Stop dragging it out. End my suffering!”
Nate and Gage encounter a Feral Ghoul in Kiddie Kingdom that is a little different from what they are used to…
Notes: CW: Please be aware that there are mentions of being stuck in confined spaces (first POV), gore, blood and death. If you start feeling too uncomfortable, stop reading. Take care of yourself <3
I also might have played a bit with what is canon lore for Feral Ghouls lmao, just to warn yah, it has A LOT of personal headcanons.
A HUGE thank you to the lovely Seth’s Kiss and NekoPantera for beta reading this for me. This was WAY out of my usual comfort zone and I truly needed a few pairs of extra eyes to help me <3 thank you!
This entry is part of Darker Oneshots - Halloween Event 2022. The other participants and extremely talented authors are as follows:
- Alastair
- NekoPantera
- PhantomGypsy13
- SerenaJones
- Seth's Kiss
- YaoiHime420
- Mishiko Shinsei
Please give their stories a read-through as well :3
The beam in front of my face was tainted by rust.
Everything was oxidised metal, that was the only reality I’d ever known. I could not imagine a world without its coppery scent and rough touch. For some reason, though, this rust, its sickly pattern where it ate away at the metal, felt important to me.
It was familiar. I saw it every day, 24 hours long, with eyes unblinking, unmoving. It was home. And so long as I saw it, I knew no one was getting hurt.
But it was familiar, too, because I had felt something eat at me once. It had left patterns across my skin, and edged its way down to my bones, into my brain, my soul, my very essence. Left behind were remnants of humanity in shape and form, but deformed into something different... Familiar, but tainted.
I lay dormant in body, but active in mind. I existed, but I also did not. Against the background of a rotting environment, I blended in.
So when a torchlight shone on my face, blinding me momentarily before moving on, I knew they had not seen me.
I wished they had. Yet, I couldn’t do anything about it… I never could. Not anymore.
Most of my kin seemed brainless. As if a sickly hunger had wedged itself into their cores. All they could do was snarl, moan and eat. This hunger guided me too, but it did more to me. At least I hoped I was special. If I believed in my selfish worldview of being the only one tormented, the only one in grief of a life I took for granted, then none of the others would feel the vile self-hatred I had… and that… that was the only bit of hope I had left. I hoped I was the only one tortured this way.
That, and the fact that my eyes were still staring straight at the rust. The building’s visitors had not stirred me yet.
Let me sleep. Let me pretend I’m dead. Let me pretend I am in hell.
“Suppose I didn’t have to sleep tonight anyway…”
“Quiet, Gage… We’re not alone down here.”
“Yer not helping…” Even the muttered whisper was close enough to be loud to me.
They were too close. There was no way I wouldn’t wake – unless they remained silent.
A blink made me realise it was too late. The eyelids had momentarily stopped my never-ending view of the coppery pillar in front of me.
It startled me more than the footsteps had earlier. One blink was followed by another. My eyelids did a poor job of it lately, barely covering what used to be my eyeballs, but it was still a movement. A shuffle alerted me to the fact my feet had moved too. I could no longer feel my body – when I caught sight of my reflection whilst roaming, I was glad I couldn’t feel. The rot must be painful.
“Jeez…” I had no idea what the visitors commented on, however I heard the familiar clicking of a keyboard. After so long, the terminals still worked. Over 200 years of rust was taking over the world, but those damned things still worked.
It had been such a place of solitude to sit in front of a screen and type away the painful feelings. To sort of… keep a diary. No one would read it, no one would use it to understand history – I knew that. But that didn’t mean it hadn’t given me comfort to try and sort out my pain…
Now someone was reading it. For some reason, it felt like my privacy was invaded. But it also felt like a little shred of hope. Maybe they would understand that they truly were not alone. Maybe they would leave.
“Gage, these people slowly turned into Ferals…”
There was a long pause, but the words had gotten louder as emotions ran higher.
I watched, in horror, as my gaze moved away from the rust, jaw parting to let out a muffled snarl between dry, bloodstained teeth over which no lips existed anymore.
The visitors didn’t react yet. I caught a glimpse of them, and immediately recognized them as Raiders – part of the group that overtook the traders who had settled down in Nuka World, no doubt. We had to set up extra defences to keep those bastards out. More radiation. Ferals everywhere…
And it still didn’t work? How did they get in?
Back then, the defences had been to keep them out so we would stay safe.
Now, the defences were to keep them out to stay safe. Oswald didn’t agree. He never saw us as the monsters we truly had become.
“Boss, what the hell are you talking about?”
“These were people once.”
“We’re Raiders. Ain’t got no time to feel sorry for some people.”
Although I physically could not feel my emotions anymore, I knew that I felt scared for the life of Oswald. He still lived, he still had control of his body… He had been our hope for a cure… for salvation…
Slowly, my body moved its hand over to the edge, shaking fingers slowly closing around the concrete to drag my body forward. Blood started flowing again, albeit it slowly… deadly slowly… and another raspy breath was inhaled.
Out, came a snarl. A loud, vicious one. It was happening again. I watched my body move, I followed along as it fell down from its hiding spot, and unravelled itself to stand back up again in almost liquid movements, as if our spine did not exist anymore.
With little blood flow, came little control over muscles. I twitched, I limped, all the way to the sound of the voices. I was not alone. Three others joined me.
I recognized them. They were my friends too once. Jenny, who lost her hair before turning into a Ghoul before losing her entire scalp once she turned Feral; Ken, who had begun to pace, and pace, and pace at first to keep from sleeping, then because he’d lost control over his own body; and George… George, the man who held tight to a picture of his son, lost to him somewhere in Boston… George, who we knew was starting to be touched by the Affliction when he dropped said picture to the floor, into a puddle of irradiated water, without caring…
They limped, and twitched, and moaned alongside of me. I tried to will my neck into turning to look at them, to try and catch their eyes, but nothing happened as I tried. Even if I had caught a glimpse of their gazes, I would not have recognized their eyes anymore, nor would they have recognized mine. I hoped…
I only knew who they were from their ragged clothes… Their eyes held no soul anymore. Their eyes held no emotion.
Nor did mine… They were rotting globes of flesh begging for the day when blood would no longer flow…
I saw our visitors now. They looked rough, radiation having touched their skin throughout their lives, yet it was still smoother than anything I remembered ever having. Slices on their armour told a tale of having met Oswald’s sword already, but they were not scared away by the encounter, clearly. One wore a vault suit decorated with raider armour, the other wore nothing but a raider’s outfit.
They were a strange pair.
But although I was trying to deduce them, my body would not let me think long.
It charged, throwing itself onto the one in blue. Arms flailed, nails tried to scratch, and my mouth opened to try and chomp down on innocent meat.
I hated this. It made my stomach churn – or it would have at least. I did not want to attack, but no matter how much I pushed against the confines I was in, no matter how much I kicked, screamed and threw myself against the walls, my body would not move. It only did that which the Affliction wanted it to do. It hungered. It sought life. It killed anything that moved.
Ghouls, those who were starting to look like us, were left to walk freely among us. Sometimes our bodies would turn and watch them, curious why they seemed stuck between death and life, able to walk a tightrope that let them dangle the dangerous, ominously green, ocean which would turn them into drooling beasts. But unless they attacked, our bodies would not harm them. They looked like us, but weren’t us. I craved for the time I was walking the tightrope again. I would do anything to be able to walk at all.
That is why Oswald lived among us safely. That is why… we… lived among them a long time... Until we became them.
As we rushed at them, charging as if slamming our bodies into them would let us eat them quicker, both intruders shot at random in a state of panic. Then, their bullets rippled through us with a calm precision. Eyes squinted at us through their weapons’ sights and triggers were gently squeezed. Bullets shot through my body, but I felt no pain and kept going. I threw myself at the one dressed in blue once more, but he side-stepped and I went tumbling down a flight of stairs.
I heard a crack. Breaking bones was not uncommon in this state, but this was a big bone. A big crack.
As I stood back up, my body was limping somewhat awful. I could barely make it back up the steps, and when I did, both visitors had dealt with my three friends already. Eventually, a bullet would hit a nerve that would disconnect the body’s connection with the rotting brain, and that was the end of it. Sometimes they decapitated us. Sometimes they just put a machete through our foreheads.
Sometimes they just threw a missile at us.
I’d seen it all as I wandered around the park, but I’d never faced death in any other capacity than being the one to watch, or bring it to others.
This time, they nonchalantly kept their backs to me as I snarled for them, hands flailing in front of me to get to them quicker – like a hungry toddler reaching for cookies.
They clearly heard, but they were busy with their argument. It was cocky of them… or they were simply this good at surviving.
“Boss, you don’t get to feel sad for ‘em. I put my neck on the line making you Overboss, don’t show the others this side of yeh – better yet, get rid of it.”
“They were people, Gage – all of them were people and-“
“What difference does this make? I saw you out there, killing Feral after Feral. Why the sudden change now?”
The one called ‘Gage’ turned to me. He did nothing but point his gun down to the one good leg I still had, and fired until my lower leg existed no more.
I fell to the ground, but my snarls continued and my arms still took over for what my legs could not do. I was moving so slow. They had all the time in the world to take me out as I dragged myself forward, yet they didn’t.
And he dared to say he pitied us?
Pity me then. Stop dragging it out.
“Are yeh gonna be sayin’ that when the gangs ask you to kill settler for ‘em?”A pause. “We’re all fucked. These creatures don’t have no thoughts no more. Practice on ‘em. Or the gangs are gonna practice on you.”
Gage had pointed down to me, and my hand had tried to reach out to yank him down and sink my teeth into him – but I couldn’t reach.
The man in blue turned to look down at me too, and I caught his gaze. There was pity in his eyes, but it disappeared quickly.
“Look, I know you was some big fancy Minutemen General. I know you was helping them synths. I know you have a big heart – but you’re the Overboss now. You don’t get to have a big heart, or someone will pierce it and take over. That don’t sit right with me, cause then I gotta find some new asshole to bring us where we should be.”
“Always just looking out for yourself,” the man in blue said with a scoff. I couldn’t determine, as my gaze was snapping violently, angrily, between the two victims so close to me, yet so far away, whether the man in blue was angry or sad about it.
“That’s the way the world is now.”
I deflated at those words. It was too true. We had caused harm to so many people, not just Raiders, simply by having our defences up. The traders who had come to Nuka World first were no enemies of ours, but we didn’t know that. We’d heard stories of how Ghouls were treated, after all… Still… We had hurt them. Killed them.
From the way the man in blue once more looked down at me and seemed genuinely tormented, I could tell that I was not the only one grieving a world long gone. And for a moment, I could no longer live in the selfish worldview of being the only one tormented. Even those alive were.
I knew… that even if my Affliction could be cured, I would still be in hell.
As Gage turned to me and pointed his gun at my head, I seemed to no longer be fighting to get to them. I knew I was facing death, I knew that I was seconds away from sweet release.
I knew… and for some reason, that knowledge reverberated through my body and allowed me to have one last moment of control. My arms rested on the floor, still for once despite my muscles still twitched underneath my rotten flesh. I lifted my torso up, and rested my forehead against the barrel of his gun.
“Thank you…” I whispered with my final breath and closed my eyes as –
Gage stared at the corpse that had uttered words despite being a Feral. The shot still echoed against the walls of the maintenance tunnels before dissipating to allow the background ambience of faint whirring from a far away generator to come back.
“Yeh know, for a Kiddie Kingdom, this place is real fucked up.” Gage turned his gaze to his Overboss, searching, momentarily, for some scoff of a laugh in approval of his words.
But the boss still held that haunted look in his eyes. So, Gage rolled his. “Seriously boss, I-“
“No. I know.” Nate looked at Gage and nodded his head. “I know. We’re all in this to survive. Alone. Nothing more. Nothing less. So let’s find this Oswald bastard and put an end to his misery too.”
Gage felt that his words hadn’t exactly gone through to his new boss’, however… he was aware that a man with a heart might just be what the Raiders needed at the moment – if just to ensure that someone wanted to help them get settled, and have a life here… After that? If the boss was still as warm-hearted and emotional, then he’d have to handle the Overboss … again.
But that was still a way away. For now, Gage could handle Nate.
As his Overboss started walking off, Gage was meant to follow. But he couldn’t quite move away from the body of that one last Feral… His eyes landed on the pile of rotten flesh, meters away from a large, rusted beam up against which splatters of blood and brain had splashed, hiding some of the coppery roughness on the metal.
So let’s find this Oswald bastard and put an end to his misery too.
No, Gage’s words definitely hadn’t gone through to his Overboss but… despite the roughness Gage attempted to show off, he had to agree with Nate this one time.
“Yer welcome,” Gage said quietly down to the corpse.
From up ahead, where Nate was walking, the Overboss smiled gently hearing those words, not yet losing hope that some of these Raiders were a lost cause. If a Feral had something softer beneath its harsh looks, a Raider could have it too.
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