Inquisition: Act 1 - Saturday, February 03, 1998

Consequences. It had always been consequences. Time, after
time, after time, they never seem to learn... So once again,
I roam the land, seeking for a change, for some repentance.
As before, the Earth lies in ruins. It was done rather
quickly this time, though. Quickly, and violently. This
cycle's survivors gathered in the city that symbolized
decayness the most, a city of pain and lies, populated by
tormented souls, now even more than before... A city so
rotten, so despicable, so polluted, both mentally and
physically, and yet, so shameless and dangerously soothing,
a perfect space for truth inquisition. Haifa, the city of
doom, the once notorious urban nightmare, even more
threatening in it's ruins than in it's previous function, a
soul draining vampireous metropolis. The scum of the
corrupted Earth had assembled here, now, along with it's
innocent souls, in the unlikely case that there are any at
all, left...

Dusty smog covers the fragmented, crushed buildings. I
travel with caution. Not once I almost stumbled upon a rusty
splinter of iron, pointing out from a ruptured building,
threatening to pierce any man or woman's fragile body, and
not once I was repelled by  a hideous corpse of an
unfortunate careless vagabond, already rotting on one of
them after a fatal slip, a brown-red memorial of human
complacency. I travel further on, seeking for sane
companionship, and avoiding the insane one, the gray
surroundings refrain me from calmness.

But alas, things are not as they seem. Things are just not
the same anymore. While trying to avoid the 30cm blade of an
innocent looking 9 year old girl who'd obviously gone mad,
frantically attacking me, drooling and weeping insanely, and
trying to knock her unconscious with the least amount of
damage I can make, I realized how different things have
become. Some just couldn't adapt to the immediate turnover,
the sudden new rules, no rules... I hid the fainted girl
under a skeleton of a big old vehicle, probably used for
some sort of public transportation, bearing a street sign I
could hardly read, that ridiculously called people to unite
under a single opinion, or something of a sort, another
pointless attempt to try and stop the already far gone
violence. I took time to observe the young body, before I
continued my prolonged mission. Lucy, was her name.
Former-Lucy's once blonde hair was now almost gray,
resembling straw in it's once silky fabric, and her once
white dress must have cost her parents a fortune, a fortune
they would think twice before spending, if they knew it
would end up covered with blood and dirt one day, as it's
now. Making sure she's breathing was an easy task, her
childish breast was coming up and down furiously. And so I
carried on, still dazed, and pondering.

The former-Lucy woke up a while later, alone in the
darkness, and began weeping, quietly out of instinct, but
loud enough to be heared, chased after, and caught down by a
couple of raving lunatics, who, fortunate for her, cut her
throat open and watched her bleed to death before raping
her, nonetheless. I made sure they both suffered severely
before dying a violent death.

- End of act 1 -

Inquisition: Act 2 - Thursday, April 02, 1998

She runs. A bullet is shot, passing right past her. "You
wont be so lucky next time", she can almost imagine it
whisper. Her breast are beginning to ache. She was taking a
quick shower under a leaky gutter, enjoying the breeze and
the sensation of the muddy, polluted yet rare running water
over her naked body, when she was surprised by a gang of
other refugees ("I suppose we're all refugees", she thinks),
and barely managed to slip into her clothes when she is
already being chased after. Her bra is now hanging loosely
from her shabby beg, and she is cursing every moment, and
every member of each of the pursuers' family. She is
outnumbered, and has only a few rounds remaining in her .44.
She foolishly drained half of it on a couple of insane bums
that behaved rather rudely the other day, in a surprising
burst of destructive anger.
"I could easily waste them with two bullets each", she now
thinks, while running between the monstrous rusty iron
wreckage. "Weird. This isn't like me, to behave so careless
and emotional. Did I have a PMS that day, without noticing,
or something?", she continues pondering, almost tripping
over a big pitted tube of rusty steel. "Get a grip, Karen,",
she breathes heavily, "concentrate". They are not very far
behind her, and their shots are not getting any less
accurate. She heads towards a huge mountain of rubble which
was once a couple of enormous chimneys, who polluted the
entire industrial area, in which she is running now.

She had been wandering around the Industrial area for
several days now, feeling an unexplainable attraction to the
enormous, monstrous city of iron and steel and pollution,
now lying in ruins, crumbled like the rest of the world. She
knows the chimneys area well, and planning to barricade
herself in the small cave she used as a bedroom for those
past few days, a cave ruptured after the huge concrete
barrels fell down. She quickly climbs on the trashy
mountain, and disappears half way to it's top.

Inside the cave are still some blankets she threw there, a
few empty cans, and some bread. She snaps a small bite of
the bread, and aims for the entrance, but except for one
head picking inside to spy on her, which she blew into tiny
pieces of brain and skull right away, no one seems to try
and follow her inside, and it is suspiciously quiet outside,
a silence which is preventing her from enjoying the rest,
and the view of the gray clouds, forming ever interesting
shapes. Time passes, and anxiety starts chewing it's way
into her heart. Still, she dares not look outside. After
another long while, she throws a can outside, which is being
immediately shot. "Trapped", she thinks. "Fuck", this time
aloud. She takes the time to properly fix her brassiere
("Why the fuck for?", she keeps asking herself), and the
blankets, to be more comfortable. Outside, she sees the
clouds, rushing their way through the sky. "I must be
missing some great cloud formations today, damnit", she
sighs, and leans back, nervously anticipating.

- End of act 2 -

Inquisition: Act 3 - Monday, April 13, 1998

Philip is also running for his life. He's not being chased
after, no, but he carries an important message, a message
that any delay in it's delivery may cost him his life, or
maybe even more than that. The boss is relentless, shows no
mercy or patience whatsoever. He rushes through dark
tunnels, mysteriously carved inside a black rock
(mysteriously, because this is certainly not a man-made
tunnel, but still doubtfully  a natural one...) , with
anything but black stone to decorate it, and yet faintly lit
with a dim haze from an unknown source. He isn't being
chased after, but he certainly FEELS like it, and he keeps
looking behind his shoulder, expecting to see a vicious
beast after him, but sees only the narrow dark path, like a
big, black mouth threatening to swallow him, and from which
he's seemingly running away. It seems like the light is
moving along with him, as he runs, but he carries no torch
nor flashlight. Still, it doesn't bother him much. He's
focused on humoring his boss, the uncompromising master, to
which Philip has been functioning as a messenger for the
past few weeks. The previous holder of this job had suddenly
disappeared, so they say, after failing to fulfill one of
the tasks he'd been given, and Philip isn't too keen about
ending his life in any way similar to what the rumors say
happened to that poor soul (including some terrible graphic
descriptions from alleged eye witnesses), and he almost
trips down while watching behind him again, with another
sensation of paranoia that weaves him. "I can swear I hear
music up ahead...", he thinks, and glares at the darkness in
front of him, approaching.

Lightning. she is found. anger, bursting like ancient
flames. ancient. ancient memories. before time, before
existence. emptiness, fulfilled. blood. blood with dirt,
blood on a stone. fear. pointlessly hiding. found. fear.
shame. shame. anger. Lightning. messenger approaching. she
is found. satisfaction. the odds. the odds are looking
better. clarity. new energies formed. triumph is mine this
time, most certainly. my presence will return. my
consciousness will regain it's position. long time awaited
position. too long.  music, to soothe the tormented
soul...there, like this. comfort. Lightning. messenger steps
in. the little monkey can hardly speak. his little useless
lungs are hardly functioning from the activity and the
stress. patience. strong urge to devour the worthless misfit
this instant... no. not yet. he is to perform one last task.


Philip enters the room for the first time during the period
he'd been working as a messenger. Yes, there is music in the
background, but he hardly notices it anymore, his breath
instantly taken away. He glares at his surroundings, his
brain unwilling to accept what his eyes are witnessing. The
room, this, hall... Incredibly huge... Limitless... Black.
Just, huge, empty black space. No floor, no ceiling, no
walls. "Is...are...  are these stars I see there?", his
subconsciousness mumbles and faints. The master is in the
middle, seemingly floating, staring at him, a threatening
glare. His eyes, his devouring eyes, make Philip both shiver
and regain his grip on reality once again. "She's, she's
found, sir. Boss. They f...found her. The woman, the, the,
little woman. Girl. The spies...", he mumbles.
"Silence.", the boss says, and it seems that reality itself
obeyed.
"Go back, and tell Key and his men to capture her, and bring
her ALIVE."
Philip doesn't dare breathing. He memorizes every word like
his life are depending on it, and they most surely are.
"Her state of retrieval is highly crucial for my needs. She
must be brought back intact, or things will get most
unpleasant. Is that clear?"
"Oh, yes sir. Very clear", Philip's doesn't even dare to
imagine the boss' idea of unpleasantness.
"Good. Run along then, don't waste time". Philip's brain is
glad to escape this mind warping sight, that inconceivable
room, and it orders the legs to hurry back and inform the
proper people of the new orders given. The boss'
satisfaction of him makes him feel better, and he runs with
twice the energy than before, humming the music he heard in
the master's dreadful den. His humming is suddenly stopped,
and so is his cheerful mood, when he's suddenly struck with
the utmost certainty that his boss is right behind him,
following him, perforating his back with dark red eyes, like
knives, with his penetrating glare, but he dares not looking
back, and keeps on running as cold sweat slowly wraps him,
and the terrifying feeling of the doubled, surreal glare
hunting him.

- End of act 3 -

Inquisition: Act 4 - Wednesday, December 09, 1998

Night came. "Soon enough I'll have to fight my own eye lids
as well", she thought, "Damnit, Im fucked". Fear got
stronger, but she didn't panic. Karen was not the panicking
kind of person, she couldnt allow herself to lose control
that way. As hours went by with nothing happening, the
situation was getting harder and harder to bare, but that
was just the basic fear of the unknown things to come. Karen
believed she could deal with anything they'd throw upon her.
Fact is she survived so far, a young woman, hell, merely a
little girl, alone in the new anarchistic, violent
pseudo-world.

She could see the moon now, shining in the gaps between the
rushing clouds, but even the skies gave her no comfort. She
remembered a faint picture from a memory, emanating from her
early childhood, in which she is sitting with her father,
who's face she can hardly remember, on the top of a small
grassy hill. It's late at night, and it's winter time.
They're both wearing a thick layer of clothing, and are also
cuddling together on the grass, who's freeze had molten
because of their bodily heat. She's looking up, dazed from
the sight of the limitless sky, the countless stars, the
white, round moon, hovering above them, a magical force
stops it from falling. "Dad, there are so many! How can
there be too many that a person can't count?", she asks, and
her dad, faceless in her memory, replies, "The stars are the
way God reminds us of how he watches and guards us, wherever
we are, and whatever we're doing...".

She snapped out of her pleasant hallucination to the sound
of a silent conversation from outside the improvised cave.
Some strict informative whispering were heard, and then some
decisive mumbling, and then silence. With her gun aiming at
the entrance, she waited in a bent position, tense and
alert. For a few minutes there was still silence, and then a
sharp explosion sound, followed by what seemed like a medium
sized projectile, launched from the outside, and got stuck
in the cave wall, immediately starting to spread a thick,
white cloud of gas.
In her last few seconds of consciousness, she tried to think
of at least one sensible reason to why there were absolutly
no stars in today's sky, except the moon, but couldn't even
think of one, before she passed away.

- End of act 4 -