The man began to try and let out screams, but with the thick layers of paper in the way, all I heard were strange muffles coming from him. He tried to move his hands, only to experience more pain as the blade cut into his flesh and caused more bleeding. As such, he quickly realised he was at the mercy of me, a complete stranger he had never knew or met before.

So, he glared at me fiercely, but the look in his eyes made me chuckle. Gone were the days when I feared to be looked on by such cold mirthless eyes filled with hatred. Right now, this guy’s life is in my hands, and I was going to do whatever means to relieve the stress that I’ve felt for the last ten years since I lost my family to his evil scheming.

“I’m sure you’re confused as to who I am,” I said, speaking casually to him while restraining my hatred. “I’m even sure you’re trying to figure out whether I’m an enemy sent by the revolutionists, right?”

When I asked him that question, he narrowed his eyes suspiciously as if I had correctly guessed what he was thinking. I smiled sweetly, but I immediately grabbed his head and brought it closer to mine so that we were inches away from each other.

“Let me tell you right now that no one set me up for this! Rather, I’m here to carry out a vengeance that I’ve held in me for the last ten years!”

I shoved him away, and instantly he moaned as the knife points on his hand dug a little into his hands as he tried to move them. Tears began swelling in that man’s face as he sat straighter and glared at me again.

“I suppose you’d want to know who I am, and guess what?” I asked and swore at his face. “Why should I bother revealing my identity to a loser that’s going to die in probably ten minutes? Well, ten minutes if you survive my torture that is.”

He instantly reacted violently to that and attempted to get up, but his hands stung him, and he sat down heavily while moaning in pain.

“However,” I began and leaned closer to him “you brought this on yourself.” When he looked confused, I chuckled and said, “Remember the time ten-years-ago when the local government conducted a night raid?”

There was an instantaneous recognition from those words, and his eyes shot up as wide as he could muster from the immense shock he felt. He would remember that day considering it was his plan that the government carried out and probably granted him a high status of job, wealth and much more undisclosed to the public.

“Many people died that day, and many more were sacrificed by your people! It was a cruel, cold blooded crime to make yourselves look good in front of the masses and make them fear The Empire! But guess what? There was one thing you couldn’t escape from. Care to take a guess?”

I asked him slowly in a soft voice, almost in a whisper while I glared menacingly at him. It looked like he was confused, and I smiled wryly before I grabbed the knives and revealed the reason.

“It’s for the murder of my parents!” I said, and began to move the knives stabbed into his hands back and forth.

In an instant, he screamed out from the agony of his hand being cut and blood seeping out, but all that came out was muffling sounds with the thick papers covering his mouth. I glared at him menacingly while continuously moving the knives back and forth on the bed table.

“You know how I felt when I saw my parent’s heads lined up beside so many others? Do you have any idea of the pain I experienced after losing the only people I had left in this world to care about? Do you even understand what I went through, the transformation from an innocent kid to being a cold blooded murdered that I’ve become?! It’s all because of you!”

With my temper flaring, I pulled out my hay knife and slashed it down on right hand, specifically aiming for his thumb. The moment it got sliced apart and blood sprang out, he wailed helplessly like a wounded dog from the immense agony from losing a finger.

“Do you understand how sad I was at the thought of losing them?!”

I exclaimed, and slammed the hay knife down on his forefinger. Once again, he let out a scream that was muffled by the papers covering his mouth.

“Do you even know the pain I went through to live!?”

I slammed the hay knife down onto the middle finger, next to the forefinger I sliced off moments before.

“Do you even know how many people I killed just to live, huh?! How many people I had to steal from?! How many lives that I probably destroyed just to keep on living?! Do you?!”

With that exclaim, I sliced off his middle finger. By that point, he was crying great bucket loads of tears from his eyes while he continued to scream from the pain of losing three fingers.

I glared at him crying and demanded, “Why’re you crying? Why are you crying?! Why the hell are you crying?!”

And I sliced off the ring finger, next to his middle finger that I took out a few seconds ago. Then I raised the knife and pointed it at him, giving him a fierce look that showed the hatred that was surging within me.

“You have no right to cry, not after everything you’ve done to me and so many others!”

With that, I slammed the knife down and sliced off his pinkie, leaving him with no fingers on his right hand.

The man didn’t appear to be listening as he was gasping and wheezing for breath. It looked like the pain of losing his limbs was much harder for him to handle, but I didn’t want him to sleep. No. I wanted him to be wide awake as I proceed with torturing him.

I rose to my feet and headed into the bathroom to fetch a mug, and then I returned to the bucket filled with water. After scooping it up and filling the mug with water, I walked over to the guy losing consciousness and smashed the cold water right into his face.

In an instant, he reeled back from the shock and fell flat on his back against the floor. As he did, he screamed as his hands dug up to the handle of the knives holding his hands down on the bed table. A moment later, the table got lifted off its feet and it fell heavily on him, making him groan in pain.

It took him a moment to recover, and he blinked rapidly while his face contorted with anger, rage, hatred, and whatever else he was feeling at that time. I laid the mug down and walked over to kneel beside where he lay, giving him a deadly cold look.

“I’m not going to let you doze off, fool! You have to stay awake as long as possible and face the retribution that comes with what you’ve done to me and anyone else!”

I held the hay knife out, and he turned to face with a tear-stricken face, his eyes filled with fear. When I saw the fear in his eyes, I smiled and showed how much I enjoyed seeing him fearful for his life.

“You’ve got some nerve trying to doze off when here I am trying to share my pain with you!”

As I shouted, I raised my hay knife in the air above my head. He began shaking his head vigorously, clearly disliking what I was about to do. Still, I didn’t care and swung it down on his leg. The blade dug deep into his flesh and caused blood to seep out, sending the man into a world of pain and agony.

I wasn’t done though because I wanted to completely slice off his leg. So, while speaking in a voice filled with rage, I raised the knife, sliced it down, raised it back up and repeated the process.

“Do you even realise how much pain I felt when I saw the heads of my dead parents on those stakes?! It felt like I lost a part of me, a limb that cannot be found or replaced! It tore me apart!”

Blood kept getting sprayed onto my face with each slicing strike I made on his leg, which had been the case for everything I’ve done up until now. But I didn’t care and kept mercilessly attacking him away. Finally, at the end of my dialogue, I completely severed his leg from his body and sent him writhing into a great agony.

“But was that the end of that? No! I had to endure even more pain after that!”

I shouted as I nudged closer to his other leg and began hacking away as it as if I was a lumberjack hacking away at a tree, but while tree did not feel pain, this guy experienced a whirl of emotions and pain that he was probably wishing he would die sooner than experience all of this. But I didn’t let up, and I repeatedly slashed down at the leg until it was sliced off while continuing to speak to him.

“The food I bought with the remaining change got stolen, and then I got beaten up by those thugs for trying to get it back! Then the next time I met them, it was after I accidentally killed one of their comrades because he stole from someone that I marked as my target! After that, I ended up killing their leader because he was trying to kill me! What a fool, trying to claim about comradeship when only survival matters in this world!”

Once again, by the end of my speech, I successfully severed his leg from his body and watched him with a satisfied smile as he writhed in pain. I could almost hear him thinking he wished I would just end this suffering sooner than make him go through all of this. Frankly, I didn’t once think about his feelings because I was the victim in this bastard’s schemes, and he was the reason I’ve become this twisted.

I watched him breathing deeply and groaning while attempting to nudge the bed table off his body. It looked like the weight of the table falling on his stomach with the added pain from his hands that were still pierced through by my knives was causing him a lot of pain. That’s when I came to the realisation that all of this came about because he wrote documents to provide the support for the government to conduct their night raid.

“This is the hand that you used to write the documents that caused the night raid to happen, did‘t you?” I asked, and seized his hand while he looked at me in shock.

Gripping the knife placed over his right hand, I pulled it out and he jerked from the shock of his hand getting freed from the blade. However, the pain was far from over because I gripped his hand by the wrist and held it up with my left hand while I firmly gripped the hay knife with my right hand.

“Let’s make sure you never have a hand to write with anymore!”

As I said that, I swung the knife and sliced off his arm in an instant. He jerked violently at that and twisted his body while I held his dangling limb before I chucked it aside and smiled down at him.

“And didn’t you use the other hand to support the document as you wrote?”

When I said that, he began shaking his head and tried to twist away only to experience pain from the blade digging into his hand as it remained wedged on the table. Once again, I removed the knife and held his left arm with my left while holding my knife with my right hand.

“Such a supporting hand must not exist!” I said, and sliced off his left arm without any hesitation.

I chucked his arm aside and took the bed table away while he writhed in pain from the pain of losing both of his arms. For a moment, I paused as I stepped back to observe this man with no arms and no legs writhing around in pain.

Did I feel satisfied with just this much? Did I feel I had done everything to carry out my vengeance? No. This wasn’t enough. There needed to be more done, something that would forever be etched in this guy’s mind as he died a painful death that would scare any other man into wetting themselves.

That’s when I remembered a saying that my mother always used to tell me as a kid. Though I don’t follow it anymore, I realised I could apply the meaning of her words as the final punishment for this guy. So, I walked over and knelt beside him as he wheezed and groaned from the agony his body was experiencing.

“Hey. Do you know of a certain saying?” I asked, and he tilted his head towards me.

Due to the loss of blood and the extreme pain he experienced, I could feel him slipping away. Despite that, I still didn’t feel any sort of remorse for him and only wished to carry out this one final act of vengeance to put a satisfying touch to this man’s filthy existence.

“Do not see evil, not hear evil, and do not speak evil. My mother always told me when I was younger, and frankly speaking, I feel that those words perfectly apply to you.”

He understood the meaning very quickly and began shaking his head vigorously. Before he could writhe around to avoid me, I placed my knee on his stomach and made sure he remained facing up so I can see what I was doing. Then I brought both of my knives and slowly moved from the man’s mouth, to his ears, and then to his eyes, which flinched, were widened to the fullest extent in fear.

“Which should I begin with?” I muttered, audible enough for him to hear. “Let’s see… If I remember correctly, mum always began with ‘see no evil’ so let’s go with that.”

With my words said, I held the knife over his eyes, and he instantly shut them while shaking his head with hopes that I would not be able to get a good mark. However, he was destined to failure when I grabbed his head with my hand and held it firmly in place, but he still managed to closed his eyelids.

I smirked and said, “It’s only going to hurt a lot worse,” and plunged the knife into his left eye. As he let out a muffled scream because of the papers, I immediately took the knife out and plunged it into the remaining eye socket, permanently blinding him for life.

“Not that he will live long enough to the fullest extent of his life,” I thought wryly.

His screams would have been able to shatter the windows if only he could manage to make sound, but the papers kept any of that from slipping out. He was in a lot of pain, but I kept going regardless of how he felt because this was the end of his suffering, and I could finally feel satisfaction from watching him die.

“Next was ‘hear no evil’” I said, and I promptly plunged my knife his ears, going from one after another.

This guy must have experienced a pain far more devastating than anything he had felt from the last few minutes that I had been slicing off his limbs piece by piece. Now, he was blind and deaf, so he couldn’t hear me anymore, but it didn’t matter. I was already smiling as I held the knife over his sealed mouth with a vengeful expression on my face as he shifted his head with a pained face.

“Finally, ‘speak no evil’” I muttered, glaring down at him.

He could neither see nor hear what was happening, but the man guessed what was coming. My opinion on this matter was that people were indeed able to sense when death was approaching them. Thus, he began trying to desperately move his body as much as possible to throw me off but what good would that do?

“If you’re going to blame someone for your death, blame the hotel for not providing adequate security!” I said to him though I knew he could not hear me anymore. “Now, pay for your crimes with your death,” I shouted and plunged the knife into his throat.

He let out a soft gasp of breath, maybe from the shock of having a knife pierce into his throat, or from the thought of dying, I wasn’t sure. But once I did it, I let out a huge sigh of relief. All the pent-up anger I felt toward The Empire, all the anger I felt towards the people responsible for the death of my parents; I finally achieved it on that day. It was a small victory, but a victory nonetheless.

As I got up, I realised that I was covered with his blood and sighed wearily. Then I looked down and saw him still twitching as he still clung for dear life. It was then I felt a tiny tweeny twinge of sadness for him; all the achievements he made, and he ends up dying a dog’s death. It’s a real shame of how sad a talented man’s life could end if they choose to make the wrong decisions in life.

“Anyway, I better wash myself, pack my things, and leave before I raise suspicion,” I muttered.

I immediately tore a large piece from the man’s clothing and used it to rub off any handprints from the handle of the knife that was pierced into his throat. I didn’t want to take the knife because it would immediately kill him, so I left it there while he desperately clung to dear life and die eventually.

Once I wiped the handle clean, I quickly washed the blood off my weapons in the bathroom and packed all of my things into the bag I brought with me before I entered the bathroom to have a shower and freshen up.