The Zero Countdown

Chapter 23: Memories

"The good news is that, not only your daughter is saved, your wife miraculously survived childbirth all on her own despite having no support and the fact she wasn't taken to the hospital should be fatal, proving your wife fought to the end with everything she has. However, as for the bad news..."

The doctor ceased talking when Saya's husband shook his head. He barely could breathe earlier but he somehow cooled down and calmed himself.

"Hearing the bad news now is bad for my heart. For now, can I please meet my wife and see her well?" He begged the doctor for entry.

It was the doctor's intention of showing her wife's condition, to begin with, so he gladly let him inside the emergency room there he found his wife carrying their healthy child crying under her embrace.

"Saya... I'm really sorry! I should have taken you to the hospital earlier..." He profusely asks for forgiveness, clenching the bed rails as if he committed an unforgivable crime.

"No, stop that dear... I should be thanking you for going back as fast as you could when you heard the news. Besides, aren't you gonna greet our daughter first? I'm sure she wouldn't want her father sad." Saya bravely endured giving birth and ended up overcoming a trial that could've cost her life.

"I'm just glad, really..." Her husband pecked her forehead, delighted he's finally going to be a father after waiting for so long.

"About her name, I'm sure you haven't forgotten that if our first child is a girl, we'll name her Madela." Saya pouts, figuring out her husband totally fail to remember their agreement in the past.

"Of course! How could I forget haha!" His crooked smile says it all. "From now on, she's Madela! I can't wait for her to call me dad."

The gradually everchanging recollections changed form, the landscape is in the same hospital but Elyon discerned the setting inside the office of the same doctor Saya's husband met during the incident.

"Tell me, what happened to my wife?! What have you done to her?!" He accuses the hospital rather than looking at the bigger picture of the situation.

"But sir, we already have written clear in the diagnostics that your wife had severe brain damage because of her sudden delivery. As for your request for discharge, your wife is fine and healthy but we can't identify the effect of the trauma that afflicted her mind."

The doctor kindly addressed the problem with certainty. He showed factual evidence of Saya's ailment yet her husband ignored it all, believing that she was actually alright when her cerebral deterioration gets worst each passing day.

"Argh... Forget it. You have no idea what became of her. Even a doctor like you can no longer help her, I guess I should handle it like how I always did."

In the end, he told the doctor the details about her wife acting very strange. Often talking to the plants and blooms fulfilled her routine, Saya became so deranged she committed an act that his husband, a police officer, couldn't tell anybody other than him alone.

When the time comes that Madela can read and write, in their shared bedroom, she could always hear her mother and father arguing every day for small little things until they eventually could reach the point of shouting and yelling in front of their child.

"Keeping you here is hard enough. Why can't you stay put and quit killing people?!" Her husband exclaimed.

"I keep telling you I'm not the one who did it! It wasn't me... I never killed someone, I swear..." Saya's weeping because her husband handcuffed her and restrained her in a chain on a daily basis to prevent her from committing crimes.

At those times, little Madela was so young she has no clue what her parents are rambling about. All she knew is that whenever her mother and father quarrel in an endless night, she feels a strange tightening in her chest, and soon her tears would trickle down her cheeks under the pillow, hiding away the pain she did not understand.

Sometimes, Madela also did not understand why her father cover her face with his large hand when crossing the other room that lead to the premises of their shop.

"I wanna pee..." Madela asked her father. She lived her entire life confined inside a chamber of four corners without a window, ever wondering what is the outside world.

"Is that so? Tsk..." Her father began showing signs of irritation around her daughter.

And again, he guided her towards the other compartment where the bathroom is located. However, as they cross the place of wonder, Madela couldn't figure out what was the strong stench she's smelling.

It's just after nature called her, she'd open her eyes in the same bedroom without ever knowing what kind of place the door had led them to.

Except, Elyon could see everything in the 4th-dimensional plane. He witness how the pile of gore and flesh which Saya calls collections was already present in the very spot where he died thrice.

Her husband who's a police officer was the reason why Saya can keep committing hideous crimes. He conceals Saya under the radar of justice just to keep her by his side.

He thought she can change her, for he believe once he tries to bring her to a psychiatrist, not only the things that she did could be uncovered, he knew they'd send his wife to the asylum until she's treated, which also he's aware could be impossible since the last doctor that he met told him Saya will be mentally ill for the rest of her life, and the physician's diagnostic couldn't tell what mental illness she has.

It took him a few years what the doctor was telling him, and he blames himself for requesting an early discharge as the doctors were still trying to figure out her change of behavior and possible treatment thinking she was totally fine.

But as time passes, despair could lead Saya's husband to blame the root of all causes; the reason why he's miserable, hiding away his wife's wrongdoings.

Whenever Saya's working in their flower shop, tending the herbs and blooms early in the morning, her husband could execute something unimaginable he never thought could eventually engage.

As Elyon couldn't take what he's seeing anymore, he attempted interfering between them, though he remember it's all a fragment of the past, and there's nothing he could do other than gaze at such an act of atrocity before him.

"Why...? Why would you come out earlier than you should?! Saya lost her sanity because of you! You are a mistake in this house... You shouldn't have been born in this world!"

It wasn't the harsh affront Saya's husband threw at Madela that broke Elyon's heart, it was how he mercilessly beat an innocent little girl who have done nothing wrong.

Her father slams her head on the wall, smash her face on the table, traumatizing her by pointing a g*n right at her face, and even attempt to do malicious acts to demonstrate how he detests Madela's very existence.

Unlike any fragile child, Madela endured the living hell she underwent. She never thought of screaming, calling for help, or wailing like the child she is; instead, she simply accepted the brutality and a***e of her father believing it was a completely normal thing to do.

Her father did his heartlessness for years, Saya asks Madela where she got her bruises and scabs from but every time her mother open the issue, she would always tell she liked climbing on the shelves and would end up falling in the process.

Until her husband's wickedness would be brought in light, Saya went back to their bedroom so she can get the wallet she forgot on the desk before going to the supermarket.

And she stumbled upon a scene where her husband's already torturing Madela, the wall painted in the redness of her blood coming from her nose, merciless and unjust that Saya's mental illness turn the switch on, allowing her evil side from taking over.

Her husband was so busy hurting his daughter that he didn't know someone saw him, and worst it was his wife that witnessed his monstrosity.

That's why Saya snatched a pair of shears and stabbed it right at his back with no indecision.

"Saya...? Why you...!" He turned around and pushed his wife over the wall, trying to restrain her as quickly as possible but she did her thing.

"You are the one tormenting Madela all along! How could you do this?!" Saya retorted and ingrain the shears directly in his midsection, puncturing both his lungs and followed by a stab in his liver.

She isn't randomly shoving around the shears, Saya's precisely hitting the weak spots of a human body as if she already knew what they looked like from the inside.

"Wait Saya...! I—"

Her husband's plea wasn't heard, Saya kept stabbing like a madwoman who lost it all. Even though he is already dead, she kept impaling his organs, disassembling his flesh and soon her husband became a part of her horrid collection.

The worst Elyon learned wasn't how Saya wasn't aware of what happened to her husband since her mental illness makes it so she forgot her crime, the awful thing he perceived was the fact Madela saw it all how her mother murders his evil father.

Now, she is all alone. What accompanied her during the darkest night is her doll Dionsy that she received from her mother, along with the screeching noise of men getting murdered next door, every single day.

However, her life changed when Dionsy spoke for the first time.

"Madela..." The doll spoke, she freaked out.

"Dionsy?! You can actually talk?" Madela shook her head and blink thrice. She pinches her cheeks confirming she isn't inside a dream.

"Of course, I can..." Dionsy had the voice of a girl the same age as her. "But forget about that... Want to play a game with me?" The doll asked.

"Play? I will play any game with you Dionsy! Hehe."

Little did she know Madela had signed the contract of the devil the moment she talked with the incarnation of Unknown Entity, imprisoned inside a game of despair and cruelty.

Still, Elyon's tears unknowingly surge forth upon learning what Madela thanked him for inside the remaining fragments of her lucid memories.