Major trigger warning: This is a very graphic chapter. Dont read if you don't easily handle gore, violence, tragedy, death, pain, suicide, self harm, or panic attacks. Don't worry about missing any major plot points. You can skip this whole chapter without skimming it at all and still be caught up for the next chapter. Please be safe out there.

Virgil opened his eyes and was welcomed by a dark grey everything.

The walls, the floor, all of it. Everything was dark gray and undifferentiated.

It was silent.

So very silent.

But he couldn't hear his own breath or his heartbeat. For a place so quiet, he should hear himself. Was he alive?
Oh God he had vanished.

It was so silent.

No heartbeat, not a single noise.

Virgil grabbed at his hair but he couldn't feel anything as he pulled at his brown locks.

He felt like he was beginning to hyperventilate but he wasn't breathing.

Was there even any air here?

Oh god. Oh God. He had vanished, and now he was going to be stuck here forever.

He squeezed his eyes shut and fell to the floor. He opened his mouth to scream but nothing came out, and his chest felt like it was fire. His lungs were ripping in half. There was no air and he couldn't breath. His heart was going to explode but he couldn't feel or hear his heartbeat. Just pain.

His lungs tearing in half.
His heart on the brink of exploding.
A slicing pain in his head.
All of his muscles felt on fire.
Maybe he was on fire.
Maybe this was what burning alive felt like?
His mind completely overwhelmed by the silence and all of things that he was feeling.

He pulled on his hair, and scratched at his arms. He banged on the ground, and clawed at his ears. He hoped desperately that maybe if he damaged his ears, he would hear something. Even if it was just ringing.

He clawed at himself, and screamed as hard as he could while choking. Still no sound. No colors. Just his entire body ripping itself to shreds.

And then, the loudest noise he had heard in his life. A noise so horrifying and powerful that Virgil was flung backwards through the airless room, and landed in a heap.

He opened his eyes to search for the source of the sound. And just like that, he wished he were blind.

In front of him, was the worst scene possible.

Joan laying on the dark grey floor in a puddle of his own blood. His arms shredded, and neck sliced. A steak knife still held in his right hand. Eyes staring accusingly upwards.

And next to him, the source of the sound. Thomas, screaming and falling to his knees.

Virgil was struck with another wave of atom splitting pain, as another scene appeared not five feet away from the first one.

A man dressed in full black and wearing a ski mask crouched over a body. Virgil couldn't see who the body was yet, but as the man began to laugh hysterically and walk away, Virgil saw.

It was Thomas. Stabbed an uncountable amount of times in the chest. Limbs severed, neck also slashed, and head decapitated just below the sliced neck.

As the laughing man stood five paces away from Thomas, Virgil stared at his hosts face.

Virgil flinched in horror and surprise as the eyes of his host opened and stared directly at Virgil. And two seconds later, the decapitated head of Thomas also began screaming.

Virgil felt tears pouring down his face, his body still in the same pain as before, and he wished for the silence back.

More and more scenes popped into existence before his eyes. With wave after wave of pain pummeling him as they appeared.

Thomas drowning just out of reach of a lifeguard.

Thomas' mother falling down the stairs and breaking her neck.

Thomas loosing grip of a tree branch and falling to his demise.

A mugger bludgeoning his host.

A train hitting his host as Thomas's  car suddenly stopped working in the middle of a railroad.

The plane that Thomas was in plummeting towards the earth.

Thomas being awoken in the middle of the night by a man with a knife.

Thomas being awoken in the middle of the night by knocking coming from his mirror.

Thomas finding countless of his friend's bodies.

Thomas stepping off of a chair only to be caught by the noose around his neck.

Thomas trapped inside a burning building as the flames licked at his heels.

Thomas looking petrified as he had become violent and struck Terrance.

Thomas at the top of a building, knowing he was about to fall to his grave.

Thomas on a rollercoaster and feeling his seatbeat snap.

Thomas witnessing his friends get on a carnival ride and witness the carnage as the ride malfunctions and his friends are flung like ragdolls into the air.

Thomas and other students hiding just around the corner as they hear a door handle turn, and suddenly gunshots.

Thomas losing control of his car on a icy road.

Thomas driving home, and colliding with a drunk driver.

Thomas suffocating as he's buried alive.

So, many horrible images. And they just keep appearing. And the sounds all overlap each other.

Virgil squeezes his eyes shut and presses his hands over his ears but he can hear the sound no matter what.

The screaming, the laughter of his killers, the crashing, the gunshots, the sound of bones breaking, and all of it warping together and becoming more distorted by the minute.

And he can tell each time a new one appears as it's sound is added to the mess and Virgil can feel as his own pain is multiplied by ten.

He can't tell which way is up and down anymore as his body is overcome by seizures.

If a doctor asked for Virgil to rate his pain on a scale of one to ten, the earth would have exploded as a response.

The passage of time was only marked as new scenes appeared, the noise doubled, and his pain worsened.

His eyes were shut, and he seized, and he screamed soundlessly, and he clawed at his hair and ears, and suddenly nothing.

No pain, no seizing, no sound.

Virgil was still shaking and silently sobbing.

He was terrified to open his eyes, unless the scenes and noises came back. Lest it all be a trick to make him see even more.

When he finally peaked his eyes open, he saw nothing. The same thing he saw when his eyes were closed. But as he registered the nothingness, he shut his eyes again once more as he felt himself being lifted very quickly.

Like his body was being pulled up by some strange backwards form of gravity.

Until finally he was dropped, and he felt like he fell ten feet and had a mere instant to feel the skull cracking impact before he was gone.

Unconscious.