[b]DAY 16: CHAINSAW – MIRROR OF DOOM[/b]

Aimi had accidentally heard about a very peculiar object. People talked about a mirror that would show you something scary, but what it was, it varied a little. It might show you how you die or your worst fear or some horrors that made no sense and would make you lose your mind. But would those visions really come true? Rumors were just rumors. It appeared that people who had seen the mirror with their own eyes actually existed – but for whatever reason, they would rather not speak about what they had witnessed. This would, of course, make this tale a lot more interesting and the most curious ones wanted to see this odd object as well.

And Aimi was one of them. It was rumored that this mirror could be found from an abandoned hospital, which was left to rot somewhere near the border of the town. Some people said that this place was haunted and during a night you could hear or maybe even see the ghosts of patients that died there. The night was also told to be the only time when the mirror would work. If the ghost stories didn't scare you off, you still had to face the darkness. 

But Aimi was adventurous enough to do this. She had ridden a bicycle all the way to the abandoned hospital. When she was at the destination, she clicked her flashlight on and looked around. The place was a bit overgrown with vegetation, nature taking over. It also seemed that over time, some teens had been coming here and vandalized the building: lots of the windows were smashed and the wall had been smudged with graffiti. The hospital looked really repulsive and the blowing wind whizzed as if giving a warning to stay away. But Aimi wasn't going to back off. Bravely, she began to walk towards the building, entering inside.

More graffiti smears could be found from inside. Some doors were out of place and some of the few hospital equipment that still remained – mostly beds – were scattered across the hall. It looked like that teens had been going absolutely wild here. Aimi wandered through the halls, only taking a little peeking around the empty rooms, searching for the mirror. And so far, no trace of ghosts.

She ended up walking to some sort of lounge. And that was when she spotted a tall mirror with fancy frames standing at the end of the room. Was this the rumored mirror? Aimi strolled closer to that reflector. Soon she was standing in front of it. She looked at the image it was showing, but saw only herself. Just how long do you have to wait to see something? For a few minutes she stared at it.

Then, Aimi finally started to see something else than just her own reflection. It looked like a dark figure, like a mass of shadows. Whatever it was, it looked bubbling. Next, the shadows kind of fell off, revealing a mysterious person. This individual looked like a man in lumberjack clothes and a white mask covering his face. And he had a chainsaw. He started the engine, and that was when Aimi realized that it wasn't just reflection: the person was standing right behind her. She turned around and faced the figure, being completely overwhelmed by fear. Swiftly, she dashed past that man, running away as fast as she could.

She ran through the hospital, hearing the chainsaw behind her. She rushed out of the building, heading to the place where she had left her bicycle. But to her dismay, it was gone. Hastily Aimi looked around but couldn't find her vehicle anywhere. It had just… vanished. She was panicking: she had to get away somehow.

But before she could make her escape, an engine roared behind her and she felt horrible pain in her leg. She screamed in pain and fell to the ground. Aimi stared, horrified, at the leg that now had a part of it missing. Just how this masked man had managed to catch her so fast and so silently?

“No, no! Stay away!” Aimi was crying from fear. She tried desperately crawl away, but knew it was futile. She couldn't run anymore.

The chainsaw man raised his weapon – and brought it down, sawing off Aimi's other leg as well. She was screeching and crying. And for a little while, the man seemed to just quietly stare at her, as if admiring his bloody deed. Then he decided to act again and saw Aimi's other arm off. Quite a large pool of blood had started to form below her. She was feeling lethargic due to blood loss.

Allowing her just a little moment to take her last breaths, the chainsaw man then came to a decision to put her out of her misery. He hit the chainsaw at her head, sawing through her skull and splattering blood and bits of brain everywhere.

It was done. One more victim for the mirror.

The man turned away from the fresh corpse, returning to the mass of shadows where he had emerged from.



[b]DAY 17: CANNIBALISM – FIRST MADNESS[/b]

Such a strange place. Everything seemed to be chaotic and in order at the same time. The sky was in constant state of darkness, no matter how much time passed – it was like the sun was dead, and only mauve moon would climb to the sky every now and then. Stars could be seen, but they would soon die and fall from the sky, however, new ones would replace them. The land below was just as weird. Woods were more alive than what those who were visiting this place had used to: they were humming songs that no one had ever heard of and sometimes they would try to reach out for you and grab you, but no one knew why. Perhaps they just wanted your company. And then, of course, there was those black waters that were so dark not even a moon could shine on its surface. These waters were the graves of the drowned, and you really should never tread too far or swim in them – otherwise you would join the dead.

This was the land of the damned that holds many secrets. But before you uncover them, you might die.

But then again, what if you were already dead?

Kagi was wandering through the forest. Just like everyone else who had got thrown here, he had just woken up with no memory of how it had happened. But he didn't mind that. He was curious to see what this world held.

The tall dark trees with their golden leaves seemed to follow him, as if they had eyes. They were accompanying him with their strange humming – it sounded pretty soothing in its own way. So he kept strolling through these mighty rulers of the land. A wind joined their singing, adding whispers to their choir. Together they made some musical art. This gave an impression that this land wasn't really bad.

After wandering for a while, Kagi smelled blood. And as he kept going forward, he eventually stumbled upon a corpse. It was another sergal, his stomach slit open. So that's where the blood smell was coming from. It seemed like that this corpse was fresh. This indicated that there indeed were some hidden dangers in this world. But Kagi was probably going to forget that tiny detail due to his bad memory.

He just stared at the body. Though, he mostly just spaced out. But when he got a bit of his focus back, he suddenly got a weird thought: that corpse looked edible. He did feel something like hunger. What would the carcass taste like? He was curious to find out.

Kagi kneeled down and sunk his teeth into the chest of the body. He was tearing the soft flesh violently, like a ravenous beast, finally managing to shred a piece of meat for him to eat. He gobbled it up in no time. Now, having a taste for meat, he buried his snout to the open stomach and started gnawing at the exposed guts. His snout was now covered in blood. He raised his head again, pulling the guts with his mouth, taking a hold of them with his hands as he kept chewing them. Tasty, tasty organs. Now his hands were bloodied too. After munching a good amount of guts, Kagi then proceeded to eat something else. He tore the torso open, cracked the ribcage out of place and took a grasp of the heart, ripping it out of the body's chest. Then he stuffed it in his mouth. Delicious.

He kept shredding pieces of meat from the corpse and eating them. But then came the point that he was full and satisfied.

So Kagi stood up and continued on his way through this strange realm, leaving the partly eaten body to rot.

And the trees kept humming songs as he moved forward.

Who knows what he might find from these lands of the damned.



[b]DAY 18: PLANT GROWTH – HELL PLANT[/b]

How much time had passed, he didn't know. It almost felt like that this place had no sense of time. Sun didn't exist and moon raised to the sky and disappeared from there however it pleased. This place had its own rhythm that was impossible to follow, Kagi had noticed. That was quite interesting thing. So he had no idea how long he had been up and going, but he still kept moving forward. He had been proceeding pretty much aimlessly, not really paying attention to his surroundings – or much to anything, actually. Though, he probably hadn't encountered anything interesting during his stroll through these lands. He had managed to get out of the woods and after that, he had been wandering through a plain that was pretty bare: only few lonely trees here and there, some threatening pointy rocks reaching for the sky and dry grass everywhere. Only wind as his companion, he was slowly making progress in crossing the plain.

Not a single living creature could be seen. Or dead one.

After a long wander across the grassland that seemed to be almost endless, Kagi could distinguish some hills of rocks ahead. The sight was quite magnificent: the rocks were blue and they were decorated with whitish stripes and they were making exquisite formations. And as he came closer to them, he could differentiate some beautiful flowers in many colors ornamenting parts of the rocks.

When he came near these rocks, he could get a closer look of how beautiful they truly were. He was weaving his way among the spectacular formations, touching the stone. Oh, how smooth they felt. There was certainly some beauty in these odd lands.

But it definitely held dangers as well. And these rocks possessed one of them.

The beauty of this location was a trap. It was meant to attract unaware travelers to come closer. And when they do, they won't even notice that something horrible had already happened to them. They would inhale some pollen from the flowers without realizing it. And then, the suffering would begin.

But Kagi wasn't a normal wanderer.

He could feel pain almost in every part of his body. It was so great that it would have made a normal person fall on their knees and writhe in agony. But Kagi wasn't even fazed by these sensations. Then, he could feel in some bits of his body that something wanted to get out – through his skin. And so it happened: dark green vines burst suddenly out of various parts of his figure. Some were larger, some smaller, but they all wanted equally make a host of his body, feeding on his flesh and blood. They were growing and growing but Kagi wasn't daunted one bit. He was actually feeling quite comfortable. He just followed how the amount of plants increased and how they entwined around his neck, arms and legs, sort of crushing him.

Eventually Kagi started to feel rather somnolent. Maybe it was because these plants were sucking out his energy. So, he settled down, letting the plants consume his body.

And he lost his consciousness.



[b]DAY 19: BLEEDING EYES – MOTHER'S TEARS[/b]

Onilt had always been rather bad kid. It was, unfortunately, common for him to bully other children of the village, sometimes in really violent ways, like smashing their faces with a rock or cutting them with a knife. Naturally, the other kids started to fear him and avoided him. He didn't seem to care, though. But he had to take out his violence at something, so he began to hurt other living things, whatever he could catch, like squirrels and cats. It appeared that he didn't seem to possess not even a single empathic bone in his body. And as he grew up, his wicked behavior only got worse so even the adults of the village started to be quite afraid of him.

This was really wearing for his mother, who happened to be a complete opposite of her son. She was kind and caring and saw something in her son what others couldn't see. Maybe it just was mother's love. She was so worried constantly because of the boy's troublemaking and having to constantly apologize for his behavior. After years and years of this vicious cycle, the mother eventually fell seriously ill because of all the worries. Death was inevitable. But even when taking her last breaths, she prayed for her son.

And from her prayers, Samchei came into existence. 

Obviously, Onilt had been frightened when he had seen Samchei for the first time. You don't see a really tall winged creature every day, especially near your mother's death bed – even though his appearance was angelic. Samchei was calm and kind to Onilt and he became sort of guardian angel to him, following him everywhere. And only Onilt could see him.

But despite of Samchei's constant presence, Onilt's violent behavior didn't get better. It only did grow worse as he matured. Maybe he happened to be an incarnation of a demon of some sort.

Onilt would wander from village to village, causing all kinds of blights. He would start destructive fires, steal stuff, murder people and even rape women. And he enjoyed every part of doing these bad deeds. Samchei had been trying to be Onilt's voice of reason, but in vain. Even though these two had been having some conversations before, as the time passed, an invisible wall appeared in between them because Onilt stopped talking to Samchei and ignored him completely. The angelic being still kept following him, more loyally than a shadow.

Eventually Samchei had started to bleed from his eyes. Perhaps this was a manifestation of Onilt's mother's anguish. Through Samchei's eyes, she could see what her son had become. And the more time passed, the more he was bleeding and his eyes turned dark. When the bloody tears of Onilt's mother had appeared for the first time, Onilt had been a bit concerned about this strange phenomenon. But just like what happens with everything in the end, he stopped caring. 

However, even as a grown, feared man, he still can't bring himself to look at the blood pouring from his guardian angel's eyes.

Maybe there is still some remorse left in his heart of stone.



[b]DAY 20: SLIT THROAT – DO AS I DO[/b]

When Kagi regained his senses, he realized pretty soon that the plants that were previously growing from his body were now gone. And not a single trace of them remained. No wounds or withered parts were left behind. Next, he also noticed that he wasn't among the beautiful blue rocks anymore. He was now in a cave of some sort with regular brown stone walls surrounding him. The odd thing was, that for some reason, a campfire was blazing in the middle of the cave, bringing warm light to that grotto. Who could have done this? But then Kagi perceived that there were shadows dancing on the walls, in shapes of various creatures. It seemed like that they didn't have physical appearance, the only indicator of their existence being their dark silhouettes. But could such disembodied entities be able to start a fire? Probably not. Perhaps someone carnal was nearby.

Kagi cranked himself up and slowly began to walk out of the pretty homely cavern. When he got out, he looked at the sky and noticed how incredibly bright the moon was at that moment, shedding its mauve light to the odd world below. In its radiance, Kagi could see the area around him. Behind him was a rather large hill of rock where the cave was conveniently placed. And just some meters away from the hollow was a dark lake's shore. Trees with white trunks and red stripes on them and with crimson leaves were spread throughout the area – it was quite beautiful sight. This place looked like something where someone could easily make their home.

He looked all around his surroundings, but Kagi didn't see anyone who could have made the campfire – or brought him in this area in the first place. Maybe that sort of person didn't even exist, these things just happened to be other oddities of this land. Either way, he could move on with his life.

Kagi treaded to the shore of the black lake. He took few sips of water, then staring at the ripples he made, spacing out for a while.

And when the waves were gone from the surface, he could see a very clear reflection of himself in the water. That was another strange thing in this world, since the waters were so dark that a moon couldn't shine on them. But the image Kagi saw was perfect.

Then something unexpected started happening.

Even though Kagi was staying still, the image of him in the water started moving. The reflection of him raised its hand, put it on its throat – and slit it open. 

Kagi had a sudden urge to repeat what he had just seen. So, he raised his hand, scrabbling his neck a little bit, then sinking his fingernails to his throat, slowly tearing his flesh open. This procedure was messy, blood was pouring and he was gurgling, but he was in ecstasy. But after he was done with it, he decided that it wasn't enough – he had to make another one. So he struck his nails once more to his throat, leisurely slitting it. This one became wider. The blood kept streaming, staining his fur.

Having such a pleasant feeling, he fell backwards to the shore, almost wanting to laugh in glee, but his throat was full of blood.

And there he stayed, enjoying pain and bleeding under the light of the mauve moon.