Bloody Tomato-Time Loop and Mystery

Snapped~Seventh~ times. |

My head began to feel like a black hole, desperate to force back up whatever I'd swallowed.

A drawing, or maybe a letter, was carved into the palm of my left hand. My hand knew for certain it hadn't written it, but it felt like it had drawn it ~a circle, its end trailing into a scratch like a scar on the skin, shaped like the letter Q.

A prickling sensation was still there at the back of my skull, and I didn't know where it had come from. My feet moved between people. My nose caught a mix of different perfumes, cut through by the smell of grilled chicken, which reminded my stomach that it was empty.

I was still trying to piece things together in my conscious, split, self contradicting brain.

The left hemisphere ~the one with the criminal personality, the one that thinks like killers ~was telling me: kidnapping dozens of people at staggered times would benefit me in several ways, among them money thrown my way from an organ trade.

I wouldn't be alone in it, of course.

The right hemisphere~ the one that asks questions with a hesitant personality ~was saying: if it's a group, and if they catch me, or if I'm not careful, this will be the end of me.

So my brain reasoned that whoever ran the organization would have to be careful not to expose it ~ maybe the group's funding came with a loophole attached.

And a careful operation like that would need coordination and money. How would I get the money~through kidnapping people? Something was slipping past me, or telling me something wasn't right, that I needed to dig deeper into this.

Thinking this seriously hadn't been happening to this degree even minutes ago. Was this case different? That's what I felt, maybe. There was some clue about the time she went missing, five years ago …Sel…wait, what…had I forgotten how to even pronounce her name?

At the mouth of the alley I caught sight of three men whispering suspiciously. One of them, straddling a motorcycle, had green hair and a nose ring, and he'd spotted me the other two turned their eyes toward me too. It was a look that seemed to say don't come closer.

I approached to within three steps of the one with the nose ring. I raised my hands in front of them..it's fine, I'm just looking for someone, I need help. The one with the pink, rooster-crest-style hair asked me, lifting his wrinkled chin,

in a sharp voice,

"How can we help you, bra ?"

I saw a gold ring gleaming, pierced through his tongue. Wait ~ had I seen this before? The third one, apparently their leader, with pronounced abs and rings in his ears, put his hand on Rooster-Crest's shoulder and spoke in a soft voice: "Come on, bra, you're making us look like the bad guys in front of this bra."

He furrowed his brow, closing his eyes, softened his neck, and said in a rough voice, "Who are you looking for, bra?" I let out a little breath. "Have you seen anyone suspicious passing through here?"

They went quiet for a moment, and the one with the nose ring asked me if I was a cop. There was a pause where I wanted to wipe my forehead.

"Yeah, I am…. bra.”

The one with the ear rings tilted his head toward his friends and looked at me, saying, "Three alleys over, there was bra Charlie, coming back from a rock and roll show~" Rooster-Crest cut in, "and what a show , braaaah,"

I saw his forehead get smacked.

He continued he'd heard three men talking about a deal, and he claimed their look didn't suggest they were from around here.

I asked him what they looked like bra. He told me: sharp, put-together clothes. bزra Charlie had been too drunk from buzzing so he didn't remember much.

A moment passed

"Listen, girlfriend's cousin bra went missing, maybe kidnapped, and we heard about other disappearance cases ~ we wish we could help you bra."

He reached his hand toward his pocket, which made me step back; his left hand reassured me, and my body relaxed. He handed me a colorful, scribbled-on punk-style brah card with a phone number on it.

They smiled at me, pinkies under their ears and thumbs raised above them.

I smiled back and said to myself, hell no bra would call you.

I turned my back, waved behind me, and kept walking down the same street. The hour had gotten late, and only a few people were still out walking the street ~ the whores and the drunks among them.

A building with its lights out, three stories, a sign reading "under construction" already eaten by rust. The entrance led toward an unknown right side. I stepped forward.

The iron stairs told me to climb them, and that's what I did. The moment my foot landed on the first step,

I heard the screaming of a group of men, an echo from inside up, for a moment. I tried to make out the scratch of their voices but instead came the echo of a gunshot,

and after it my feet and my hand were pulling the pistol from my waist.

With every step the surge of gunfire in the place rose higher

a light automatic weapon...

I entered the corridor carefully, pulled the bitten apple out of my pocket and called for backup. Alan answered.

I told him: I'm on Fifth Street, an abandoned under-construction building, gunfire, I need backup now. He answered "ok ..ay" ~I hung up, put it back in my pocket, and listened. Nothing. Silence suddenly took over.

I moved forward, then pressed my back against the wall next to the door. My ear caught a faint groan. I looked out of the corner of my eye

and damn it, all of them were dead. I counted around sixteen, maybe seventeen. The streetlights cast a shadow over a sight that made my skin crawl, and the strange thing was,

the feeling had come over me before ~but how, and when? The flashes I was seeing, it was as if I remembered them, my subconscious saying each time: yes, this happened.

I looked closer, my feet trying not to step on any of them. Two bags ~ one metal, the other looking like it was meant for storage or cooling, to keep something frozen. My ear caught the tap of a footstep.

I saw the wounded man standing in front of me. I pointed my gun at him, but his features suggested he'd lost consciousness. I wanted to shout *police, stop where you are~ but he was already lunging at me. My hand hesitated to fire and aim,

and before I knew it.

His fist had slammed into my face. I tried to defend myself, and a flash blacked out my vision for a moment. The sound of his ragged breathing was loud from his broad chest.

He tried to land another punch. I stepped back and wrapped my forearm around his head, keeping my finger off the trigger. Our feet tangled together as he tried to break free.

I told him to give up. My body stayed behind him as I tightened my grip to make him lose consciousness. He threw me off and we fell onto the blood-soaked floor, the gun still in my hand and another gun close to his fingertips.

I screamed at him to stop, but he was groaning and snarling, trying to grab the weapon. He got hold of it and tried to raise it toward me, but I already had the muzzle of my gun pressed against his hair. Bang. That was enough to silence him.

My mind shut off then ~ not from the feeling of having taken a human life, but from the count: how many people's breath had I taken now.

Silence loomed over the place for a few seconds... damn it... I feel a prickling in my leg, forcing me to lean against the wall and sit down

My ears were still ringing from the sound of that small gunfire. My lungs pulled in a bit of the air mixed with the foul smell. My numb back felt the wall's harshness, its cold. I stretched my leg a little toward the cooling case beside me.

I bent forward and gripped it on both sides. I checked its edges ~ there was a latch on each side. I pressed them and pulled the lid back. Cold, foggy vapor spilled out, and there it was, right in front of me ~ round, fresh, with green hair and a red, freshly-picked color. I pulled it out, and the moment it touched my palm~my thought didn't even finish forming.

It came alive in front of me. Threads, or maybe roots, burst out from its firm skin and drove into my flesh ~ I felt them in my veins almost instantly, and it wasn't pleasant. My mind was telling me to throw it, but my hand wouldn't listen. I dug my fingers into my forearm trying to break free. My vision's filter flipped to red, and then my hand moved on its own, my jaw with it, prying my veins open.

They pulsed outward, crimson. I bit into it

but half of it scattered into pieces everywhere. Its core wasn't like a tomato's core ~it was black, with seeds, a rubbery, sour taste, but it felt like I was eating my own flesh. I swallowed it almost right away. My throat began to burn, to cough.

My blood was boiling. My heart was racing.

the black core slid down my throat, the back of my skull tingled not pain, but a sharp, electric flutter, like a dead nerve flickering back to life. Then it was gone.”

Nothing.

The moment stretched like it was my ending.

What the actual fuck.

I could still feel its liquid coating my throat with a wet film. My stomach was jabbing at me like needles. The veins in my forearm and my neck ~ I could hear them, tapping at my ear, nonstop.

My mind threw everything else aside, searching for an answer: the shape had been a tomato, but it was alive. What were they doing here?

I checked my hand ~ curled my fingers once, twice. I braced it against my leg and straightened up. I turned my head right and left. Beside another man was the second bag. I stepped toward it quietly, wondering. about when the Breaching Unit would Arrive

I crouched and grabbed the handle. Checked it ~ just red stains. It wasn't locked. Green bundles, banded in the hundreds, filling it to the brim. They hadn't split it yet, then. But the strange part — this much money was enough for whatever they'd done to that thing. And it had only forced me to eat it. Was I going to get؟poisoned? Maybe I should think about getting out and going to the hospital, fast.

I set it back down. Stood up. All I could think about was heading toward the stairs.

But my feet weren't moving. I could feel them, but there was no response. My hand, though, was already moving on its own ~ every cell in my brain trying to force it to stop. I bent down again, my face nearly tearing itself apart from fear.

I reached into the man's jacket pocket and pulled out a pen. I tried to stop it, but the pen's tip pierced into my palm, into the circular drawing ~ the letter Q I still didn't know the origin of ~ and traced over it.

I regained control, took a long breath in, and let it out. In that instant, the world turned red.

Something that wasn't my brain was telling me to move, now ~ like some survival instinct. My back went partially numb.

Then came a muffled sound, followed by an impact, or a small explosion, against the concrete pillar beside me.

A shot.

A sniper.

My skull went white with shock.

The world stopped. And I stopped breathing.

"There was no pain. Just a spreading cold, like ink in water. Then nothing.”