After I Died, My Fiancée Finally Learned the Truth

After my fiance lured me to a remote village called Blackhollow, deep in the Greystone Mountains, I became nothing more than a human test subjecta disposable body for the village to cut open at will.

The village doctor had sliced my abdomen open with crude, brutal strokes to draw blood for drug trials. Massive hemorrhaging followed. I lay in a pool of my own blood.

Through the door, I could hear the two village men on guard duty, puffing on hand-rolled cigarettes and chatting:

"This college kid from the city is so gullible. Still thinks he actually got kidnapped."

"No kidding. That's what he gets for crossing Miss Simmons' favorite person."

"Miss Simmons paid our chief half a million bucks to get the whole village in on this little 'escape room' game. Even those special meds that keep him from dying of pain? She shipped those in herself."

"Word is, Miss Simmons said as long as he survives three years in this hellholelong enough to understand the suffering her best friend went throughshe'll show mercy and take him back to get married."

Through the crack in the door, I saw the video call lighting up the guard's phone. The name on the screen: Constance Simmons. My fiance.

So that was it. Three years of sunless, living hellall of it was just a custom-made punishment she'd designed to make her best friend happy.

Searing pain ripped through my abdomen, clawing at every nerve. As consciousness began to slip away, a mechanical voice echoed inside my skull:

"Host, the target Constance Simmons' anguish value has reached maximum capacity. Do you wish to abandon the mission and extract from the current world?"

I opened my eyes. Stared up at the blackened wooden beams overhead.

The door exploded inward, smashed open by brute force.

The hinges snapped. The wooden plank crashed into the mud, spraying filth in every direction.

Constance Simmons stepped through the doorway in a black couture trench coat, striding into the dim, reeking pig pen.

Five bodyguards in dark sunglasses filed in behind her.

Then two private physicians carrying medical kits.

The village doctor was crouched beside me, pinching a rusted suture needle between his fingers. A length of coarse black thread dangled from its tip, hovering over my abdomenwhere the flesh had been ripped open and blood kept surging out.

Constance stopped. Her gaze swept across the floor: pig dung, bloodstained straw.

She raised one hand and pointed at the village doctor.

"Stop. Get out."

He dropped the needle and thread, his hands smeared dark red, and scrambled out of the pen on all fours.

Constance turned to the physicians behind her and issued her orders.

"Give him a cardiac stimulant. High-dose adrenaline. He is not allowed to pass out right now."

The two doctors moved in fast.

One cracked open a medical kit, drew out a long syringe, and filled it with a clear solution.

The doctor grabbed the withered skin on my inner thigh and drove the thick needle into a vein.

The solution was pushed in fast.

Ten seconds later, the drug reaction spread through my bloodstream like wildfire.

My muscles began convulsing beyond my control. My body thrashed and rolled across the filthy straw. Every spasm tore the unsutured wound in my abdomen wider, forcing out more blood. It ran down my thighs and pooled on the ground in a dark, spreading puddle.

Constance stepped back, sidestepping the blood creeping toward her heels.

"Cut the act. I know exactly how much they used on you."

She stared down at me from above.

"I've read the script the village sent me. The pig-blood pouch and the fake wound glued to your stomachnice prop work, I'll give you that."

A cold laugh escaped her lips.

"You really think playing the tragic hero is going to erase what you did to Caspian?"

The drug's stimulation sent jolts of agony through my brain.

My upper body lurched forward. My hands clawed instinctively at the ground ahead of me.

Skeletal fingers scraped through the mud and brushed the hem of Constance's trench coat.

The instant my fingertips made contact, a ragged, barely human sound crawled out of my throat.

"Constance... it hurts..."

Constance's expression darkened. She swung her foot and kicked my hand away.

The back of my hand slammed against the stone trough beside me, scraping off a layer of skin.

She pulled a white silk handkerchief from her breast pocket.

Constance bent down and scrubbed viciously at the spot on her heels where I'd touched them.

"Wipe that disgusting look off your face."

She crumpled the handkerchief into a ball and threw it at my face.

It slid off, landing in the blood pooling on the ground.

"Caspian hasn't forgiven you yet. You don't get to touch me."

I stared at the handkerchief. I didn't reach for it.

I had to get away from her.

Constance straightened up and waved to her bodyguards.

"Take him. Don't dirty my car."

Two bodyguards stepped forward.

They seized my left and right arms and dragged me off the pile of straw.

My legs had been broken months ago. The bones had healed crooked, fused at wrong angles, unable to straighten.

As the bodyguards hauled me forward, my deadened legs scraped across the ground of crushed gravel and mud, carving two long trails behind me.

The skin and flesh over my kneecaps split open against the rocks, exposing white shards of bone.

Constance walked out of the pigsty and stood on the dirt road at the village entrance.

Chief Grogan waited at the roadside with a handful of villagers, thick wads of hundred-dollar bills clutched in their fists.

Constance swept her gaze over them.

"You've done well these three years. He was here with you, and the act was very convincing."

The Chief nodded eagerly and stuffed the money into the pocket of his threadbare coat.

The bodyguards dragged me in front of Constance and dropped me on the ground.

My body hit the gravel road hard.

Constance looked down at my legs from where she stood.

"You didn't want to do hard labor, so you went and broke your own legs."

She let out a cold scoff through her nose.

"Playing the beggar for sympathy? Making yourself reek like thisdid you think I'd go soft?"

I closed my eyes.

Three years ago today, I'd been in the kitchen of the villa, slicing an apple.

The blade slipped and nicked my index finger, drawing a thin line of blood, a single bead welling to the surface.

Constance came running in from the living room and snatched the knife from my hand.

She held my finger under the faucet for ten minutes, then brought out the first-aid kit and wrapped it in so much gauze it looked like a cotton ball.

A month later, she booked out an entire private island.

Every inch of it was covered in red roses.

She held up a ten-carat men's diamond ring and slid it onto my ring finger.

Two days after that, Caspian Holloway came back from overseas.

He moved into the guest room at the villa.

A week later, Caspian came down the stairs wearing one of my white dress shirts.

He picked up the scissors from the coffee table and dragged the blade across his own forearm, opening a streak of blood.

Constance pushed through the front door just as he did it. Caspian clutched his wound and pointed at me.

"Constance, he cut me with the scissors."

Constance ripped the glass of water from my hand and pulled Caspian behind her.

Another week passed. Caspian was carrying a cup of freshly boiled coffee.

He poured every drop of it onto his own shoulder and shrieked, crumpling into the corner of the sofa.

Constance came racing down from the second floor.

Caspian pointed at me.

"He tried to scald me to death with boiling water."

The next day, Caspian stood on the ledge of a thirtieth-floor rooftop.

Constance rushed forward and grabbed him.

After that, in front of a crowd of reporters, Constance tore our marriage contract to pieces.

She froze every one of my bank accounts and had her bodyguards shove me into a car.

She drove me to the Greystone Mountains herself and handed a sum of money to the village chief.

She told me I would stay here for three years. To feel what Caspian had felt.

Those three years were real torture.

After the Chief took the money, he locked me in the pigsty.

A heavy iron chain was locked around my neck.

Every day, the only thing I was given to eat was rancid slop.

Every night, the thugs from the village walked into the pigsty.

In the darkness, I endured round after round of blood draws and brutal drug trials.

The bodyguards hauled me up and threw me into the trunk of an SUV.

When the plane took off, I lay in a corner of the cabin.

I opened my mouth, trying to make a sound.

Only a ragged hiss escaped my throat.

Constance sat on the sofa and slipped a pair of black noise-canceling headphones over her ears.

"Enough. Stop playing mute. Save your strength. You're going back to the city to get on your knees and beg Caspian for forgiveness."

The plane landed on a private helipad in the heart of downtown.

A bodyguard wrapped my body in a sheet of black tarp and shoved me into the last row of a luxury van.

The vehicle pulled into the underground garage of the Continental Hotel. An elevator took us straight to the top-floor ballroom.

The doors swung open.

The ballroom was draped in heavy red carpet, and crystal chandeliers cast a blinding glow over everything below. The bodyguard ripped the tarp away and hurled me onto the center of the carpet.

Constance stood beneath a spotlight, microphone in hand.

Guests holding champagne flutes crowded around on every side.

Constance pointed at me.

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is the gift I've prepared to lift Caspian's spirits."

Her gaze swept the crowd.

"A vicious man I dragged back from the mountains."

Laughter erupted.

Several men in couture suits strolled forward, wine glasses in hand. They looked down at me.

"I heard he spent three years up in the mountains?"

"Covered himself in mud on purpose and reeks of blood. Trying to disgust Caspian, no doubt."

I lay facedown on the red carpet.

I reached out with my right arm, pressed my elbow into the floor, and dragged my body forward.

My broken legs trailed behind me, leaving a dark, wet streak across the carpet.

Caspian descended the spiral staircase in an immaculate white suit.

The moment he spotted the bloodstains on the floor, he let out a sharp gasp.

He collapsed into Constance's arms, fingers clawing at her trench coat.

"Constance, the blood on him is so red... I'm scared..."

Constance's expression turned ice-cold.

She turned toward the hotel security guards stationed by the entrance.

"Get water over here. Scrub every drop of that filth off the carpet."

Two security guards came running with plastic cleaning buckets. The buckets were full of freezing, grimy water.

"Pour it over his head. Wash off that disgusting act of his."

The guards lifted the buckets.

Ice-cold water laced with grit came crashing down over my skull.

It streamed through my brittle hair and seeped into the unstitched wound on my abdomen.

The bone-deep cold sent violent spasms ripping through my body.

Constance walked over and stopped beside me, the point of her stiletto heel landing an inch from my fingers.

"Crawl over there. Kneel before Caspian and bow your head to the floor three times."

She stared down at me.

"Admit that you faked a terminal illness to compete for my attention. Do as you're told, and I'll let you stay at the company as an errand boy."

I lowered my head.

The gala moved into its second half.

The bodyguards dragged me out of the ballroom and dumped me in a corner of the hallway near the restrooms.

My clothes clung to my skin. Bloody water dripped from the hem of my shirt onto the marble tile.

Caspian stepped out of the restroom, adjusting his cufflinks.

He stopped in front of me.

He raised his right foot. The hard heel of his leather shoe came down on the broken index finger of my right hand.

He ground it side to side.

Every nerve in my body screamed at once. My whole frame seized tight, and I recoiled on instinct.

Caspian watched me and let out a light, cheerful laugh.

"You really thought Constance set you up at some quaint little farmhouse?"

He bent down, his face inches from mine.

"The day Chief Grogan got the money, he messaged me asking how I wanted you handled."

He straightened up, smoothing the hem of his suit jacket.

"I told them to do whatever they wanted. Just keep you breathing so they could use you as a blood bag."

Caspian's gaze drifted to the bloodstain spreading across my abdomen.

"All those hundreds of days and nights, having your organs hollowed out bit by bit. Must've been something, huh?"

The sharp click of heels echoed from the far end of the corridor.

Constance appeared around the corner.

Caspian threw himself backward instantly, slamming hard onto the marble floor. He clutched his ankle with both hands, fat tears rolling down his cheeks.

"Jacob, I know you hate me, but why did you have to push me..."

Constance's expression shifted like a switch had been flipped. She stormed toward us in long, furious strides.

She didn't spare me a single glance. Her right foot drove straight into my body.

The pointed toe of her stiletto connected with surgical precision against the wound on my abdomen.

The scraps of cloth holding me together burst apart. Blood and shredded flesh sprayed across the wall.

I lay flat on my back, eyes wide open, lungs frozen mid-breath.

Caspian leaned against the wall, pale-faced and gasping.

"Constance, the shock triggered my anemia again. I'm so dizzy..."

She turned her head immediately, her gaze locking onto me like a blade sheathed in ice.

"If you had the strength to push him, you can repay Caspian with your blood."

She pulled out a two-way radio and called for her private physician outside.

Seconds later, the doctor came running down the corridor, medical kit in hand.

Constance pointed at my arm.

"Draw his blood."

The doctor crouched beside me and pulled my left hand toward him. He cinched a tourniquet around my upper arm, then withdrew a glass collection tube fitted with a thick, long needle from his case.

Inside my skull, the System's alarm blared again, the intervals between pulses collapsing to almost nothing.

Seventy-two-hour countdown interrupted by lethal external force. Program accelerating termination.

Host body vitality severed. Pain suppression protocol disengaged.

Soul detachment successful. Wishing the Host a pleasant journey in the new world.

The needle plunged deep into a collapsed vein.

The extraction pump whirred to life, emitting a faint mechanical hum.

Constance stood over me, glancing at the watch on her wrist. Her expression was one of pure, undisguised impatience.

"Faster. He's not going to die."

Her cold gaze swept over me.

"He starved off every ounce of fat under his skin just to play the victim. This kind of pathetic act only fools the hired help who don't know any better."

I stared up at the chandelier hanging from the corridor ceiling.

The light was dimming in my vision, bleeding away at the edges.

I didn't have the strength left to twitch the corner of my mouth.

My eyes lost focus. My head surrendered to gravity, lolling softly to the right against my shoulder.

Constance's brow knotted tight. Her voice cracked through the air like a whip.

"Stop playing dead. Look at me!"

The words had barely left her lips.

CRASH.

A piercing shatter rang through the corridor.

The doctor let out a shriek, his hands flying open.

The glass collection tube hit the marble floor and exploded into fragments. Dark red liquid splattered in every direction.

Constance strode forward.

"What the hell are you doing?!"

The doctor didn't answer her.

His eyes were blown wide with horror. He scrambled backward on the floor until his spine hit the wall.

His hands trembled violently in the air, one finger pointing at the gaping hole torn open in my abdomen.

Foul, black blood was pouring out of it in a steady, unending stream.

The doctor's voice came out so shrill it barely sounded human.

"Ms. Simmons... what came out of that tube was nothing but septic blood from catastrophic organ failure!"

He grabbed his head with both hands.

He pointed at the rotting flesh.

"And his abdomen has no healing muscle tissue. There's nothing inside but a mass of necrotic, blackened, mangled organs!"

The air in the corridor froze solid.

Everyone stood paralyzed.

The doctor's trembling voice continued to echo off the walls.

"Ms. Simmons, this body was already falling apart days ago. He's been dead. Completely dead!"