Chapter 45Crawl out of Hell
Crawl out of Hell
Aslanov
The chair beneath me wobbles, its wooden legs uneven against the cold, bloodstained concrete.
The noose bites into my throat, thick and rough, each shallow breath making the fibers scratch against my skin.
My hands are cuffed behind my back, shoulders burning from the forced position.
The room stinks of sweat, blood, and something else, something rotten, like flesh left too long in the dark.
A single light swings above me, flickering, casting jagged shadows against the walls. The air is thick, oppressive. The kind of silence that only comes before death.
A guard stands beside me, his fingers tapping lazily against the back of the chair. His gloved hand rests there like a vulture waiting for its prey to drop. His voice is calm, indifferent. “After this,” he murmurs, almost thoughtful, “we’ll dissolve you in acid. Clean and neat.”
I breathe in through my nose, slow and steady. I don’t flinch. I don’t look at him. Fear is a weakness, and I refuse to die weak.
I was always meant to end this way.
Dangling from a rope, hands bound, body broken.
A monster’s death.
The fibers of the noose bite into my skin, but it doesn’t matter.
The sting is nothing compared to the weight I’ve carried my entire life.
Blood. Violence. A legacy carved in the marrow of my bones before I was even old enough to understand what I was becoming.
I was raised to be cruel, sharpened into a weapon, molded into something inhuman. And now, this is where it has led me.
Maybe this is justice. Maybe this is what monsters like me deserve.
I close my eyes for a moment, breathing in the scent of blood and rot that clings to the air.
There is no peace in this death, but there is finality.
An ending to something that was never meant to last. I’ve killed, tortured, destroyed.
The hands that now hang limply behind my back have spilled more lives than I can count, each one staining deeper, sinking further into my skin.
I used to tell myself it didn’t matter—that I had no choice.
That I was born into this life, and you do what you must to survive.
But in the end, all I did was exist.
I never lived .
Not in the way that mattered.
I have never felt the warmth of the morning sun without blood already drying on my knuckles. Never stood in a quiet field, breathing in fresh air without the weight of death clinging to my shadow. I have never known a touch that wasn’t tainted with power, control, destruction.
Except for her.
The one thing—the only thing—that ever made me feel human.
A cruel joke, really. That the universe would grant me a glimpse of something pure, something I could never hold. A spark of warmth in a life that has been nothing but cold steel and jagged edges. A reminder of everything I will never have.
I won’t see her again.
That thought alone cuts deeper than any blade ever has.
I wonder if she will even care. If she will think of me when I am gone. If she will feel relief or nothing at all. I wonder if she always knew I was doomed, if she saw the ruin in me long before I did.
I do not pray. I do not beg.
What is there to ask for? Salvation? Forgiveness?
Monsters don’t get redemption.
That’s how my world works.
Men like me are born in blood and end in silence.
It is not tragedy. It is not injustice. It is simply the way of things.
A cycle that turns, endless, swallowing us whole.
I have seen it a hundred times before, watched men crawl toward their deaths, clawing at the floor, whispering prayers to gods who never listened.
I did not pity them. I did not think of them once they were gone.
And now, I am one of them.
That is how my father choked on his own blood, his body twitching, fingers curling into the floor before turning still.
I remember the way his eyes glazed over, empty, like he had never existed at all.
That is how my brother bled out in the gutter, lungs filling with red, his mouth still open in a scream that never finished.
That is how countless men before me have fallen, throats slit, bullets buried deep, bones shattered, forgotten in shallow graves no one would ever find.
That is how I will go, too.
No grave. No name whispered in mourning. No hand to hold as the last breath leaves my lungs.
I tell myself I am not afraid. But the truth is, I don’t know how to be anything but afraid.
Not of dying. No, that is the easy part.
I am afraid of how little it matters.
How little I have mattered to anyone.
How the world will not change when my body swings from this ceiling. How the sun will rise tomorrow, golden and warm, and I will not be there to see it. How people will wake, drink their coffee, kiss their lovers, keep living, as if I had never been here at all.
That is my punishment.
The door creaks open, and I feel my jaw clench instinctively. My heart tightens with a mix of anger and bitter disappointment as I see him. Petrov.
His figure emerges from the shadows, but he’s not alone.
He’s being dragged. The two men hauling him forward move with little effort, his weight nearly dead in their grip.
Chains rattle against the floor with every step, the sound sharp, grating.
His posture is stiff, but there’s no denying the weight that hangs over him.
He’s here, and I can feel it, my stomach twists in the way it always does when I think of him. Betrayal. Again.
I’ve always known this day would come. Petrov is like a storm, unpredictable, impossible to trust. The past haunts me in the most visceral way, and every inch of my being tells me that this man, this traitor, will only bring more ruin.
His captors release him with a shove, and he stumbles forward.
The chains around his wrists and ankles clatter against the ground as he tries to steady himself.
His movements are slow, deliberate, almost like he’s dragging himself.
His eyes never meet mine, as if he knows what’s coming, as if he knows I’ve already made my judgment.
And I’m ready to voice it, ready to condemn him, to finally cut him out of my life like the cancerous wound he’s always been.
I can already feel the words forming on the tip of my tongue: I knew you’d do this.
I knew you were just waiting for the right moment to turn against me.
But as he steps into the dim light of the room, something stops me.
It’s a small thing at first, a flicker of doubt that gnaws at my insides.
There’s something wrong. Something in the way he moves, or rather, how he can’t move.
The way his shoulders are slumped, as though he’s carrying the weight of the world on them, far heavier than any man should bear.
I watch him more closely, and my breath catches in my chest. His face is a mess; bruised, swollen, covered in dark, angry marks.
His lips are cracked and bleeding, his eyes dull and sunken.
He’s barely standing, the chains pulling against his every movement, but somehow, he manages to keep moving toward me, each step more of a struggle than the last. His clothes are torn, and I can see the remnants of blood soaking through his shirt.
My jaw loosens, the anger dissolving into something heavier, more complicated.
I have to force myself to breathe steadily.
What the hell happened to him? This isn’t the Petrov I remember, the one who would betray anyone without blinking, who wore his treachery like a badge of honor. This man... this man looks broken.
A mix of suspicion and concern knots in my stomach as I take in the sight of him. He’s no longer the enemy I thought he was. No, this man is something else entirely. A man who’s been crushed by forces even more unforgiving than I could imagine.
I can’t keep my eyes from tracing the bloodstains on his clothes, the way he falters with each step.
I want to ask him what happened, but the words die in my throat.
Something inside me is still too proud, too bitter to give him the satisfaction of sympathy.
I’ve been burned too many times by this man.
Yet, the anger is not enough to overshadow the sharp sting of something else, something darker, something far more unsettling than the betrayal I had been ready to feel. Fear.
His eyes flick toward the other guards standing at the door. Petrov is barely standing, but his gaze, though weary, is still there.
‘‘Do you know what’s happening?’’ His voice is raw, cracked, but it still carries the edge of urgency. He’s not asking for my pity. He’s not here to beg for mercy, because he hasn’t done anything to ask mercy for.
I don’t respond immediately. Instead, I take a long, hard look at him—really look at him.
His face is gaunt, his cheeks hollow, his body trembling, and yet I can feel the faint pulse of defiance still lingering beneath the surface.
He’s been through hell, but there’s something else in his eyes, something I can’t quite place. Something... desperate.
We stare at each other and slowly realize our own minds and external factors have played us both.
This is it. The end.
And I’m going first.
The door creaks open, and two more figures step inside.
They don’t speak; they don’t need to. Their presence is the announcement we’ve been waiting for.
The gun on one of their hips gleams in the low light, a silent promise of violence.
The tension is thick enough to choke on, but neither Petrov nor I move.
We’re both too aware of the situation, too aware that the fate of both our lives is now tied to this single, impossible moment.