Simply terrifying and horrendous. What he sees is the creature that chased him minutes ago, now lying dead on the floor. The putrid smell is even stronger, and its appearance, besides being disgusting, is disturbing.
Its features are very similar to those of a woman, yet deformed as if ravaged by a disease that left her to wither away to death. Nonetheless, something strange catches Darkin's eye, but he doesn't pay much attention to it. The creature has two rings around its wrists, something that is, in fact, quite intriguing.
"Darkin!!" his father's voice calls from the living room. For a moment, however, the man in the white suit doesn't respond.
Finally, Darkin lowers his weapon and looks for something to cover the body, feeling an overwhelming urge to vomit everything in his stomach.
His father's lazy footsteps slowly make their way to the room where he stands.
"What are you doing here?" his father asks him.
"Father, how did you kill this creature?" Darkin asks the man, who is about to uncover whatever is hidden under the cloth.
"Creature? What creature?" the man says, deep concern marked on his face, and immediately uncovers it. "No, no..." he mutters, as if on the verge of a breakdown.
"What is it?"
"You killed it."
"Killed? I just ran, I didn't do anything to that creature — and thank God it died. I escaped." At the end of his words, Darkin speaks with relief, having managed to save his life.
"You didn't kill just any creature."
"What do you mean?" Confused, Darkin asks, a great shock washing over him when he sees his father's face filled with total sadness.
"You killed my mother," the man says to his son, who widens his eyes in shock. "You killed your grandmother."
...
Things grow very strange. Darkin cannot believe his father's words, as they make no sense — the man in the white suit refuses to believe them. A tiny spark of happiness was with him when he thought at least one other survivor remained, and he had so many questions to extract from the man now accusing him of being responsible for his grandmother's death — when all he saw was a humanoid, grotesque creature.
Frozen by the truth spoken by his father, he can only remember running away when the thing — now called his grandmother — was chasing him, determined to end his life. His father's eyes begin to flush with rage, the veins threatening to burst.
"I didn't kill this creature," Darkin insists, even after hearing it was his paternal grandmother.
Suddenly, he feels his father's hands grabbing his wrists tightly. Darkin notices a mark on one of the man's arms — a wound that seems like it was made by a bite, though he momentarily dismisses the idea.
As the two lock eyes, Darkin feels invaded and intimidated, repeating once more:
"I swear I didn't kill…"
"Shut up. You just ruined my experiment… She would've recovered, I… I was sure, but…" The man, defeated in his expression, suddenly lets go of Darkin without explanation.
Darkin feels like he's dealing with a madman, not his father — like being in a war where most people lose their reason and destroy each other just because someone ordered them to, ignoring the simplest, most sensible path: dialogue.
"Father, please, believe me — I didn't kill 'my grandmother', I just ran…"
"Since it all started I…" the man begins to speak in a tone suggesting he's about to reveal something, but abruptly stops himself.
A second later, a disturbing laugh escapes the man's lips as he turns to his son, looking at him as though he was nothing, void of any affection.
Darkin shudders at the sound of his own father's laugh, and immediately feels that he's facing someone insane.
"I can see… look at me," the man says, pulling one of his eyelids open with his fingers.
His eyes are entirely white, though filled with angry, swelling veins, forming patterns that could only have come from some satanic, hellish vision.
Darkin feels the need to test something — to be sure whether this is his father driven to madness or a creature wearing his father's face. He can hardly believe what he's thinking, but based on what the man said — that the creature was, in fact, his grandmother — Darkin wants to see what the other sees, hoping for at least some answers.
"Who are you?"
"I," the man says, pausing to laugh before continuing, "am Thomas Punkson."
Darkin freezes, silently staring at his father, then asks again:
"Please, tell me what's happening here. I can help you bring… back…" he lies in his last words.
"My mother?" the man says, with a childlike joy, like someone who just received a long-desired treat.
"Yes."
"I'll tell you, yes."
Finally, Darkin would hear the full story of what was happening there. He breathes with relief as the other man slowly leaves the room, heading to another where he can sit comfortably and recount everything in detail, to clear up the confusion in young Punkson's mind — a mind riddled with severe memory lapses.
The son follows his father, walking at the same pace into the living room, ready to finally have the conversation he so desperately needs, hoping afterward to do something to help any other survivors beyond his strange father.
The creature in the room continues to rot even in death, its white eyes growing increasingly veined, as though the red threads might soon consume the white altogether, in a way that would make anyone believe it was still alive.
"Bring a bottle of whiskey there, would you?" Thomas says to his son, who immediately goes to the spot to fetch the drink, ready to hear what his father has to say.
"Here it is," Darkin says, handing the glass to the other while holding his own with his other hand.
Thomas takes it and slowly smiles — a smile that quickly turns into such an eccentric laugh that, for a moment, Darkin has a flashback of a monster looking at him, ready to attack. Instinctively, he jumps up from the couch, his breathing heavy.
"Calm down, boy — your wife is safe," Thomas says suddenly, after pausing from his laughter and taking a sip from his glass.
"What?" Darkin naturally senses that the man's words likely mean the opposite. "What do you mean by that? What have you done to my wife?"
"Well, I haven't done anything… yet. Now sit here — I'm going to tell you the story of the world. Everything's ending, my boy."
"Father, I'm your son… why are you treating me this way?"
"You hypocrite. I could ask the same question. And someone like you, who abandoned his father when he needed him most, how else should he be treated?"
"I…" Darkin tries to say, ashamed, but the words die in his throat.
"You had the nerve to leave me, sick and wasting away in Orge hospital, with your pathetic excuse: 'I can't, because of work.' That's how all this chaos began, and now we're all suffering. DAMN YOU."
Darkin can't hold back the tears, shaking his head as if refusing to believe what he once did. The truth from his own father burns like lava.
"I…" says his father, bitterly, "have no son. My son died for me the day he cursed me. Do you think after that a simple 'I'm sorry' could fix things?"
"You're right, father. I simply disappointed you," Darkin says, staring at the TV, which again shows what he saw while being chased by the creature — the one he now knows was his grandmother.
His expression hardens; he focuses on the screen.
"Look at me," says Mr. Thomas. "Look deep into my eyes."
Darkin turns and stares into his father's eyes, their long pointed noses nearly touching.
"I was an idiot," says Darkin.
"You were an idiot indeed. But now it's too late. I hate you."
The son feels an unbearable sensation, as if an arrow had pierced his heart. He can say nothing — just looks at his father, who suddenly begins to blink repeatedly in a short burst, and then his eyes are overtaken by those hungry, red veins.
"Father, father!! What's happening to you?"
Thomas shoves his son with an inhuman strength that astonishes the man in the white suit. Before hitting the floor, Darkin crashes into a cabinet, knocking down several whiskey bottles — which, fortunately, he dodges, avoiding serious injury.
Thomas begins to scream uncontrollably like a madman, then collapses to the floor, unconscious. Silence falls over the house and Darkin…