Even a serial killer gets sick sometimes

Part 4

The orphanage caretakers had never been nice to Zack: they had him buried the bodies of other children who had just died. They only let him drink dirty water and nothing to eat.So, he often had to search in the garbage for something that was maybe rotten or even poisonous, but edible. But not only the two caretakers in the orphanage were cruel to him, but also the other kids in the orphanage were not friendly towards him.To be honest, they were mean. Since these children themselves had mental health problems, they were aggressive and behavior-conspicuous. They were known for beating the weaker up or biting, or even ... killing in the worst case. Normally, Zack could do very well against the other kids, after all, he was not inferior to them, but now that he was in such great pain that he believed he was dying, he was one of the weak ones on whom the mean, strong Kids, -but not just those-, hacked at him.

„"Hey, look how Zack bends in pain!" The first child pointed with his finger at the weak-looking boy.

"What's his problem?" One of the mean children asked provocatively, grinning, "Did the doctor do bad things to him?" Then a nasty laugh released from his mouth, making the other mean children listen and take notice.

"It doesn't matter what's with that bitch" hissed an annoyed child from his bed, "He's getting on my nerves."

„"So he finally got weak." The first mean child grinned and called his brawlers together: "Come on, let's make him stop whimpering.""And how?" Asked one of the more retarded children.

"Well, if he's unconscious, he'll feel no pain," the leader answered laughing.

"Ingenious plan," grinned another child and so they were five circling around Zack's bed.

Rachel sighed, "He seems to have a nightmare again. He is getting very restless."

Concerned, she bit her lower lip and thought about what she should do: "Should I keep him sleeping or should I wake him up?The better question is what's more painless for him."

Her blue eyes darkened with concern because she had already noticed Zack's predicament. When he he was supposed to get some restful sleep, he had nightmares, but when he was awake, the flu was tormenting him. He would never have a stop from his suffering, whether in sleeping or being awake. But Rachel thought that sleep was better than dealing with various disease symptoms. Although she had to admit that she was already curious about what he was dreaming about ...

"I feel so bad and it hurts ... Argh! It hurts like hell!" Zack whimpered, trying to be as quiet as possible. But the pain made his attempts in vain and now, he was unable to hold back the cries of pain. They mostly came out of his throat in an uncontrolled way, so he had to bite his tongue to keep his cries of pain as quiet as possible. He couldn't risk showing weakness. Not when survival was all. Even with pain and illness he had to defend himself. If not, he might soon be a corpse to be buried.

"Hey, Zack." A voice called out that Zack was sure he didn't want to hear it right now, "Well, are you hurt?"

"Go away," he croaked with a miserable voice that had almost reached the limit due to the many screams."Oh, I'm not alone," the leader said, grinning at the black-haired boy.

„Verpisst euch.", murmelte Zack, was wirklich nur ein leises, kaum hörbares Wispern war. "Piss you", Zack muttered, which was just a low, barely audible whisper. His voice had failed at that moment and he coughed heavily, spitting some blood as well, as he had bitten his tongue multiple times before.

"Hey, I'm gonna piss on you when you not shut your mouth!" The leader kid hissed a little louder. The volume caused the sick boy to wince in a headache that only got worser, but the mean kid didn't stop: "Your whimpering gets on our nerves."

Zack said nothing, but he badly wanted to.Only the pain and his broken voice didn't allow it, so he was forced to remain silent. In addition, he suppressed his cough, so that the mean children wouldn't allude to it.

"Yes exactly. Just be quiet." Now a child from the group intervened,"Otherwise we'll mute you."

„"Just a sound and you're dead, Zack" another child threatened.

Zack just nodded and struggled with all the pain that made him want to scream. He fought the coughing which slowly squeezed his lungs. He wanted to gasp, he wanted to cough, but he couldn't. He was afraid for his life.Usually he was no one to be scared or to show fear, but for once, -and he didn't know if it was the injection or the disease itself-, he couldn't help but let his weakness and anxiety go free. Why didn't these mean children just leave him alone? Didn't they notice that he just didn't care? But he would never get rest or get better with these assholes around him.He had always been their bullying victim ever since he came to the orphanage. He had never had any friends but one, but this friend died of child abuse by the caregivers.Then, Zack had to bury the corpse of his best friend. Since then he had become really quiet and also very lonely.

" Can't I calm him down somehow?" Rachel wondered with a thoughtful look. she pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and typed "What to do Nightmares" into Google's search bar. Exited, she waited for the results. She was quickly presented with relevant results and she scrolled through hoping that she would receive useful information.

"You shouldn't do anything?!" Rachel was finally shocked and sighed. Then, she looked at Zack with worried and a sympathetic expression: "But it just keeps getting worse." A little sadly, she put her cell phone away and her eyes became a little more resolute: "But I stay with him and if it's the only thing, that I can do for him."

Zack couldn't hold back his cough for very long and he had to cough what became a veritable coughing attack that not only made his throat but also his lungs burn. Just when he thought his cough had calmed down, one of the boys gave him a kick to his lungs and, he gasped for air, thinking he was suffocating for a moment. Tears were forming in his shiny, feverish, glassy eyes and he was afraid of his life. With quick breaths that were almost taken in panic, he tried to fill his lungs with enough oxygen so that he wouldn't have to suffocate. That was hard enough with the awful pain. Above all, it seemed to please the horrible children and they laughed at his fear. Apparently, his despair made them want to do more so they stepped on him and hit him all at once. .Sometimes they hit his lungs, so he was desperate to gasp, sometimes they hit the side into which the crazy doctor had injected him this awful drug.But no matter where they kicked him ... He felt hellish pain. At some point it became too much for him; then, when they started to laugh about how weak and sick he was. The words 'pathetic', 'monster', 'idiot' and many more hurtful expressions were said, causing Zack's head to explode in pain. After all, he couldn't handle it anymore and madness was coming over him. Finally, he screamed in a croaking, overused voice: "Stop it! Shut your fucking mouth and be quiet for a goddamn moment! "

Frightened because despite the torture he could still spend so much strength, the children retreated. Suddenly, they got a queasy feeling about the bullying and so they moved away from him. A little bit blood dripped to the floor and they looked at Zack in fear, who was not only bloodied in the face and bleeding from the mouth, but also had blood from his side.

He grinned a little victoriously, though the pain drove him insane. Maybe the pain had already made him insane and that's why he was just immune to the immense pain. "Are you afraid?" He asked, coughing even more blood that was coming out of his mouth, not knowing if it was coming from his lungs or from his tongue, "I give you three seconds. Then you can run away and leave me alone.", He grinned a little wider, which made it the grin look more psychopathic," If not, I'll infect you all. "

But because of fear, the children had fallen into paralysis and couldn't move. At the same moment, however, the caretakers came in, who had become aware of the noise, and now the two of them saw the chaos. Zack's bed resembled a battlefield, five frightened children stood around it, trembling like aspen leaves. The scene looked very wrong in the eyes of the caregivers.

"Isaac!" The first caretaker shouted angrily, and Zack got angry, too, because he had been addressed with his real name. He hated that name so much that it pissed him off. His psychopathic grin became even more frightening and the five kids ran away. The caretaker made furious and less anxious steps toward him: "What comes to your mind?! Are you mad?!"

"They're to blame," Zack tried to defend in a croaking voice. From the moment where the caretaker had stood before him, he was doing worse again. The pain became unbearable again and he coughed heavily.

"Don't fool us." The big man didn't seem like he believed the boy, "Sick or not, you're going to sleep outside today."

"What?" Zack wanted to scream, but his voice allowed only a soft, inaudible croak.

But the man didn't answer him, but grabbed him rudely and pulled him behind him. The pulling caused more pain for Zack and he cried out in agony. No sound escaped from his throat anyway. He only knew that he would die now. Alone, sick, weak, in the cold.

"Zack!", Rachel let go of a worried scream, as her black-haired friend squirmed in his sleep and apparently tried to get out of something. She also had to be careful that she didn't get hit by him, but she had promised herself not to leave his side. Even though she'd taken a few punches for that, which were surprisingly not as hard as normal.

" Ow ... Zack must have gotten really weak," thought Rachel, who believed more she was going to die of worry. So, she did the only thing she thought was right. She woke him up by leaning over him and shaking his shoulder as she called out his name aloud.

"Zack ...", she let out a sigh of relief as he opened his eyes. She pulled away some tears that had formed in her eyes out of fear and put on a slight, calm smile, "Thanks God, you're finally awake."

„"Ray?", He looked at her a bit confused and dizzy, then, he coughed away from her.

"Yes?", She had not noticed it out of concern ...

He had already noticed, despite his feverish and stunned state, "W-Why are you so close?"

When Rachel noticed that her face was only a few inches from his, she blushed, "Eh, I don't know."

With a cold expression, he pushes her back, so that she was no longer in his immediate vicinity.

„"Zack?" She wondered why he suddenly didn't want her around.

„Argh. We can't let you get sick, too" he said as he coughed away from her again. At least he had the feeling that this cough felt better than that in the dream.„

"I see," Rachel said, rubbing his back. He only looked at her with a tired, weary expression, but didn't seem to be against the touch. he just didn't have the strength to fight back."He being so weak made her even more worried, which of course was noticed by Zack: "Don't worry."

"But ...", Rachel started, but she didn't have the words she needed to finish the sentence.

"Stop that," Zack said in a contorting voice, coughing again for the sake of speaking, "Ray, you worry too much about things that don't need to be worried about." His throat grew drier with speech, so that the cough stimulus increased.

Rachel just kept rubbing his back, "You're sick. That's why I'm worried. "

"So what?", He replied in a brittle voice, "A little cold and a little cough will not take me down."

"Zack ...", Rachel just shook her head in disbelief and was unsure if she should tell him what she had found on the internet, "It's not just a little cold or a little coughing." Zack ... ", she took a deep breath and then said," You have the flu. "

Now small question marks formed over his head and he looked at her in confusion: "Huh? The flu?"

Rachel just nodded and was glad that he hadn't been angry about it yet. It wouldn't do him any good if he got mad, "This is not a common cold. This is worse. You are very sick, Zack.""Can I die?", He wanted to know.

„Um… nein?", anhand ihrer Antwort merkte man, dass sie unsicher war. "Um ... no?", From her answer you could realize that she was insecure. She had not read about that.

"Look," Zack said and shrugged his aching shoulder, "I'm not dying, so calm down."

"Zack ... I don't know ...", she became a little nervous now, "Maybe you could die."

"Rachel ...", though his voice was badly battered, and you could hear that it was about to faded, he sounded serious: "After all we've been through… I guess I'm not going to die because of a cold or flu or whatever it is...""Yes ...", Rachel said and was unsure at first, but then she gained courage and smiled again: "If you say so, it must be true!"

Just as Zack wanted to say something with a grin, he realized that his voice was gone. Annoyed, he rolled his eyes and leaned against the wall, exhausted. Also, because the pain had returned and he had trouble suppressing it.

„Zack? Is your voice missing?" Rachel asked," I can make you another cup of tea."

He just nodded, and she made her way to the kitchen to brew another cup of tea for him.

" Come on, Zack." He spurred himself on and hissed something, because of the pain he felt " Just a little bit more. The fucking pain will go away soon and everything will be fine ... Everything will be fine. ARGH!I don't fucking even believe myself. Nothing will get better!"

After gaining this realization, he writhed a little in pain again and he pulled the hood of the hoodie deeper into his face, because he had got more headache from thinking. With a pained expression on his face, he held his stomach and whimpered quietly to himself, since no one could hear. Rachel was too far away so the whimpering couldn't reach her and there was none other in the apartment. If she had been there, he probably wouldn't even have thought about whimpering.

" Fuucck, is this bad and the pain ... My stomach kills me! Everything hurts ... Okay, I tell Ray that I'm in pain." Zack thought, trying to distract himself from thoughts of nausea. As he took a deep breath, he closed his aching eyelids and tried to relax. Of course, the tiredness had to come over him again and he fell asleep.

Original author comment:.The chapter got a bit long and I tortured Zack a bit too much, I think, but that doesn't matter. Torture is always good in Sickfic ^ - ^ Above all, I tried in the dream sequence to play with Zack's real name. The children have given each other nicknames and so they call Isaac when they speak to him, Zack. However, the caregivers use the right names, which always makes Zack angry.

Well, let's see what happens in the next chapter and let's see how bad he can go ... Oke, I'm sadistic XD Of course we all want Zack to get better, right? D:D

Additional comment: So, it took me a little time to translate more, also because this chapter was really long, but I'm on it! Also, while translating, my computer shut down and I had to do it over again…

But I'm really happy about the nice comments and reviews that I get! It's really a motivation for me! Thanks a lot :D

I hope I hear more from your nice words~

Update: This was posted and delected first, because there was the German script in it... I don't know how it happends, but it was confused so I had to delect all the German parts in it myself and that was hard work... Hopefully there isn't some German left in this chapter... If so, I'm (not) sorry.