#was make the angels at the beginning cold and sterile and unpleasant

[shredsandpatches]

Was just reading about the 2019 Stuttgart Mefistofele (the one with the hazmat suits) while slacking off at work and it's cracking me up because some aspects of it seem to show the same directorial tendencies that I would bring to the piece, only cranked up exponentially. Like, I would only put an orgy into ONE (1) of the chorus scenes. A good reminder to use restraint in my imaginary opera productions.

[themoonandotherslikeit]

Gone - Part One

Castiel Novak’s obsession with dead things started when he was just six years old. His neighbors had this cat that the kids, fondly, called Lumpy. Her real name was something complicated, some four syllable name that was after someone that they’d never heard of, so to them she was just Lumpy. She bumbled around the neighborhood meowing at everything with a blatant disapproval that is unique to cats.

His father was a writer, constantly locked in his study, so Castiel spent most of his time wandering around. During the late autumn months, he sat on his porch crudely carving his Jack-O-Lantern with no supervision. He planned to carve a simple smile on the front of it with wide round eyes and a big open mouth.

He was focusing intensely when the familiar yowl of Lumpy danced through the chilled air. “Come here, Lumpy, you ugly cat,” he called out, not thinking too much about it as his eyes still focused on his blade sawing through the flesh on the pumpkin. He pursed his lips, making a kissing noise, wondering what was taking the fat cat so long. Usually she would be at his calf, rubbing and begging for pumpkin pieces by then.

Castiel looked up, his attention sparked just as the wet angry screech of car breaks broke through the afternoon air. The driver was gone before he could even run into the street. He stuck his hands under Lumpy, peeling her sticky, blood soiled body off of the asphalt. Her head lulled, her lifeless eyes open and accusing.

He knew he had to help her, so he tucked her against his chest, matted wet fur sticking to his cotton t-shirt. He took her to his porch and laid her out. In the mind of a child, he needed to fix the pieces that were broken on her, and then she would wake up. So he took out his carving blade, pulling it from his pumpkin and began carving out the pieces of rock. He shaved away the pieces of skin that were worn away from the tire tread. “It’s okay Lumpy, I’ll save you,” he murmured to her sweetly, like she was merely sleeping.

Castiel plucked at her broken, flattened ribs with slick, trembling fingers. Perhaps if he reconnected all of her pieces she would begin to meow and purr just as he knew her. It was only once his father stepped out onto the porch with his reading glasses perched on his nose, and his pen fell from between his lips and bounced off the leather tie on his house shoe, that Castiel realized that he was gravely mistaken.

“Castiel what have you done?”

“I’m trying to fix her,” he pleaded, staring up at his father as congealing, dead blood rolled down his forearms to his elbows, “I have to fix her.”

His father was rightly horrified and Castiel went to a child therapist for five years. He hadn’t been enthralled with death before his at length discussions with his therapist. He just wanted to help her, but she wasn’t so convinced. She thought that he found a thrill from the blade, from the slicing skin, from the pearl white bone against crimson red blood. He didn’t find thrill in it. At least he didn’t when he’d been trying to help Lumpy, the thrill came much later when his therapist unbuttoned her top and breathed whiskey onto his neck. He bit into her throat drawing blood, requiring six complex stitches, but Castiel never had to see her again.

He was an exceptional student, and he was fascinated by biology. He loved to take apart technology and put it back together, and the idea that it could be done with people was fascinating. He could heal someone, fix them. It didn’t take long for him to decide that he wanted to be a surgeon. He never went on dates, even though he was easily one of the best looking guys at his school. He graduated at the top of his class as the weird loner who wore the same three t-shirts every week. He couldn’t bother to care about fashion, romance, or anything that would distract him from getting into the best pre-med program in the states. It was no surprise to anyone that knew him that he got into both Harvard Med and the best residency program. His bedside manner was poor at best, he was awkward, and he didn’t understand much about social queues, usually missing the beat, but he was a damn good surgeon. Was being the operative word.

The tape whirred inside of Castiel Novak’s recorder. “September 21st, examination of Jacob Stevenson.”

There was something in the air the night that everything changed. It was a full moon, and maybe that’s why the leaves were blowing, crackling against windows like a hard autumn rain. Castiel felt a chill as he walked out of his stale, one bedroom apartment, but he didn’t turn back for another layer to trap in the warmth. He’d rather be cold, sometimes a feeling was better than feeling nothing at all, even if it was unpleasant.

He was used to being cold, it was part of the job. Most medical examiners he met were clad in turtlenecks up to their chins, thick layers, and a pale disposition as if they’d never seen the sun. He blended in with them, just another faceless shape in a crowd. He wasn’t always that way, though. Despite his horrid bedside manner, he was described as bright by those who met him. His skin glowed with the fresh tan of a man who played a lot of golf or read medical textbooks outside on benches.

“Caucasian male, age 71, approximately 1.6 meters tall, weighs 83 kilograms. Note a yellowing at his fingertips likely from years of smoking.” He clicked the tape off and set it back down on his instrument table. He took a swab out of its packaging and carefully ran it across the man’s fingertips. He collected a sample from under his nails, the inside of his cheek, along his bottom lip, bagging each piece he collected for testing.

He knew what he expected to find: years of heart disease, smokers lungs, too many homemade cupcakes from his loving wife. He would see a body aged by a life that was lived. That was the goal, wasn’t it?

“I’m sorry that this happened to you, Mr. Stevenson. Rest well.”

He closed his eyes, clasping his surgical gloved hands and said a silent prayer for his soul, wherever it may be. He wasn’t a believer, not really, not anymore. He just had to say goodbye to the spirit, to disconnect himself from the person that used to be inside of the skin. He had to separate himself so that he could make that first cut.

He undressed Mr. Stevenson, unbuttoning his sleep shirt. His pale, wrinkled flesh spilled and pressed against the cool metal of the autopsy table. He pressed his scalpel into the man's skin, across his chest and down his stomach in a Y shape. There was no blood. That stopped after death, settled and clotted.

He liked cases like Mr. Stevenson. He passed in his sleep. He was old, and his heart gave out. Dying old and peacefully was the goal. There wasn’t a lot of peace to be found in life and all that Castiel could really hope for was peace in death. It was called an eternal rest for a reason, right? He removed the organs one by one, weighing them on the scale. He made notes of any odd coloring, biopsied anything that was abnormal.

People often asked him why he worked with the dead. Well, not often . People didn’t often speak to him at all, but when they found out he was a medical examiner, their curiosity was piqued. They just couldn’t wrap their minds around why a surgeon would ever want to work in a dark, cold basement instead of an operating room, but they didn’t understand. How could they?

Mr. Stevenson’s heart was a little enlarged, but that was no surprise. Heart disease was on his chart. It ran in his family. Castiel wondered if darkness ran in his.

He threaded his surgical needle with suture thread and meticulously began stitching the pieces of flesh back together. He vaguely recalled his grandmother stitching together his torn shirt in much the same way, every stitch with care. “We can make it whole again, Castiel. Don’t you worry, little angel.” Except he wasn’t worried, not about a tear. Why worry about a rip when there were other things out there in the darkness?

He tied off the last suture and ran a gloved finger across the perfect line. It was much easier to stitch on unmoving flesh. Another chill ran down his spine. It was the full moon pressing down on the world like a heavy hand. It was making him feel claustrophobic.

He moved Mr. Stevenson into a black bag, zipping him up, and sliding him away into the wall of drawers to keep him preserved until the funeral home could come and pick him up. Castiel’s job was done. He discarded his gloves and washed his hands, scrubbing his fingernails, between his fingers, and up to his elbows for exactly five minutes, a habit he picked up when he was still operating. Everything had to be meticulously sterile.

He dried his hands, his arms, and reached into his pocket and pulled out a small orange bottle. He gave it a shake to listen to the familiar clatter of tablets against plastic. It gave him peace to know that the pain was a dry-swallow away from dissipating. He popped open the lid, child-locks be damned, and poured two into his hand. They looked small, insignificant against the heft of his palm. He flexed his hand, watching them hop as if eager to slide down his throat.

“Take us inside of you, Castiel,” they seemed to beg. So he did. It was the only intimacy he knew.

There were different types of trauma. While in therapy Castiel learned that they all could be categorized into one of three main types. Acute trauma that results from a single incident, chronic trauma that is repeated and prolonged such as domestic violence or abuse, and complex trauma which is exposure to varied and multiple traumatic events, often of an invasive, interpersonal nature. More so, there was capital T trauma and what she called little t trauma . Capital T was the big stuff, the stuff that wrecks a person in an irreparable way. Little t was less so. It is possible for a traumatized person to get over  little t trauma.

In Castiel’s life, he’d seen his fair share of trauma. Probably more than a thirty-four year old man should’ve. He’d seen trauma happen to others, happen to himself, and he continued to see it on corpse after corpse. He saw trauma that others didn’t. The kind of trauma that couldn’t be seen from the outside. The kind of trauma that a person inflicts upon themselves.

He remembered his first tumor resection from a lung. It was successful, beautiful, that tumor was a piece of art. He went out to deliver the good news to the man's twenty year old daughter. When he told her the news she immediately threw up into the trash can. She kneeled over it, Castiel standing next to her awkwardly, unsure of what to do. He offered her a Kleenex.

She took it and wiped her mouth. She turned her head and looked at him with bloodshot eyes. “I thought he would die. I thought he had to.”

“What do you mean?” Castiel asked, puzzled.

“He knew what the cigarettes were doing. He knew they’d kill him, but he didn’t care. If he throws his life away so easily how does he deserve another chance? Why would someone willingly do that to themselves?”

He thought about that a lot, but mostly he thought about how she didn’t understand. How could she understand? He did, though, looking down at the tumor with its tendrils wrapped around the lobe of his lung. The cancer was made of him. It was a part of him. Sometimes people have to cause pain for a release. People are naturally violent. They’re prone to cutting, kicking, biting, and those that are usually find an outlet. They become a football player, a boxer, a surgeon . Not everyone can, though, so instead of inflicting that violence and pain on others, they inflict it on themselves.

Sometimes pain was the only way to feel anything at all. Sometimes he’d rather be numb.

His phone vibrated angrily on his instrument table with a vrrrrrr vrrrr vrrrrr . He opened his eyes and pulled it into his hand. It felt forgein, like it didn’t belong to him. “Doctor Novak.”

“Novak, we have a body.”

“Great,” he said flatly. “Bring it in.”

“Don't hang up!”

“What is it?”

“There’s been a murder. We need you to come up here. There’s a new detective, and I think it’s the first time he’s seen a stiff. We could use you here.”

“Fine.”

“I’ll text you the address.”

Castiel didn’t have many friends. Maybe any friends at all, but he had Inias. He was a forensic tech. He knew that Castiel didn’t like being in the field, so he tried to take care of everything on his own. When he was matched with a good detective, it wasn’t a problem. Castiel knew, though, that a rookie could disrupt evidence even by accident and leave him in a mess when he completes his autopsy. He was tired thinking about it already.

He removed his lab coat, hung it, and walked to the bathroom to change out of his scrubs. He preferred to not be out in public in them. In fact, he preferred to not be out in public at all if he could help it.

He threw a gray scoop neck sweater over his white undershirt and pulled on his khaki pants. He grabbed his kit, keys, and cell phone and walked out into the frigid day. The air bit into his skin, and he hissed a bit, wishing desperately that he didn’t leave his coat at home. The plastic bottle in his pocket weighed heavier. He ignored it, shifting his weight to the right as he walked creating a sort of limp.

His vehicle groaned angrily, whining about the cold. “Yes, I’m aware,” he commented to the machine impatiently. The engine sputtered to life after a few twists of his wrist with the key in the ignition. His head had begun to pound, and he added it to just another reason why he hated being out in the field.

The scene wasn’t far, only a few blocks. In another life, Castiel would’ve walked and basked with the sun on his face happy to be alive despite the chill in the air. That was another life, though, and in the life he was in, Castiel drove.

Yellow crime scene tape circled the scene, and Castiel hung his tape recorder on his wrist loosely with a strap. He shoved his hands in his pockets as he walked up, the recorder bouncing off his hip as he walked.

“Cas!” Inias called to him, waving like a child. He was all wrist and elbow, moving his entire arm. Even his shoulders bobbed. “Damn, buddy, it’s good to see you in the fresh air.

“Speak for yourself,” he replied sourly. “Is this the deceased?” He gestured with an elbow to a woman sprawled out on the ground.

“Nah, this is my girlfriend,” Inias deadpanned. Castiel stared back at him like he didn’t understand, and Inias pinched the bridge of his nose. “Yeah, ‘s her.”

“Perfect.”

Castiel crouched next to her. “Caucasian female, I’d place the age in her twenties,” he said into his tape recorder. Everytime the tape looped around there was a click. Whir, whir, click. Her dark eyes stared up at him, wide, gaping, accusatory. Her lips were parted slightly as if she was going to say something. Day-old red lipstick stained the fullness of her lips.

He squinted at the pinpricks along her arms accompanied with black and blue skin. She was bruised. The blood had settled beneath translucent skin. “Drug use is apparent,” he commented into the recorder. Click!

“You must be the M.E.”

The voice was rough and it sent an immediate chill down Castiel’s spine. His eyes flicked up to catch a pair of moss green eyes glinting in the sunlight. He was young, likely not even thirty years old. His badge hung around his neck on a chain, swinging slightly as he shifted his weight. A plaid button up was tucked under a brown leather coat.

“Yes.” Castiel said, realizing that the man was staring at him like he was a fucking idiot.

“Awesome.” The corner of his mouth tugged into a smirk that seemed almost smug, and there was a tug deep within Castiel’s belly as a response. Who did this kid think he was? “I’m Detective Winchester.”

“Pleasure.”

The detective blinked a few times before scratching the back of his head.  “I uh...What do you make of her?”

Castiel cleared his throat, happy to turn back to his work. He peeled his eyes off of Winchester and planted them firmly back to the deceased. “The track marks here and here,” he said, gesturing loosely to the pin pricks on the inside of her arm. “Lead me to believe she is an addict.”

“Think it’s an overdose?”

“Hard to tell without a toxicology report,” Castiel began. “But, see this?” He gestured to her mouth. “No vomit. That tells me that it’s unlikely that it was a true overdose. Normally they choke on their own vomit. I’d have to look inside of her throat…” He turned to look back at the detective when his words caught in his throat. He had crouched down at some point while Castiel was talking and was now a breath away from him.

“What about this?” He asked, pointing to the victims throat.

“Bruising,” Castiel explained with a quick nod. “I noticed it as well. It looks like she’s been choked.”

“Could that’ve killed her?”

“I will look into the state of her windpipe, but from here it doesn’t look like there was enough force.”

Winchester nodded a few times, his eyebrows furrowing together in puzzlement. From that close, Castiel could see freckles sprinkled across his nose and cheekbones. It gave him a boyish look, young and wide eyed, but the honey brown hairs poking through the skin on his jaw aged him a bit more. Castiel had to resist the urge to reach out and feel the roughness of new hair breaking through.

He cleared his throat, forcing his eyes away from the detective, and back to the victim. “I will collect some samples and examine her back in the lab.”

The detective put a hand on Castiel’s shoulder, causing him to recoil, his head whipping back to look at the man. His green eyes were fixed, intense. “Will you call me with what you figure out? I’ve got a nasty gut feeling that this is more than it looks like.”

His mouth was dry, and he was sure his jaw was hanging open. The guy was green, a rookie, so what did he know? Castiel’s eyes flickered back to the body and his own gut twisted. He didn’t know how, or why, but he believed the green eyed detective. He believed him down to his bones. “Alright.”

“Thank you,” Winchester breathed, like he was relieved.

“It’s my job,” Castiel said blankly, his fingers tapping his pocket anxiously. He didn’t like it… talking to people, socializing, being watched. He could feel the weight of the man's gaze and it felt suffocating. He turned to Inias. “Bring the body to me, I… I will meet you there.”

He turned on his heels and shuffled away rapidly, trying to catch his breath as the sky seemed to come down on him with a crushing weight. He pulled on his collar, trying to get it away from his neck, because it felt like a tight hold, like fingers pressing on his windpipe. The pain was still there, it was always there. It was a phantom limb, gone but still aching.

He hadn’t waited for Inias to respond, or to pass over what he had collected. His recorder was still whirring in his hand, recording every passing second. He clicked it off as soon as his ass fell into the driver's seat of his vehicle. He gripped the wheel with both hands and clamped his eyes shut. He tried to steady his breathing, like he’d learned in therapy, but thinking about therapy made him even more anxious. Why did Inias call him? He could’ve handled it on his own!

He dug deep into his pocket, pulling out the familiar plastic bottle. He cracked open the top, dumping the tiny tablets onto his palm. He wasted no time before swallowing them, his lips to his palm. It hurt rolling down his dry throat, but he avoided the urge to gag. He needed it. He closed his eyes again, pressing the back of his head to the headrest, and he fell into the darkness.

+++

He was whistling, whistling. He wasn’t sure he’d ever whistled in his life, but yet there he was. It was probably inappropriate, to have some feigned happiness around a woman who had overdosed. Well, he couldn’t say for certain that it was an overdose, not until his lab got back.

Like he suspected, she didn’t die of strangulation, but there was a struggle. She was attacked and fought her attacker. He got samples of skin under her fingernails. Skin and blood. They still didn’t have any identification for her, but the police were supposed to be running her finger prints and dental records. It was looking more and more like a murder. It was a puzzle, and Castiel loved puzzles. They were complicated, but yet they all fit together in the end in a pretty picture. Not much in life ended up that way, so Castiel craved the moments when it did. He hoped she would make a perfect picture. The dead deserved justice, sometimes it was all that they got from a world that only dished out pain.

He thought back to the rookie detective as he sewed up the Y cut across her chest and down her stomach. He was handsome, young, and serious. Castiel didn’t allow himself to look, let alone date, but he couldn’t seem to pluck the man from his mind. He was a planted seed, and the ideas were already blooming and growing out of control.

He wasn’t sure exactly when he stopped whistling, but the new silence around the morgue was deafening. It was broken only by one stray drip drip drip. Did he leave the faucet on? He turned quickly to check, the world tilting on its axis a bit as he stumbled to the sink.

Sure enough, a droplet was pooling and falling rapidly from the faucet into the sink with an earth shattering splash. He let out a sigh of relief, as he placed his hand under the faucet, almost as if to check the temperature, to be sure that it was really there. Wetness pooled at his fingers as another drop fell from the faucet onto his skin, and he pulled back his hand to examine his fingers.

They were red.

Blood soaked his fingertips, a single droplet at first, but it continued to spread. Had he cut himself? He wiped away the blood on his scrub top, but it just kept coming, spurting and oozing out. He blindly reached for a towel and wrapped it around his fingers to stop the bleeding. He pressed it against the wound, his head spinning already from the blood loss.

The light blue surgical towel was already turning wet and crimson from the blood soaking through, pooling, growing, and a horrible feeling came to his stomach. He was going to die.

He didn’t want to die, but more than that he didn’t want to be a body on someone’s table. He didn’t want to be exposed, cut open, and emptied out like a bag of groceries. He didn’t want his blood to settle and congeal. He didn’t want a tag on his toe, his greying skin zipped within a black bag. He couldn’t be reduced to just parts.

His heart was racing, and he knew that it was a mistake. He was a doctor for god sakes, and he knew that rapid heartbeat would make him bleed out faster, but he couldn’t stop the panic that was spiraling within him.

The pain pulsed through him, his fingers throbbing with the beat of his heart. “Fuck,” he hissed under his breath as he quickly unwrapped his fingers. He needed to find the source of the bleed and stitch it up or he would surely bleed out and die alone next to a murder victim. He unwrapped the towel and placed his hand immediately under the faucet to run water over it. He turned on the flow and clear water ran over his skin. There was no blood to be found.

He pulled his hand away, examining it in its entirety. Then his opposite hand. There was no cut. There was no blood at all. He picked up the surgical towel to find it completely dry. There was never any blood. He stared at it, his fingers curling around the fabric.

He was losing his fucking mind.

Castiel let out a heavy sigh and turned off the faucet, wiping a bead of sweat off his brow with the surgical towel. He probably needed a day off — maybe a week. He turned back to finish his examination of the murder victim. He still had a mountain of paperwork to do and samples to process. His eyes settled on the metal examination table. The silver top gleamed in the buzzing fluorescent lights. He touched his temple and closed his eyes. In, out, in out. Keep it together, Castiel. But when he opened his eyes the picture in front of him was still the same.

The table was completely empty and cleared off.

The body was gone.

+++

Part Two

Masterlist 

[angeleyesgilly]

↬ Mort Part 2.

● Setting: Henderson Asylum, 2014. ● ❝I was pure as a river, but now I think I'm possessed.❞ ● Trigger Warnings: Gory depictions, direct references to rape, direct mentions of murder, death.

Gillian didn’t want to go. She didn’t want to leave Lola, for the starters. They said that was what the guards were for. That they’d linger outside of Lola’s door and protect her against threats. But Gillian knew they were only human. Those guards were not a complete barrier. They were next to helpless against the countless supernaturals. She didn’t trust the doctor either, she didn’t trust that he’d make sure those guards were ready to lay down their lives like she would for Lola at any moment.

She didn’t trust that they wouldn’t just sweep her sister away, or that she wasn’t leading herself to sudden doom. But most of all she barely found the strength to stand, every single step was like dragging herself across shards of broken glass. It was consistent with how she’d felt when the force of her life was pouring from her body. Dizzying, exhausting, like she may drop in those very moments.

She wanted to collapse into bed. She wanted to stay there, weighed down by her turmoil and pained. But she couldn’t. She’d made the deal. She’d made the deal to help. And that deal seemed to mean being called upon. A part of her wasn’t sure she could handle it, feeling another blade bite into her skin, feel herself being poked and prodded at with the memories of the autopsy report being so fresh. She could ask for them to knock her out. But that would be worse. She’d only wake up again wondering what had been missing, what they’d taken from her.

But Lola was what mattered. She had to keep going for Lola. No matter what. She’d keep going. Even if it meant really dragging herself over broken glass. Lola was more important than anything, even her own pain. Gillian had walked down along the hallway, trying to hide the fact she felt so hollow, trying to hide how truly broken she had been left. She didn’t want to show weakness around this doctor. He was particularly sadistic. And while she wondered what made him that way, she was not completely numb to the knowledge of his sadistic nature, his enjoyment of the pain he’d caused her. A part of her felt bad that someone had come to be like that. But in her depths, even in her Gillian-type nature, she did not like him.

Near the end she was blindfolded. She didn’t like the blindness. Not with the trauma still weighing heavily on her shoulders. She did not like the way she felt helpless, completely susceptible for more pain. She tried to hide the fact tears sprung to her swollen and tired eyes as she walked, led around by the hands of the doctor. Her skin crawled at his touch. The nausea stirring again. She wanted to flinch away, but she knew it’d do no good. Once more she was bound by the hopelessness, as well as her dedication to appear compliant enough to keep Lola. Even if it meant experiencing more pain.

And finally, her walk had ended. Or at least the blindfolded portion. She could tell by the scent of it that she knew this place. It was the same dank smell of rot and mold. Decay. The basement. A new flood of memories accompanied the fresh wounds in her mind of the assault, of her death. Her torture. Her day spent in this basement being tortured and pried and picked apart, only ever experiencing blessed relief in her unconscious state. A relief from the pain. Knowing she was being cut open had served her no better than not knowing. Both scared her. Both traumatized her in a different way.

She didn’t need her sight to know this place. She hadn’t realized she’d broken from reality briefly, spiraling in the memories of the dirty basement until she heard the familiar voice of the man who’d tortured her. It made her skin crawl. Like there were small bugs traveling over her. Every hair decorating her body stood on end. And as usual, she felt tense.

“Little angel,” the voice alone had part of her spiraling back into the memories. The cut of his blade as he would sing the nickname in the singsong tone. Pain spiking through where he’d cut open. His absent humming, as if he was doing something menial like writing a grocery list. “We called you because we have a task for you,” she was so simmered out on her emotions, she felt something she rarely ever felt, annoyed. As if his words hadn’t indicated the obvious. Instantly she felt guilt at thought. Even with this horrid man, she felt guilty for even thinking something rather rude. And then she felt shame for being such a pushover, quickly believing it was this thinking that had led her to both attacks in the first place. Then more guilt and shame because she’d felt the shame to begin with. It was a rollercoaster, one reaction spiraling another. And her mind pulled her off in different directions.

“What is it?” She eventually answered, her voice strained, tired, weak even. As much as she wanted to seem strong and unbroken. She couldn’t. Not in those moments. She couldn’t muster the strength in her voice.

“You’ll see,” and once more, that unwelcome annoyance came. She grit her teeth. The vague nature of these tasks grated on her. It grated on the thinly worn nerves she already had. It was so ugly, this anger, this annoyance. She hated the emotion so much. It pained her just as much as the mental trauma did. Worse because she knew she was letting it contort her into this. Guilt once more.

But she followed after him when he started walking. It was clear he would not wait. The path was very similar. It stood out. She had walked this one only a few days ago. She recognized some of the defining features as she walked. A crack that was shaped into an odd formation in the wall. A scant, stained piece of paint that remained relatively derelict, the rest having fallen off that was shaped idly like one of the countries she’d seen on a map. She couldn’t remember what it was right now. Then there was the scent difference in the air as well. The way something more sterile could be caught in the air as they entered the new environment.

This was the path she had walked to reach Lola. And soon the environment had changed entirely. The dank and dirty basement was gone, and it looked like a clean medical facility. The assault of bright lights and blaring, obnoxious white color in the room hurt her eyes that were both sore from crying and had adjusted to the dark. She didn’t throw up a hand to her eyes. The pain helped her focus, bringing a sharp clarity to the fog that had settled in her mind from the tiredness. It did take a moment to adjust enough to see properly. The room was fairly basic, as she remembered it. Only this time there were three lab coat wearing people perched at a table in front of the window. With their heads bowed, she could tell they were writing something by the odd almost scratching noise of a ball point pen on paper. She recognized it from school. It was the first memory that hit her that night that wasn’t so totally unpleasant. Exams that had once stressed her out seemed so simple to her now.

Two brunettes and a blonde. One woman, two men. The woman was slight, short from what Gillian could see. One of the men was rather small too, slight in size to the point where she was immediately sparked with concern if he was being fed enough. She hadn’t worried too much about the way the other doctors were treated before. She always had other thoughts on her mind. The other man seemed like he should have been a line-backer on a football team. She immediately wanted to shrink away, identifying him as a bigger threat in a pure, instinctual way. But she fought that urge. “We have a new subject that we’re watching particularly closely, someone we picked up a few days ago. We’ve tested him,” there was a rather twisted grin following that, one that showed that the man seemed to enjoy what he had done. One that also indicated exactly what “tested” meant. She felt some sympathy for whoever the subject was, once more being reminded of her own painful torture. “But there’s a few questions we simply can’t get out of him. We thought maybe he might…be more forthcoming with a fellow supernatural,” there was the same sly tone in his voice that made her think there was more than he was telling her. But she was truly too tired to think about it. She couldn’t focus on it. She just wanted to do what they wanted of her and get back to her room. “Okay, what do you want me to ask?” She asked him carefully. She feared the questions would be grueling or cruel. Gillian did not want to be cruel. She’d lost so many battles this night, had been so tired she had been reduced to annoyance and anger, she did not want to have to be cruel to some creature whose only crime had been being a supernatural.

“How he’s been receiving his blood, what he did in the human world to blend in, how he coped with his supernatural nature,” he trailed on and on, listing off questions she truly didn’t believed mattered to what they planned to do with whoever it was. But she quickly determined that the creature was a vampire. There was an odd itching in the back of her mind. Something telling her there was something strange about this. But the itching, that small possibility she knew something she couldn’t drag out was so tiny, she couldn’t be bothered to drag it up.

Once more, the familiar man gripped her arm. He put a wide girth between her and the window. She didn’t get much of a chance to see anything through it. Once more, it was strange, and a part of her felt paranoid, that maybe she was being led into a trap. The door was opened, and her footsteps were more hesitant and careful, resisting the fast pace the man was trying to establish as he pulled her.

She noticed more about the room this time. It didn’t have the same set up as it had when Lola was here. The room that had looked clinical and cold before had a more sinister nature to it. The lights were harsh and blinding, and she could smell the metallic scent in the air that told her blood had been spilled in this room. And then she saw the tools that lay idle on the table. Surgical tools were there, no doubt about it. But there was much more than that. There were tools that had no place in a medical facility. Tools that she remembered being used on her in times of the man’s “fun.” She recoiled almost at the sight of the torture devices alone.

Then she saw it. She saw what had been waiting for. The subject. The man she was supposed to speak to. She saw who lid on the table, strapped down with straps that were clearly slicked with moisture. Moisture that seemed to be causing what looked like smoke rising from the contact. Binds soaked in some sort of poison. That was not her focus. The faint sizzling sound held little in the way her ears began to ring once more when she saw the familiarity in the face. She saw the familiar structure, the brown hair crowning his head, tousled and messy. The fully oval shaped face. The harsh, thick bushy brows that were a few shades darker from the hair. She remembered what that face had looked like, contorted in sickening pleasure as moisture beaded the skin that she remembered to be clammy and disgustingly warm. She remembered the thicker, sturdy build that much reminded her of the doctor she’d seen in the adjoining room. The build that had allowed him to hold her down and put her completely at his mercy as he ripped away her innocence. The world spun, her body began to shake violently, the perfect combination that sent her crashing to the floor. The ringing in her ear’s made the hollow scream of terror sound far away as the world went black around her, the last thing she’d been able to coherently see was the face of her rapist. -- Gillian came to with her body still violently shaking. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think couldn’t speak. She was lost. Lost in a place she was scared she couldn’t come back from. It was all so raw here. Every emotion was so illicit, full and intense that she felt nothing but that. And it felt like it was ripping through her mind painfully. Like a headache, only as if someone was shredding her brain from the inside out as she was forced to endure it. She wasn’t aware of anything. The passage of time meant less now. She wasn’t even sure what time was now. She wasn’t sure of anything. Just the pain. The pain. It was acute. It was so sharp and intense she felt nothing but it. The divides of physical and emotional had broken down. It was just her. Just her and that pain, nothing else. Nothing to bring her back.

Wave and wave of pain hit her, and the more it hit the more she succumbed to her seizing state. Lost in the world of it. She wasn’t sure how long it took her to come back. She didn’t know. Slowly but surely those waves of agony slid back away, slinking into the recesses of her mind as she started to gain some control back. Gillian wasn’t entirely sure what dragged her back from the netherworld of torture either. But as she started to feel and become aware again, she felt pain stinging her face. Sharp pain. It wasn’t quite the same as what had been happening in her head. Much duller compared to it. It had a quick zinging nature to it. It wasn’t so deep, but the nature of it was enough to bring her some control. She ended up rather fervently clawing at her stomach. It was different from her usual prodding at the scar. This was desperation to feel her clawed nail-tipped fingers hit something solid. That scar to anchor her somehow. There was more pain with that, and she was certain she’d ripped her dress more. The pain held, and the realization that the scar was there, asking as its usual anchor helped too. Finally the shaking stopped. She opened her eyes, not even aware that they’d been closed. She hadn’t been aware of anything but the agony in the place she’d been in, in the recesses of her mind. And what she saw with the blinding light was the face of the man she disliked so much. And he was grinning. That sadistic, twisted grin that showed he relished in the pain that had been brought to her by seeing this man. It glared down at her, accompanied by the glint of amusement in his eyes. The ugly, ugly anger flushed through her unlike it ever had before. Pouring into her limbs, igniting her with a fiery hatred she’d never felt anything of the kind before. It pushed through the bounds of her tired body and mind, it lit her up. And she was so lost in it she couldn’t even despise the emotion. She couldn’t bring herself to meet the violet and chaotic motion with her usual disdain for it. But she knew turning it on the doctor would be unwise, even in her blind anger. She was on her feet in a minute. Her body vibrating, the shaking lower this time, quivering through her. The adrenaline sparked by her anger, or the purity of the emotion racing through her. She didn’t resist as she walked towards the table, stalking was more like it. Quick, long bounds of her legs, wasting no time in reaching the table to stare down at the man on it. He looked scared. It was different, and for a minute, she felt a sick twist of pleasure. How he’d frightened her by throwing her into a world that had been familiar to him, and now he lay at her mercy, frightened of the girl who should have been dead. Even in her state though, she felt immediate guilt. Immediate guilt for that brief thought. She wasn’t like this. She fought the anger. “You’re dead.” The statement might have sent her into the dissociative nature once more, torn between if she was alive or dead. But she couldn’t battle past the rage enough to spiral in confusion again. She was too angry. Her entire body shook with it. “I was dead,” she said simply, the stiff tone in her voice surprising even her. “You killed me.” They hurt to say. But she was not greeted by flashbacks this time. The anger blocked those out too. No intense flashbacks, just memories that fueled the anger. “You drove a knife into my stomach, twisted it,” her hand came to rest on the table, gripping it rather tightly. Her hand was shaking too. That terror didn’t leave the man’s eyes. But there was no pleasure with it this time. That brief jolt had woken her up enough for that. But slowly, something washed over his face. She could tell it was forced. Tell the bravado pushed onto his expression was put there by desperation alone. A smirk came onto his face. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe he was enjoying it too. “Well I really fucked you up didn’t I?” His voice reminded her of a less contained version of the doctor who took such joy in torturing her. Sadistic and twisted. But this was rawer, not so watered down or disguised like the doctor’s was. Gillian snapped. Something inside of her snapped. Different from the pain. “Superficial wound on the neck. Bruising on the knees with an abrasion to the right knee. Bruising on the legs conclusive with that of fingerprints. Pulled muscle in the left leg. Entry wound in the abdomen indicating the blade had been twisted with puncturing to the liver,” she stated it off, listing off things she’d read in the report, each one delivered with a cold, harsh nature she’d never thought she was capable of. It was like nothing she’d heard before, not from herself, and it shook her to the core. But she couldn’t stop. “Minor abrasion to the labia minora,” she was shaking harder now, and the emotion was slipping through in that cold tone, the shakiness evident in her voice. “Deep tearing to the posterior fourchette,” she was shuddering now, and thrown back into reliving it. She could feel him inside of her again, feel the pain lancing through her body. She hadn’t been able to scream. Her mind was at a war with itself. She felt like she might implode. “Torn hymenal tissue,” she became aware of hot tears spilling down her face again. She wasn’t fully there. Once again she was back in the mindset of what had happened. Anger was gone. Most of it was, replaced by despair and pain.

She wasn’t really looking at him. She couldn’t. She saw him in her mind anyway, over her body, ripping into her and enjoying every minute of her pain. “That’s right little angel, show him what he did to you. Make him feel it,” she heard the voice, and it reminded her of a serpent almost, in the way it seemed so sly, so cold. The doctor, he was taunting her, goading her on, encouraging her to give in to the darkness. “He killed you, and he almost killed your little sister. Make him feel your pain.”

She looked up at the doctor, shock forming in her eyes. It all came together now. She was not here to ask questions and make inquiries about this man’s feeding patterns. She was here for another game. This was a torture, just like any other, a test to taunt her into a darker path. He was pushing her to see if she would break, give in. He wanted her to torture the man like she’d been tortured, to unleash hell on him. “Come on little angel, if you don’t do it, I will,” his voice was a threat, showing that either way this man would meet the same fate. She slowly looked down at the man who’d killed her, her murderer. Her eyes were wide, vulnerability and shock painted in them. It was hard to believe almost. She couldn’t believe what was happening in those moments. But the most shocking part was that small, angry part of her born of trauma and pain wanted to give in. It wanted to hurt him, to make him feel her pain in its entirety, to take everything from him like he’d taken to her. And it terrified her. That tiny part of her scared her so deeply, but she could not quiet it, she could not push it down, or hide it away. It was there, raging and trying to build in her mind, to take up base. Whatever was in her face must have flashed in her eyes because the man’s demeanor changed again. “I would have done it to your little sister to you know. I would have drained her just enough so that she was dizzy, tired, near the very edge of her death. I was going to do to her exactly what I did to you. I was going to tear into her and make her last moment’s Hell, watch the light fade from her eyes and feel the power of every second of it. I would have done it.” The anger gained more ground.

It was winning. One of her shaking hands that had gripped the table he was strapped on began to reach for the different table, the one laid out with different hellish looking devices. Different blades and wooden knives. She’d never seen anything like it. Never seen these things before. But the more he spoke. The more her raved and ranted it made her anger flare again. She wasn’t sure what she was reaching for. Something, anything to start the path of pain and vengeance. It was a little wooden knife. Small in size. But she didn’t want something big. She wanted something to hurt, but tear away slowly, like her mind had been doing since he’d hurt her in the beginning. “That’s it little angel, that’s it,” the voice encouraged her. “Do it!” The man was roaring this time, her attacker screaming at her, as if he was begging for the pain. “Rip into me like I ripped into you, tear me apart!” Her hand shook, and she was ready to. Ready to succumb. She wasn’t sure where she would target. Anywhere. Anywhere was fine with her. She just needed to satiate the need to avenge herself, to defend herself in the way she should have in the first place. Defend her little sister the way she should have in the beginning. Then she saw something in his eyes, aside from the raving madness he clearly held. Fear. He was terrified. Her shaking hand unclenched, the little knife dropped from her hand almost immediately. Her actions were so quick, she started to bend like she was moving to pick it up, one hand extended as if she was reaching for the knife. She wasn’t looking at it though. Her other hand moved to the table so quickly, grabbing for the too perfect weapon she’d seen before. It was thick, pointed at one end with a flatter base at the other. As her hand wrapped around it, she could feel that it was smooth, sanded down.

This man would face torture. Hours of it. He would suffer, and eventually die. There had been seemingly no way around it. One way was cowardice, ducking away and letting it happen. Being exactly who she’d been before. The other way was dark, and angry, born of a place that craved vengeance above all. A contrast to who she was, who she wanted to be.

Her technique was rather shaky with her trembling hands. She had no idea what she was doing. And to solidify her hands she wrapped that second previously extended hand around the base, bringing it down in one precise swing to where she wanted it. The move was quick, direct and the pointed tip of the weapon hit its mark, sinking into the flesh with a rather sickening wet sound. She didn’t break composure, and she didn’t let it stray. Her mark was clear. There would be no added pain, no pure suffering. Just a quick sudden end.

“But I’m not you,” she said to the shocked face of the man beneath her, the man who she had just driven a stake through the heart of. There had been one other way. One way to save the man that pain, to protect him from the torture that maybe he did deserve, but Gillian was not willing to break the core of who she was to give. A quick death. Death. She’d never seen it as merciful before. But she knew there would be no more pain. Even though her actions had been nobler of intent, she still shook, it still hurt her to kill someone. But she forced herself to meet his eyes as the odd tone took over his skin, a greyness of sorts traveling over his corpse, encasing it. Not in a vicious way, the opposite maybe. An apology that life had brought them both to this end. And forgiveness, not to the man he was, but the man he’d been before he’d become a pure monster.

Slowly, her hands loosened up, and she brushed her hands over his eyes, closing them. She met the doctor with one steely glance. She was shaken, but this time she was not bowing down. Not after that. Not after this. Carefully she walked towards the door, ready to make her exit. Ready to leave. The doctor started to step in front of the door. “Don’t,” she said it carefully, her voice strong but tired more than anything. She truly was exhausted now. But whatever was in it, whatever had been witnessed by him clearly had made an impression, because he actually ceased in his movements to block the door. And she walked out. Warm tears spilled over her cheeks once more, but she could hold onto the fact she’d held onto herself.