Today I told my story. I feel numb like the static of a radio humming. It's becoming deafening. I close my eyes and all I see is a white landscape, devoid of anything. She is coming. She is coming. Will she take over forever after this? I almost want her to. Snuff out my consciousness. I never belonged in the world anyways.

 

((RP Flasback))

Tabitha

*The woman settled down slightly when Angelo explained he was merely interacting in a playful way than trying to upset her. She didn't apologize; her pride too rankled to bring herself to that sentiment. Still, her shoulders and upper body slouched to emphasize just how worn she truly felt. "No," she replied without any pause when he asked if she had second thoughts on having him over as a guest. Tabitha instantly seized up when he reached towards his belt with eyes gaping in horror. It wasn't the first time when someone she developed a bond of trust with took advantage of a vulnerable state. Appearing alarmed with pallor draining until he tossed the still-sheathed blade as it plopped in her lap. Her hands moved to hold it with fingers caressing over the leather shell absently, as if memorizing the detail of its hide brought immense comfort. Silence dawned between them at his words. "Remember when you asked what happened to make me such a monster?" she blurted out.*

Angelo

Angelo was pleased to hear that answer and be made aware she wouldn't be kicking him out due to his harshness. Whether it had been a conscious choice to try and rile up her nerves more he didn't know, he treated the majority of his interactions with the same lack of grace, certainly he'd be far worse had he truly intended to strike her deep while she was going through some inner difficulty. He stood still for a moment tracing the movements of her hands on the sheath of the large hunting knife. If Tabitha removed it from its casing she would find it polished and sharpened with care, a silver notched blade scrubbed clean of the last blood it had tasted. Not looking to test her hospitality by making any sudden moves he would slowly let a knee down against the corner of the couch, sort of leaning there while he looked in his denim coat pockets for a cigarette. One would do them both well he thought. Shooting a look at her face that told her he did remember, a slight nod coming with it. "Yep." He said dryly. "Why?" Leaving room for her to say what she was thinking of telling him at her own pace.

Tabitha

*She didn't remove it from the casing immediately and contented herself with tracing the outline. Perhaps she feared that seeing its silvery death emerged would incite her to kill Voltiel. Ever warring in opposition with her feelings for the woman, the redhead still couldn't settle on her choice. So, instead, she ventured to expose herself through the narrative of her tragedies to Angelo. She had no doubt he wanted to hear her story considering his eagerness in which he asked before. So here was his golden opportunity to know Tabitha's deepest layers that constructed her animalistic nature. Him reaching for a cigarette prompted her to find her own as she lit it up and chugged a big inhale before continuing. "Once upon a time," she began her story with a bit of ludicrous and cliche opening. "A young woman moved into Hathian. She was fresh in town, looking for a new start and way to find her own self and living. She succeeded quickly in creating a good life for herself. She was a trickster and made her money with petty crimes that still funded her modest needs. She found a best friend that she was fascinated by her mysterious and austere nature, but with the undercurrent of violence that she felt herself at times. That best friend was dating the most alluring girl the redhead ever met. They grew distant from each other, so the redhead made her move to ask out this blonde. She had fair skin, defined features, blue eyes, freckles, and the best part - she had a glasgow scar. She loved her flaws both physical and emotional. Everything was wonderful. And then, she came home to the house she shared with this blonde named Meschiya to open her mailbox. A curious note lay inside that she pulled out and began to read. At first it felt like a prank. It wrote ghastly details of horrific torture being inflicted on her lover Meschiya. And she realized then it was handwritten by her. She said how Voltiel and a gang leader by the name of Kakihara planned to kill her after she was done writing her note. Her eyes had been carved out, and she had been forced to drink gasoline. She said she loved the redhead dearly and hoped that she would move on and find happiness after this."*

Angelo

At first grasping the cigarette between his fingers, it slipped and his hands were tangled in a frantic shuffle to catch it before it hit the ground. He'd drank so much that everything from his hands to the end of his nose felt so numb that he could likely get pricked with a pin and not feel it instantly. Achieving his task at last he heaved himself down to take a seat beside Tabitha while he lit up. Trying to remain upright on his feet any longer would not end well. His attention fully turned toward her when she began her story. Sitting quietly and so still she might have thought he dozed off, but the look on his face showed he was wide awake to soak in every detail into the cavernous twists of his brain. The expression he bore was near unreadable, blue eyes shining like bits of sea glass. By the time she reached the end of her story his cigarette had been worn down a fourth and he withdrew it from his lips and spit the foul taste out in a glob of saliva. The events described sounded horrific to put it light, and though he didn't know any of the persons involved it hollowed out a pit of doom in his gut that led him to finally speaking up. "Shit, man. That's fucked up." He started with the obvious, base reaction he had to picturing it. "-But why, what were the point? They done that just to get back at ya for something?" Not sure what he was missing, an act so violent couldn't come out of nowhere. Well that wasn't all true. Not everything had to have a reason, but he found himself wanting to know more and be able to assign some sense to the described killing.

Tabitha

*She was too submerged in the story to notice Angelo almost losing his smoke to the panels below. It was fortunate, for although the likeliness it would stoke a fire in her house, the trigger would permanently destroy her desire to telling her past. Tabitha didn't really notice Angelo's expression or perhaps didn't even seem to care whether or not he did pay attention. The soliloquy adopted a life of its own now that it began. His commentary interrupted the enchantment long enough for the redhead to peer at him soullessly. "I'm not done," she spoke - though her words lacked any scolding but rather just a notification that there was far, far more. "I was so heart sick at the loss. The ultimate betrayal. So I hunted down Voltiel. I tied her up and told her how worthless and pathetic she was. Told her all her self harm cuts proved she knew she was just a waste of life and that I was going to show her how to end it proper. I got an industrial garbage bag filled with big rocks and dragged that and her down to the ocean. I shoved her the bag and knotted it up before walking out into the tides with her in her garbage casket. And finally tossed her in the ocean to drown." Her eyes bladed like a steel rapier, glinting and angry. "I wasn't done. I found her beloved friend that she considered a sister and kidnapped her. I kept her in a cage filled with barbed wire so she could sleep or feel any sense of reprieve at all times. I shot her up with meth and raped her until she came. I fed her just a little dog food but starved her more and more every day. I drilled a collar onto her neck with screws that ripped into the skin. I was going to kill her slowly and agonizingly, an even more painful end than my beloved Meschiya." She licked her lips in memory of these thoughts, feeling revived by its grotesqueness. "You want to know what happened next?"*

Angelo

Really there was nothing he could say that he thought of being appreciated. He'd seen plenty of brutality, but not against ones he loved. No he and his own had always been the offenders in that regard, those who died had relatively merciful ends when compared to this hair raising retelling. He could think of one to this day that had him in a rage when he dwelled on it for any length of time, objectively the victim had hardly suffered in spite of the reasons surrounding it. When Tabitha informed him the story had not yet been finished, she went on to give the rest without touching on his questions. The gaps in his understanding of it widened and as she told more and more he didn't notice his cigarette burning so short that a bit of still red hot ash landed on his lip and left a mark, another among the many sores that gathered there. The details were making him feel a bit like he might be sick. That could be an after effect of the drinks, he wasn't sure. This was getting brutal, deranged, and fast. He hadn't entirely made up his mind if these people she described torturing had been deserving of it yet, he hadn't been there after all. Although he didn't take great issue in a fitting end to some scum that had it coming, the acts of psychological and especially sexual torture unsettled something within him. He didn't say anything to let this be known for now. What would be the point, he didn't expect her to listen to any of his personal code of conduct and the past couldn't be altered either way. He waited until she prompted him with an opportunity to hear the rest. Did he really want to, he couldn't deny the morbid curiosity to observing with the point of view as a spectator. "What, you kill her then?" He asked and took his gaze off her to brush the remains of the cigarette off his clothes and scratch at his face in silence. Falling back on what he'd said to her ages ago, she really was a piece of work.

Tabitha

*Tabitha derived no pleasure in this gruesome story weaving, even when she visited the details of her revenge. Nothing calmed the raging tsunami of her heart nor offered solace in the black horizon that reigned everlasting night. She waited for his answer because the rest of her monologue rested contingent upon it. Should he express discomfort in learning the rest, she would bury it back in the schism it belonged. Never to be forgotten but always boxed tight in its hearse. She warned him no wanted to know this story, and there was a reason she never retold it. His question stirred her as she emerged from the mist to lay a harrowing eye upon Angelo. "I was not given such a satisfaction. The woman is a cockroach who could survive the end of the world." Perhaps she could kill her, after all. The redhead shifted as her posture drew tight into a looming boulder towards him once he sat down with his cigarette. Her own was entirely forgotten as it smoldered until the cherry scalded her fingertips. She didn't even notice the burns charring them. The ice of adrenaline pumped through her veins now. "She and Kakihara, the gang leader of the Sumfai arrived at my doorstep and forced entrance into my home. Once they infiltrated it with their filth, they set it ablaze. They came into the room where I was prepared to deliver Celine to her permanent grave. I was gunned down as Voltiel retrieved Celine's wasted form. They took me into their captivity but not before they made me watch all the memories I made with Meschiya devoured by flames. I don't even have a picture of her." She paused again wondering if she herself should end the tape there. "They took me to Kakihara's lair of nightmares. My first night I was strapped down and he summoned a pack of his dogs, Doberman Pinschers and each one was coaxed upon me. I was raped by animals as he made Voltiel watch. He even put up a video camera and taped the event. I could tell she didn't want to see it, but he wouldn't let her turn away." She was shocked that she divulged that to him, the greatest shame she carried with her even to this day. Her eyes roved somewhere else unable to face him after that. "He kept me locked in a small basement room with nothing but an old television set. He altered it so I couldn't turn it off. And there he replayed that scene for me to watch without seeing but the sounds of my screams continued to pierce me. I was given no light in there. I spent a year in that basement only allowed out of its bowels to be introduced to some creative methods of torture. I don't remember them all. I bled a lot, I was raped at times when he felt I was too insurrectious. Every night I had a show to watch of what I endured when I was put back in my room. I don't know why it never occurred to me to break the screen. I would watch it as if being audience to some horror movie. That couldn't be me, but whoever the redhead was deserved it. I deserved it. How else would anyone be subjected to inhumanity like that unless they really did earn it by existing in this world. I never tried to escape that room. I had nothing to return to, it was all ash anyways." And there she shared that belief so engraved in her soul. "Finally arrived a day where Kakihara believed me worthy to be set back out in the world. He initiated me into his gang, and I was sisters with Voltiel. I grew to loathe, admire, and somehow still beat a faint shadow of love despite everything she inflicted upon me. Perhaps because I was desperate to love someone. I knew she wouldn't love me in return but still the same I loved her underneath the hate. I was unleashed upon the city as a fully bred monster. He and Vol would still torture me from time to time as if to remind me of what I was. An animal. She raped me in the ass with a hammer and cut off part of my toe. Most people don't realize I have a partial prosthetic there. I don't even remember what incited her to do it." Her eyebrows crinkled as if that detail suddenly mattered.*

*She shook it off and persisted in finishing what she started. "Kakihara was a brute, and nothing filled me with more passion than to rid him from the world. I coordinated with police who were all too familiar with his brutality. He was killed by them and Vol disappeared for a time. A grand desecration of the gang known as Sumfai. I left the city ravaged by what I suffered. I sought out my brother to take me anywhere else. My brother now seemed a tame, gentle beast in comparison to them. We settled in Las Almas, and we fell into the groove of gang life, the activity that brought us close when I was young. We began a drug empire. I was good at finding the connections for a good price, and he would find the dealers to sell it. I managed to save a small fortune because before that I was homeless and destitute after Kakihara's death. But after five years I finally had enough of being under my brother's dominion. I knew it would never end unless I toppled it. I stabbed him in an alleyway after a drug deal went sideways. Stabbed him so many times he was unrecognizable. I took his mutilated corpse and burned it. I dumped the ash into the ocean. I still don't know why I honored his death. After he was gone, I was lost and yearned for connection to something, someone, anything. I returned to Hathian practically crawling back to Voltiel. She made me her sister, and I took on the name Adachi. It was a short stint of me bringing victims to prove my love for her. She went insane and brought Celine, her husband that she had married while I was gone, and I into a room. She killed her husband and Celine. I don't know how I managed to escape her. I disappeared again. I don't remember where I went. Everything was just a white haze. When I came back, she was in prison for life. I began to try building a life, but I didn't know how to integrate in a society that had grown soft and demanded empathy and compassion - concepts foreign to me. I tried to perform good deeds to see if I could revive that lost girl and give her a chance for happiness. Indeed, I was punished for them. It was coincidental how I often was tortured or beaten by different gangs and police officers for trying to be a good citizen. Finally, I abandoned it all. The idea I could be human." She stared hard at him. "The thing is Voltiel was crazy, but I am insane. For I acquired a taste and love to inflict suffering and death. She was just broken and would lash out in violence towards anyone close to her. I finessed my violence and made it my lover. I embraced Deseret for she kept me alive during those years." She stopped. Recently about a 6 months ago I broke up with an ex who then smashed my skull with a bottle of tequila. I almost died. I couldn't make him understand that I was such a despicable creature undeserving of his love. The things that should have mortified me, images and fantasies, I was aroused and desired them. Things that not even the worst of creatures would entertain. I was impaired by amnesia after that, you remember right? I was confused and didn't understand the terrible visions I had. All I knew was that a Voltiel was at the center of it. I sought her out in the federal prison. I had her transferred to the Backwaters one without her knowledge. I had her released and I took her in. I plotted her on my land. Gave her a home of her own. Fed her for she was malnourished

Gave her psychiatric medicine she was prescribed. She stopped taking them, and I warned her that if she turned back into the Vol I knew, I only had two ends for her. She took my best friend and split her tongue that I brought to visit. I wanted to give her an opportunity for a life she never had, for she was also ruined by Kakihara. And now here we are, and I am left with a decision to make."

Angelo

There lies the difference between him and others who racked up a body count, he thought himself to have a firm grasp on morals. They weren't the kind ordinary people took well to but they kept him on what he considered the right path. Humans were no higher than cattle to him, things to be slaughtered and kept in their places should they intrude upon him in any way, but rape was a step too far toward putting yourself into that same category of the ill ones among the herd. He'd been on the receiving end of that so many times to put him off the idea of ever doing it. Neither had he defiled the corpses he'd brought their fate, eating them of course didn't count as that was only natural to an untamed soul like himself. Whatever small spark of distaste this had him staring at Tabitha with was short lived when he started to hear what she had gone through in return. She was flawed no doubt, but not quite so much as her attackers sounded to be. He found himself hit with a shudder, underneath his relaxed drunken ease he was feeling something. Fear or revulsion, one of those. It showed as he looked at her in stunned disbelief. Not intruding on any parts of the story, there was nothing he could say. The worst examples of all did not deserve a fate like this and he suddenly thought he understood her on a deeper level than before. There was no way the mind could sustain such torture without severing itself in half just to try and escape the pain. He lifted his head in a nod when she asked him about the amnesia, he seemed to remember that if he reached back far enough. Glad now more than ever that he'd not taken advantage of that state in any way to get some more drugs out of her, he had a feeling he'd have got his comeuppance if he had. Wondering quietly what had held Tabitha back from brutally striking him down after the incident with the knife and his threats, not knowing why unnerved him the same amount as this entire story. -(cont)

She had made a claim of not wanting to ruin him, but what could that mean truly. There was a depraved side stitched into his ways, did she find herself drawn to that without yet seeing it, picking up the scent as a wolf would find another of its pack. Were they really similar in any concrete meaning? He would have to leave that thought alone to get settled when the opportunity to answer it came. Hearing Tabitha admit to nursing Voltiel back to health had his stomach churning, after all he had just heard no part of him thought this wasn't a mistake. Here he finally spoke when her words had come to a stop. Giving her his thoughts and views to do with what she wanted. "Not your problem is it, what happened to her. You shown her mercy and ya been trampled on for that. If she's gone and hurt some you really care about, why the hell not kill her right on the spot? None would think it wrong on your part." He lifted a finger up to point toward the heavens where they sat hidden behind the roof over their heads. "You know we get signs when to act. That sure sound like one to me, I think you should give her exactly what she deserves. Do to her what she done to your friend there.. But don't stop. Split her fucking head all the way through."

Tabitha

*Sitting there, Tabitha drifted onto far distant glass shores. Her emotions ruptured as she concluded her tale. There were other details, though irrelevant at this time as she wanted to speak about Voltiel more than a complete summary of her. She was vile for raping. But the woman acted on such savagery for a simple, but damaged reason. She was more terrified of living as a complete rogue, no one to understand her - truly comprehend the tragedies that defined her. While it was her alter that forced herself on others, it derived from a deranged need to not be alone in her experiences, even the worst ones. Though these thoughts went unspoken as Angelo never voiced his about it. Doubtful it would be understood anyways. The only lines of morality never crossed included the collective of innocents under 18 and pregnant women (if she knew they were. Unfortunately she had tortured pregnant women in ignorance of carrying life). Angelo dug into his belief that such a depraved being should be killed without second consideration. With a less crippled mind, it would make perfect sense. But that obsession that perhaps someday her and Vol could really behave as family that protected each other and understood the ghosts of their past together lingered. Despite that hope existing as a single, frayed thread. Perhaps killing her would drive home the fact that her suffering had no meaning. It was senseless cruelty. And for some reason she couldn't bring herself to that reason. She wanted to believe that Voltiel acted as she did now - hunting women and men to try and crack their morals open by mimicking their horrors. She said nothing, not wanting to offend Angelo by saying she still wasn't certain what she would do. "My entire life my greatest desire was family. Blood family, since mine was dead. I jumped from gang to gang after that searching for that bond deeper than just collective goals. I've only found it in the Hoppers. They would die for each other even if one of them did wrong to the family. I would die for them." Except Lucas. "I finally got pregnant after having several miscarriages over the years. I started to believe I wasn't capable of birthing. The absolute joy I felt when I first held her. That out of all the horrors, I could still somehow create something innocent." That part suddenly wrecked the dam as she zeroed in on all the damage done to her. She cried like a wailing banshee, her song of woe permeating beyond the walls. "And I had to send her away when I went to prison. I had every intention of taking her back, but..." she looked away. "I am so afraid I would fail in protecting her. I failed Meschiya, and I will never forgive myself."*

 

--End--