Post by Vio on Aug 30, 2015 18:22:03 GMT -5
I awoke quite suddenly. The trickle of light pouring into my hazy eyes was blinding a first; a cascade of brilliance that swallowed up everything, forcing me to squeeze them shut again and to turn my head away. I felt light and fuzzy, too. The world at first seemed like little more than a dream. In my place, some might have believed that they were in the presence of some divine entity, but not I. I knew all too well that I was still alive. She had made sure of that when she left me there. Memories of that moment were still crisp and clear in my mind, as if they had only taken place a matter of hours ago, but despite my jumbled state of mind it was my gut that told me that this was not the case. Jigokuchi – my former homeland – was not so commonly strayed upon by foreign vessels. On occasion, a small pirate crew might have stumbled upon us due to our presence far from any of the major trade routes, but our own militia was more than enough to tackle such wayward felons. Unfortunately, the whole of our island had not been enough to tackle what had stricken us.
Amidst the fog of thought and memory, I did what I could to adjust to my new surroundings. This was not a quaint little village house, but some sort of infirmary – a hospital situated on a foreign island within ease of reach of those who enforced the world’s laws. At the time of my awakening, I did not know this was the case, but it would only be a short while until I would find out for myself. For now, I lay in a comfortable hospital bed. Mostly immobile, much of my body was enveloped in dressings and bandages which restricted my movements, likely covering the numerous wounds that I knew I had suffered. None of the blows I’d taken on that fateful night had been fatal – I don’t believe any of them were intended to be – and it perhaps explained the weakness I felt. How much blood had I lost from my injuries, I wondered; and how long had it been before I was ‘rescued’?
Eventually, I allowed my eyes to open once more, bearing witness to the environment in which I was being kept. It was a relatively large room, from what I could see, with sturdy wooden floorboards and clean white walls. My bed was surrounded by curtain rails of iron, with drapes of light blue hanging down around me and cordoning my bed off from what I imagined were the rest. I must have been lying at the far end of the room, for one side was open to the glass windows, through which the warmth of the midmorning sun came. The feeling of those rays upon my face was nice enough to provoke the slightest smile, for this was stark in contrast to the coldness of my most recent recollections. I felt safer here, but by no means did I feel completely protected from the harshness of the world. The one place I had felt safe at was now a shell of its former self; a place in which a monster had been raised amongst us without my knowing.
I don’t remember exactly how long I lay there for, staring idly at the ceiling above and the curtains around, and occasionally casting a glance to the window as I watched a pair of bluebirds flit about merrily. Eventually, the peace and quiet was broken by the sound of approaching footsteps, two blurred silhouettes eventually coming into view as they moved around the curtains. The first was a doctor – a practitioner of medicine – dressed light blue shirt and dark grey trousers, with a lengthy white coat. He was a relatively short man, or so my eyes seemed to want to tell me, perhaps in his mid-fifties. Barkley was his name, I think? Doctor Barkley, whose dark hair adorned with traces of grey was certainly not unlike my own. Thin, half-moon spectacles rested upon the bridge of his aquiline nose, hiding small and deep hazel eyes.
“Ah, good, you’re awake!” he said as he approached the bedside, placing his clipboard down upon the cabinet on my right, nearest the window. I didn’t answer back, or even attempt to do so, for my voice seemed to want to hold itself back from the world. I felt as if I could scream out at any second, but it was obvious that doing so would be a waste of precious energy. In due time, I would be allowed to speak my mind, but for now I thought it best to remain silent and meditate upon my thoughts and concerns. Still, I could not help but cast my dull chocolate eyes to the curtain. The second silhouette remained outside, and instinct would not let me settle until I knew who it was. It was no doctor or nurse, that much was certain, else why would they linger? Would they not attend to the other patients, as Barkley was doing? I let my mind dwell far too long upon these questions, paying little mind to the routine check-up that the good doctor went through as I assumed was per usual. As far as he was concerned, I was well on the road to recovery and – in a few days’ time – I would start physiotherapy. But for now, there were more pressing matters to which my own experience would prove useful.
“Miss Rosa,” Doctor Barkley said again, “I have a ‘guest’ who wishes to speak to you regarding the ‘incident’ which brought you here. His name is Mister Beckman; he’s an official of the World Government working for a special unit, who came here to interview those involved in what happened on Jigokuchi. There are others, like you, who’ve survived and are pulling through. If you wish, I can direct Mister Beckman to them until you feel you’re ready to speak with him?”
My eyes lingered upon the silhouette for a moment, but soon I turned to the doctor. A firm nod of the head was all I needed to do to confirm what I wanted. A sense of relief washed over me with the knowledge that I was not the only surviving inhabitant of the island, but at the same time I could not take much pleasure from knowing it. What Barkley had said in regards to them had reminded me of what she had said to me originally. There were indeed ‘like me’, and that was the reason that they still drew breath today.
“Very well,” the doctor nodded in return, leaving me and returning to a shadowy silhouette upon the curtain, discussing something in hushed whispers with who I could only assume was this ‘Beckman’ character. It took only a matter of seconds, but soon Barkley walked off, allowing the stranger phantom to enter. He was a man of moderate stature, perhaps a little shorter than my late husband, but he was an unmistakeable individual nonetheless. Not an officer of the World Navy as I had originally expected, although at least a man who was associated with them, he was most definitely a peculiar fellow to look at. An extremely sleek physique he bore, with a rich complexion and a mess of windswept light blond hair atop his head. He wore white trousers and a black jumper with a turtle neck collar that came right up to his jaws, overlaid by a short white sleeveless jacket that he left unbuttoned. Upon his back, I could have sworn he had a pair of feathered white wings, but his most distinctive features were those of his face. A sharp jawline and deep complexion, with scarring present upon the left side, his visage was adorned with piercing blue eyes and a strange little tattoo upon his right cheekbone.
“Miss Rosa-soyo,” he bowed slightly before taking a seat beside me. He was definitely not East Blue born, his appearance alone told me that, but the way he spoke was quite quirky and intriguing. He had some sort of speech tick, manifesting at the ends of most of his sentences, which sounded vaguely like the whistle of a gentle breeze through the leaves of a tree. Surprisingly tranquil a sound it was, but it was probably a better idea for me to not dwell upon the peculiarities of the person I was speaking to. After all, I had heard of far stranger men who sailed the harshest seas of the world.
“I’m sure Doctor Barkley told you already-soyo, but my name is Stanley Beckman-soyo,” Mister Beckman introduced, “and I’m here to investigate what exactly took place on the island of Jigokuchi-soyo…” He paused a moment and closed his eyes, perhaps wishing me to clarify that I understood what he was speaking about, but apparently needing no visual cue; and so I gave him none. “We – my unit and I-soyo – have reason to believe that what happened on Jigokuchi may be directly related to an attack upon a merchant vessel that was following the nearest trade route-soyo. Unfortunately, the men aboard that ship were not as lucky as you and the other women who survived-soyo, and that’s why I’ve been tasked with tracking down and bringing this killer to justice-soyo.”
My brow furrowed, my lips curled downward. So it had not been long after her rampage that she had found new prey? Sailors, who always took precautions against piracy in this day and age, had fallen to the same fate as Jigokuchi. Still, it was something of a miracle that they had stumbled upon that ghost of a ship when they did, else our island could have gone on suffering from its wounds for weeks to come. Perhaps she had intended it; to create a scene capable of drawing in the authorities so that those she wanted to remain would do so? No, that was far too clever. It was impossible to believe that she was capable of that, given the mental state she had ended up in, and so I instead found myself thanking coincidence over premeditation.
“Tell me-soyo,” the agent continued calmly, “do you remember the face of the person who did this to you-soyo?”
Hearing him ask that question made my heart freeze and my blood boil. Of course I would remember the face of my attacker, for that face was the face of my own flesh and blood. My youngest daughter, who I had once thought of as an embodiment of the love I had once held in my heart for my late husband, Maxwell Grimm, was the culprit. Images of her visage – from the beautiful roundness it had possessed when she was first born, to the fair porcelain of her youth, to the ghostly and pallid hues of a monster – flashed before my eyes. Two decades worth of my life flickered before me in less than a couple of seconds, accompanied by a prolonged silence which neither Stanley nor I seemed to dare to break. That was until I shattered the illusion with a chuckle. Was it a chuckle, or was it sadness? I suppose even I could not tell myself which it was at the time – I felt like I should have broken down into tears, burst out with laughter, or even let my body be wracked by a fit of rage.
Such an emotional tumult claimed my form for several seconds, but soon I abandoned all traces of such things; I had let them be stolen from me by a cold and eerie emptiness, far worse than anything I had experienced before in my entire life. Annabelle’s tragic death all those years ago did not faze me in the least bit, nor did the death of my own husband not all that long ago, nor even the ‘death’ of my youngest. Little did I know at the time that the cycle seemed endless, each was in turn responsible for the end of the one before them. Maxwell, my own husband to whom I had sworn an eternal oath, had killed our firstborn. And then just as he had claimed the life of his own flesh and blood, it was his youngest offspring who had been responsible for his demise – which I did not know until more recently. I suppose that meant I was the one destined to kill her? But could I even bring myself to do it – to put an untimely end to that which I had brought into the world? I would never know; not until the time came – until the opportunity presented itself.
“Take your time-soyo,” Mister Beckman added, “I know it can be hard to recall traumatic events-soyo. Some things are best left-”
“Her name,” I interjected throatily, “is… Scarlette Grimm-Rosa…”
Speaking that name was far more difficult a task than I believed it would ever be. Not only was my throat dry and raspy, words likely having not escaped my lips in quite some time, but the emotional weight that name bore was such a burden upon me that even just speaking it took all my strength – of body and of mind. Still, I watched unnerved as the piercing blue eyes of the man beside me widened in disbelief; that the woman he was tasked with hunting down would be directly related to one of the last remaining survivors was likely quite a shock to his system. Or maybe it was the fact that I was cooperating with him was what startled him – or even the emotionless way in which I had spoken the name, as if I had long since severed all my attachments to it. But those eyes of his did not seem satisfied, drilling deep into my very soul as if he were searching for reasons and ways to mend my broken heart, but a layer of cold ice so thick as to not be broken by such meagre methods had quickly formed. My heart and soul would say nothing until the day I saw her again.
“I see-soyo,” the scar-faced man confirmed, reaching into his pocket and withdrawing a piece of paper. It was a relatively small piece of paper, a photograph by the looks of it – no bigger than my hand. For a moment he eyed it, scanning it with vivid hues before looking to me, leaning forward and presenting the picture. And that picture was one I would always recognise. Taken two years ago, the image depicted a young woman with pale skin barely touched by the sun, with a lengthy bowl of jet black hair upon her head and eyes of dark chocolate. She was smiling – laughing even as she danced through the streets on the day of her twenty-first birthday, coinciding with the Autumn Festival. She had not changed much since then, but that photograph – one which I had previously displayed in the lounge of our home – captured another aspect of her. It was an aspect that I, personally, had not paid any attention to until that fateful night. Those eyes of hers seemed to turn a vivid red in the right light; far brighter than the burgundy shade of my own irises, they were the glowing red hues of a demon.
“Then, if you remember so clearly-soyo… Can you explain exactly what took place-soyo,” Beckman said again. It was a request, not a question, but I think that was because he knew what the answer would be, no how he had enquired. Just a few minutes spent with him and I knew what type of man he was, capable of discerning the most subtle of cues with those piercing eyes of his. Hiding the truth was not going to get me anywhere and so, without hesitation, I humbly obliged…-~-
The population of Jigokuchi was minute, I admit, consisting of no more than a dozen small families woven together into a tightly knit community that more than made up for our lack of numbers. About twenty houses in total made up the only town on the island; men served as farmers and builders, as well as members of the militia once they came of age; as for the women? Well, we settled with the less laborious but similarly important tasks – clothing, catering, and so on. Everyone in the community – man, woman or child – played a vital role, but sometimes we had a few outliers who preferred to attempt different things to what was considered the norm. My uncle, for example, had been a skilled chef and thus made it his profession. My daughter, Scarlette, had actually shown interest in farming – a task considered to be more of a man’s work than a woman’s. As a child, she liked to help sow the seeds in the fields; she was far more effective with heavier pieces of equipment than more refined tools like needle and thread.
I remembered when she was just seven years old; during the height of that summer I took her down to the beach to play. The few other children were all older than her by at least three years, but she was quite content in playing in the sand. She actually made a little sand castle! It was adorable really, but one of the older kids came up and kicked it down. I gave him a scolding, but Scarlette herself wasn’t in the least bit upset about what had happened. Looking back upon it, I suppose what happened then revealed two things about who she was. Soon thereafter, she simply went about and rebuilt the simple sculpture, presenting to me an amazing tenacity and ability to forgive and forget. She also perhaps proved that there is little need to destroy things without good reason.
If only she had kept that forgiving nature. Perhaps she did?
Even so, the day that it all happened was so terrifying. It was late evening, the sun had set and twilight blanketed the sky. Everybody was in their homes, save for Scarlette herself. I had not seen her all day, the girl having likely left before I woke. She loved solitude, always preferring loneliness than to be in the presence of others. Every time I had tried to comfort and console her, she had pushed me away. Maybe I should have tried harder? But, would that have made things any better? Or just made it worse? It’s one of those questions I find I keep asking myself, but never do I find the answer. An answer would not have mattered, anyway, for it was already far too late to save from herself at this point. That night was evidence of that fact, the sound of screams from a neighbouring household being the first signs I received that something was amiss. I had never once heard such a blood-curdling scream.
I was preparing supper for when Scarlette came back home, chopping up vegetables to set to stew, but that sound made me drop everything that I was doing. I hurried outside and, by the time I got there, numerous men had gathered around the house across the street from my own. Swords at the ready, lanterns lit, some of our militia was already on the scene. Such efficiency was what kept a ‘backwater’ island like this going in an era where piracy was rife. Indeed, like everyone else I had assumed that pirates had snuck onto the island and started to pillage the place. But we were all so wrong. Even men trained in the ways of the military were not prepared for what came forth from the house, the door slowly swinging open before any of them could even approach to investigate. The light of the home was still kindled, creating a dark silhouette which seemed somewhat glossed over. It stood there for a moment, but finally the light of the lanterns clashed with that of the house, banishing the shade and revealing a bloodied figure.
“Scarlette!?” I cried out when my eyes adjusted. There stood my own daughter, my heart very nearly stopped dead in my chest as I took in such a sight. Clad in a white coat stained with warm red liquid, my own shambled forth, dragging an old scythe across the floor behind her. Perhaps I wasn’t yet aware of what was going on, but I made to dash towards her. My movements, however, were stopped before I could take more than two steps. The woman next door – Samantha was her name – had reached out and stopped me. She was young, around the same age as Annabelle would have been if she were still with us. Yet to marry and bear children of her own, but wise and rational for her age, Samantha always knew when something was wrong. As much as I tried to plead to her to let me pass, she would not, though I still trust her judgment to this day. In the end, it did not help, only prolonging that nightmare. It wouldn’t have been any different, anyway.
Watching and listening as the soldiers – Samantha’s fiancé among them – tried to talk Scarlette down, I could only feel myself becoming coldly distant from what was going on. My own child before me was acting uncharacteristically, to the point where I was not even sure if what I was looking at was even human. The words of the men had no influence upon her, the girl remaining eerily silent as she stepped forward into the street with steps uneasy. By the time she stopped her advance, she was surrounded by a semi-circle of a half a dozen men, keeping a few yards’ distance between one another and their ‘target’. That stillness in her body was deathly, but soon she uttered something under her breath, bringing the farming tool in front of her. That was when I knew – when we all knew – that we were dealing with something supernatural.
Shining faintly in the lantern light, miasmic energy of crimson hue seemed to pour out from beneath the sleeves of her coat, crawling down the shaft of the sickle and engulfing the sharpened blade. There was an unnerving smile upon her lips, her eyes adopted that redness as the amber glow of burning oils reached them, but such things were of little consequence. All our eyes were focused upon what she was doing, the iron fang of her improvised weapon biting into the earth before her feet as easily as if it were tender flesh. This was the starting process of a horrific power that many of us had seen before; for some it brought back memories, for others it was like repeating the event in question, but for me it dredged up an unwanted fear. This was an ability from which I now knew came from a Devil Fruit by the name of the ‘Tane Tane no Mi’, the Offspring Offspring Fruit, and it was now being demonstrated before my very eyes for a second time. Across the ground the scraped- No, though the earth she drew her blade, her body visible tensing as a darkened rift as inky as the starless night sky opened in front of her.
At this time, I feared not for the lives of the men who stood around her, but for her own vitality. The former owner of that power was a pirate by the name of ‘Crimson’ Caesar, who had attacked our land more than a decade ago. Wanted by the World Government for a handsome sum of five and a half million Beri, he was a ruthless murdered who preyed upon isolated islands like our own, and his last venture had earned him this very same power. Unfortunately for him, it was his inexperience in his ability that ended his life. The power of that accursed morsel robbed one of their own life’s blood, all to summon entities that would come to be known as ‘Homunculi’, and Caesar’s grotesque demonstration of his so-called might had killed him outright. By summoning two dozen of such entities, the formidable scourge of the East Blue completely drained his veins of that which sustained him, ending his life there and then.
But it was as I watched my daughter utter a few more quiet words to herself that I realised; she was far wiser to the deadly and self-sacrificial side effects of that power. Rather than summoning one or two dozen Homunculi to deal with the men around her, Scarlette summoned just two carmine creations – childish representations of herself, forged from her very own blood, bubbled up into existence from the dark rift in the ground. We hesitated. That was enough.
“Grab!” Scarlette called out. Almost immediately and without further guidance, the bloody beings she had conjured lunged forwards like children chasing a ball, rushing straight for the nearest soldier with arms outstretched. Not a single one of us had ever seen those things perform such actions, their debut to us having been nothing more than them standing idle for a short while before melting into puddles of dark red. So concerned about the unknown potential of the Homunculi were the men that they failed to pay enough attention to their creator, my daughter following suit with such frenetic speed. The last time I had seen her move so quickly was on her twenty first birthday, when she had been dancing. That whirling dance, so unique to my eyes at the time, was replayed before us all as she twirled her scythe around like some sort of baton. It only took a matter of seconds for her to slice open two of the soldiers with the edge of her weapon, painting the ground around her with yet more inky crimson.
Frozen in fear was I, barely even able to breathe as I watched an otherwise frail looking girl put trained warriors to shame. Since when had my daughter been so strong – so skilled as to be able to overcome a fight in which the odds were stacked against her? Answers would fling themselves upon me like a pack of rabid wolves, but my own state of shock left me numb to the snarling fangs of realisation. Three men had fallen in less than a minute, a fourth struggling to overcome the grasping efforts of clinging conjurations, and the other two charging into the fray to avenge the lives of their comrades. The East Blue, as I would later find out for myself, was regarded by many as the weakest of the world’s oceans. And yet, despite that very unbecoming title, it was the very same sea from which monsters such as these were born.
It was not that these men were poorly trained or unprepared, really. Rather, it was the fact that they were mentally incapable of comprehending exactly what was going on right now – just as we all were. These men were soldiers, yes, but they were also friends. These were men who had grown up in the presence of Scarlette herself as I raised her, men who ranged from her own generation to twice her age. Their bodies might have been strong but, in the grand scheme of things, their tempered spirits were not quite resilient enough to fight against someone who they cared for. By now, only two were left standing, Sam’s fiancé one of them. Finally we moved. Samantha herself practically dragged me back inside of my own home.
“What the hell is wrong was her?” she yelled at me. I stumbled to the floor, my head practically swimming. The look on her face just as troubled as my own, neither of us had a clue what was happening at the time, and if we did? Well, it was likely we had both simply forgotten about it, or forced it to the very back of our minds in the heat of the moment. There were no words to describe the thoughts that bounced around my head, nor how I felt as a whole. I was just not myself. I tried to reply, my throat working and my tongue almost numb, but nothing comprehensible came out as far as I was aware. Samantha, meanwhile, had already slammed the door shut. With all of her strength, she shifted a wooden cabinet full of tableware in front of the door to barricade it; cups and saucers, bowls and dishes, all shattered or cracked by the forceful and frantic attempt at fortifying the house against the horrors without. But no matter how many layers of woodwork were placed between us, my ears rang with blood-curdling screams and spine-chilling laughter…-~-
“Miss Rosa-soyo… Do you need a moment-soyo?” Mister Beckman asked, his coolly spoken words wrenching me free from that nightmarish recollection of what had happened. I had not noticed it until now, but my eyes were stinging with the tang of saltiness. Bitter droplets of grief and remorse for all that had happened tried to force themselves free. I tried to hold them back, somehow maintaining my composure despite the emotional discord going on within my soul. Those eyes of his, however, were reading me like the pages of a book. I could just tell that that was the case, though I cannot explain exactly why. His visage explained nothing to me – a calm and collected look which spoke of tranquillity, but still I had the feeling he was feeling what I was. Perhaps such a belief was a little conceited of me, but that was how it felt.
“No, I’m fine,” I lied. A blatant lie, obvious as the full moon in a clear night sky, but the man before me seemed to pay no mind. He closed his eyes for a moment and nodded slowly, silently bringing together thoughts unknown before looking at me once more. It didn’t need to be said, but he clearly wanted for me to continue my explanation of what was happening. And so I did…-~-
I could not remember exactly how long that Samantha and I cowered within the confines of the house, but I can definitely say that it was a rather terrifying experience. Seconds, or minutes, perhaps hours? They all blended together seamlessly, a stretch of time that had no clear beginning and an even more blurry end. Sam herself had already raided the kitchen, arming herself with the very knife with which I had been chopping vegetables just a short while ago. Though her efforts were valiant, no mere kitchen utensil was going to dissuade my daughter so easily. She had already decided of our fates. Eventually, the screams from outside came to an end, a cold silence befalling Jigokuchi as the last vestiges of twilight faded into blackness. Neither an owl cried into the night, nor did a fox make known its shrill bark. It was all deathly silent, save for the thunderous cacophonies that hammered away within our own two chests.
And then the silence was shattered.
BANG! The front door was kicked or rammed, or something of the sort! Forceful, but by no means enough to remove the obstacles that blockaded it, hinting towards something that I know now would have seemed so obvious had we not been stricken with fear. Again, the door rattled from a hard impact, but the trembling of sturdy timbers barely made it much further than the back of the cabinet. The look on Samantha’s face seemed to expect this to go on for several minutes, the girl even going so far as to press her body against the furnishing in defiant resistance, but after the second thud it went eerily quiet once more. Now, as I looked into the dim reflection of my burgundy irises in the clean steel of the knife that my neighbour held, I could hear the slow and heavy footfalls outside. The scraping of something metallic through the dust and the dirt was brief but distinct. And the sound of deep breaths seemed to howl in my ears like the winds of late autumn.
“She’s right outside! What do we do?” Sam tried to whisper to me, her voice retreating back down her throat in reluctance. What escaped her quivering lips instead was a raspy mouthing, barely audible, but my heightened state of awareness brought on by such terror made the words leap to me anyway. Almost as if I knew what she was saying, the words recited themselves within my thoughts. Such a strange experience it was, but while I might have been able to read her like an open book, I was feeling just as exposed. The pages of my own life were being torn out, one after another, as everything I had strived for – the story I had written for myself and my family – was ripped away from me. Whole chapters of my life seemed irrelevant now, death having quite literally knocked upon the door.
“Just be quiet,” I whispered near silently, “and she might go away…”
Did I believe my own words? Not in the least bit. But, despite the unsettling and intensifying fear I felt flowing through every inch of my being, I remained somewhat strong. I was not at all the type to laugh in the face of danger, nor would I be the one to shed tears just because something displeased me at the time. I could never explain it, nor could the people I lived with, but I had always been the charismatic type when it counted. My efforts during Caesar’s raid had kept the people alive and orderly whilst our militia – led by my husband – took care of the pirates. Now was one of those times where I had to be especially stoic, but even then I was finding it difficult. My whole body rejected my attempts at controlling it, my subtle desires to stand up and try to take responsibility for my child’s behaviours denied in favour of a cold fear that kept me rooted to the spot – encased in ice.
CRASH! Once again the silence was broken, the room sprayed with shards of broken glass that glistened in the moonlight like flakes of snow – and icy spray that alluded to the cold and biting grip of death impending. Samantha and I both screamed shrilly, our minds and bodies working far harder than ever before, uncertain of what had just transpired despite our eyes seeing it so clearly. Something had been tossed at the window, a stone or something else forceful enough to shatter it, but there was no thud of a heavy rock to signify the projectile in question. There was no sign of something amongst the twinkling constellations of glass that would have caused such a thing to happen. And then, just seconds afterwards – when naught but the slightest tinkling of crystal against crystal could be heard – a voice rang out.
“I know you’re in there, so stop hiding and come on out! Accept your fates!” Scarlette’s calls echoed in my ears – her voice so hauntingly familiar to me and yet so horrifically different that it was unrecognisable! It was as if she had been possessed; her body consumed by the Devil himself. That was what I wanted to believe, at least. Listening to her words over and over in my mind, each repetition as clear and as crisp as the last, I soon realised that what she was saying was coming so deeply from within. This was a side of her that she had never dared reveal to me before. Did she hate me so? I think, at that moment, a single tear of sorrowful regret trickled down from the corner of my eye and across my left cheek.
Any movement would have betrayed us; that much I was certain of, despite the rest of what was happening being so incomprehensible. If I tried to move, I knew I would have been caught within my devilish daughter’s line of sight, seen as a lamb to the slaughter. But despite my mental hesitations, my body no longer felt any burdens. Samantha had become caught up in all this against my wishes, prey for the beast that lurked outside. I was no warrior, nor did I feel I could reason with the shredded understandings that Scarlette held onto like ribbons, but she was still my daughter – my own flesh and blood. If I could do one thing at this point – anything at all – it was to try and save at least one life from the horrors happening. All this flooded forth in the wake of a single shed tear.
“Fine!” I yelled, steeling my nerves to the best of my ability and forcing myself to my feet. Sam looked at me in silent disbelief, shuddering before handing the knife to me. I declined it. I would not need it, and even if I did, what use would such a flimsy weapon serve against a girl whose frenzied list of blood pushed her beyond the boundaries of pain and injury? I doubted that a mere stab wound could shut her down, for no matter how deeply I could cut with its sharpened steel edge, I would never be able to cut as deeply as the loss the two of us had suffered years ago.
“What are you doing, Clem?” Samantha asked of me, her whispered words harsh on her throat and ripe with fear. “She’ll kill you!”
“I don’t care about that anymore,” I retorted snappily as I took that first slow step towards the window, the cold air of the night dancing upon my face. “I’ve already lost a lot – Annabelle, Maxwell…, Scarlette. Besides, how much more can I gain from running away? I’ve never run before, so why should now be any different? Keep that knife and run, Samantha. I’m sure her worst won’t be bad enough.”
Looking back upon what I had said, I suppose it was a little cliché, but it was also the honest truth. The old can’t hold onto life forever, but the young can carry it on for us. I couldn’t entrust such responsibilities to my own offspring anymore, but I could pass the burden onto someone I thought wise and rational enough to bear it. Without another word, I gestured towards the kitchen – a viable escape route – before stepping forwards once again. My shoes crunched upon the shards of glass that littered the floor, as if I were walking upon a snow-laden field. But on my third step, I felt the coldness set in.
Those eyes, filled with unbridled fury, seemed to drill into my very soul. I knew at this point that my daughter, whom I had treasured every moment with, was no longer present in this world. If she was, I would have felt it – I would have felt those last few shreds of love and hope. What I felt when meeting that bloody gaze was nothing of the sort. Scarlette’s eyes seemed to wish me a grim fate, but I could not tell exactly what such a fate was to be. I would experience it soon enough, as I took those last few steps, turning to face her entirely. She stayed silent. So did I. Samantha slowly crawled her way to the kitchen, her movements barely followed by my eyes as I focused upon the demon standing just ten yards away. I could see everything that she had done. Bodies stained by darkness that glistened softly in the gentle rays of silver moonlight – the only light that illuminated the landscape. But that light was not to last. Slowly but surely, blackened clouds were creeping over and spreading an all-consuming darkness across the island: Darkness far thicker than the inkiness of the midsummer’s night…-~-
“That was extremely brave of you, Miss Rosa-soyo,” Beckman said, once again intruding upon the flow of memories that tormented me so. I knew why he kept interrupting; he was doing it so that I wouldn’t have to suffer any sort of breakdown – so that my thoughts would be clear and consistent, not blurred by the whirrs of an emotional storm. Such things got the best of the best of people. But, while I might have been thankful for him to do that for me, I wanted to get this out of the way as soon as possible. That image – a woman soaked in blood and wielding a scythe stained with death – was one that anyone could interpret with similar results. It looked as if she had been built for reaping lives.
Tch! “Was it bravery? It felt more like cowardice, ready to embrace death with open arms. That b!%€# let me live!” I admit, I was extremely angry with myself, but it’s extremely difficult to take out one’s frustration upon oneself. Instead, I unfairly directed by ire towards this gentleman, but he seemed to take it all in his stride. I was unaware at the time, but he was essentially a veteran of warfare who had deserted his people. A selfish and dishonourable move, some would say, but he had his reasons. Reasons that he was about to share with me, teaching me a lesson that I clearly had never needed to be taught before.
“Sometimes, Miss Rosa-soyo, the difference between what counts as courage and what counts as cowardice is hard to see-soyo. Sometimes, the bravest thing we can do is to surrender-soyo. Even if it means abandoning that which you hold dear-soyo,” he explained coolly. I suppose any soldier would have said otherwise – that bravery is to fight to the death against all odds – But not he. It was hard to believe that such a man could say such a thing as that, but those were the very words that had escaped from his lips. Whether or not I could agree with him was yet to be seen, my mind still focused upon explaining everything that had happened…-~-
By the time either of us made any move to speak, the darkness of the night had consumed Jigokuchi entirely, drowning the earth in blackness so that it seemed we were the only two alive. Disturbingly, that was very nearly true, but I had no idea how many members of our small island community had fallen to Scarlette’s onslaught. Actually, it was probably going to be easier to count how many had survived than how many had died. It was a frightening, morbid thought, most definitely.
“What is it, Scarlette?” I questioned angrily. “What could you possibly gain for killing everyone?”
The way those words escaped my lungs was harsh, my intonations most definitely hitting her ears in an alien voice – or perhaps one slightly familiar. I did not shout, for any exertion on such a level was likely going to break my determination, and so instead I spoke firmly and clearly. Each word that escaped my lips was filled with bitterness against the actions that my daughter had taken, treating her not as my own child, but as an outsider. After all, that is what she had become; no longer the innocent and energetic girl, but a vicious murderer no different to the piratical forces that showed up from time to time – perhaps much, much worse. This was a monster I had not seen until tonight. This was a monster I could not possibly hope to forgive.
“I gain nothing,” she replied coldly, the inflection upon her words (or lack thereof) teasing my conscience. Was that honesty? Or was it mockery? Regardless of what it was, she continued to speak: “But they gain everything…”
I snapped.
“What could they gain!?” I barked. Fear and rage overwhelmed me all of a sudden, driving me to scream at the top of my lungs. Where such energy as that came from now was not my thundering heart and the adrenaline that raced through my blood, but from the depths of my reasoning mind. “What could innocent people possibly gain from dying? What did they do to deserve this!?”
My cries seemed to echo in the night like the rumble of distant thunder. A stifling silence flooded over us in its wake, embracing us in an eerie quiet that threatened to erupt like a volcano at any moment. My breathing and the roaring beat of my heart within my chest – those were the only two sounds I could really hear right then. But that would soon change. Before me, Scarlette’s body seemed to shake rhythmically, the faintest trace of a smile forming upon the shadows of her visage. And soon thereafter, she started to giggle. Then she laughed.“Hiirorororororororororororo~!”
Such a laugh as that made me shudder then and there, and it would still do so if I heard it today. But all I should do was grit my teeth and bear it as she stood there wrought with a maniacal hysteria that made my blood run cold and my muscles tighten. Each and every little exhalation made me quiver and wince, the shrillness of it all piercing me like a thousand needles. Eventually the laughter ceased, though even then it seemed to ring on forever and ever within my ears.
“That’s exactly why they deserved it,” she informed me. At first, it did not register in my mind what she actually meant by that. Why was it that those people deserved to die? I almost asked that aloud, but the need to do so was banished as she continued, providing an answer that I could not have anticipated.
“They’re innocent, so I freed them from this place – this prison!” Scarlette announced as she turned her back to me, gesturing to the world at large before spinning right back. “The innocent don’t belong in this world, don’t you see? They need to be free! That’s why I killed them – liberated them – so that they could pass onto the next world! I did it so that they could enjoy their existence without burden of sin!”
Whatever twisted philosophies my daughter had become caught up in, I could not comprehend them. Those words that had just escaped her mouth had silenced me. Those words were the words of madmen escaping from her lips – of people driven into the depths of insanity or berserk fanaticism by their undying loyalty to causes corrupt and misguided. I’d seen it before – heard it before in the words of ‘Crimson’ Caesar. That had to be what had done it; Scarlette had been driven mad by her power. It was a power that fed upon its user, manipulating them to do its bidding. I was wrong, but I refused to see the truth through the fog of memory that had crept into my eyes. Accepting the reality now was perhaps the most impossible of feats and, to an extent, I was at least grateful that she had not gone on to explain where she had developed such a twisted outlook from.
“But you…” she uttered again, her entire demeanour changing so swiftly that it was as if she had just been replaced. I had thought so naively that the monster before me was the worst thing I would come across, but all of a sudden I felt myself break into a frigid sweat. So quickly she had changed from fanatical hysteria to poisonous fury, everything about her seeming to change; her stance straightened, her smile faded to nothingness as the shadows consumed her face once more. But the most frightening change was in her eyes. That crimson glow had vanished entirely. Her gaze was cold, dead and empty.
“People like you don’t deserve to pass,” she uttered, raising her scythe so that the blade loomed above the ground between us. “People like you have committed the greatest of sins… and for that, there is only one option. It is my job… to enact your punishment!”-~-
“After that, she attacked me. She never said another word,” I explained to Mister Beckman. Going into detail about her method of attack was not something I felt capable of doing. As steeled as my nerves were, her brutality was sickening – an assault of cutting and stabbing attacks designed to inflict as much pain as possible. An assault which had continued ceaselessly until I finally could not move a muscle. The last thing I saw, as I explained to him, was watching her walk away as if nothing had ever happened. At that moment, I passed out, and the next thing I remembered was waking up in this hospital bed. Honestly, I would have expected more to it than that, but that just wasn’t how the events played out. Scarlette was very simple-minded; not so much unintelligent as just one who liked to avoid complexities.
“Miss Rosa-soyo,” the blond began, “may I ask-soyo? What would you do if you ever saw your daughter again-soyo?”
I had expected that question to be asked, but not so soon, perhaps? Either way, my mind had long since been made up. My course of action was as clear as those memories were and, much as Scarlette’s eyes had portrayed the coldness of a merciless maniac, mine too did portray the coldness of a merciless desire for vengeance. I stared at him, watching his eyes widen a little in shock. For once in our conversation, his cool façade was broken clearly by what could only be described as a look of fearful amazement. It was by no means an extreme look as one would expect, but a rather subdued one which spoke of prior experience but appropriate surprise. I too felt something unusual, as if a great burden had been lifted from my shoulders and cast outwards.
“If you’re asking whether I would try to reason with her, or whether I would want to kill her, then the answer is neither,” I stated with stern bitterness. “When she and I next meet, I want to make sure… that it is anything but a pleasant experience for her.”
“Is that so-soyo?” Bowing his head, the gentleman seemed to smile softly. His eyes closed as he put his hands together and meshed his fingers. I was certainly curious as to what he was thinking about and why, only now, he was expressing such certain emotions. Up until now, his portrayal and disposition had been still and collected. Even though he retained much of that tranquillity, he was starting to show much more in the way of ‘humanity’.
“Yes. It is. Though,” I added, “I would prefer it if I never saw her again. She’s completely dead to me now.”
Accepting that fact was far easier a thing to do than accepting the deaths of my husband and eldest child. In fact, those words escaped my mouth so smoothly that it actually startled me a little. To be cold and unforgiving seemed like something she would do, but I knew better than to compare my feelings to hers. My mercilessness was directed entirely at a single soul, while hers was spread amongst the world’s entire population. If she and I possessed that same level of determination, then would not it be mine – the most heavily focused of the two – that would win out?
“Very well, Miss Rosa-soyo,” Stanley Beckman agreed, “I will take care of her should I encounter her-soyo. From this point on, her name will be branded as that of a criminal-soyo. However, once you’ve recovered-soyo, I would think you an ideal candidate for fighting against her-soyo.”“Why? Is it because I’m her mother?”
“No-soyo,” he replied enigmatically, “It’s because you have the will of a conqueror-soyo. It’s a dangerous weapon in the wrong hands, or the ultimate tool to use against someone like your daughter-soyo.”
No sooner had he explained that than Mister Beckman had departed, leaving me alone and guessing as to what he meant by the ‘will of a conqueror’. It sounded like some sort of fanciful metaphor, but he did not seem the type to use such things at all. Regardless, I was now aware of this man’s intent in full, and was thankful for it. Knowing that my daughter- No. Knowing that Scarlette’s actions were not to go unpunished was a welcoming feeling to my still beating heart. That woman had caused so much pain, but sooner or later she would be forced to meet my retribution head on. I won’t deny it, either. I want to see her squirm!
