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PURE JOY: A New Page for Salvatore Moreau

Prologue: Failure

"They'll have to respect me if I kill you," was the guttural declaration amidst the raucous roars and harsh rattles of the colossal creature as it pursued the light-haired man through a roundabout area within the murky reservoir.

The monstrous, amphibious fish was distraught. The life-sustaining water had been drained to limited levels. It needed to be submerged to rehydrate and sustain itself. For without its precious water, it would assuredly perish.

Inside the great maw of the beast, its rider remained bawling from shame and fear. However, the pale humanoid's voice echoed from the beast, which was influencing the tormented being to shout curses and threats.

Nevertheless, from the charging creature, there were also pleas for acknowledgment. Despite its cries falling on deaf ears, the creature still clung to a strand of hope that the light-haired man would stop shooting and corporate.

But the hated-self was more in control; taking over the will and reasoning to ask for help. Thus, the beast continued to use its multiple muzzles in an attempt to pull the light-haired man into its massive mouth. Or it tried to burn his lungs and bone marrow with a cascade of highly acidic green bile and gas.

"Take... Take this!" the retching creature bellowed with countless, monstrous eyes burning red with a deep ire toward the sprinting, young adversary.

Continually, the light-haired man dodged through the decrepit, algae-mottled huts and broke the creature's enzyme barriers. All the while, he bombarded the finned beast with all sorts of weaponry. And after a great length of chasing, vomiting, and bewailing, countless pieces of ammo had been lodged throughout its ginormous girth. Ultimately, spiking the gastric walls and bladders of the creature.

"I don't want to die. Oooh, it hurts so much."

The injured beast felt itself vastly hemorrhaging with plasma and bile. Swearing from anger but also from utter loathing with itself, the creature unwillingly raised on its haunches from the immense swelling of its metamorphosed body. And as it howled from the stretching of its pained hide, all it... he could do was scream...

"Ah! H-help me! Mother! Ow! MAAAAAAAAAAAA-!"

"-MA!"

Moreau's own shout caused him to snap opaque sights wide open. He gasped, holding out his thin arms to stop the small seat from tilting over. Once the legs of the stool were stagnant, the hunched fish-man screwed his eyelids closed. Moreau could hear his labored breathing over the familiar sounds of leaky drips onto dank floorboards, and the static fizz from a small, outdated television.

Lowering tired limbs, Moreau's chest expanded, then sank as he let out a shaky, raspy respire through jagged, askew teeth.

"Just-just a bad d-dream... I... I didn't fail," he assured deeply to himself to gather his bearings.

Of all the past nightmares, that was the worst one that the fish-man's altered psyche had ever endured. It seemed too real for it to... be... not real? The simple being shook his head. He shouldn't try to analogize things when just waking up.

Suddenly, Moreau jerked and gawped at nothing in particular. Something told him that his surreal nightmare wasn't fully fabricated. Moreau's bulbous throat made several spasms from sheer anxiety.

"Please! Please! Oh, please still be here!"

With his covered brow feeling damp, the nervous fish-man reluctantly shifted sideways. And his fear came into full circle.

"No! No-no-no-no-no-no! NO!"

Almost stumbling, Moreau got to his small feet and shuffled forward through the narrow space of his timber shack to find his charge... the Rose jar, which he was entrusted with...

...was gone. Just... gone.

Whimpering to the point of almost hyperventilating, Moreau fretfully wiped and patted the little table over and over; hoping his weary vision was playing tricks, or perhaps the valued entity had turned invisible somehow as some part of this test. But the only thing his palms picked up was musty moisture from bare wood.

Hastily rubbing the grime on his gray, frayed attire, Moreau grunted while shoving the table aside, and peered through the glassless, enzyme-patched window... No signs or sounds of anyone.

The fish-man narrowed his beady eyes and huffed angrily. That... dirty little sneak thief!

Hot air escaped through Moreau's short, crooked nose as he balled shaking fists. The snappy blonde man must've stolen Mother's special child when he had fallen asleep. Moreau's hardened demeanor instantly slacked from regretful realization...

Mother. He failed Mother.

Hobbling from the window, he looked down at his dirty, exposed feet. There was no way in hell, the slow-bodied, contorted fish-man could locate nor catch up to the blonde burglar to barricade him with bubbled enzymes. Maybe his hated-self could if the thief was near his precious water. But it wasn't like it worked whenever he wanted it to.

Moreau shuddered. Retrospectively, he still didn't want it to make his hated-self show up. All that agony and boiling nausea were damn insufferable. Not to mention the dread of that horrible nightmare possibly coming to fruition...

Moreau swayed around and lugged his reedy legs to his stool. The fish-man's swollen, transmogrified back had persistently labored him with aggrieved heaviness. But right now... it felt like an entire windmill had collapsed over his sensitive, knobby body.

With arms propped on threadbare pants, Moreau groped at his leather hood and yanked at its clasped rope hem, many times. Then, with hands shrouding his face, he wept and wept out his dirge.

Moreau was absolutely humiliated. Absolutely disgusted with himself for failing the ever-beautiful and ever-powerful, Mother Miranda. Moreau never had gotten the chance to do the trial of the tricky thief to finally prove his worthiness to his family. The fish-man bemoaned even louder. He could just hear the hurtful taunts of his successful siblings...

Such an ineffectual, fat fool!

Ha-ha! Ugly Fuggly can't do anything!

Screw things up! The only thing the moronic freak is good at!

Tersely rocking himself, Moreau held his hidden, distorted ears to shield his mind from the insults, and the accompanied buzzing and cackling of his flawless nieces. A flash of a golden masked woman, draped in dark robes and ebony wings, kept at arm's length. Moreau put out a hand toward the impassive beauty.

"Mother... p-please stop them from p-p-picking on me."

The hateful mockery fades but so does the beloved, pseudo-figure. The dejected, crying fish-man sloped his limbs and hung his heavy head as low as his restricted neck muscles were able. How could he so stupidly sleep on the one job... the last probability to have finally made his one true purpose for existing, so proud?

When Moreau's strained diaphragm was exerted, he reared his head and resignedly scanned the dark, warped wood of his creaky, cluttered quarters. Or rather, quarter. As that was what the shack relatively was.

Snuffling, Moreau wiped his dribbling nostrils with a ruffled sleeve. One space... Just... one.

He did have a few assorted hanging ropes, tables, couple of shelves, but it would have been nice for his tender torso to have a real chair to work and sleep on since he no longer used his laboratories. And though he was grateful that the mines could receive some amount of power for lighting, a workable woodstove could keep him much warmer.

Chilled, the fish-man tugged at his trench-coat while curling his pointy toes. He hated the cold almost as much as his seclusion. And now that Moreau could never finish his task before the others, that icy isolation was going to be permanent.

Sorrowful, wet eyes trailed from the digital snow on the smudged TV screen, down to the damaged flooring. By his right ankle was a thin, plastic case that had contained the movie he had been admiring. The desirous fish-man's wide, bottom lip trembled from gazing at the cover art: a handsome, finned being, swimming underwater with a lovely woman in red.

Feeling even more loveless, Moreau's drooping face turned to the remains of his old brie. Consumed by depression, he went to reach for the knife in the wood pan to finish off the wheel. Unfortunately, the fish-man's stomach sensed another wave of uneasiness flooding in. He hurled it onto the carpet; soiling it and the cheese before his clawed fingertips could even touch the utensil.

Blinking at the mess, Moreau groaned, clutching his round, bumpy midsection. It was far from being one of the first accidents whenever he felt ill. But at least, the vomit was sort of normal. Unlike the bile of his hated-self which would have left him with no floor at all.

Moaning with heaving whines, Moreau staggered to his feet and walked away from the soaked, square rug. Avoiding missing floorboards, he goes next to a slanted plank that was propped to keep the rickety rooftop from collapsing. Behind the lofty board, he dragged out an empty sack and proceeded to fill it with belongings. Including some things of great importance on a candle-lit table...

After clearing a shelf, the fish-man spied his journal on a small footstool. He begins to slightly bend and opens a hand for the worn, flat notebook.

"No point," he mumbled, coiling his spindly digits. "No p-p-point, anymore."

Failures don't deserve books about them.

Moreau also turned away from his utmost favorite possession, atop a bunch of battered, plastic crates. The fish-man wished he had the room in his sack and the strength in his flimsy biceps to move his movie gear. Moreau had gotten the black and white video box with the disc player and discs in a vacant hovel. And he knew personally that the people who once resided there were certainly not returning...

Moreau pulled the drawstring together, then hauled the weighty satchel over his sore shoulder, grimacing with the newfound pressure. But the aching wasn't nearly as bad as when it woke up.

Moreau returned to his worktable and grabbed a flat item from the carved wood. Then, feeling more insecure than the fish-man thought he ever could be, he clumsily swings around and does the one thing which a cowardly mistake like himself, could only do now...

Go. Just go.

I can't be abandoneded if I abandon me first.

With subdued sobs, Moreau gave his dusty and damp living space one more solemn once over, before inserting the winged bronze key into the gate. Then after a grunted push, the old entry clanks apart. Moreau elicited a surrendered sigh as the key dropped and was absorbed into the muddy ground.

Listlessly, the lone fish-man skulked through the corridor, treading over a fallen ladder. He paused and blinked in puzzled surprise to find the old mine elevator present. If Moreau had eyebrows, they would surely be raised. Someone must've used it and left it. Or... had they sent it back down? Moreau droned flatly until a weak, relieved grin fleetingly visited his rimpled, ashen face.

Maybe the snappy blonde man wasn't as cruel as they said he was.

Moreau entered the creaky, wooden contraption. And after plopping the burlap bag to his side with a groan, he grasped the handle and pushed up.

In the vacant shack by the small stool, was a mismatched array of bones that were once twined into a partial circlet. As the elevator leisurely headed topside, its sniveling passenger shamefully pulled his lighter hood over salty, burning eyes.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Mama...

Failures don't deserve to be rulers.

A/N: Prologue to my current big fanfiction project. All future chapters can be read on Fanfiction, Archive of Our Own and Wattpad. Wattpad has visuals.

#Salvatore Moreau #resident evil village #fanfic #fanfiction #fiction #resident evil 8 #comfort #hurt/comfort #romance

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