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tragicquartet · 5 years

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Halloween Special Drabble: Wrath

(([Content/Trigger Warning: this drabble contains several graphic scenes of blood and gore, impalement, bleeding out, broken limbs, negative thoughts, and allusion to child abuse. Reader discretion strongly advised.] Hello everyone, happy Halloween! Gosh, I love this time of year, don't you? The decorations, the candy, the holiday cheer...and what better way to celebrate the day then with a story, huh? How about a ghost story? A ghost story about a certain malevolent spirit of Wrath and Vengeance. Gather around the campfire, friends, because today I tell a new story to you all, although it will take us all the way back to the day that this spirit died, and even farther back than that, and we will go where I don't think I've led you all to before, at least not in full... Deep, deep into Mallew's mind: you'll be right there to experience his nighterrors with him, doesn't that sound exciting?! You'll be right there to see all the blood and gore, experience all his pain and sorrow with him, sounds lovely, yes? On this fine Halloween, I tell the tale of Mallew, for the first time ever, refusing to indulge his urges at their peak, and invite you to join for all the consequences and surreal horror that results, diving deep into his mind to join him as comes face to face with his greatest enemy of all... Himself. Happy Halloween!))

Losing it. He could feel himself losing it. His grip on reality. His patience, his perseverance slipping through his fingers like water. 'Keep it together,' he thought. A feeling crawling up his spine like pinpricks, turning into small blips of pain, turning into deep, sharp shocks of agony that couldn't be ignored. Keep it together. "No, no stop..." He was trying to talk himself out of it, talk himself out of the thoughts that were rising in him, golden locket heart shuddering, scraping against itself as he fought the feeling back. "I don't have to, I don't have to." He'd have to. He would definitely have to. This kind of feeling didn't just crop up and get ignored: given half a reason to do so, he'd tear into the closest living thing... And it was only getting worse. "Stop, STOP." It was like commanding the earth to stop turning on its axis, asking the sea to stop crashing against the shore, asking the sky to drop to earth: it wasn't possible, and he could feel it rising, ever higher and higher... Rising like a tide, warm and pulsing, made of blood, intoxicating and undeniable, pooling at his feet. Clawing through him like fire through wood. Suffocating, smothering him, snuffing him out like a water over a flame. "S-St-Stop!" Helpless, pulled along by the flow of his own thoughts, his own twisted, corrupted, and unyielding mind, Mallew could feel himself being pulled beneath the waves of his own conscience, falling to his knees, grabbing his head as he tried to fight it, his urges drowning him, choking out what little remained of resistance, temperance in him, calling to him, beckoning him to indulge in violence, the feeling slowly swarming throughout him, closing in all around him, suffocating him as it built and built up to a screaming, horrifying crescendo- "STOP!" ... There was nothing. Nothing at all at first, Mallew slowly peeling his hands off of the side of his head, opening his eyes... Long, tall corridors. Old wood, rotted and cold. Empty blackness outside of the windows, framed by motionless, dust-covered drapes. Cold. Cold... And all tinted green. "..." He knew this place: this was the setting of many of his night terrors, the nightmares that never left him, even after he waked, him never having the luxury of forgetting his dreams. Had he knocked himself out? Passed out after trying to suppress his urges? Or was this something else? Knowing from years of night terrors not to stand still in this place, he moved. His feet stumbled heavily on the rickety floor: he was always helpless in his dreams. Without flight. His body made of weak, solid living flesh. His lungs hungry for air, no matter how stale, toxic, or thin it may be. His fire gone. His powers gone. His fear exponentially amplified. This was the prison of his own mind, where, when body slept, unable to carry out the murder his mind craved, his urges would turn their desire for violence inward, aiming for Mallew himself as he slept, and tonight... They would strike a particularly low blow. "Ugh!" Mallew leaned against a wall, gasping for air as he stepped down the hall, already in pain, lungs aching, head swimming as he tried to keep moving. He couldn't tell what was after him, but that was hardly the point: all he knew was that he couldn't let it get him. Struggling forward, he tried one of the doors along the corridor, it shuddering at his touch, but remaining shut. Another, and it actively shocked his hand, touching it. Another, and the doorknob melted in his hand, burning his skin with molten metal. "Augh!" He grabbed his wrist, grunting and gritting his teeth as he waited for the pain to dissipate, and although the molten metal did eventually drip off his hand, pooling on the ground with a derisive hiss, the burn stayed snaked across his skin... The wound had cleaved through his flesh, leaving the bone exposed, while all the skin around it ached with a horrible, ceaseless sizzle. He tried not to touch it, not to think about it, the door in front of him now hanging open, neither the doorknob nor the mechanism holding it shut it there anymore, Mallew taking this oppurtinity to step through the threshold, duck out of the hall and away to what he hoped would be safety... He couldn't let himself be caught. Stepping into the darkness beyond the door, he felt the ground drop: it was a downward slope in pitch blackness, Mallew's footing unsure, his hands reaching around for a wall, a railing, some point of reference upon which to grasp, to find his place. Eventually, the echoes of his heavy breathing, his grunts and yelps of pain as his hand continued to ache began to narrow, amplify, a wall finally brushing against the tips of his outstretched fingers as he moved towards the first semblance of what appeared to be light that he had seen in what felt like hours. He followed the source carefully, hands pricked, scraped, and pressed up against sharp stone walls as he stepped closer and closer towards the light... A dim, foggy, magenta glow. Stepping forward, his footfalls guided by both the steep terrain and the need to move towards the light, feeling again that he had been followed, he hoped the light would bring him safety. Eventually he reached the end of the long, dark chasm, his eyes momentarily blinded as the room opened before him. When his vision finally adjusted, he found himself upon a ledge, sloped and jagged, reaching high above a bed of sharp, blood-slicked stalagmites, far below. "N-No..." Not needing this horrid reminder of his fate, Mallew immediately turned on his heels, stepping away, attempting to flee and was- "Urk!" -grabbed by someone's hand, his throat clenched by sharp, burning hot claws, his legs lifted effortlessly from the ground, left kicking, finding no purchase onto his attacker who, through the momentary panic and pain, Mallew recognized all too well... Himself. Smiling wickedly, heavily-fanged skull visible through its flesh as it dangled him, helpless and choking, from its grasp. Mallew had never been attacked by himself in his dreams before, and, in that moment of self-recognition, he uttered a single confused syllable, unable to breathe with it clamping down so hard on his throat: "Wh-" "You deserve this, you know." The voice was his, but lacked any semblance of his usual tone: it was loud, echoing, truly monstrous and thunderous, having lost all cadence and semblance of humanity. What was this? "Wh-Wha-" "This is for what you did to me, TRAITOR." The monster licked its lips, its long black tongue trailing along its suddenly bloodstained teeth as Mallew felt it shift its grasp, dangle him farther out over the pit of spikes below, Mallew screaming, begging in his mind for this not to happen. His night terrors took him to many dark places, but never here, never to relive this, never to experience a moment that not even his unreliable, distorted memory could tear away from him. The way he died. He clutched, clawing at the arm of his mirror image, trying desperately to get it to stop, to which it only smiled wider, human face completely gone as it boomed, gleefully, skeletal visage mocking Mallew as it roared: "I'll see you Hell!" It let go. Mallew tried to scream, but only a hoarse, choked cry escaped him. And then, without even a moment to brace himself... He hit them. They drove through his flesh like it was nothing. The pain was insurmountable. His terror beyond realized. He cried and screamed, but all that emerged was a spray of blood, sound lost in the gurgle of fluid as he fought desperately, hopelessly to pull himself off of the stalagmites, cutting his hands on the sharp rock again and again, to no avail, making his grip more and more useless as his hands were slicked more and more with blood. There was nothing but pain, nothing but terror, a blind, screaming terror as his body choked, lungs convulsing for air that they couldn't even hold anymore, one of them ruptured, the other bruised and quickly filling with blood, his once great strength now having no foothold, no grip, no ability to save him from this fate. And now, not even death could release him, because, after all... He was already dead. Asleep, in his own mind, the weight of years of suffering alone in his mansion warping and twisting to form a murderous, fiery monster, it all starting from this very place, this very moment, his gruesome death, which he had now relived in full... But this time there would be no miraculous rebirth, no resurrection of his spirit into a powerful apparition of Love and Vengeance, later warped into a thing of Wrath and Vengeance, no. This was his Hell, and he, dreaming, could not force himself to awaken. He could only sit there, body broken, bleeding out, in more pain, terror, and agony than his dreams had ever given him before. It felt like months until he moved again, until he was finally able to, after ages of painful scraping and slippery, blood-caked hands, he pulled himself slowly off of the spikes, maneuvering himself down onto the ground, him lying there shaking, bleeding, sobbing horribly, pitifully as blood continued to drip out of his maw, Mallew sure that, at some point, he would surely bleed himself dry... When would all of this end? He sat there, frightened and alone, for quite some time and then, forcing himself to his feet, he finally lifted his head... And found himself somewhere new, or, should he say, somewhere very, very old. The floors were a fine polished hardwood, the walls a pristine white, gilded with golden trim, smelling of pinewood and the faint, distant scent of something sweet being baked as the day neared its end. He knew this place anywhere. Home. His childhood home. How did he get here? He struggled along the wall, leaning against it for support, dragging one of his legs, now hopelessly damaged, unable to bend nor support his weight, behind him, until he found a familiar door. He pushed beyond it, entering a darkened room, the world outside the window nothing but a pitch black void, the room itself as neat as it ever had been... A shelf of books on one wall, a display of dolls on the other (many of which were alpacas), a walk-in closet on the side, door ajar, and a tv in the corner, several Sailor Moon DVDs littering the floor around it, arranged neatly by season. All familiar sights. He wasted no time in stumbling over to the oversized bed in the center of the room, gingerly sliding up onto it, laying on his back as he continued to bleed, letting out a pitiful, defeated moan of pain as he laid there, despondent. Of all the places for his night terrors to send him, why the cave...and why here, afterwards? He closed his eyes, sobbing hopelessly, feeling utterly helpless as he sat there, trying to remain lucid, avoid the wave of sadness that was rising in him being in this place again, reliving the home he had once called his... Before the apartment. Before the cave. Before his betrayal. Before he warped into the thing he had become. It had been a prison in its own right, and even now he feared that some nightmarish version of his father may be lurking the halls here, but to be reminded that, at one point, his life hadn't been ceaseless anger and suffering... It made him feel truly helpless inside. 'Pathetic.' The word hung in his head like a slur. 'PATHETIC.' "You." The sudden voice roused Mallew from his sobs, from his quickly downward spiraling thoughts. He turned towards it, finding a figure standing beside the bed, a look of concern on its face. It was him. Him as a child, barely five years old, he'd wager, holding an alpaca plush in its grasp, bushy mullberry purple hair hanging over its eyes... Which were empty, black eyesockets, no irises to be found within. "You shouldn't be here," the child said, Mallew feeling its gaze upon him as he tried to turn his head a bit, address the child properly as he laid there, bleeding out. "I-I'm sorry: I just needed to lie down for a second. S-Sorry about the mess, I'll go-" "No, not that," the child clarified, narrowing it's empty, cavernous eyes as it continued, "you shouldn't be here at all. It's never sent you here before." "It?" Mallew asked, coughing up a large glob of blood, hot and painful, from his throat, shuddering as he cleared his throat and continued: "what do you mean, it?" The child was silent, only pressing a finger to its lips, whispering, ominously, "we don't give things like it a name, names only give things like this power. You know that." "...what does it want from me?" "You must have angered it, done something it didn't want you to. It's trying to teach you something." "...how do I get it to stop?" "I don't know if you can from here," the child said, quietly, running its fingers through the faux fur of its doll, "it does what it wants, where it wants, how it wants. I don't think it has a mind..." The child looked down at the ground, despair audible in its tone: "...but it does have a will." "...what does it want?" The child looked Mallew dead in the eye, striding up next to him, placing a small hand on his bloodied shoulder, frowning: "You can't beat it by force." "What does it want, though-" "You can't punch it, you can't light it on fire-" "How do I beat i-" "It wants you to forget everything else but what it wants-" "Is it me, i-is it you?! I don't understan-" "It wants you to remember why it's here." Mallew went silent as the child did, his eyes eventually glancing past it, seeing a figure hiding in the doorframe. A short, skinny little kid, no older than five either, his little hands pressed against the doorframe as he half-hid behind it, but Mallew saw enough... He saw its spiky blonde hair, and deep, intelligent amber eyes. Mallew sat up in bed suddenly, making his younger mirror image flinch as he yelled, as loud as he could in his current state: "What's he doing here?!" The child Mallew only frowned, explaining, sternly: "He's just as much a part of who you are now as anyone else. He has his place here. You can't make that go away." "..." Mallew growled, shifting his weight on the now blood-soaked bed, getting to his feet. "How do I wake up?!" "You'll only wake up when it's done with you." Mallew grumbled to himself as he stood, stumbling towards the door with his useless leg dragging behind him. The child Arthur recoiled as he stepped closer and closer, falling back onto its butt as Mallew stumbled through the door, the child staring up at him with fear on its face... Mallew turned to his child doppelganger back in the room, pointing at the Arthur with an angry finger, warning his younger self, as if it could somehow retroactively change fate: "DON'T hang out with this one, he's dangerous." And with that, he pushed past the door and down the hall, taking one moment as he passed the cowering child Arthur, shaking as it peered up at him, to hiss: "Traitor." ~~~ Mallew walked for what felt like years. He went to many places, each as unsettling as the last: The rest of his childhood home, empty and cold, haunted by familiar scents and sights, but no one there. A forest filled with rotten, sharp trees and heavy, acidic air that made his lungs burn. A hospital, empty save one room: a well-lit and welcoming morgue, filled with body bag after body bag, each containing himself. Another room, ceiling as high as the sky, him surrounded by a forest of skyscraper-sized bones, all cracked, shattered, and familiar. His mansion, weathered by hundreds of years of abandonment, left to rot, his underlings and cats long gone, the place no longer his. The apartment, floating like debris in a black void, nothing left but a couch, a note scribbled in awful handwriting that he couldn't even read, and a single blue rose in a dried-out vase. He was losing his patience, and his mind. His nighterrors usually lasted a good long time, but this was something new. He felt like he had been here for years now, and he was slowly losing what little remained of his hope for escape. Was he even going to wake up at all, at this point? Would his twisted mind finally consume him? Eventually, he made his way to a familiar place: his basement, and, in particular, to the chamber where his coffin lay. He stumbled across the cold stone floor: he had spent many long years lying in wait here. In his heyday, this was where he liked to sleep, surrounded by row after row of carefully curated bones, bodies, and possessions of his victims, his coffin in the center of it all. But now there was nothing here but the coffin itself: it stood, ominously, the walls around it long since deteriorated, drapes, wallpaper, and carpet all warped, broken, and unkempt. He could feel it: this was the place. There was nowhere else to wander to: this was where IT wanted him. His old resting place, the place where the remains of countless souls had been gathered like the most precious hoard in the world... And it greeted him with a warm, WARM welcome. The lid to the coffin barely cracked open, a thick slick of black fluid flowing from it, Mallew feeling the pure oppressive, corruptive heat emanating from the rancid gunk, even from here. He had gotten sick on his own ectoplasm before, had even his own powerful essence drained by it upon touch. It would rise in his throat whenever he'd become particularly monstrous, then burn him after he returned to normal like bile, like even his insides wanted him dead, resented him for returning to a more human-like state... So when it burst from the coffin, flooding into the room and flowing against his feet, burning him, he wasn't surprised, by he was surprised by just how hot it was. It was like touching lava, a burning heat so beyond searing that it numbed all other sensation that just roiling, awful heat, like metal cutting to the bone. Feeling that pain, though, he stood his ground: he knew there was nowhere else to go, nowhere else to run, and that, if he wanted to escape this, get away from this thing, he had to face it... And so, he waited. The flood of ectoplasm eventually ebbed, the coffin lid beginning to sliding slowly open...then thrust loudly, aggressively ajar, the lid going flying across the room, Mallew covering his head with his weak, injured and punctured arms. The lid didn't hit him, but the presence of the thing that had emerged from the coffin did, and, slowly opening his eyes, lowering his arms and lifting his head to face it, Mallew felt only one thing... Absolute, primal FEAR. The thing was huge. It towered far overhead, approaching him on all fours just to fit in the space as it tore itself, ripping and snarling, from the coffin. Mallew stared up at it, but in the dark, with little to no light to go by and its gigantic form blocking what little there was, there was only so much he could discern. He could see its massive claws, landing on either side of him like pillars. He could feel its boiling hot breath on him, making his injuries ache and his body feel even weaker, lungs gasping for usable air as it seemed to consume it all, use all available oxygen for its own heat. He could hear it breathing, a low, angry cycle of inhales and exhales, like it was barely containing its urge to tear him apart. It had no eyes, not even eyesockets, just hungry, massive, skeletal jaws, with row after row of teeth that reached back down its throat as far as the eye could see, all the way back to the back of its maw, where Mallew could make out only the faintest hint of light... A burning, churning pinprick of white, painful light, that, upon looking at it, finally made him fall to his knees, its heat being felt even here, a heat and a pain so intense that it made Mallew scream from his mouth, his mind, and his soul. The thing, the power at the core of this creature could only be described with one word, and Mallew didn't dare say it, despite him knowing it to be true... Hellfire. And it was all for him. He was shaking, body in immense, burning agony as he heard the thing's breathing move in closer to him, close in around him as massive jaws opened wide, razor-sharp fangs, like so many stalagmites, and boiling Hellfire, hotter than anything he could ever hope to summon, called out to him, beckoning him like prey to an anglerfish's lure... He had no choice if he wanted to wake up. This was his doing, and this beast was his burden to bear. It may not be sentient. It may not make sense. It may not have a name, but Mallew knew that there was no escaping it. It had the will to make him suffer, and it would get what it desired, for it only had one thing it wanted Mallew to know... That no matter how much he changed, no matter how much he fought, ignored, and tried to outsmart it, it would always win. Mallew would give in, sooner or later, and blood would on his hands again. It was a part of him, as much a part of him as his childhood, that night in the cave, and Arthur, too, and, if he wanted to do well by it, he would remember its name... Wrath. Finally satisfied that Mallew had submitted to it, its jaws snapped shut, carving through Mallew's flesh like it was nothing, Mallew feeling every agonizing, searing, painful shred of his form falling apart, the beast making one last conviction clear... If he ever did manage to get rid of it, he himself would not be far behind. ~~~ Mallew awoke on the floor of his mansion, near gone. His irises burned barely above an ember, his false human skin all but disappeared, his form skeletal, his anchor aching horribly as he laid there, the room lit only by moonlight trickling in through the windows. Mallew laid there, cracked skull lying against the hardwood floor, staring out at the forest beyond, the trees silhouetted against the darkened sky, branches waving in the nighttime breeze, and, as he laid there, he noticed that something was missing... His urges: they were SILENT. They had been subdued by that whole nightmarish experience, about as well as his usual methods did. How...curious. "Ha...ha ha...ha haha ha haaaa..." He laughed, but it was no laugh of triumph, only relief. He was awake, still alive...but only barely. His urges had been pushed back, but nearly at the cost of his own self, and even then it seemed he had only survived because his urges, whom he would not name, had willed him to do so. It had tortured him for what had felt like centuries...but he had emerged, and, as far as he could tell, rolling over onto his back, looking his clawed hands, black suit, and skeletal form over, he hadn't, in fact, given into his urges in the interim. He laughed, sitting there on the floor of the grand entry room of his mansion, his voice a raspy, pained echo...but he was alive. He had told his urges no, and, frightened though he was, badly injured in both mind and body he may be, spared from destruction, perhaps, only by his urges' mercy towards him, he was alive... And he hadn't taken a life, this time. He giggled to himself as he stood, floating towards his bedroom with an odd sort of despairing hope, accepting rebellion, and blissful agony in his badly battered and exhausted mind. His urges had attempted to flare his rage back up inside of him, had shown him again the darkest parts of his past first-hand, had shown him eerie portends and strange scenery, all in the hopes of scaring him into submission, into not fighting back... But, if anything, Mallew had hope, now. He had quashed his urges, even if it had earned him great pain and suffering. He had pushed them back, even if he had barely emerged alive. He had told them no, and, regardless of his urges' inevitable return, today was a victory. He laid down upon his bed, skull resting down against his pillow heavily, the spirit knowing it would take some time for him to heal but, his urges quiet for now, he had no doubt that he could rest for a while, peacefully. He laid there, his cats quickly making their way into the room, hopping up onto the sheets, curling up against of him as he sat there, nuzzled and purred at and gently licked, Mallew giving into their concern and affection as they tended to him in their own little way, pressing up against his skull and skeletal body as if nothing had changed. He looked as close to that original spirit of Love and Vengeance he had been years ago as he had ever been, though he wasn't sure what that meant, just yet.

He let out a deep, exhausted sigh, golden locket heart, cracked, aged, dented, and warped, just as he was, beating along, and, lying there, exhausted but free, and contrary to what his urges may want him to think, he came to a singular, all-consuming conclusion... He would be alright.

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