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"your hide will make a fine poncho." |
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Post by Vespyr on Dec 5, 2011 23:17:13 GMT -8
Lost and Found
“Vincent… Vespyr.”
She lit a candle and set it on the wooden desk in the center of the shadowy room. Time would seem to tick backward for the next few hours while the wax slowly melted and dripped and the flame cast its pleasantly quivering glow onto the walls. Fleeting moments of the distant past reappeared in the dim illumination, only to disappear again, at peace. Before the night and the candle were spent, Vespyr and Vincent would retrace their steps to that fateful place in the past where they had last seen each other.
“Better than the old names, I suppose. Whatever they were.” “…I wish I could remember,” replied the other twin sullenly. There was a moment in which a pensive silence pervaded the room, while Vespyr leaned thin body against the desk and faced Vincent, who was seated across from her on the bed.
“Why remember? Hardly anything worth remembering, dear.”
Her voice was tinged with something grim and resentful despite the calm smile she wore. “…I know, but I can’t help but feel like my memories have been… stolen. I hate the empty gap that’s left. At times I hardly know who I am.” “No matter who you were before, you’re someone else entirely now; as am I. We, as we were back then, are dead. We can be whoever we want to be.” “But… You haven’t changed.” “I have,” she corrected him, closing her eyes. She had difficulty imagining her brother as anything but the innocent, terrified boy he was when she had last seen him. She didn’t want him to be; if he hadn’t adapted, he would not have been able to survive.
“You should know, dear. I’m rather vile.”
She simpered in a manner that made it clear: she mourned nothing of her transformation, and wouldn’t have it any other way.
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Post by Vincent. on Dec 6, 2011 10:37:19 GMT -8
[shadow=black,left,300]A Certain Degree of Similarity[/shadow]
“…So I’ve heard.”
Vincent flashed an impish grin, his eyes glinting dark and mirthful. Lighting a cigarette, he let his carefree gaze drift about the diabolically captivating room.
“So I suppose that’s two of us.” “Oh? What’s your claim to infamy?”
His sister looked aloofly amused. Vincent was suddenly unsure of himself; unsure of her definition of vile, and unsure of how she would react.
“..I’ve… killed people.”
To his surprise and relief, Vespyr seemed rather unaffected if not outright pleased. But she remained wordless, staring at him like a violet-eyed cat. Vincent smiled and laughed nervously—
“…what?” “Oh, nothing. It’s just interesting.” “What is?” “That after all this time apart, we’re still twins.”
Their nearly-identical faces peered at each other curiously in the half-light. Vincent wanted to believe her, but already he had seen differences: she was confident, and he was prone to anxiety; she was chaotic, and he was partial to order. Still, it made no difference. Twins separated at a young age had grown up separately to become killers. It was uncanny and delightful.
"...Where have you been?
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"your hide will make a fine poncho." |
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Post by Vespyr on Dec 6, 2011 14:47:01 GMT -8
Development & Awakening
"...Where have you been?"
"Here and there... 'there' being San Francisco for ten years or so. I got sick of it after awhile so I came down here a couple of years ago. I hardly keep track of the time..."
By now, the smile had faded and her face was once again an unreadable mask.
"San Francisco was where the train left me. I never dared to venture anywhere else because I was certain I would find you there eventually, if I waited long enough. I lingered around the station for months—Vespyr Street Station—waiting for you to step off the train, but you never did. They caught me and put me in an orphanage for about a week, but that ended in disaster. I escaped with blood on my hands and nowhere to go. While it felt strange to call that city my home, I could hardly call myself homeless. I found it surprisingly easy to survive there. I lived in the basement of a department store for about a year. After that, I slept in alleyways, gutters, storm drains, and dark crevices during the day. Eventually I started frequenting rooftops as well. There isn't one part of that city I don't know; I had all the time in the world to do whatever I wanted. That was life."
Vespyr crossed her arms and propped up her fist beneath her chin. Her gaze wandered thoughtfully across the floor as she recalled her years spent in the northern city. As much as she had come to despise the place after a decade, she admittedly missed ascending its high-rising buildings. At those blustery heights she had first seen the insignificance of man. She spent her nights traversing the roofscapes, glaring downward, growing distant. There were no magnificent skyscrapers in Long Beach to compare to those that she perched atop of in her youth. There were dark alleyways and drain tunnels and abandoned lots, but surely nothing to give her quite the same top-of-the-world experience.
But in reality, she had never stopped looking down on the world.
"I never spoke to anyone. I was afraid to, at first, but after a time I realized I just didn't want to; I vehemently hated other human beings. I started killing. In the beginning it was merely self-defense, but after awhile I began to enjoy the violence. Every night I woke with the insatiable urge to hunt, to get my claws wet, to drink blood. I was voracious and unstoppable; the police could never catch me, let alone track me down. I never ran into any problems until I started meeting individuals who were uncannily stronger than most people. These kids—usually they were my age or a bit older—all seemed to be localized to a few schools. I never attended, but I lurked out of curiosity, always lingering at a safe distance. I started noticing some rather odd things.
The students fought each other like beasts and the teachers would have to beat them into submission. Most were unbelievably strong. Some even seemed to have superhuman abilities. The more I observed them, the more I began to notice them outside of the school as well. Still, it didn't matter until one of them, a cannibal, caught and almost killed me; it was then that I really started paying attention. He wounded me badly and then tried to fix me, but I was stubborn and escaped. I stayed in the city for a few more months, but only in constant hiding. Finally, I decided to abandon San Francisco and move south.
It wasn't a smart move on my part to travel with a haphazardly stitched-up gash on my arm; I'm surprised I even made it as far as Long Beach before I was incapacitated with blood poisoning and other infections. As I was teetering on the edge of oblivion in an alleyway some night, a stranger in an iron mask, another one of those strange individuals, found me. That would be the beginning of a long period of tribulations in which I came across the realization that I, too, am a part of the same superhuman race that breeds and festers within the schools. Over the course of nearly two years bound to him I grew stronger and discovered that I cannot die. He killed me twice; I only had to kill him once."
By the time she had finished speaking, her eyes had gone dark with memories and her voice had developed a slight hissing tone.
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Post by Vincent. on Dec 7, 2011 18:27:58 GMT -8
[shadow=black,left,300]The Unpleasant Truth[/shadow]
Vincent was so focused on the movement of his sister’s eyes and lips as she spoke that he forgot he was even holding the cigarette. By the time she paused, it was half turned to ash. His sister’s last few words resonated in his ears and reminded him of something “Unfettered” said earlier. At the time he merely passed it off as some sort of figurative talk, but coming from Vespyr, it sounded all too literal.
“…Can’t… die?”
He nervously tapped the ash off the end of the cigarette and resumed inhaling it, slowly, calming his nerves. He didn’t know what he wanted the truth to be: that this talk of death was all some sort of metaphorical obscuration of words, or that she was truly incapable of dying. While the latter would most certainly explain a lot of things about his own past… it would also make Vincent sick to his stomach to know that his sister had been killed several times before. He waited, anxious beneath the surface, for her elaboration.
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"your hide will make a fine poncho." |
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Post by Vespyr on Dec 7, 2011 19:06:34 GMT -8
Explaining the Inexplicable
Vespyr found herself smiling.
“I was hoping you wouldn’t know what I meant, dear. It brings me much comfort to know that you haven’t had to find this out for yourself.”
She crossed both her arms across her chest and shifted her pensive gaze upward, to the ceiling that she had once upon a time blacked out with charcoal, pondering how she might even begin to explain the phenomenon of her—and she assumed, his—apparent immortality. Not only was it a rather fantastical thing to claim, but also something that she had barely come to understand yet. All she really knew was that she’d been killed three times and she was somehow still alive and unharmed. Perhaps the best place to start would be at the beginning.
“I was in a particularly nasty fight with someone. He cracked my skull, snapped my spine, and broke my neck. When I came to consciousness the next day I was in excruciating pain but I was alive—and there wasn’t a scratch on me. Ever since then, my blood has been abnormally dark. Black, even.
It happened again several months later. I was stabbed in the stomach twice with hydrochloric acid-tipped blades. I think it was the acid, not the stab wounds, that killed me; when I woke up, the acid it was burning and left scars where the wounds had been. Had been. At that point I started getting wise to this oddity, but I still wasn’t sure. So I gambled with my life to find out if I really was as death-defying as I thought.
On the next occasion, I bled out after being shot through the chest and abdomen five or so times. Five… seven? I don’t know. I suppose I stopped counting after the first one. Anyhow, as I predicted, I woke up sometime later with nothing but bruises where the bullet holes had been. And a rather shaken ‘Unfettered’. Evidently it was a traumatic experience.”
Vespyr turned and cast a sidelong glance at the German behind her, wondering if he was awake and possibly listening in. Then she realized that she didn’t really mind, and turned her attention back to her brother. Vincent’s face had gone null of color.
“What’s wrong, dear?”
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Don't bleed on the carpet. |
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Post by Vincent. on Dec 7, 2011 23:00:32 GMT -8
[shadow=black,left,300]Suspicions Confirmed[/shadow]
Vincent continued to take long, drawn-out drags on the cigarette in hope that the nicotine would kick in and return the feeling of placid normalcy to his body and his internal organs, which were churning with unease at the moment as unwanted, gruesome images flooded his mind: the body of Vespyr, he imagined, broken and distorted; her blood; his blood, leaking from his wrists where a sharp, rusty screw had cut through with ease.
“What’s wrong, dear?”
After putting the last of the cigarette out, he clasped his hands together apprehensively and met her gaze once more.
“…When I was about thirteen or fourteen… I committed suicide.”
Up until now he’d passed the failed attempt off as a mere delusion—some elaborate dream of despair—because he was reluctant to consider the possibility that he could not fathom had taken place. He had to find some understanding in order to cope with the aftereffects, so he understood it to be nothing more than a fantasy.
…But of course, Vincent was a terrible liar and never truly succeeded in fooling himself about anything.
“…I woke up the next morning without a mark on me, though I was covered in dried blood. Too much blood to be all my own. Somehow I’d made it over the wall that surrounded the orphanage, and I was free.
...A few days later, I read in the papers that there had been a massacre the night I escaped. No one had seen the killer. Four boys were slaughtered; the same boys that had beat me up that night before I killed myself. The newspapers said five… Four bodies, and one missing. They never bothered to suspect that the missing boy could have been the killer. I had a hard time believing it myself… I didn’t remember anything.”
By the time he had finished speaking, Vincent’s head was in his hands. He chuckled quietly to himself, but it was a strained, tired sort of laugh and it did little to hide the distress in his voice.
“…So I guess we’re both dead?”
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"your hide will make a fine poncho." |
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Post by Vespyr on Dec 7, 2011 23:37:37 GMT -8
Long-Awaited Goodnight
“We were always dead, Vincent. From the very beginning.
We were never supposed to exist. Because of that, there’s something in us that’s missing. Like our names, it’s something we can never hope to reclaim. Whatever it is—a soul, maybe—is lost.
But we don’t need it.
We don’t need a soul to live. We don’t need to have a purpose to exist. We don’t need humanity; it only makes us mortal.
They’ve tried to kill us. But you can’t kill something that doesn’t live. You’ll only piss it off and give it a reason to make you wish it was never born.”
Vespyr rose slowly and turned herself to sit beside him on the bed. Vincent leaned over until his weary head rested on her lap and she ran her hands through his hair as soothingly and naturally as she had so many years ago. Her amethyst eyes were half-closed and lost in the darkness above her.
“The only thing I ever truly regretted,” she said quietly, “was that I let them tear us apart.”
“It’s not your fault.”
Vespyr was silent. Of course she’d always blamed herself, but then it didn’t really matter, did it?
She felt her brother yawning and looked down at him fondly, still running her fingers through the soft white hair.
“You should sleep. It’s been a long day.”
“When will you?”
“Eventually.”
He began to lift himself, but got only far enough for Vespyr to stand up before he would feel her hand on his chest softly pressing him down again. The bed was his for tonight. With one more stroke of his hair, Vespyr bid him goodnight and moved toward the door.
“…Vespyr? Will ‘Unfettered’ be alright?”
“He’ll live,” she replied, uncertain but optimistic.
“Goodnight.”
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