~If I got any of the words wrong from the bit that was shown in the episode, PLEASE tell me so I can correct them!
~X~
The little boy was drawing - though what he was trying to draw, Izzy couldn't begin to guess. She barely kept an eye on him for the most part and just stayed near him, ignoring him, preferring solitude over spending time with a child.
Her phone still didn't ring. That cop must be cooperating, she thought to herself, smiling. He's really going to do it! The ultimate expression of our love…
She checked on the boy again.
"I'm thirsty," he said when he saw her.
She stared at him for a moment. Does he really expect me to care? she wondered. He looked at her with trusting eyes, and she realized that he did. He wasn't afraid of her at all. That's odd, she thought; I don't exactly try to hide what I am…everyone notices.
She made a split-second decision to test a theory.
She walked over to him, sat down at the table, and picked up a green crayon. She smiled at him wickedly, then started tracing a circle on his paper.
"Ring around the rosie," she sang, slowly and softly, actually trying to be creepy.
"A pocket full of posies," the boy sang with her.
"Ashes, ashes…" The boy had stopped singing, and was watching the crayon move in a circle.
"We all…" She slowed down. "…fall…" She drew a line to the center of the circle she had made. "…down," she said softly, laying the crayon down as she did.
She gave him another evil smile.
He looked at her for a minute.
"Will you play hide-and-go-seek with me?" he finally asked; he was so young, Izzy could hardly understand the words.
So it's true, she thought; he's too young to understand. His parents probably try to protect him from the real world. Poor kid…It's going to be so hard on him when he learns what the world's really like…
But I can do something about that, she realized.
"In a minute," she answered, sitting up. She held out her arms. "Come here," she told him gently.
He got out of his seat and walked up to her, and she lifted him up onto her lap, as she had seen some mothers do.
She stroked his hair. "My grandfather's name was Henry," she told him softly. "He had blond hair, just like you. He was a very scary man." She leaned closer. "Let me tell you a story," she whispered in his ear.
"Okay," the boy said.
Izzy smiled.
"It's a true story," she told him. "It's my story…and it's not a happy story."
"Okay," the boy said again.
Izzy's evil smile widened.
"Once upon a time," she began, "a baby girl was born…and that baby girl was me." Starting it like a children's story is okay, but there's no need to talk in the third person this whole time. She tilted her head. "Are your mommy and daddy nice to each other, Henry?" she asked.
Henry nodded in that hyper, enthusiastic way little kids did.
"Well, mine weren't," Izzy told him. "They never did anything but fight, for as far back as I can remember. Neither one of them wanted to be bothered with me, so they both kept trying to force me on each other. I would wake up with one, be immediately driven to wherever the other was and passed on to them…and, every time, whichever one was the second to deal with me every day would drop me off with my grandfather.
"My grandfather didn't have a wife to hurt...so when I came over, he hurt me - badly, every day. He-" She stopped short as something occurred to her. She tilted her head. "Do you know what rape is?" she asked Henry.
Henry shook his head.
Izzy gave a long-suffering sigh. "Do you know what sex is?" she asked him.
Henry seemed to think about this for a second, then shook his head again.
Izzy rolled her eyes. "Well, I'll have to tell you so you can understand this story," she told him.
"Okay," said the boy.
So I'll be doing his parents a favor, too, Izzy thought; they would have to tell him this anyway, and they would be uncomfortable with it - maybe even too uncomfortable to explain it fully. I feel no shame, so I'll tell him everything. Besides, this makes this more well-rounded: telling him the pleasurable side of darkness before telling him about the pain.
"Well," she said, shifting his weight on her lap, "you know how you have a penis?"
Henry hesitated, then nodded.
"Well, all boys do," she told him; "that's what makes them boys. Girls, on the other hand, have something else, called a vagina. We don't pee out of it, but it's what makes us girls. It's an extra hole between our legs, an opening into our bodies." She smiled nastily. "When a man wants to have sex with a woman, his penis gets all hard - almost as hard as a bone - and it sticks straight out." Izzy gestured with her free hand around the boy's crotch, though she was careful not to touch him. "That lets him stick it into a woman's vagina - into her body - and that's what sex is." Her eyes grew hooded. "And it feels so good," she breathed huskily. "You can't even imagine…There's no better feeling on earth." She stroked his hair. "It goes on, and on, the man thrusting his penis into the woman's vagina again and again, each time more incredible than the last…and after a while, it builds up so much, that you get what's called an orgasm." She closed her eyes and tilted her head back, relishing the thought. "It's the most amazing feeling…Feels so good you can't even think…can't even breathe…" She allowed herself a moan.
The little boy said nothing, but Izzy didn't care. She gave herself one minute, then opened her eyes and pushed the feeling away. The boy's eyes were wide, but more with curiosity than horror; he was definitely starting to feel uncomfortable, but not nearly as much as he should.
"If a man does this while his penis is inside a woman's body, and if nothing has been done to avoid it, the woman might get pregnant," she went on, more matter-of-factly. "It doesn't always happen, but that's how babies are made." She smiled. "You see, your mommy and daddy did this, and that's how they made you."
"Oh," said the little boy. He sounded more confused than anything, like he wasn't sure what to think of all this.
Izzy's wicked smile widened. That's the pleasure; now time for the pain, she thought. He'll know what to think soon enough.
"This is supposed to be done when a man and a woman love each other," she said, "but most of the time, it's not. A boy's penis can get hard when he just thinks a girl's pretty…or for worse reasons." Her evil grin widened even more, and she momentarily widened her eyes for effect. "In fact, sex can happen even if the boy and the girl don't both want it.
"Now," she said, lifting the little boy a bit higher on her lap, "you'll never have this problem, since you're a boy…Well, not quite this problem," she amended nastily. "You see, boys can only have sex when it's what they want, because that's the only time a boy's penis gets hard like that. Girls, however, just have a hole that's there all the time. So, it's possible - and even common - for a boy to have sex with a girl when she doesn't want him to. That's called rape." Her smile faded. "Rape doesn't feel good. It hurts. A lot. It's cruel. It's against the law." She paused for a moment, for effect, then added, "It's what my grandfather did to me…starting before I was even half your age."
Henry's eyes widened, this time only with something resembling horror. Izzy smiled for a moment. Progress.
"I was so small," she went on, no longer smiling, "and he was so big and strong…His penis was far too big to fit in my vagina, but he forced himself in anyway. He hit me, as he did it. He always kept one hand clamped over my mouth so I couldn't scream, and hit me with his other hand. He liked watching me cry. The pain was so horrible…you couldn't even begin to dream of it."
"Why?" asked the boy.
"Why what?" Izzy asked.
"Why did he do that?" Henry asked.
Izzy tilted her head. "Because that was just who he was," she answered, still not smiling, stroking the boy's hair again. "It was what he liked.
"After he finished with me, he always covered the bruises with makeup before letting me go again," she continued before Henry could say anything more, "and he always told me that if I told anyone about what he did to me, he would hurt me more. I was so scared of him. I did what he said. I never told anyone, and my mommy and daddy were too busy fighting each other to even notice...even though I couldn't completely hide the blood.
"Eventually, my mommy and daddy decided not to even keep me anymore, so one day, when I was about your age, they dropped me off to stay with my grandfather and never came back for me…and from then on, my entire childhood was nothing but pain and fear. My grandfather raped me every…single…night." Izzy closed her eyes against the pain of the memory for a moment, then continued,
"By the time I started going to school, I'd had a lot of practice pretending I wasn't hurt when I was around other people, so no one at school noticed, either. Most of the time, when I came home, my grandfather would rape me again, as well as that night. I did my best in school, just working hard not to be noticed by anyone.
"As I got older…bigger…the rape itself started to hurt less. My grandfather didn't like this, so he started hitting me harder." Izzy tilted her head. "He didn't care what age I was," she told the little boy, whose eyes were wide with horror; "what he liked was that he was in control of me, and could hurt me constantly without anyone ever knowing.
"When I was about ten years old, though, something started to change. I started to get used to the pain - all the hurting started to make me stronger. At the same time, my grandfather started to get older, and weaker…though he was still a lot stronger than me. But I started to turn cold. I started to accept that it wasn't going to change…unless I did something."
Izzy smiled wickedly again. "When I was about fifteen years old, I decided I'd had enough, and that I was going to fight back." Henry smiled back at her, and she knew what he was expecting: The triumph of good over evil, like in every fairy tale. If only, she thought nastily, feeling no remorse.
She widened her eyes momentarily in her creepy way. "I stole a knife from the kitchen," she told the boy, smiling with relish, "and whenever my grandfather was away, I went outside, found a rock, and used it to make the knife sharper, until it was sharp enough for what I was going to do. When I was fifteen-and-a-half years old, it was ready. I hid the knife under my pillow and waited for him to come to me that night. When he took off his pants, showing his hardened penis, I pulled the knife out, jumped at him, and used the knife to cut his penis off, so he could never use it against me again!"
Her grin was predatory as she went on, "He screamed. Oh, how he screamed. He was surprised, too - he hadn't thought I was able to fight. He lunged at me, shouting that he was going to kill me, and I didn't hesitate - I stabbed him right in the tummy." She pointed to the corresponding place on her body, then traced her fingernail across it as she went on, "I cut him open, all the way, and I pulled the cut apart and sliced all the organs I saw in there. I gutted him, and I hurt him so much he couldn't do anything to stop me. He died, slowly and painfully, screaming all the way."
Izzy felt Henry start to shake with terror in her arms. She looked him in the eye, her smile one of pure evil, her eyes narrowed with relish as she relived the memory.
"When he was dead, and I was standing over him, covered in his blood…I felt something I had never felt before," she said, softly and evilly: "happiness. He could never hurt me again. No one would ever hurt me again - I wouldn't let them. For the first time in my life, I was free."
Henry was speechless with fright, and Izzy's smile widened. Mission accomplished, she thought smugly. There's just a little more to go…
"I washed the blood off, changed my clothes, and ran," she finished. "I was pretty good with makeup, after all the years of hiding my bruises from people, so I was able to disguise myself pretty well. I ran to another city, found an orphanage, and they took me in. No one ever found me.
"But Henry…" she added nastily, "that thrill I felt when I gave my grandfather a slow and painful death…it never went away. I still feel it. It feels more and more amazing every time I kill."
Henry gasped. Izzy's smile twitched, unable to get wider, and she widened her eyes for a moment again.
"It's like sex to me now," she told him huskily. "You know how I told you about orgasms? I get one every time I painfully kill someone. I love hurting people. I even found a way to make a living just killing."
"A-A-Are you g-going to hurt m-m-me?" Henry asked, his voice trembling with terror.
"Oh, no," she said soothingly, stroking his hair again. "No, no, no." She smiled again. "You're not my type," she told him; "you're too young for me. No fun at all.
"Now you see, Henry, people like my grandfather, and me, are the kinds of people your mommy and daddy make a living trying to stop," she told him. "They try their best…goodness knows, they try their best…but they're outnumbered. For every one person like your mommy or daddy, there are ten people like my grandfather."
"Or you," Henry said softly.
Izzy chuckled. "Or me," she agreed. "But you see, Henry, I didn't have a choice. I wasn't born this way - I was a victim. Choosing to be what your mommy and daddy would call 'evil' was the only way I could save myself. Some people have no reason to like hurting other people - they just do."
"Why didn't you stop when you were free?" asked Henry.
Izzy grinned evilly. "Oh, trust me, Henry," she said wickedly; "once you become evil, you can never go back. It's too much fun," she added in a nasty whisper.
The little boy swallowed nervously.
"Oh, don't be scared of me," Izzy told him in the most soothing voice she could manage, hugging him against her and stroking his hair. "You don't have to be afraid of me; I won't hurt you." She paused, then added, "But there are plenty of people out there who would."
Henry looked up at her.
She smiled creepily. "Some bad guys like their victims young, like you," she said. "Do your mommy and daddy ever tell you not to talk to strangers?"
Henry nodded.
"Well, that's why," Izzy said, her smile widening, her eyes flaring open for a moment in her trademark creepy way. "There's no way to tell who would or wouldn't hurt you. Everyone has evil in them…some choose to ignore it, but many don't. People are bad, Henry. This world is nothing but pain and fear. Fun and games, like hide-and-go-seek…they have no place in the real world. It would be nice if they did, but they don't. But don't worry," she added, hugging him again, "I'm not going to hurt you." She stroked his hair again. "I might have to kill you, if your daddy doesn't do what my partner says…" Henry stiffened in her arms. She held him tighter. "But I don't want to have to do that…and if I do, I won't make it hurt. I'll make it quick, and completely painless." She bent her head down. "I promise," she whispered in her trademark seductive voice, and she kissed him gently on the head.
They stayed like that for a minute. Izzy wasn't used to trying to actually comfort someone, so she had no way of knowing if she was succeeding at all. Why am I even doing this? she wondered. She didn't know.
Finally, she pulled back, and pushed him away slightly, so she could look him in the eye. "Now, Henry," she said, "do you know why I told you all this?"
Henry shook his head.
"I told you so that, when you see for yourself how cruel the world is, it won't be so surprising," she told him. "You'll be prepared. It won't break you." She didn't know if he understood the idiom - or several other words she had used - but she hoped he could guess.
Henry said nothing.
"Henry, this is just what the world is like," Izzy said, as gently as possible. "You needed to know. Your mommy and daddy were going to have to tell you about the world someday anyway - I just happened to be more experienced in it, and less afraid to talk about it. People don't normally talk about these kinds of things…especially not sex. But it's how the world is, and you needed to know."
Henry still said nothing.
They were both silent for a minute; Izzy could see that the innocence in Henry's eyes was almost completely gone.
She tilted her head. "Are you still thirsty?" she asked him.
He didn't move for a minute, then slowly nodded.
"Okay," she said, "I'll get you some water. Come on," she said lifting him off her lap. She stood up and put a hand on his shoulder as he walked back over to his seat. "You keep drawing," she told him gently; "I'll be right back with some water for you."
"…Okay," Henry said.
Izzy smirked as she walked away. Another good deed done, she thought. I didn't tell him more than he absolutely needed to know, so I didn't drop the whole world on him…the whole truth might have broken him, poor kid.
What she hadn't told Henry, regarding herself, was that she enjoyed killing people because any one of them could be evil. Her grandfather had never been found out…and even if he had, what of it? The police would have arrested him, maybe put him in jail for thirty years or so, but they wouldn't have given him what he'd deserved. They wouldn't have returned all the suffering he had inflicted on her. The police prioritize murderers over child molesters, she thought angrily. Bah! Killing is one thing - once a person is dead, it's over, they're done, they're not in pain anymore. But torture…making someone live with unbearable pain…that's the greater crime.
She would never trust anyone, nor had she ever, except for the man she loved. Anyone could be a monster. She knew she was, but at least she used evil to fight evil. She ended lives, hopefully before the people she killed had a chance to hurt someone innocent, knowing that she was doing the right thing. All adults were evil unless proven otherwise, and killing them slowly and painfully was the ultimate justice.
The ultimate thrill.