Author's Note: So, we come again to the start of another story. I have no idea where this one is going or what's going to happen so I can't make any promises of what's going to happen. So far I can tell you that it's pretty gruesome and should NOT be read by anyone under the appropriate age. Just bear with me on this and please believe that I'm not a sadistic psychopath... well, not really... Anyway, I'd say enjoy, but I'm not sure this is one of those stories. Just give it a few chapters and feedback is uber appreciated. So without any further ado, I give you my evil side: Rogue Rouge.
WANTED FOR MURDER:
ROGUE ROUGE
$1,000 REWARD
The gloved hand tore the poster from the side of the whorehouse, dark lips curved in a sneer. The picture on the poster was a far cry from what she had looked like when she used to dance and sing a lifetime ago. Then the posters were advertizing the next show and she was pictured as the rising star, the beautiful young girl with the voice and looks of an angel. But that was then. Now? Well, now things were different. A whore named Cheri had taught her to use lemon juice to bleach her dark auburn hair and an American named Jill taught her to use an iron to straighten her curls into flat, smooth lanks. The rest had been easy. She had taken the blood-red lipstick that always wore from the purse of woman whose husband she had killed just minutes before. She rarely went out in the daylight so her skin faded to a pasty white. And her eyes, they had changed too. Not color, of course, but there were most definitely different. There was no sparkle or shine or innocence in their brown depths any longer. They were cold and hard and uncaring. They had changed the most.
Folding the poster neatly in half and tucking it between her black coat and red corset, the French girl known as Rouge continued walking down the nearly deserted streets of a blossoming New York. More emigrants arrived nearly every day at Ellis Island to start clean. At the turn of the century, the young nation was filled with tense wonder and hopes fueled with promise. But under the very noses of the faces lifted to heaven in prayer of a new start was a corruption that stretched back beyond the New World and its undiscovered fortunes. Certain individuals of malicious intent had infested themselves into the hierarchy of the government and aristocracy. They preyed on the exuberant and naive, always ready to cheat, swindle, steal and even kill for the old money in young families.
She had belonged to a family like that for one brief flash of happiness. The group of men, The Policy is what they called their secretive group, had promised to ruin the lives of her new family unless they were paid off, but when her they had refused to play in their trap of a game and turned the tables around, the vengeance of the crooks had been swift.
"I have one?" Rouge asked one of two men, seated in the dirt outside of a bar.
A filthy, gaunt man with rotting teeth gave her a sickening smile, pulling the cigarette she had indicated at from his lax lips, looking first at the cigarette and then at the girl. "Little young to be smoking, ain't ya, dearie?"
Her English was far from perfect and while she understood them fine, she cocked her head slightly to one side and gave them her best imitation of a sad doll.
"Alright, alright. I guess even the young ones need a healthy habit," he said as his body became wracked with coughing. The man spat whatever he had managed to cough up on the ground, taking one last drag before handing it to the girl.
Just as her fingers were about to enclose on the cigarette, the man pulled it back, catching a glimpse of the red under her coat. "Wait a minute now, watcha got hid under there? Looks like someone's not so young after all. How about you do us a favor and we'll give you a fresh smoke?" The man rubbed the back of his hand over his pants and Rouge wished that he'd burn his manhood off with the cigarette he held.
Smiling and turning back towards the darkened alley, she beckoned to the two men with her finger. They laughed and jostled each other in their excitement. She was undoing her coat, her back to them when they came near her. The poster fell unheeded to the ground. She let her coat drop on top of it and revealed her crimson corset and short, black skirt that came just above her garters and torn black stockings.
She could hear the metallic sound of one of the men undoing his belt and trousers as she finally stopped at the end of the alley. When she turned around she watched their faces change. The copious amount of consumed alcohol made their reactions slow, but somehow more enjoyable to watch as they went from lustful to uncertainty to fear. Tied around the waist of her corset was a thick leather belt, snugly holding in place four rather large knives that laid flat against the boning of the corset.
Both tried to run, but only one made it out of the alley. He was of little concern to her. People would mistake him for a hallucinating drunk. The other man was the one she wanted anyway, the one who had done all the talking. He tripped on his lowered trousers and fell to the ground. The girl descended on him, flipping him over and placing the end of the knife against his exposed manhood.
"Move and lose it," she said enunciating as best she could around her French accent.
The man froze in petrified terror. "Don't hurt me. I didn't mean nothing by it I swear. I wouldn't have made you do nothing you didn't want to." He began blubbering like an idiot and was soon reduced to pitiful sobs, making it easier to raid his pockets. The one good thing about drunks was that they took all the money they had with them to the bars so they could keep drinking as long as they had change.
Along with the money, not much, but enough to buy her a hot meal and a cheap place to sleep for the day, she also found his matches. Tucking the money next to her left breast, she took one of the matches and struck it on the ground next to the man's face. The action made him squeal with fright. She inched the blade between his legs higher.
"One more sound and you'll never think about another woman without remembering this night." Bending towards his face, she kissed each of his cheeks, leaving smudged lip marks of deep red. It was her trademark. That was how she had acquired the name Rouge. She stood, giving the man a solid kick between his legs to ensure he didn't follow her or alert the police before she had a chance to escape. One man saying he saw her was a fool of a drunk. Two men meant suspicions became raised. The man pulled his knees up to his chest and rolled onto his side, fighting the vomit that coiled in his stomach.
Pulling the poster from where it had lain under her coat, she held the lighted match beneath it, watching it catch easily. She held the corner of the poster for as long as she could, getting a small thrill from the flames licking up the parchment greedily. The ash and remnants fell to the cold ground as she picked up her coat, securing her knife back into her belt and wrapping herself up.
Now, to finish what she had set out to do before she had become distracted by the wanted poster. It had been a wonderful little distraction though, however brief. It meant that she was getting somewhere, and that, perhaps, they were just a little afraid of her. It was always easy to tell the level of fear the pursued had of their pursuer because the reward price got higher. A thousand American dollars wasn't much, not in the grand scheme of things. Not compared to all that they had taken from her. But it would grow. She would guarantee it. Possibly even by the next day, when she crept out from whatever decrepit hole she was sure to crawl into as the morning approached, she would see that sketch of her face with twice the amount posted.
They would never find her though. She looked just like every other whore now. Besides, who would give much credence to a young woman murderer? That was a sport for the renegade man or hardened criminal, not the softer, weaker sex. No one suspected that a woman who had everything taken from her, who had nothing left to lose, would be more dangerous than any man could ever be. Men were rash. They sought revenge in the form of immediate retaliation. But a woman was patient and conniving. She would exact her own justice on those who hurt her if it took the rest of her life.
It had taken her two years to get to where she was and she was prepared for it to take even longer, depending on how the night turned out. The first kill had been, surprisingly, her easiest when it came to tracking down the men who had destroyed her life. He had still been in France when she was finally released from the hospital. She had seen him just walking down the street, eating an apple and laughing at something the woman on his arm had said. She never knew his name but she followed him, anger and hatred growing in intensity with every step. If she lost sight of him, she was certain she would never get another chance. Chance to do what she didn't yet know.
When he went into a restaurant for lunch, she sat outside and waited. When he stepped into a shop, she waited around the corner for him to exit. When he and the woman finished their day and retired early into a hotel she, asked the man at the desk who he was, but he refused to tell her anything. She tried to find out what room he was in, but the man at the desk made her leave, threatening to call the police if she did not go. She thought he had escaped from her. She had wanted to cry, but could not even force tears. So she continued to wait. Her patience had eventually paid off and the man snuck out a few hours later. It was harder to follow him at night when there were fewer people on the street and she had to bite hard on her lower lip to keep from groaning about her muscles that had grown stiff as she waited.
His midnight stroll took him to a night hall. On the street her torn and dirty dress was easily overlooked, but in there it stood out. All the girls were in bright colors with dresses tailored to make men look at what wasn't covered. The one good thing about them though, was that they were designed to be quickly taken off and it didn't take her long to sneak into one of the rooms, easily ignored by the rambunctious couple who were busy in the bathroom. She gathered up the yellow dress that had been haphazardly discarded and changed as quickly as she could. The corset top was fit with stitching in the front so, while it all felt a little backwards, it was relatively quick work to fit it on.
When she emerged, the man she was following was being led to another small room in the opposite corner.
"You there!" a woman's heavy voice called to her. The authority that the voice exuberated forced her to stop and turn. A large woman with a tray of various fruits and cheeses waddled up to her. "You new here, girl?" the woman asked, sizing her up.
"First night," came the anxious reply.
"Well, then take this to Dyorick," she said, pointing with a fat finger to a humongous man, richly draped in fabric with four women hand feeding him similar fruits. The sight was revolting. Not wanting to get distracted from her task, she took the tray and detoured back to the room she had seen the man enter. As she approached, the door swung open and the girl who had been walking with him, a redhead in a blue dress came stumbling out, one of her sleeves torn.
"I ain't a proper lady, but I sure as hell ain't a pig to be treated like that!" she called back into the room.
Seizing the opportunity, Rouge slipped into the room and shut the door behind her, setting the tray down on a simple and rickety looking table.
"Who the hell are you?" a voice from the bed called. She bit back vomit as his words induced a convulsion of memories. She turned to face him, unprepared for what she was going to do next.
"Don't you remember me?" The man seemed confused and taken aback."Remember this?" she asked, lifting the skirt up to reveal a jagged gash of a scar, bright red and clearly relatively fresh.
The man's eyes started at her inner thigh as he tried to remember. "You? I thought we killed you," he said with little concern, laying back against the bed. "Guess you're more resilient then I thought. Got a taste of what a real man feels like and wanted some more, did you?"
His self-assured air made the bile rise to her throat. "Something like that," she forced herself to say, carrying the tray to the bed. Picking up the small, somewhat dull knife that was meant to be used to cut off slabs of cheese, she allowed all the hatred to billow inside her, giving her courage to do what she must. The knife trembled in her hand as she turned towards him. He could see the apprehension in her eyes and mistook its meaning. Grabbing her and tossing her backwards on the bed, the knife fell from her hand. He climbed on top of her, forcing his tongue in her mouth. She tried to fight him off but he was too strong and she was still weak.
He shoved his hand under her skirt, raking against her sensitive scar and igniting a flare of pain. She used that pain to bring back the exact moment she wanted most to forget. She was immediately filled with such a putrid horror and disgust that the overwhelming need for his death took complete control and she surrendered gladly.
Biting into his wriggling tongue as hard as she could she simultaneously lifted her knee to his groin. He fell back, mouth bleeding and swearing. She located and retrieved the fallen knife.
"You fucking whore! I'll kill you!" he spat over mouthfuls of blood. He reached for her as she swung at him. She expected it to be like cutting butter. That's how it had felt when it had been done to her, that her flesh was no thicker than soft butter as they had cut into her. But their knives were sharper. Nonetheless, it entered his stomach soundlessly.
At first, he hadn't even realized what had happened and kept coming at her. She pulled the knife out and swung again, higher this time. She felt the immediate hard surface of ribs, but the knife glanced off and slid in between. He felt that one. His eyes grew wide as he missed grabbing her arms and fell off the bed instead.
Unable to stop herself if she had even wanted to, she knelt beside him and began blindly stabbing, raising the knife as high above her head as she could and plunging it down with both hands. Sometimes the knife sank all the way up to where she grasped it and sometimes it only went in an inch or two.
Images, horrible images, flashed with every stab of the knife. The dancing. The smiling faces. The well-wishes. Those were perhaps more painful than the ones that followed. The doors bursting inward as men with guns rushed in, shooting bullets into the air, grabbing people and dragging them away. She could still hear their demanding voices followed by screams resounding in her ears.
By the time she stopped, she couldn't lift her arms anymore and her canary yellow dress as well as her arms and face were stained red. The knife clanked to the floor and lay there accusingly.
As the adrenaline rapidly wore down and she came back to her senses, she looked at the mutilated mass before her. This room didn't have a bathroom, but she wouldn't have had time to make it before she vomited anyway. She was shaking uncontrollably as she tried to wipe off the blood on the stained sheets, but there had been so much of it. She never knew how much a person could bleed.
She scrubbed madly at her face and arms until she wasn't sure if she was still covered in his blood or if she was making herself bleed. The man's coat lay where he tossed it on the floor. She wrapped herself in it and vomited again. It smelled like him. She felt suffocated by it but she had no other choice. There was a door propped open somewhere near. She could feel the cold fresh air and hear the chatter of women. Stumbling almost blindly towards these sensations she finally tumbled out into the night, drawing calls from the other girls about not being able to stand the life of a whore.
Ignoring anyone and everything she ran, keeping the coat crossed over the dress. The screams came shortly later and the sirens soon after that. She had wandered off into the night, not knowing where to go or what to do, not even sure that she cared what happened to her. So certain she would be caught at any moment. But no one ever came to take her away. She was utterly alone.
She had survived that night and many nights after that until she came to the decision that all the men who had done that to her deserved the same fate. Every single one who participated in such atrocities, ruined and ended so many lives, needed to die. She left all but her memories behind, even her name. Christine Daae died the night that and Rouge was born. She had set out to learn how to kill. She became an excellent student.