A/N: I've decided to branch out a little from my usual style of writing and try something a little different. I don't know if I'm entirely happy with this one, but I spent a while on it and I don't think there's much more I can work in without making it too cluttered. Anyway, this one is written in a more morbid sort of style, with a different sort of voice than I usually use, and was actually typed up at eleven-thirty at night on my iPod Touch. I hope you like. ^^
Disclaimer: Don't own Yu-Gi-Oh!
Bakura enjoys their screams far too much.
The first time Bakura ever killed was when he was fourteen years old. He remembers perfectly the feeling of the man's heart, soft and tender and juicy as it dripped blood between his swollen fingertips, staining the soft skin a beautiful, ugly red. He can still feel it pulsing if he tries, if he closes his eyes and concentrates hard enough on the life flowing through his— Ryou's— veins. Sometimes, he wonders if they're one and the same, if the tissue of the man's heart has managed to rot its way through his very flesh, lace its poison through his body. The thought makes him laugh.
Yes, Bakura's favorite ones to kill are the screamers. He loves to listen to their shrieks bounce off of the walls, begging for mercy and justice and pity they'll never receive. "I have a family," they screech, "I have a wife and children to protect!" This just makes Bakura laugh more, because he knows that they're not thinking of their wives and children as he traces his knife over the smooth curve of their jaws, watching as their blood gathers slowly in little beads on the pale tissue. They're thinking of their own skins, devising desperate plots and notions and plans for how they can save themselves from the terror and agony that comes with being slit open from your belly up. Bakura just smiles and lowers his knife into position, shuddering in pleasure as he makes his first incision, careful and caring as any artist as he works at removing the brain from the skull in a twisted, beautiful surgery.
Each time Bakura finds a new way to make someone cry, to scream and writhe and moan, he ticks off an imaginary box in his mind, humming a little to himself as he works.
"Another one down," he thinks. "A million more to go."
And he uses each carefully planned method, each new stroke and cut and flick of his knife to his advantage every time, because their screams are music to Bakura's ears, and they sing a melody of loveliness— and terror and fear, which are the things he loves most in his crazed, cruel life.
To Bakura's ears, each scream is different. Nails on a chalkboard, blood-choked sobs; each is precious and unique to him. The perfect treasure.
(And we all know how much Bakura loves treasures.)
He steals them, seals them away in tiny, labeled jars in his brain, each one perfectly categorized, set in easily-remembered alphabetical order.
A is for agony, the sound of your pain. B is for bloody, red mixed with rain.
He whispers the names as he works, the names of every family member, every friend he lost to the molten Millennium Items, carving hate and pain and fear into soft, supple skin. He works slowly, because one hundred is a large number, after all, and he has to have time to count them all.
"They screamed just like you did," he murmurs. "They made that exact same noise."
Yes, the screams and shouts and yells and shrieks and pain remind Bakura of home, which is why he enjoys them far too much.
Not too happy with the ending here, but oh well. Reviews are much appreciated. :3
-Eggy