So listen, this is explicit violence. If you know you can't handle gore or the like, please, please refrain from reading this. I don't want to cause any psychological damage or something- I doubt it will happen, but still. For those of you with a stomach like mine, I hope you enjoy!
A single light shone overhead. It flickered a bit when he first flipped the switch, but settled down as time went on, emitting a soft hum that spoke volumes of its age and use. It was the only illuminate source he'd be needing, though, and sustained well enough, so he didn't bother with another.
In front of him lay an array of tools. The light glinted on the metal corks and screws and pinchers. He polished them with a damp rag each, careful to have them clean in his meticulous way. It was a compulsive obssession; he knew what these tools were about to help him with, and though the messy fact stood, he couldn't help but care that they were clean and orderly beforehand.
The tin tray tinked quietly as he placed the last of the tools on it. It sounded loud in the pregnant silence that hung in the air. Jellal took the tray by its handles and walked over into the shadows where the air was damp. He'd never thought having a cellar would actually be useful-- she'd wanted it, for an armory or some other-- yet here he was, in their cellar, about to put it to use. Now he wished he'd acknowledged it earlier and had the chance to tell her; he wasn't using it as an armory, but she would have had less to weigh her down when she left. His blood began to simmer thinking about it, so he forced himself to change his train of thought. It was difficult.
He set the tray down on an old wooden table. The light from a few feet away was just enough to dully shine over the tray so that only he could see his tools, and it cast his shadow over the chair beside the table. The chair was plastic and worn like the old table, but it was reinforced with bands that wrapped around a man's bare arms, wrists, and legs. He was stripped of his clothing except for his underwear. He was out cold so as to prevent too much resistance.
When the man woke up, he groaned.
"Shit," Jellal saw him sluggishly stir, turning his head to try and see his surroundings. There was nothing but darkness. "Where the hell am I?"
Jellal didn't answer his question. Instead, he directed the man's attention to the tin tray by picking up one of the tools: a pair of tweezers. He wasn't quite sure what he was going to do with them yet, but he might as well answer some of the man's other questions while he thought about it.
"You should remember me; I'm the guy who's house you broke into two days ago. You remember that?"
The guy was still very dysfunctional. He nodded his head, looking like he didn't quite remember but also like he knew exactly what he'd done and wasn't sure whether he should be admitting to it or not. His jaw was slack when he talked. "Yeah . . ."
Jellal played with the tweezers in his hand while he played with ideas in his head. He walked around in the darkness aimlessly, meandering as if his soul had been separated from him and was dragging him on a leash as it tried to find the other half of itself. It would find nothing.
"Do you remember what you did after you broke in?"
"Not really . . ." the man's words were sloppy, and his "r's" came out like "w's." weally instead of really.
Jellal stopped. "You don't?"
"Ah, I dunno," he groaned again, and a dull slushing sound reached Jellal's ears. It was followed by the wet sliding of exposed bones, like ice sliding over granite, "I can't think straight," stwait not straight.
Jellal suddenly knew what to do with his tweezers.
He took two long strides to the chair and the table, and stood in front of the perpatrator. His fist came up fast to knock his jaw back into place with a loud and moist shlunk! The man in the chair slumped to the side from the heavy hit and started to sputter up blood. Jellal took the tweezers in his hand and latched them onto the shell of the man's ear, squeezing tight. The man yowled.
"You know what you did." He hissed in his ear, "And if I have to say it myself, you're leaving this cellar in small pieces."
Pieces. Small, mangled, bloody pieces that are bloody scarlet like her bloody hair--
The man didn't answer the question, just moaned and groaned, and Jellal squeezed hard enough to puncture the cartilage.
"Aaggh!" the man released a pained cry.
"Say it," Jellal prompted right into his ear, "I want to hear you to tell me exactly what you did to her! Tell me!"
The man's voice came out wobbly, his tongue lazy and covered in blood. But his "r's" were right now. "I really . . . can't remember."
Jellal wished he couldn't remember.
There was blood; blood everywhere. Moonlight filtered through the ruined window to reveal glass littered on the floor in hazardous shards promising pain, the room turned upside down with the bed sheets a tangled mess around her legs, the dresser thrown on its side, a pile of clothes on the floor-- he'd wished for a life washed in her essence, but not like this.
He'd never wanted this. He'd never wanted her clothes removed and strewn about haphazardly. He'd never wanted her beautiful skin blemished by another man's sinful pleasures. He'd never wanted her delicate face abused by greedy hands. He'd never wanted her scarlet identity plastered on the bed and the sheets and the walls and the floor and all over her body and all on him-- oh god. He'd never wanted her to be used while he was gone. He'd never-- never-- wanted to come home late from work.
And the beast responsible was standing over her looking like he just had a fucking field day. He raged, took the man by the throat without a second thought and slammed him into the floor. He repeated the action several times, wanting the man to die but thought better of it.
He decided that he would have a field day too.
It wasn't fair that this criminal got to forget the horrible thing he'd done when he was forced to be tortured by the mere thought. It wasn't fair that remembering it hurt so much, and that his mind just wouldn't let him forget it. It wasn't fair that he couldn't eat apples, or raspberries or strawberries or anything red without thinking about her, that he couldn't look at roses without the terrifying urge to cry, that he could hardly live in his own house without feeling haunted, that not even in sleep did he rest.
Jellal unhinged the tweezers from the man's ear, the thin and sharp prongs shifting the cartilage painfully with a dull shick and leaving the bounded man gasping for breath. He started coughing up blood again from the strain on his throat. In the dull lighting, Jellal could still see where he had crushed the man's esophagus in his rage two days prior; rough pink shards of it stuck out in some areas, crusted over with blood. It was a miracle he could talk at all. Now his ear bled a thin trail down to his collar bone.
"You killed her," Jellal growled, and because he'd had to say it, picked up a knife and drove it hard into the man's thigh. He came close, his voice a breathy and demonic whisper, and his eyes staring hard as if hoping to bore holes through the other man's soul.
"You had your filthy way with my wife and then killed her!"
You monster! Monstermonstermonstermonstermonster--!
The man in the chair whimpered. He put his head down in shame, clearly remembering now that he had seen Jellal's face up close in its animosity just what he had done two days ago. He didn't seem to regret it however, much to Jellal's disgust; he was just frightened. He was afraid of what Jellal was going to do to him.
He should be.
Jellal fidgeted the knife in the man's thigh. Dark blood spilled over the surface of breached skin, looking black as ink in Jellal's shadow, and muscles spasmed in response to nerves that were surely on fire. The man suffering the torture grunted in pain, but didn't let out a shout. The puncture in his ear must have just surprised him; now he was keeping his suffering in, playing it tough. Jellal would break him soon enough.
He pulled the knife out roughly and caught sight of the red blood in the light.
Warm scarlet spilled out in soft and unruly tendrils across the bed. She thought it was a mess, but he loved it. He wished she would spread her hair out across everything.
Jellal blinked at the knife. He walked away from the man in stiff silence, his body on autopilot so that he resemvled a robot, and picked up his damp rag to wipe down the blade. When it was clean-- immaculately, it had to be immaculate-- he went back to his meandering, suddenly lost.
"All because you couldn't control yourself, I lost everything," he stared long and hard at the blade, not paying attention to where he was going and not really caring. His mind spilled out of his mouth. "Why? Why is life so unfair? Do you know? Seriously. I can't comprehend what reason the world could possibly have for punishing me like this-- her like this-- us like this. Have you ever had your everything taken away from you? Has the world wronged you too?" Jellal recognized all the while that it was a vain attempt at emptying his head.
The man in the chair spat crimson onto the floor of the cellar. His leg was being painted the same color by a sickly slow stream of it from his thigh, and his throat looked a wet, wet red. He was beyond worse for wear, but this was far from over. "I never had nothin' to begin with." he gurgled.
Jellal didn't hear him. He walked in his way, tapped the menacing tip of the blade against his fingers contemplatively. "Foolish question; that was a foolish question; the world has wronged everyone. But why?"
And as if coming to a sudden, shocking realization, Jellal froze. His eyes ventured the darkness until he found the soul that would liberate him and he realized where he was. He turned towards the man painted in crimson.
"I'm going to kill you, you know. Does that frighten you?"
The bounded man stared at him uneasily.
"Good. But first, you're going to feel her pain ten times over. Are you ready for that?"
The man's jaw went slack, his tongue sloshed in the pool of blood inside his mouth and a thick, inky bubble popped in his mangled throat. He didn't know what to say.
"You're right. No one could possibly be ready for that," Jellal stepped towards the man and the tin tray and the tools, "Do you know how much pain you put her through? I do. We were one, she and I. And you tore us apart. Now I'll tear the one of you into two pieces, so you know her pain. And I'll do it to you ten times over so you can never do it again."
Finally, the man had the gall to mumble, "You're psycho." shycho now instead of psycho.
He took his throat and he crushed, and he slammed, and he slammed, and he slammed--
"Perhaps. But that's what happens when you take everything from a man who has nothing without everything."
The killer said nothing more. He stared, foreboding, as Jellal took the knife and held it like he was an expert carver or chef; the man was ready to cut. And men sporting the same manic look in their eye as Jellal, who felt the satisfaction of cutting once, always cut again. There was no telling when it would end.
"Ngh," the bound man grit his teeth as best he could without giving himself a headache. Intense pain shot through his jaw and his side, like a firework soaring north in a steady line before exploding and dispersing colorful fire everywhere. More blood washed down his skin in a crimson curtain-- blotchy, inky crimson like the psycho was rambling about. He saw Jellal's glare from the corner of his eye, and rued the dark pit he saw in the woeful man's eyes.
"I often like to think that Greed and Lust are intertwined if not one in the same. Your selfishness is a sin, you know. It's the reason why you are here, now, being torn apart."
That'sright, that'sright. You're greedy, sinfully greedy, and because you wanted her all for yourself you let yourself be controlled by your other greed and now you're torn because she's gone and that's not good that'snotgoodthat'snotgood--
Cutting wasn't enough. It wasn't enough. Jellal made a fist and shot it with all the strength he had into the criminal's shoulder, dislocating it. He felt a swell of rage at the thought of cutting not being enough-- why wasn't it enough? why wasn't it enough?-- and hit the man's shoulder again with the same force. A dull snarl of pain, and there was something white-tipped and sharp sticking out of the man's shoulder blade. It was gruesome, but Jellal had seen worse (he was worse).
Much worse much worse. Her shoulders were black and her chest was blue and she was scarlet and crimson too-- thatrhymed look, thatrhymed so clever-- and she was abused and she was used and it was terribleterribleterrible so worse much worse--
"AAHH!" a crazed howl of anguish.
Jellal lost himself. It was a split second, a flash; just like what he had seen and what he had done. He lost himself in a flash. And then the waters were made placid because they had beaten-- did that make sense? it made perfect sense. He cut himself with the knife and blamed the nameless shameless brainless heartless heartless villainous man and nearly took his head off his shoulders and then calmed down. His deep breaths were all that he wanted to focus on.
"I'm a doctor you know," Jellal said lowly, coming back to his senses, and the man looked up at him with a bludgeoned right eye. "I know a lot about the body. All the important arteries and veins that make you bleed more, bleed faster. The most important organs and their most important parts. All the bones in the body. And the biopsychological relationships between these parts and the mind. Do you know what that means?"
The man didn't answer. He saw Jellal's gaze looking through him as if he could see all that he had just named; invasive; empty and distant and knowing.
"It means you're going to scream."
Jellal set the bloodied knife aside, onto the tin tray next to orderly tools-- it was foul filthyfilthyfilthy but he ignored it-- and picked up a hammer. He held it in one hand, feeling it's weight, and with the other, socked the man in the seat deep in his gut, hoped it bruised. Blood spurted out of the holes in his throat, poured in a steady stream out of his swollen mouth. He wheezed and he hacked as saliva and blood began to seep into his lungs from his desperate attempt to snatch in air.
Jellal watched as he wheezed, thought about how much he fought, realized he didn't even know the man's name, nor did he care. He doubted that he knew her name or cared when he killed her, so why should he care about his name while he kills him? He'll feel all of her pain, know what it's like to die alone and at the horrible mercy of someone unnamed and who unnamed you because it made you less human and you realized it was easier to kill something that was less of what you were supposed to be because if not it made you more of a monster.
He was a monster, a monster. He killed her like a monster and now he would die like a monster, and he would become a monster for killing his monstrous brethren.
Crack!
The unnamed man gave a distorted plea.
"There are two hundred and six bones in the body," Jellal started as he ground the hammer into one of the man's fingers, "The fingers are among some of the most sensitive, considering nerves group largely in the hands," he added pressure to the tool and the man screamed again as he watched his finger burst into dozens of pink and white splinters, like bloodstained shards of ice-- they even glittered. "Because of this, enough damage to the hands can cause psychological trauma. You'll likely start to see and hear things that aren't there. I wonder what haunts you,"
The heathen (heathen, he liked that, it suited him) sucked in a sharp breath, looked troubled for just a moment. Jellal saw him shudder, and felt a sickly sweet pleasure.
He's losing it he's losing it, I'm losing it, love, we're losing it--
"I hope she wanders your dreams and turns them to nightmares," she haunts mine
because she's all I see and all I hear and all I breathe and all I feel and all I want and all of me and everything I could never be that's why I need her but you took her from me and now she's lost without me and everything's a mess like the dreams--
Screaming disrupted his freight train of thoughts. Jellal was (relieved) disappointed that the criminal had robbed him of her image again. His control, which had been teetering over the edge of such a highhigh cliff, slipped through the cracks instead. It was genius, he thought; genius. It always found a way to slip. It never fell, there was no falling, it only slipped. Nothing was truly sudden it was all gradual it had been coming for a long time but you just never saw it until it was right in front of you and by then it was too late so it seemed sudden but it really wasn't-- notreallynotreally.
"Monster!" Jellal roared, the sound reverberating and reflecting and coming right back. He was a monster. He deserved to diediedie and die horribly and painfully and ten times as painful as she died-- was taken away. A monster, a monster, he had become a monster; a monster for killing his monstrous brethren, a monster for killing an innocent human, a monster for not making bread out of bones, a monster for licking the bones dry but not making bread-- he was wasteful-- a monster for being selfish, for sinning and raging and indulging and raging and ragingragingraging.
Where had the hammer gone?
Jellal blinked, some of the dark glaze on his eyes receding but by no means quelling the rage. He blinked again, and blinked back tears this time. He looked at the man in the chair, the man with no name, the monster. He was shaking-- quaking-- looking electrified and seized, and rattling the chair like he rattled his bones and disgusted that he hadn't made the bones into bread. The hammer was gone, in the darkness, cast away, lost, in obscurity, looking for her for him while he tried to lick the bones clean. Jellal let the hammer continue its search, almost terrified to stop it. He looked at the monster in the chair.
Crimson. Crimson, crimson, bloody crimson, a colour so divine it was related to scarlet and sat at the same table and ate the same food and shared the same friends and and did the same as scarlet, because it was just that good of a colour. Scarlet was the Queen, crimson was her king, like the crimson on his face, and the crimsom on his hands, and the crimson on his shirt, and the crimson on his monster and the crimson on her mother-- her mother? that's right, he'd neglected to tell her mother. what would she think? would she curse him? condemn him? cry with him? kill him? hold him? love him?--
Where did this lighter come from?
Jellal played with the flick. He birthed the fire, killed it, birthed the fire, killed it. A cycle of rebirth was in his hand-- did the flame also have a soul that could reach Nirvana? A groan and a sob left the man in the chair, the man named Monster who sat in his plastic chair, and Jellal saw his red, red skin. It was a violent red, like his rage, like her hair, like his shirt and his hands. Did the fire play with Monster? The fire wasn't allowed to play because it was dangerous. But Jellal was the flame's father now, and he said the child he'd birthed in his hand could play however much he wanted with his friend Monster. Monster and Fire were best friends.
He'd always been a quiet kid. People feared he would do weird things because of it; "It's always the quiet ones." The quiet ones, he learned, always had something to hide. Typically dangerous. Therefore, he was a dangerous child. He didn't know what to think about it. He thought many things, thought of everything, considered every evil thing he could possibly do to another child. He didn't like those thoughts, but they came. And he realized that he was indeed a monstrous kid, a "quiet one."
But she was never one to blindly listen to others and do what others did, so she talked to him. She said she liked his crimson. He was quiet then, that's what he was. She didn't seem to think he was dangerous. It made him think that maybe he wasn't dangerous. The evil thoughts didn't come when she talked, when he saw her firey hair and they laughed and played and he touched her. Fire and Monster got along quite well. Monster thought Fire was beautiful.
Fire and Monster eventually conceived a child. He was a father who had birthed another flame by his very own hand and was very glad and very proud and very loving. She was radiant and supporting and strong-- so strong.
But monsters were plenty, and they hated flames.
Jellal blinked back more tears, glared at the crimson smudges-- filthyfilthyfilthy smudges-- on the steel lighter. He played with the flame and felt his soul stir somewhere in the dark, heard it dragging the hammer along. "As fickle as humans are," his throat was dry and so he spoke quietly, "we can endure quite a lot. Contradictory beings, we are."
Jellal was impressed by the durability of Monster. He'd pulled through, screamed and cried and screamed some more, despaired and cursed and pondered why with no answer-- it was maddening. He was mad, he was mad-- why was he still breathing? why was the crimson and the red not enough? why was he laughing? God damn, he was laughing. The chair rattled, and the lighter fell unto the floor, and he was on his hands and knees, and his spine ch-ch-chuttered and his fingers were gone because of the hammer and he could smell her in the air and the binds the shycho put on him were digging into his skin and creating blisters and Monster didn't care because he was coarse and hurting everywhere.
He was shychoshychoshycho.
But flames hated monsters just as much as monsters hated flames. The monster cried and he screamed and he screamed, just like Jellal said he would, and he screamed and he screamed and he cried. He squirmed and wriggled and convulsed and bled and screamed and cried, and against his will, Jellal was reminded of a baby-- a poor, defenseless and restless baby
a baby a baby a crying helpless baby he was killing a crying helpless baby and the baby had become a hapless baby that had never even cried and he would never get him back because he was gone and now she would cry because her crying helpless baby was gone--
"I'm sorry!" he pleaded amongst the fire, "I'm sorry I ever touched your wife! Please, let me go, and I promise to never look at another woman again! I swear!"
Jellal wiped away the moisture on his face with mild confusion. When had he gotten on his feet? He watched the monstrous man with cold, glazed eyes. They were far away; he was looking at something else, and that bothered Monster. They darkened as he tilted away from the light and spoke to the man in the chair anyway. "No. . . You won't."
Jellal picked up the mad flame from the floor and grabbed up a wrench. He didn't have a scoop, so it would be messier than it should be, but he didn't mind it; now the pain would be much worse (and he lived for the pain, hedid, hedid, because it was hurting him and he wanted it to stop).
Calmly, unnerving (him) his victim, Jellal set the wrench to the man's eye-level. He twisted the screw on the side, opening it wide enough to fit around the circumference of his left eyeball. Numbly, Jellal recognized that it was crazed and frantic and scared.
"Please!" the man begged, his eye widening. Jellal blinked. He would need to open up the wrench more than he thought.
A sickening squelch and the sounds of several tendons and nerves ripping out of the socket followed the mortified cries of he-who-must-not-be-named because if he was named that made everything worse and everything was perfect, she could never be anything but. He had a true seizure this time, shook and thrashed in his crimson chair and foamed at the mouth and choked on the foam, his countenance melting off and the wrench falling to the ground because it was hot. But he was resilient. Jellal left him to suffer.
He walked into the darkness. He took up his pointless circles, meandered with not even a hollow thought. He was still wary of the hammer, though; he tried in vain. The thoughts came back and everything came back, even if he didn't want them to. Stray tears leaked from his eyes as he shuddered with repulsion and rageragerage and recognized the filth. He hated himself-- he was crying like a child. He could hardly call himself a man, falling apart like this. She would hate to see him like this.
And yet, Jellal sobbed.
He was a grown man, but he'd lost everything that truly mattered to him and it hurt; then the pain broke him. His mind finally shattered as the terrible reality of not getting her back fully sunk in and his stalling had come to an end-- so wasteful. But he couldn't face the harsh reality for all of his maturity; it was too much (he realized he was going crazycrazycrazy but remained ignorant). She was the reason why he bothered going on in life, the reason why he hadn't turned his back on everything-- because she was his everything-- and given up on everyone. She was the meaning of his existence. He was obsessed and now he'd forever lost his obsession; he was a man who had everything and lost what he needed because everything and she was taken and--
Jellal fell down, curled into a ball, and cried. He felt it all just slip-- that was how they got you.
whereareyoulove? whereareyoulove? I miss you and I need you love. youleftme youleftme and I'm crying because I want to go with you love. you'reeverything you'reverything you'reeverythimgtomelove.
A light shone on his face and Jellal opened his red eyes. A warm and caring hand settled against his cheek, another in his hair. He could feel her legs beneath his head to act as a pillow. She liked to hold his head in her lap before bed, though he couldn't fathom why; she had the most beautiful scarlet hair and pretty rosy, heart-shaped face. He adored her.
"Jellal," he heard her speak. She was ethereal; his eyes slid shut again, his mind shut down again, all was quiet and placid and okay again. "Jellal, my love, you can't stay here,"
Jellal hummed. He reveled in the feel of her fingers sliding through his hair and kneading his scalp. Her heat felt like the sun. fire
"You have to find me. You have to come with me. We must always be together."
"Always together," he murmured.
"Let go, Jellal. You remember, don't you?"
" 'member, remember . . I remember . . ." He fell into a mantra. Jellal silenced and felt happy when her mouth came close to him and her lips ghosted over his ear to whisper the answer. The tips of her nails tickled the back of his neck and sent an electric wave of pleasure through him.
Her voice slithered into his ear. "I am everything." Erza is everything
Scarlet hair and white smiles and pure rage and essence of fire and when she sets the sun rises beacuse there can't be two and the night is cold because she's set, and there nothingnothingnothing worth what she is because she is everything.
Erza is everything, everythingeverythingeverything.
Jellal felt the sun's heat dampen. The fingers in his hair left and the warm hand on his cheek left and he whined like a child. He felt her warm kiss on his forehead before she left him again-- but this time he knew to follow. Before she got too far, he'd follow, and he'd find her.
Jellal took the knife-- filthy filthy still so filthy knife-- and turned off the single light. He took a deep breath and thought about everything, ignored the hammer his soul was still dragging along, and gave Monster what he'd pleaded for. Monster pleaded to rest.
And finally-- finally-- he turned his back on the light, on the table, on the tools, on the chair, on the monster, on the mess, on the crimson, on the steel, on the walls, on the cellar, on the house, on the everything, and became that hapless soul despairing in lost, pitiful circles for his lover, his other half.